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  ‘Or she could be with her friend. She could be somewhere with Amy Brown.’

  Alison looked at her husband with a glimmer of hope, but the hope was dashed straight away as she realized that she did not know Amy’s address. The friendly visits had not had time to get off the ground. Amy had been once to tea at Linden Drive. Nesta had not yet returned Amy’s visit. It had never seemed necessary to know where Amy lived.

  They searched Nesta’s room, this time hoping to find the address written down somewhere. It was then they found that her moneybox was empty.

  ‘She had over twenty pounds in there,’ said Alison.

  They emptied the yellow bag and discovered that it was stuffed with things that were mostly there as deceptive bulk.

  ‘Her bank-book isn’t anywhere either,’ said Alison. ‘She must have taken that. So we can guess she has money with her. I don’t know whether that is better or worse.’

  ‘The telephone directory,’ suggested Matthew. ‘We might find Amy’s address from that.’

  ‘With a name like Brown?’ said Alison. ‘There could be hundreds of them. They might not even be in the book. We aren’t!’

  Matthew sighed.

  ‘Tomorrow we can ask the school,’ he said. ‘They will have her address.’

  Alison was aghast.

  ‘If she is not home by tomorrow morning, very early tomorrow morning,’ she said, ‘I shall definitely ring the police. They will not ignore a child being missing overnight.’

  The horror of Nesta being missing overnight was too chilling to contemplate. Here was a woman of Ormingat suddenly confronted with the possibility of sharing in the agony of Earth. This was something that happened to other people, something that happened only to Earthlings.

  Alison laid her head on her arms and wept.

  Matthew did not know what to do.

  ‘You wait here by the phone in case she rings,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and look for her.’

  He took the car out and drove round York, up one street, down another, hoping against hope to catch sight of his daughter. Once he even drove past the end of Carthorpe Road where Nesta, wrapped in Grandpa Turpin’s greatcoat, was already fast asleep. After three hours of fruitless search, he turned for home.

  Alison was still awake and waiting when he came in, her face chalk white, her eyes red with weeping.

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  Amy on Thursday

  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.

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  Thursday at the Gwynns’

  It was all very well Alison saying that she would ring the police first thing in the morning. But, when it came to the point, lifting the phone to say, ‘My daughter is missing’ was much more difficult than she had anticipated.

  ‘Nesta is not missing,’ Matthew pointed out. ‘She has not been abducted, she has not mysteriously vanished, she has run away. The police will want to know why. How will we explain it?’

  Alison looked at him, hesitating, with the receiver already in her hand.

  ‘What use will they be anyway?’ said Matthew. ‘How often I wonder do they find youngsters who have deliberately run off?’

  ‘They can find them dead,’ said Alison with a shudder.

  Then, after a silence, she said, ‘If we report her missing, we shall at least have something to hold on to, some possibility.’

  So it went on. There was thought and counter thought as the Gwynns struggled to know what to do for the best.

  ‘I don’t know what we should do,’ said Matthew at length. ‘We’ve talked round and round in circles. It isn’t becoming any clearer to me. All I hope is that Nesta has found herself somewhere safe to stay and that, as she thinks about it, she’ll realize that her place is here with us. She could walk in the door any time. Then we would be off and away.’

  ‘Oh, Mattie!’ said Alison. ‘You know she won’t come back in time. She’s made that quite clear. She wants us to stay here and this is her way of making sure that we do. And what happens next? After the ship goes, where does that leave us? Neither of Earth nor of Ormingat? What will we be?’

  Alison was on the edge of a great and frightening thought. But no way would this make her consider the possibility of leaving her child behind.

  ‘How does she know that we won’t go without her?’ said Matthew impatiently, far more aware than his wife of what they were being forced to give up. It was as if he really knew the edge and what was over it. ‘We could. We would have every right to: the stakes are high.’

  Alison gave him a look of disbelief.

  ‘And what would happen to her? Left here on Earth alone?’

  ‘She would be taken care of,’ said Matthew. ‘If they can take care of a house and a cat, taking care of a child should be no problem. They would create another illusion. We remember Boston, don’t we?’

  Alison shuddered.

  ‘You do see what I mean, don’t you?’ said Matthew.

  ‘At this moment, Mattie, I see nothing. My eyes are too full of tears. You talk as if Nesta were safe and sound. Other children have been raped and murdered. What makes you think that our child is immune?’

  When dusk came again, Alison and Matthew stood together looking from the back window into the garden, across the patio and the lawn to the pond where the frog squatted on its grey stone lily pad.

  ‘Ask the communicator,’ said Alison. ‘It is all we can do, and we must do something.’

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ said Matthew, ‘if I enter the spaceship, I will not be allowed to leave.’

  ‘We’ll drain the pond,’ said Alison. ‘Then we’ll lift the frog. We’ll lift it just so far, and we’ll call down for help without entering the spaceship at all.’

