‘If you do know something, April, please say, now. Ruby’s life could depend on you.’

I was about to speak when someone knocked on the back door, so I never knew what I might have said.

‘Perhaps there’s some news.’ Betty rushed to the door. ‘Oh, Bobs, it’s you. Come in,’ she said flatly.

‘We’ve going out to join the search. I just wondered if April had any ideas where we might look. I mean, Ruby could be trapped somewhere. A silo, the old eel trap in the river …’

My dream of Ruby trapped in the burning orchard flashed into my brain.

‘April?’

‘No.’

If Ruby was found she would get into the most awful trouble with all those people looking for her. And so would I. We would both be sent to an approved school. I had to find her before they did so that we could run away together. Please God don’t let Ruby be murdered or trapped by fire before I get there.

‘Tell everybody thee will be tea and sandwiches here if they want them. I can’t think of what else to do… oh dear, I just wish they’d hurry up and find her. I can’t bear to think of her out there, somewhere.’

‘Will they have bloodhounds?’ I asked,

‘There may be some police dogs, Alstians I expect.’

Wet pink tongues beaded with saliva flapping over jagged teeth, panting after a runaway slave. Myself running across the fields pursued by baying dogs, accidentally leading them straight to Ruby’s hiding place.

As Bobs left, a policeman and policewoman arrived.

‘Could we have a word in private, Mrs Harlency?’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘No, it’s all right. We hope …’

‘April, take Peter through a minute.’

Peter was crawling on the floor. I captured him by the back of his vest and carried him just out of sight.

‘We have to prepare ourselves for the worst, Mrs Harlency. We’ve found the bicycle.’

I heard Betty gasp and cry out,’ ‘No.’

‘Of course it may not necessarily mean anything at this stage. I wonder if we could ask April some questions. I gather that she’s the missing child’s best friend.’

‘That’s right. They’re inseparable.’

‘OK, let’s have her in then. We’ll be as gentle as possible,’ said the policewoman.

‘Did you and Ruby have any special places you used to play in? Any hideouts or hidey–holes, a secret camp perhaps? I know when I was a little girl I had a camp in an old hollow tree.’

She could never have squeezed into a hollow tree now.

‘One of your school friends said she thought you have a secret…’

‘What friend?’

‘It doesn’t matter who it was. All that matters is finding Ruby and bringing her home safely, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why don’t you tell us where you think Ruby might be hiding, mmm?’

‘I don’t know. In the rec maybe, or she could’ve taken sanctuary in the church. She might have climbed into the belfry and got stuck.’

In the midst of all this drama what could I do but lie to the police, to the kind policewoman?’

‘Where was Ruby’s bicycle found?’ I asked as they were leaving.

‘Where do you think it might have been found, April?’

‘How should I know? I don’t know! I wish everybody would stop asking me all these questions.’

The baker and the milkman came next and I ran upstairs to pack a few clothes and Bobbity in a carrier bag. I would have to steal food when I got the chance and some money from the till. Ruby’s bicycle lay on its side with its wheels spinning. Perhaps she had abandoned it to throw them off the scent, to make it look as if she’d been kidnapped. I hid the bag under my bed and looked round my bedroom through tears. There was my white sugar peepshow Ester egg, piped in pink icing, too precious to eat, and all my treasures that I would never see again.

Mr Greenidge came into the tea-room in his white suit and a panama hat. He had picked a white rose for his lapel as if it were just another sunny day. He looked jaunty. Out on the spree. As if he might start twirling his stick in a tap dance or make Liesel jump through a paper hoop.

‘No, I haven’t called in for my tiffin, Mrs Harlency. I just dropped in at the Rising Sun to see if there was any news.’

‘Well?’

He looked as if he were about to ay something important.

‘The bicycle has been found.’ His voice was solemn as if he were at church.

‘We know, the police have been here.’

Mr Greenidge looked disappointed.

