Cass is waiting at the door when we walk in, her tail wagging frantically. I drop my hand to stroke her head whilst checking the kitchen for Alex’s schoolbag. It’s not here. It’s not in the hall either. Or the living room.
Panic rips through me with the intensity of forest fire. ‘He’s not home, Nathan.’
‘He’s in so much trouble.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I mean, he’s not home. It’s eleven-thirty and he’s not here. Where is he?’
I don’t wait for a reply and take the stairs two at a time.
His room is a tip and eerily quiet, the bed unmade, the floor littered with schoolbooks, his pencil case and calculator, muddled in with assorted balled tissues, ink cartridges, a browned apple core, as if his bag has been upended.
Nathan appears behind me and mutters something ill-tempered about the mess.
‘For God’s sake,’ he says sharply. ‘Stop looking so worried. He’s rebelling, can’t you see? Missing the ceremony? It’s his idea of a petty stand against me. He’s probably drinking somewhere, thinking he’s oh-so-clever and cool.’
I don’t say anything but, God, I hope he’s drinking somewhere. I hope he’s with a group of friends drinking cheap cider out of two-litre bottles, laughing and flirting. I hope his friends asked him if he should be at that thing his dad’s doing and I hope he made a face and said, ‘Fuck, no, why would I do that when I can get drunk with you lot?’ I hope this because if he’s drunk with his friends he isn’t lying in a ditch somewhere.
I want him home.
Nathan takes in the mess on the floor. ‘That looks like stuff from his bag. He didn’t go to school?’
‘Yes, he did. I mean, I think so. They’d have called, surely?’
Nathan moves with purpose down the stairs. I follow even though I want to run to our room and cocoon myself beneath the covers of the bed. I am bombarded by horrific scenario after horrific scenario. Each one more terrifying than the one before it. Alex lying, broken-limbed, at the bottom of a mine shaft. Alex unconscious at the foot of a cliff. Alex dead beside the road. Alex at the bottom of the sea, his bloated body leaking blood into the salty water…
I grip the study doorframe to steady myself.
Nathan reaches for the phone on his desk. I stare at the painting on the wall, the hunting scene, those men in their flat caps contemplating the lifeless stag. I try and block out the image of Charles Cardew, sitting in the chair, turning the gun towards his face.
‘There’s a message,’ he says, pointing at the phone on his desk, on which a red light pulses ominously. ‘Why didn’t you check?’
I don’t know what to say. I never check for messages. They are never for me. The only person who ever calls me is Vicky and she never uses the landline in case Nathan picks up and she is forced to talk to him.
Nathan puts the phone on speaker. He taps the keypad. Plays the message.
‘Good morning. This is a message for Mr or Mrs Cardew. It’s Mrs Foster at William Brownley. I’m calling to ask if you could telephone the office to confirm Alex is off school today. You can register an absence on the school website if you log on to the parent portal and click absences.’
My stomach hits the floor.
Nathan silences the answerphone and picks up the receiver and dials.
‘Who are you calling?’ My voice, like the rest of me, is weak and shaky.
‘I’m calling the bloody police, of course.’