  ‘That would never work,’ said Matthew, but his tone belied his words. Maybe it would work. Maybe it was worth a try.

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ said Alison, echoing his thought.

  So together in the growing darkness they went to the pond, drained it, and then tugged at the frog till it tilted leaving a gap between itself and the pad.

  ‘Help us,’ called Matthew, bending low and cupping his hands to call downwards into the deaf ear. ‘We have lost our daughter.’

  From the gap came a streak of blue light. Matthew and Alison felt it drawing them like a powerful magnet. As they struggled backwards their clothes clung around them. Alison had to tear her skirt away from the opening that widened like jaws endeavouring to swallow them. Matthew flung himself at the frog and pushed it back into place. The power was muffled now, but still strong, throbbing beneath the stone as if gathering more strength. Matthew grabbed Alison by the hand and ran with her into the house. As if on cue, large drops of rain began to spatter down on them. They locked the door behind them and went straight to the front room out of sight and sound and, hopefully, influence of the communicator’s will.

  ‘It is only thinking of our own good,’ said Matthew, panting and wiping his brow with his handkerchief. Short as had been their time in the rainstorm, both had wet hair, and shoulders soaked with rain.

  ‘It is not thinking in that way at all,’ said Alison bitterly. ‘It is not a sentient being. It is an artefact, a thing, a programmed machine. I should have known better. What we have just done is like asking a phone for help with no one at the other end picking up the receiver.’

  ‘It was your idea,’ said Matthew. ‘Not mine.’

  ‘I know,’ said Alison wearily, ‘and I know now that I was wrong.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ said Matthew.

  ‘Bang our heads against the nearest brick wall,’ said Alison angrily.

  ‘We can pray, Athelerane,’ said Matthew helplessly. ‘I don’t really know what more we can do.’

  ‘Prayer is not something I have gone short on, Maffaylie. I won’t sleep, but I must lie down. I feel too weak to go on.’

  Her face was white against the darkness of her damp hair. Her eyes were circled with deep shadows.

  At three in the morning, the clock radio by their bed began to buzz again. Matthew and Alison were instantly alert. They gazed eagerly at the clock face, waiting for the voice that would surely tell them what to do.

  ‘Return-to-the-ship,’ it said. ‘Your-return-is-awaited.’

  ‘But what of our daughter?’ said Alison. ‘What of Nesta?’

  ‘Return-to-the-ship,’ said the metallic voice. ‘It-is-time-to-return.’

  ‘I have lost my daughter,’ said Alison angrily, irritated by the automaton. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Return-to-the-ship,’ said the voice.

  Matthew listened and knew that they must find some other way of asking the question. The machine might know the answer if only they knew the right way to ask.

  ‘Find our daughter,’ he said.

  ‘On-Earth,’ said the machine, ‘use-Earth-means.’

  ‘Tell what Earth means are,’ sa
id Matthew. He and Alison waited anxiously for the reply, which did not come immediately.

  ‘Ask-Earth-authorities,’ said the voice at last, clearly experiencing some difficulty. Maybe the effort of communicating through this non-standard contraption was just too great.

  ‘Report her disappearance to the police here in York?’ said Matthew.

  The computer groaned, or maybe it was just the clock.

  ‘Return-to-the-ship,’ it said. ‘Your-return-is-awaited.’

  Then the clock fell silent and became itself again.

  ‘Not a lot of help,’ said Matthew.

  ‘Enough to give us the next step,’ said Alison firmly. ‘We do ring the police. We tell them that Nesta has not come home. It is surely time we did.’

  ‘In the morning,’ said Matthew, ‘in daylight. We are so confused now we would not know what we were saying.’

  Alison lay back on her pillow, but first she unplugged the clock from the wall socket. A futile gesture maybe, but she was beyond knowing what was futile and what was not. She was worried and miserable and very, very angry.

  At first light, Matthew crept out and turned the valve that filled the pond. It would not do to have policemen wondering why it was empty, or getting too close to the frog on the lily pad.

  CHAPTER 24

  * * *

  Friday in Carthorpe Road

  ‘I skipped games,’ said Amy when she came to the garage at teatime on Friday. ‘It was the last lesson of the day. They were just messing about in the gym because the field was too wet. Miss Garth is always flustered when that happens. No one will be any the wiser. It gave me more time to get all the shopping done.’

  She put down in front of Nesta three large bags – evidence of her spending spree. In one was a red fleece – with a hood! A second bag contained a thick white sweater, and in the third was a pair of black leggings and some knee-length boots.

  ‘I got them as cheap as I could,’ said Amy. ‘The sweater came from the Oxfam shop. I just thought that if you are going to look different at all, you will have to look completely different. We can put your school things in the Karaoke box for now.’