‘Just a home phone?’
He nodded. Madeline had never bothered with a mobile.
‘What about her carer?’
Phil shrugged. ‘I don’t know any more, sorry. She’s last on my round and I didn’t want to keep the others waiting.’
‘Of course. Thanks, Phil.’
I hurried after Mum into the office, where she clicked open Madeline’s file.
As she tried phoning her again, then followed up with a call to her carer, apprehension began gathering momentum as it pulsed through my arteries.
‘Her carer left at eight. She was fine, then. A little tired from yesterday’s adventure, she said, but nothing out of the ordinary. Phil would have been there around nine-fifty.’ Mum pursed her lips. ‘Her next of kin is a niece in Scarborough. It seems a bit premature to call her just yet.’
‘I’ll go,’ I said. Mum nodded. She knew that nothing on earth could have stopped me.
34
Wheezing from the exertion of sprinting the whole way there, I peered through Madeline’s windows and rapped on both doors in time to the thundering in my chest. For a second I wondered about finding a blunt object to smash a window and climb in, but if it came to that, the carer had a key, and there was no real reason to be overly concerned yet. Maybe Madeline simply decided to give the Barn a miss and have a snooze instead.
The churning inside me was screeching something different.
I tried her neighbour.
‘She was just leaving when I saw the kids off to school. A bit earlier than usual, but she seemed her normal self.’
Okay, so she’d gone out. The question was, where had she gone, and should I be worried about it?
Think, Jessie.
I tried to get my frantic brain to think, but the truth was she could have gone anywhere.
She could have popped to the shops, not wanting to wait for her supermarket delivery. Or decided to treat herself to breakfast at the café. Except that the carer had given her breakfast. She could have simply decided to go for a walk. It was a beautiful spring day. Perhaps she fancied a quiet day rather than the drama of the Barn for once…
And then I knew, with utter certainty, where she would be.
I hurried to the end of the road and around the corner. The bench was set back from the road, on a wide verge, and at this time of the year it was partially hidden from view by the bushes growing beside it, but spying a glimpse of what looked like Madeline’s walker through the greenery propelled me to a jog.
She’ll be fine,I panted inside my head.She’s just gone to see the horses. She’ll be fine.
I found my friend, sitting upright on the bench.
She was not fine.
* * *
The initial blow was so fierce I squeezed my eyes closed for a few seconds, praying with every cell in my body that when I opened them, I’d see something different. Her twinkling at me. Nodding her head in sleep. Even slumped unconscious was something I could handle. But not this. Not now. Not Madeline.
After a couple of shaky breaths I sat beside her on the bench and gently cradled her hand in mine for one last time while I called my mother.
* * *
Isaac had wanted to stay at home with me for the rest of the day, but I knew he’d offered to drive Connie and Wilf to a paediatrician’s appointment in Nottingham, so I shooed him away, insisting that I preferred to be on my own.
Which was true, until twelve-thirty, when Penny came and found me in a heartbroken huddle on the sofa.
‘Jessie,’ Elliot said, when he followed her in a moment later. ‘I didn’t realise you were off today.’