‘Oh. Well then. Did they have anything to add? Any fresh clues?’

‘She hadn’t opened up, had she? Gloria?’

Mr Greenidge put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Ah well. One must take the charitable view. Somebody has to hold the fort. Life must go on eh? Poor woman’s pretty distracted to give her due. And our little April, this is a dreadful ordeal for her too.’

‘Well I’m glad Gloria’s keeping the home fires burning puling pints!’ said Betty.

Mr Greendige’s fingers tightened painfully on my bone, transmitting the message right through my body that he knew where Ruby was hiding.

‘Fair dos,’ he said. ‘Worry makes thirsty work.’

I twisted free and looked up into his cold blue eyes, at the beard like a badger shaving brush. A white handkerchief with a blue letter C.

‘Best be off. I’ll keep you posted if hear anything. Drop it, Liesel! Drop!’ Liesel had Peter’s rubber squeaky teddy in her mouth squeaking feebly.

‘Chin up, April.’ He squeezed my chin between his forefinger and thumb. ‘I only wish I could be out there too.’ He tapped his ankle angrily with his stick. ‘Makes a chap feel so damn useless.’

There was no way I could make my escape because that day, for the first time, the Copper Kettle was as we had imagined it, full of people, even Mrs Edenbridge-Dwyer popped in, more customers than we could cope with, and Betty rushed off her feet.

To and fro I went between tea-room and kitchen with my stomach quivering like a heap of scrambled egg, serving the customers eating and drinking Ruby’s disappearance. Mr Greenidge returned Justas the policeman came back into the steamed-up kitchen.

‘Afternoon, Inspector. Any joy?’

‘Thank you, Mrs Harlency, I could murder a cup.’

‘It’s a bit weak I’m afraid. We’re running out of everything.’

‘So long as is warm and wet. Nothing as yet, sir.’

Behind their back Mr Greenidge mouthed a kiss at me.

‘Leave me alone. I hate you,’ I hissed. He recoiled as though I had spat at him.

‘I was just remarking to my lady wife, Mrs Greenidge, that the police have an almost impossible task. There are so many places that a child could hide, aren’t there, barns, sheds, a hollow tree, an old railway carriage, a stable loft.’

‘What was that you said, sir? An old railway carriage?’

I was out of the house and on my bike, voices shouting behind me, along the High Street, legs hurting, pedalling on, zooming down Lovers Lane. At the bridge I threw my bike in the grass and raced across the meadow, zigzagging through cows, tripping in the rough grass over clumps of thistle and sorrel and cowpats, scrambling up and running on until a red-hot stitch seared my side and I stopped, sobbing, panting, touching my toes to make the stitch go away. Then I saw a cloud, a billowing black-and-grey plume of smoke twisting and spreading in the sky above the orchard.

A hand grasped my shoulder. I turned, into a blur of black and silver buttons. The Inspector. And then we both saw the men walking forwards in a crooked line across the field. Percy, Tiny Vinnegar, Joe Silver, Mr Drew the Sunday-school teacher, fathers of the children at school, and at the centre of the line was Lex, carrying Ruby on his back.

Her face and arms and legs were black. Her gingham dress was scorched. One bare foot dangled where a laceless plimsoll had fallen off.

‘It wasn’t me! I didn’t tell!’ was running alongside Lex.

‘I knew you wouldn’t,’ Ruby’s smudged face said before Percy dragged me violently by the arm and caught me a slap round the head that sent me spinning with shock and grief.

