I Hear You Calling Read online

  ‘Rae, I know you’re in there somewhere, and I need you to come back now. We all need you to come back but especially me ‘cos I have never been without you and I don’t know how to be.’

  Mark arrived at nearly ten o’clock that same night.

  ‘That’s really good babe,’ he said wearily when I told him about the smile, ‘but like the nurse said, don’t get your hopes too high. I don’t want you to be hurt even more.’

  I felt guilty that night, snuggled up with Mark in Rae’s double bed while she was lying in a coma in hospital. But it was lovely to have my man back with me. Mark was my rock, not a superhero by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly not a head turner, but to me he was perfect. Except for the snoring. But even that was comforting rather than annoying at that moment.

  The last thing I remember thinking before I fell asleep was, “She did smile, a proper smile, I know she did.”

  …………

  ‘I think I’ll stay here and look after the dog and do a bit of gardening for her.’

  I was getting ready to go to the hospital and had thought that Mark was doing the same. I couldn’t quite believe my ears when he talked of crying off.

  ‘The dog will be fine, Tom will be round in about an hour to walk him,’ I said.

  ‘As for the garden, well it’s a kind thought Mark but has it not occurred to you that maybe I need you with me today?’

  I was annoyed that I had had to point this out to him, usually Mark was really quick to recognise what I needed.

  ‘OK, don’t get upset. I’ll come to the hospital.’

  He smiled at me but I couldn’t bring myself to smile back.

  Rae lay still as ever, bruised and plastered and not there. I had got so used to seeing her like this that I had forgotten the huge shock that Mark would be feeling seeing her for the first time.

  He stood in the open doorway just staring at her and his usual ruddy complexion paled.

  Forgetting my bad mood with him I reached out a hand, which he grabbed like a life-line from a sinking ship.

  He sat down on a plastic chair by the bedside and buried his head in his hands.

  My heart went out to him then; he must have been dreading this and that’s probably why he tried to get out of coming.

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’ I told him gently. Then turning to the bed I lifted the tone of my voice.

  ‘Morning Rae, look who’s come to see you. It’s Mark, all the way from London, no expense spared for my sister.’

  He didn’t smile, he just sat looking at the floor the whole time, even when I read the final chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

  ‘I won’t make you come again,’ I told him as we drove away. ‘I didn’t realise you would find it so hard to deal with.’

  When he didn’t answer I sneaked a sideways look at him and saw that his eyes were wet.

  ‘She’s going to be ok,’ I almost shouted. ‘Stop moping, Rae is tougher than you think and she’s going to pull through this.’

  He nodded slightly and looked away out of the window. I carried on driving in silence. All of these people with their negative thinking didn’t know my sister like I did. She would be fine, she had to be fine.

  Tom

  It was the strangest of times really. Pam and I spent most of those early days of our courtship either comforting Janet whilst we waited for news or sitting next to Rae’s hospital bed. The hardest thing was that nothing seemed to be happening at either place and we would often find ourselves running out of things to say.

  Janet was thin as a rake, she seemed to be living on a liquid diet of tea and coffee but she was still keeping her house immaculate and washing stuff every day even though there was no one around to dirty anything. Her mood swings were incredible, she flew from morose to furiously angry in 60 seconds flat and then back to a quiet depressive state again when her anger was spent. Never having had a child myself I could only imagine the pain she was in but Pam was really good with her and always seemed to know just how to say the right thing according to Janet’s mood. There was a police liaison officer assigned but the poor man often suffered the brunt of her anger as she got more and more frustrated with their lack of ability to find Richard and Chris. To say it was not a happy environment would be a joke – it was painful to witness.

  As for Rae, she showed no sign of change whatsoever although Jen insisted that she had smiled at one point.

  I prayed a lot, for both of them.

  Richard

  So, this morning we were the little shop just down the road from the woods to get milk and bread and stuff like that. While Dad is sorting it out I am looking for a new football magazine. And that’s when I see it.

  It’s us – me and Dad, right on the front of the newspaper. I look away and then back at it again just to make sure. Yes, it’s definitely us.

  ‘Dad,’ I shout, ‘there’s a picture of us on the newspaper.’

  Dad drops the plastic shopping basket onto the floor with a bang and rushes over to me. When he sees the picture he goes whiter than the milk he has just put in the basket. He pushes his big hand into the middle of my back.

  ‘Out,’ he says. ‘Out now.’ He pushes me all the way through the shop door and onto the street.

  ‘Why are we in the paper Dad?’

  ‘Shut up and get in the car,’ he sounds out of breath even though we have only walked a few steps. I almost fall into the car ‘cos he’s still pushing me as he opens the door. Then he jumps into his seat, starts the engine and rushes off at top speed. It’s like a scene from a movie.

  I hang onto my seatbelt as we go round the bendy roads really fast and I am being swung from side to side.

  ‘You’re scaring me Dad.’

  ‘Just sit still and be quiet,’ he says. ‘We will be ok.’

