When Nesta failed to return on the first bus, Alison decided to meet the next one. The bus stop was on the corner of the street, on the main road that led through the estate. It was visible from the front gate, but the darkness and a certain unspecified anxiety made Alison tense. She wanted to see her daughter step down from the next bus; yet she was visited by an overwhelming certainty that Nesta would not be on it.
The bus was five minutes late. It stopped and an old man Alison knew only by sight climbed up the steps slowly, clutching his walking stick. No one alighted. There were no passengers at all coming to Linden Drive. The next bus would be in half an hour’s time. Alison stood dismayed. There was no point in standing in the cold for half an hour. Her own front door was hardly five minutes away.
‘What if she’s run away?’ said Alison to Matthew after she told him that Nesta had been on neither of the two buses she normally used. ‘She’s never as late as this without telling us.’
‘Check her room,’ said Matthew. ‘See if there’s any sign there. But you know, for practical purposes, this is her last day on Earth. Maybe she’s stopped to talk to friends, or to look at places she has cared about here. There are all sorts of explanations.’
In Nesta’s room, there was no note on the dressing-table; nothing appeared to be missing that might not be stuffed in the yellow bag that was on the floor at the foot of her bed, apparently all packed and ready to go.
‘We should check the bag,’ said Alison.
‘She was told she could take whatever she wanted. I don’t like prying,’ said Matthew.
Alison looked at him, exasperated.
‘Ideals are all very well, but Nesta is very late and we have the right and the duty to find out all we can, even if it means opening her bag. You’re a hard man to understand, Matthew Gwynn!’
‘Open it then,’ said Matthew softly. ‘Open it, Athelerane.’
Alison blushed at his use of her true name in a tone that made it sound like an endearment. Anxiously, she pulled the zip round the end of the yellow bag; its lid flopped back and an envelope fell to the floor. Her heart was filled with dread as she picked it up.
‘To Mom and Dad’ was the inscription. The flap was sealed down and Alison tore it open. She trembled as she removed the letter from inside. She hesitated, then handed it to Matthew.
‘You read it,’ she said. ‘I can’t.’
Matthew read in silence.
Dearest Mom and Dad,
You told me so much, but you would not listen to what I had to say. I am not coming to Ormingat. I am never coming to Ormingat. I am Earthborn and Earthbound. I do love you very much. If you leave without me, I do not know what I shall do. If you stay, I promise to come home when the danger is past. In the meantime, don’t worry. I shall take great care to run no risks.
From your loving daughter, Nesta
‘What does she say?’ said Alison.
‘She will not be home till Sunday,’ said Matthew. ‘By which time, we shall be gone; or we shall be here for good. She speaks of being “Earthbound”. That is what we shall be if we fail to leave on Sunday morning. She cannot know what that really means to us. There was no way of explaining it to her properly.’
Alison took the letter in her own hands and read it.
‘She will take no risks!’ she said. ‘No risks! She is too innocent. She has no idea what a risk is.’
‘Innocent she might be,’ said Matthew, ‘but she is not stupid. She’ll do her best to stay out of danger.’
‘You are as innocent as she is,’ said Alison. ‘This is not Ormingat! There are evil people out there who are much cleverer than you imagine. Do you think wickedness is confined to avoidable back alleys? I’m phoning the police – now!’
Matthew was horrified.
‘We can’t show them that letter,’ he said. ‘It tells everything.’
Alison paused with the receiver in her hand.
‘We tell them that our daughter has failed to return home,’ she said, ‘nothing more.’
‘What time is it now?’ said Matthew, being the practical one for once.
‘Five to six.’
‘Nesta is nearly thirteen,’ said Matthew. ‘Children her age go missing for hours. The police would take no notice. It’s not even especially late. They’ll tell us to check her friends. They’ll ask us of there is any special reason why we think she is genuinely missing. We’ll draw attention to ourselves to no purpose whatever.’
‘Try the spaceship then,’ said Alison. ‘We are expected there tonight. Go inside and ask the communicator to find her.’
‘There are many reasons why that is impossible,’ said Matthew. ‘Our language can act as a homing device, but homing devices work only if the holder of the key uses it and wants to be found. Nesta has disappeared of her own accord. Besides, she holds no key: she cannot say the words properly. But there is a more important reason. If I enter the spaceship tonight, I feel sure it will not allow me to leave.’
‘So what do we do?’ said Alison.
‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘all we can do is look for her ourselves.’
‘Where?’ said Alison. ‘She could be anywhere in York. She could be on a bus or a train going out of York. She could be miles away.’
‘Or she could be with her friend. She could be somewhere with Amy Brown.’
Alison looked at her husband with a glimmer of hope, but the hope was dashed straight away as she realized that she did not know Amy’s address. The friendly visits had not had time to get off the ground. Amy had been once to tea at Linden Drive. Nesta had not yet returned Amy’s visit. It had never seemed necessary to know where Amy lived.
They searched Nesta’s room, this time hoping to find the address written down somewhere. It was then they found that her moneybox was empty.
‘She had over twenty pounds in there,’ said Alison.
They emptied the yellow bag and discovered that it was stuffed with things that were mostly there as deceptive bulk.
‘Her bank-book isn’t anywhere either,’ said Alison. ‘She must have taken that. So we can guess she has money with her. I don’t know whether that is better or worse.’
‘The telephone directory,’ suggested Matthew. ‘We might find Amy’s address from that.’
‘With a name like Brown?’ said Alison. ‘There could be hundreds of them. They might not even be in the book. We aren’t!’
Matthew sighed.
‘Tomorrow we can ask the school,’ he said. ‘They will have her address.’
‘If she is not home by tomorrow morning, very early tomorrow morning,’ she said, ‘I shall definitely ring the police. They will not ignore a child being missing overnight.’
The horror of Nesta being missing overnight was too chilling to contemplate. Here was a woman of Ormingat suddenly confronted with the possibility of sharing in the agony of Earth. This was something that happened to other people, something that happened only to Earthlings.
Alison laid her head on her arms and wept.
Matthew did not know what to do.
‘You wait here by the phone in case she rings,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and look for her.’
He took the car out and drove round York, up one street, down another, hoping against hope to catch sight of his daughter. Once he even drove past the end of Carthorpe Road where Nesta, wrapped in Grandpa Turpin’s greatcoat, was already fast asleep. After three hours of fruitless search, he turned for home.
Alison was still awake and waiting when he came in, her face chalk white, her eyes red with weeping.