THEIR MOTHER’S BAD MOOD OSMOSED through walls and under doors like toxic gas. She’d already smacked Ava around the face for making her sisters laugh too loud, so they all slunk away to get their school bags.
Colleen’s bad mood was because of Trevor. Sometime in the night, he’d left her in bed and gone out without saying a word. Ava had been up and staring out The Front room window as she often did when she couldn’t sleep and needed to think. She’d heard Trevor get up so she’d ducked behind the big table. He’d been naked and he’d silently padded in to The Front room to quickly get dressed in the dark, loose change and keys jangling in his pockets. She’d listened to him quietly leave the flat then she’d scurried to the kitchen window.
The wall clock’s luminous hands stated it was quarter past two in the morning. If he’d returned to his own flat on the level below them, she’d not see him, but she’d watched him run up the steps to the main road and switch right. He was no doubt going to visit one of his other women or attend a rendezvous for a dodgy deal. Ava had returned to bed and, a few minutes later, as she settled, she heard her mother open her own room door and whisper into the night, ‘Trev?’
Of course Ava couldn’t tell her mother what was regularly going on with Trevor’s nocturnal excursions. She just had to endure her mother taking her frustration out on her daughters instead.
Ava returned to The Front room while Mom put on lipstick in the mirror, getting ready to go nowhere. Rita opened her mouth and flipped over a penny on her tongue, an impressive skill but one not appreciated by the eagle-eyed Colleen.
‘And get that out your gob or you’ll get canker!’ Colleen said.
Rita removed the penny sheepishly and put it in her pocket. Ava resisted the urge to challenge her mother’s assertion: the possibility of contracting canker through sucking pennies was highly unlikely. Germs yes, but not canker. But Ava didn’t want to get hit again so said none of this as she ushered her sisters out of the front door.
In the foyer, they met Susan Shaw, who was taking her children to school too.
‘Ava?’ she said. ‘Have you heard?’
Ava shook her head, and Susan’s mouth pinched. ‘Another kid’s gone missing!’
The Bonneys stopped in their tracks.
‘Around here?’
‘Yeah! But they haven’t said who it is, only that it’s a six-year-old boy. He went missing last night.’ Susan pointed towards the Quarry. ‘Police are all over again. Look.’
In the tepid sunshine, on the very crest of the Quarry, Ava could see the search teams waving sticks in the gorse. Ava’s stomach fluttered. She thought of Trevor out last night.
At school, during form-time, Ava looked for absentees. Two faces were missing: Tracey Wilkes and Tom Shelton. Her stomach fluttered again. Tracey had older brothers. Tom had a six-year-old brother.
Oh, please, please God, no. Don’t let it be Bry.
Ava tried to be rational, tried not to worry. There were hundreds of six-year-old boys; the missing pupil could be from any of the many primary schools in the area.
It could be someone else. But Tom’s empty chair exuded disquiet. As the class filed into the hall for assembly, everything was typically unbothered. None of the teachers mentioned a missing child, their faces as impassive as church statues.
It was on the way out of assembly that one of fourth year kids murmured, ‘It’s Tom Shelton’s little brother. My mom said.’