  Then he turns right instead of left, back to the woods.

  ‘You’ve gone the wrong way,’ I tell him. ‘The woods are that way.’

  ‘We’re moving on.’

  I am scared to ask the question but I really need to know. ‘Are we going home?’

  He doesn’t answer me, but I know anyway really. We are not going home yet.

  The inside of the car smells a bit now; dirty blankets, dirty clothes and dirty feet.

  I have got used to the smell of whisky on Dad’s breath in the woods but in the car it seems stronger. I start to feel a bit sick and keep hoping we will stop soon so that I can get out and get some fresh air. But he drives for ages.

  We go through small towns with little houses and people stopping to chat on the pavements. I see a man with a German Shepherd dog on a lead and it makes me think of Tom and Herman. I wonder if Tom knows that me and Dad have gone away. I hope he does ‘cos then he might be looking after Mum, he would do that, he’s a nice person. I miss Tom and I miss snuggling into Herman’s long fur.

  Then we drive through a big town with huge buildings and lots of shops. People are dashing around with their heads down, not talking to each other at all. Then it starts to rain and the people walk even faster and one man in a suit puts his briefcase over his head, like an umbrella. That makes me smile.

  And then we drive out onto real country roads. I see sheep and cows in fields, there are tractors on the road and lorries loaded up with hay. We have to really slow down then and I can hear Dad swearing under his breath.

  He hasn’t spoken to me at all and every time I look at him he has little beads of sweat running down his face. He keeps wiping them away from his eyes so that he can see but they keep coming back.

  I need to stand up, I keep sticking to the car seat and have to keep moving my bum and legs around. We have been in the car for ages now.

  There’s a garage coming up, a little one but it has a little shop as well.

  ‘Shall we stop and get a drink Dad?’

>   ‘There’s a bottle of water on the back seat.’

  ‘It’s just that you look hot.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He carries on driving.

  ‘Dad, all the road signs are funny aren’t they? They have dragons on them and they have writing in a foreign language as well as English.’

  ‘It’s Welsh.’

  ‘Oh, so are we in Wales?’

  ‘That would be why the signs are in Welsh, don’t you think?’

  I snuggle down into my seat and decide to go back to my place and look for the princess.

  The last couple of times we have met a little bit more of her has appeared. She doesn’t look a half done drawing now, she looks like a three quarter one. She has long blonde hair now but I still can’t see her face properly.

  She is sitting on a large rock on the edge of the lake. This time the lake is purple and blue. She has no shoes on and her feet are in the water.

  ‘Welcome Sir Justaboy.’

  I sit down next to her, take off my shoes and dangle my feet in the cool water like she is doing.

  ‘You look upset.’

  ‘We are on the move. I saw our picture in the newspaper and then Dad got really strange and he is driving us into Wales now and the signs are all funny.’

  She is looking at me with her head to one side, like she isn’t sure what I am talking about.

  ‘You don’t have road signs here do you? So you won’t know what I mean will you? Road signs tell you where you are and where to go,’ I try to explain. ‘And Wales is another country, its part of England I think, but then not really. I don’t really understand that bit myself.’

  She takes her feet out of the water, they are quite small and narrow really, and she stands up. Her head keeps moving from side to side; we used to have a budgie that did that when he was listening to what you were saying.

  ‘Are you ok Princess?’

  ‘I think so. I think I should know what you mean but I don’t know if I do.’

  She shakes her head as if to throw away her thoughts.

  ‘Anyway Sir Justaboy, tell me more about your travels. So you are off to the land of Wales, which may or may not be part of England. What will you do when you get there?’

  ‘I don’t know, probably stay in a caravan or another woods and meditate.’

  ‘You don’t sound happy about it my little knight.’

  She is so nice to me that I think I might cry again, but I bite my lip hard and screw my eyes up. Knights are brave, I can’t cry in front of the princess, but it is good to be able to talk to someone about it.

  ‘It’s Dad, he’s strange now. And I don’t think Mum is coming to us after all and Dad won’t even let me ring her and I don’t know why. When we left she had a really bad headache and I keep thinking that maybe she is really ill and that’s why he’s keeping me away from her; maybe she is even dead.’

  My voice cracks on that word, I have been thinking it for ages but this is the first time I have said it out loud and it’s scary.

  ‘I’m s’posed to be in my new school now as well.’

  She does the budgie thing again then.

  ‘School is a place where you go to learn things.’ I tell her.

  She puts her hands up to the sides of her head and she sounds a bit angry when she says:

  ‘There is something, something I can’t get hold of.’

  I have upset her and I feel really bad about it ‘cos normally she is so happy.

  ‘Can we go riding through the forest again today?’ I ask, to change the subject.

