All day Thursday, Amy waited for a summons that never came.
She had worked it out that Nesta’s parents would report her missing to the police. Then a policeman would come to the school to make enquiries. He or she would want to question Nesta’s best friend. That seemed logical. Amy Brown was no fool.
I’ll just say I don’t know. There is no getting past ‘I don’t know,’ so long as I look surprised and worried. It won’t be hard to look worried!
When Mrs Powell came into the French lesson, Amy tried hard to hear what she was saying to Miss Simpson, but their voices were low and they were evidently discussing some piece of school business. As she left the room, the headmistress did not even look at Nesta’s empty seat and did not give a glance in Amy’s direction.
By lunch-time Amy had come round to thinking that maybe the police had got her address and gone straight round there to ask her parents who will not be at home. Each day, Amy’s father went off to work first. Then her mother took Gerard, her younger brother, to the junior school where his grandmother would pick him up at teatime. He would stay at Granny’s house till Mrs Brown returned from work. That was why Amy was always first home.
If the police can’t get an answer, they’ll come back to the school.
Yet home time came and still nothing had happened. Nobody asked her why Nesta was absent. No one assumed that she would know anything. She did not know whether to feel relieved or alarmed. On the bus home, she was so deep in thought trying to work out all the possibilities that she almost passed her own stop.
She hurried down her street, practically ran into the front gate and up the steps, shot through the house and was all fingers and thumbs opening the back door. When she got into the garage, she found Nesta sitting on the stool, her arms folded on the bench and her head resting on the greatcoat as she dozed.
‘I’m back,’ said Amy. ‘How’s it been?’
Nesta sat up, startled.
‘It’s been a long day,’ she said, ‘and the night was even longer!’
‘What have you done?’ said Amy.
‘Not a lot,’ said Nesta wearily. ‘I’ve eaten everything and drunk all the pop and all the tea in my flask. I’ve read the magazines, and part of my library book. In between, I slept and I listened to my radio.’
‘Come inside for a while,’ said Amy, looking at her watch. ‘Bring the flask and the lunch-box. We’ll have time to stock you up before anyone’s due home. And I’ll get a carrier bag for you to put the rubbish in the wheelie bin.’
Nesta sat on the chair in Amy’s kitchen, thankful to be in a warm house again under a cheerful light. Amy’s kitchen was much bigger than the one at home, with a square table right in the middle of the floor, and rugs covering the lino. Set in one wall was a three-bar electric fire that gave a cheerful warmth. In different circumstances, Nesta would have enjoyed getting to know this big, old house. Today, she had too much on her mind.
‘One thing about the radio,’ she said as soon as she sat down, ‘I kept it tuned to the local station but there was nothing on about me being missing, nothing about any missing schoolgirl. I thought there might have been. Did anybody mention me at school?’
‘No,’ said Amy. ‘You were just marked absent. Mrs Purvis didn’t even ask if I knew what was the matter with you. She was more concerned with the note Jack Patterson brought. He’d been off for three days with a gumboil!’
‘My mom and dad mustn’t have reported me missing,’ said Nesta, almost tearful. ‘Maybe they don’t care where I am. Maybe they’re already on the way to London.’
‘Of course they’re not. Perhaps the police are just keeping it quiet for a day or so in case you turn up. I mean, if they kept it quiet till Sunday, you would turn up, wouldn’t you?’
It was almost as if Amy had read the note that Nesta had left!
‘You’re clever,’ said Nesta with a watery smile. ‘Sometimes I think you’re too clever by half!’
‘I’m not clever enough to know what you mean by that!’ said her friend as she filled the flask and started making fresh sandwiches. Amy was, as always, very well organized.
‘Here,’ she said, handing Nesta a cup, ‘drink that, then rinse the cup and put it away. I’ll have your rations ready in two ticks.’
Ten minutes before her mother and brother were due home, Amy went with Nesta to the garage to settle her in for the night.
‘And here are four more batteries in case yours run dead. You wouldn’t want to be without your music or your radio. And here’s a big battery for the torch. It’s a long-life – so I think it would last all right even if you kept it on all night.’
‘I’ll pay you for them,’ said Nesta. She hesitated and then added, ‘I want to ask you another big favour.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Amy cautiously, wondering what was coming next.
‘Could you do some shopping for me tomorrow? I’ll give you the money.’
‘What is it you want?’
‘Well,’ said Nesta, ‘I have had all day to think about it. If the police are looking for me, I should do everything I can to keep a low profile. Could you go to the station and get me a return ticket to Casselton on the earliest train on Saturday? Then if they enquire at the station with my description, I have more chance of not being found out. You don’t look anything like me.’
‘I know!’ said Amy, pulling a comical face. ‘They’ll be looking for somebody tall, fair and thin. And I’m fat, dark and little.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ said Nesta. ‘You know it isn’t. And you will go, won’t you?’
‘Well, it’ll have to be in the lunch hour,’ said Amy, studying the problem. ‘There wouldn’t be time for me to go shopping after school and get back here before Mum and Gerry. But I’ll do what I can.’
‘And there is one other thing,’ said Nesta. ‘I hate to ask you, but it could help.’
‘Ask,’ said Amy, ‘and be quick. We haven’t much time.’
‘Get me a red fleece jacket from the store near your bus stop. I have never had a fleece jacket before, and I don’t like the colour red. So that’ll be another way of disguising myself.’
Nesta handed Amy her purse with the money she had drawn from the bank in it in addition to the notes she had brought from the box in her bedroom.
‘What’s in there should be more than enough,’ she said.
Five minutes to go.
‘I can’t stay any longer,’ said Amy. ‘I’ll have to double check indoors. Still, so far so good. One night over, two left to go. Though what you’ll do after that worries me. Saturday night in Casselton?’
‘It’ll just be the one night,’ said Nesta. ‘And I’ll be able to give myself up very early Sunday morning.’
Amy shrugged. There was something unsatisfactory about the whole situation, but it was too late to do anything about it now. As Granny Turpin would say, in for a penny, in for a pound!
Alone in the garage again, Nesta was beginning to feel quite at home. She had her supplies, her deadline, and, this will sound strange to you, the company of a friendly greatcoat whose owner wished her well.