Our house was dreary with a constant grey drizzle of shame and disgrace. I had that foolish feeling all the time, as if everything I did was silly, as if my body and face were naked. After all the tongues and lips and voices attacking me, picking me to pieces, all the questions, I spent most of my time in my bedroom. I tried to read Valley of Doom, to blot out my panic with fear but it made it worse. The rattling of the dice in my compendium of games was agonizingly loud as my ears strained to catch words from downstairs about Ruby. About me. The bell on the tea-room door jangled and jangled. It was summer outside and children’s careless shouts sounded cruel. A ball thudded heartlessly in the road and soared dully into the blue that I couldn’t see. Nobody had said I was prisoner and yet I knew I was. Even Peter turned away from me. He was grizzly with teething but I felt that he sensed that I was tainted. George Dixon and Julia Lang sang songs for good little children on Listen With Mother. I’ll kill myself,’ I vowed. ‘Then they’ll all be sorry.’ I hated them all but what was truly unbearable was the separation from their love. Percy and I avoided each other’s eyes because we both knew this, that at the time of Ruby’s capture, by hitting me in anger he had turned into Lex for a moment.

On the third day I got up while everybody was still sleeping, after a disturbed night when I had lain awake listening to their voices soothing and shushing Peter. I crept out the back door and got my bike. The latch on the shed was silver with dew. I rode along the quiet High Street to Rising Sun and leaning my bike against the fuschia hedge, tiptoed round the yard.

‘Pee-wit. Pee-wit.’

I stood below Ruby’s window calling in a hoarse whisper, ‘Ruby! It’s me. Wake up.’

I stooped down and found a little piece of gravel and threw it at her window as Ruby would have done. It hit the glass and fell down into silence, and birdsong. I looked around the yard. No piglets. No pullets. A pile of weedy crates, broken brown bottle glass flashing as the sun struck it. I picked up a bigger pebble and flung it harder and a white spiderweb cracked in the glass.

‘To whit too whooo,’ I tried our old call. ‘Ruby! Ruby!’

‘You’re too late.’

I whirled round to see the postman standing there.

‘You’ve missed them. They’ve done a flit. Cleared out. Lock stock and barrel.’

Twenty

When I went back to school I took a book to read at playtime. I wouldn’t speak to anybody. After a few days Veronica sidled up to me. ‘Can I be your best friend now Ruby’s gone?’

I looked up from my book. ‘If you want. I don’t care.’

My parents made me go to tea with the Greendige. Of course Mr Greenidge had pretended to the police that his mention of a railway carriage had just been ‘a shot in the dark’. When he opened the door of Kirriemuir and tried to hug me, I kicked him in the shins and went through to the conservatory knowing that he couldn’t tell. Mrs Greenidge was lying on the couch with Liesel at her feet. Liesel lifted her head and wagged her tail but she didn’t get up.

‘Move, Liesel’ said Mrs Greenidge trying to shift her. ‘You heavy, you silly great salami. I wish she hadn’t taken to lying there like a dog on a tombstone. Doesn’t do much to keep my spirits up.’

I could see it was meant to be a joke but it wasn’t funny so I couldn’t even smile.

‘Come and sit down, April. How are you? How is your baby brother? I suppose he’ll be running about soon.’

‘All right,’ I said.

Mrs Greenidge took my hand in her purple hand.

‘It’s very painful isn’t it? It’s so hard to lose somebody you love.’

At that I felt myself lay my head in her lap, sobbing against the slipper silk while she stroked my hair and underneath my grief was surprise that Mrs Greenidge should be the only one to understand.

I heard the jiggling of teacups as Mr Greenidge put down the tray but I didn’t look up.

‘There,’ said Mrs Greendige, still stroking my hair. ‘That’s better. You run along now. Don’t worry about tea.’

She gave me her own hanky with a spray of violets in the corner and a purple, border, smelling of her turquoise scent.

‘April, wait a minute,’ Mr Greenidge whispered in the hall, ‘wait!’

I ran out into the road and sat on the bridge watching the shallow river swirling round bright stones and endlessly washing the green hair of the water weed. I was empty. Rinsed.

When the post arrived one morning, seeing it was a bill I almost left it on the mat, having learned that presenting my parents with brown envelopes only made them cross.

Then I saw something white underneath. It was addressed to me in Ruby’s writing.

I rushed upstairs and shut my bedroom door.