  It’s really cool riding through the forest. You are high up on a horse so you can see things you can’t see when you are down on the ground. I’m a bit scared of falling off and I like letting go of the reigns and reaching out and touching the leaves of the trees as we pass them. Some of them feel really soft, like the velvet Mum used to make cushion covers for her bedroom. Some of them feel a bit prickly and I let go of those ones really quick. But my favourite are the leaves that feel like shiny glass, they are cold and hard but smooth. I have never felt leaves like them anywhere else but in this place.

  Suddenly I swing to the right and think I am falling off the horse but then I am back in the car and Dad has swerved into the driveway of a big house.

  ‘Put your head down,’ he says.

  As I do I see a quick flash of blue and white as a police car drives past on the road we have just left.

  Dad sits still for a minute with his head resting on the steering wheel.

  Then he starts the car and drives off again.

  Jen

  The 6 o’clock news was running the kidnap story again; it seemed that there had been several lines of enquiry opened following public response to the media coverage. Again the holiday photograph of Chris and Richard was flashed across the screen and people were being urged to contact their local police station if they had seen either of them, especially if they had seen them in the last couple of days. I hated to admit it but it was all beginning to sound pretty desperate.

  When I got to the hospital Tom was sitting by Rae’s bedside.

  ‘The police have several leads,’ he was telling her. ‘Janet says they think the most promising one so far is from a chip shop Chris used on Monday night. The guy from the shop recognised Chris when he saw the photo on TV. The police are searching that area now and she just has to wait and see what follows.’

  I wasn’t happy with Tom for talking about this stuff to Rae right now; didn’t he think she had enough to cope with of her own?

  He must have seen from my expression that I was not impressed and he quickly changed the subject and began telling her something Barney and Herman had got up to on their walk. He left soon after that.

  Still seething I opened the cover of our new book, Prince Caspian, and began a new adventure in Narnia.

  Rae

  It was like a voice saying the word over and over in the back of my head - Narnia. I had used that word earlier on to Sir Justaboy. How could a word feel so familiar without me having any understanding as to what it meant?

  And then I began to have vague memories of sitting on my lion throne and a crown being placed on my head. And those words that I had said to the boy were being spoken to me: “Once a Queen in Narnia, always a Queen in Narnia.”

  It was a bit like a light going on – my mind flooded with warmth and happiness and I remembered that the castle was Cair Paravel and the place was Narnia and I was a princess, or was it a queen?

  As soon as I recalled it, however, I had this gnawing feeling that maybe I wasn’t really a Queen in Narnia - that there was something else.

  Ever since my last conversation with Sir Justaboy I had been trying to grasp a word he had used that I just knew was very important to me, but lots of words were swimming around in the mist in my head like the large silver fish in the lake, and they were jumbled up and undecipherable. I was mentally reaching out and trying to grab them without much luck.

  In Narnia we used to fish in that lake using long poles and hooks. That’s what I needed to catch those words, a pole with a hook.

  I needed a hook, a hook, a book. Book; that was one of the swimming words. I had caught it. Narnia, book, and a sense that I wasn’t really here.

  It didn’t help me much, but I was determined to keep fishing.

  Richard

  I am really thirsty and dry, my skin is sticking to the window as I look out.

  The houses now are the best so far, they are all painted pretty colours; creams, pale pinks and blues and greens and a lot of them have flower baskets outside with huge red and purple and blue and yellow flowers that Mum would love. I am thinking that this must be near the sea-side when I hear the cry of seagulls in the distance. Yes, the sea-side. I start to feel a bit better already.

  We always play this ga
me when we go on holiday where we have to see who can be the first one to spot the sea. I start to look for it.

  ‘For goodness sake Richard keep still,’ Dad snaps, ‘I am trying to concentrate on driving and you are bouncing around like a meerkat.’

  ‘I’m looking for the sea.’

  ‘Well don’t. The way you are moving around people will notice you.’

  I feel like Dad has slapped me, we always play that game and he loves it too.

  I lean back in my seat and close my eyes again.

  She is back at the lake, looking out across the smooth water.

  ‘Back again Sir Justaboy?’

  ‘We are at the Seaside now but Dad won’t let me look for the sea,’ I moan.

  ‘Have you spoken to your mum yet?’

  ‘No, not yet, and I really miss her. She loves the seaside too and she would have been looking for the sea as well.’

  ‘Oh poor Sir Justaboy, you are having a really tough time. Why don’t you tell your Dad how unhappy you are?’

  ‘I can’t, he gets too angry and he’s in a really bad mood today.’

  ‘Wait until he’s not so angry and then tell him that you really want to go home.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Richard,’ Dad’s voice calls me back to reality. ‘I said you can get out of the car now.’

  Dad has parked on the edge of a small beach, by some sand dunes, there is nobody else there. I can easily see the sea. My legs don’t want to work as I try to get out of the car, they are all numb and tingly. Mum always says that the first thing you have to do when you get to the seaside is take a deep breath and take in the sea air. So I stand, stretching my legs and breathing in really deep. I can taste the salt on the breeze.

  It feels really good and now that my legs are working again I just want to run and run and run along the sand before leaping into the sea.