Lottie Project Read online

  More talk.

  ‘No, I want to come anyway. I’ll be with you in ten minutes,’ said Jo, and hung up.

  She ran to the bathroom. I followed her.

  She was on the loo, cleaning her teeth at the same time, shaking her head to wake herself up. She shook it again at me.

  ‘Look, Charlie, I can’t take any sneering from you just now. This is nothing to do with Mark and me. It’s serious.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, biting my knuckle. ‘Has Robin really run away?’

  ‘I don’t know! Mark woke up and he just popped his head into Robin’s room to check up on him – he’d been a bit funny when he put him to bed after the day out – and – and he wasn’t there. Mark says he’s searched everywhere. I don’t see how Robin could have got out the door and run off somewhere, I mean, he’s such a timid little thing – oh God, I keep thinking of awful possibilities . . .’ Jo was nearly in tears as she rushed round the bathroom and then ran back into the bedroom, pulling on jeans and a jacket over her nightie.

  I started yanking on my own clothes too.

  ‘Charlie? Look, you’d better not come. Go back to bed. Maybe you could phone the supermarket later if I’m not back. And you get yourself off to school and—’

  ‘No! I’m coming too! Oh, Jo, something awful will have happened to him, won’t it?’ I clung to her as if I were a tiny kid myself.

  ‘Hey, hey. We’ll find him. He’ll be OK,’ said Jo, although neither of us believed it. ‘Someone will have found him wandering about and—’

  ‘But that’s what I’m scared of. What if some really creepy pervert gets hold of him and—’

  ‘Don’t. No. Look, he’ll have just wandered down the road – maybe sleepwalking, something like that – and he’ll be curled up in a doorway somewhere, perfectly safe, sound asleep.’

  ‘But it’s cold out – really cold for a kid like Robin. And if he was just wearing his pyjamas . . .’

  ‘Mark said his school jumper’s missing too – and his slippers.’

  The thought of Robin setting off in his new too-big school jumper, his pyjamas and his scuffed slippers made me bite my knuckle almost to the bone.

  The lights were all on in Mark’s flat – and there was a police car outside.

  ‘There! They’ve found him,’ said Jo, taking my hand and hauling us both up the stairs.

  But they hadn’t found him. Mark had called the police and was telling them over and over again how he’d looked in on Robin’s room, and he wasn’t in his bed, and he’d gone to the bathroom, he’d gone to the kitchen, gone round and round every room in the house, calling and calling . . . His voice was hoarse now, and his face looked dreadful, pale grey and shiny. He caught hold of Jo but this was different; he was just so desperate to get Robin back safe and she might be able to help.

  I might be able to help.

  I had to tell them.

  I opened my mouth but I couldn’t get the words out.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said this young policewoman, patting my shoulder. ‘We’re doing our very best to find him. We’ve sent out his description and everyone’s searching. Children go missing every week – and they nearly always turn up safe and sound.’

  ‘Not kids as little as Robin. It’s all my fault,’ I said. ‘I made him run away. I even gave him that little cake with GET LOST on it.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Charlie – that was silly, yes, but that’s got nothing to do with it,’ said Jo.

  ‘But I said . . . I said all this hateful stuff . . . when we saw you kissing . . .’ I waited.

  Mark put his hands on my shoulders. His hands dug right into me. ‘What did you say, Charlie?’

  ‘I – I – it was so awful . . .’

  ‘I don’t care how awful. You’ve got to tell us. It might give us some clue where he’s gone. I’ve been running round the streets this past hour, everywhere he goes, down to the shop on the corner, up the road to the park, he’s not anywhere – I’ve looked, I’ve called – and yet how could he have got further, just wearing his slippers, and he hates going for walks, and he’d never go off willingly without me . . .’ Mark’s voice cracked.

  ‘I told him you wouldn’t want him any more,’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t really mean it, I said I was joking, but – but it was a horrible thing to say to him, I’m so sorry, it made him cry in the car going home and I didn’t tell and it’s so awful and if anything’s happened to him—’

  ‘Nothing will have happened to him,’ Jo said, putting her arm round me. We’re nearly the same height and yet I seemed to have shrunk and she’d become a great big enveloping mother. ‘We’ll find him, I promise you, we’ll find him.’ She was promising Mark too, saying it over and over, trying to convince us.

  ‘What did Robin say when you said all this?’ Mark persisted.

  ‘He mentioned his mum. Could he have run away to see her?’ I asked.

  ‘She lives in Manchester. How could he possibly . . . ? But I know he’s been missing her ever since his last visit. Though he always said he wanted to stay with me when I talked to him about it. Oh, Charlie, how could you tell him I didn’t want him?’ said Mark, tears running down his face.

  He wasn’t angry with me. Yet. This was far worse. I started to cry too.

  ‘It was a terrible thing to say but you were angry and upset,’ said Jo. ‘Everyone says terrible things when they feel really bad. Stop it Mark, she’s only a kid herself. Can’t you see how desperately sorry she is? Don’t blame her, blame me. I forced her into that day out. She wasn’t ready for it. We’ve been too close . . .’

  I listened to Jo sticking up for me, making all these excuses. It made me feel worse, the worst person in the whole world.

  Messages kept crackling over the police radio clipped to the policewoman’s shoulder. We froze each time – but it was never to say they’d found him.

  ‘I’ve got to go and search for him again myself,’ said Mark.

  ‘It’ll be light soon. I should wait till then,’ said the policewoman.

  ‘But Robin’s frightened of the dark—’

  ‘He’s probably tucked up in a corner somewhere, fast asleep. We’ve alerted everyone available. They’re all searching. We’ve got the helicopter up too. It’s got this special thermal imaging sweep that works even in the dark. The scanner picks up heat from the body—’

  ‘The body?’ said Mark, his voice cracking.

  ‘From the person, from your little boy, and it gives off a green image. It’s an amazing invention; we’ve had great success with it.’

  But Mark couldn’t wait, couldn’t stay still, so he went off in one of the patrol cars cruising the area. Jo and I waited in his flat with the policewoman. She made us a cup of tea but when I drank it down it made me feel so sick I only just got to the toilet in time. I splashed cold water on my face afterwards and stared at myself in Mark’s bathroom mirror. I felt I was looking at a murderer.

  I’ve never really felt bad about myself before. I could be cheeky, I could be bossy, I could be fierce – but I’d always thought I was one of the good guys. If any little kid at school was getting bullied I’d always charge in and send the bully flying. If anything needed sorting out then all the other kids would turn to me. Everybody liked me. Even the boys.

  But now I’d done the meanest thing in the whole world. It didn’t matter that I was sorry. Robin had run away and maybe he was going to be lost for ever.

  I felt myself folding up so that I was crouching on the bathroom floor, my head banging against the cold edge of the bath. I shut my eyes tight, banging and banging, trying to knock myself backwards, trying to make time tick backwards, so that I could undo and unsay everything. But no matter how I tried I couldn’t stop the hands on my watch moving forward, and every minute Robin was still missing.

  I heard the whirr of the police helicopter overhead. I wondered if they’d be able to spot Robin staggering along a grass verge, crouching down beside a hedge, curled beneath a tree. He might look up and show B