Is Read online

  ‘None of your business,’ he snapped and pushed past her.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, very put out indeed. ‘How dare you speak to me like that, Mr Phillips? How dare you?’

  ‘Don’t you tell me what I dare, Mrs Potter. Don’t you… dare.’

  He stormed back to the classroom with all of us trailing behind, grinning all over our faces. What wonderful excitement! And, needless to say, it took Mr Phillips ages to calm down. I think there was still steam coming out of his ears at the end of the lesson, he was that mad.

  He told us all to open our books and read about a rotten old experiment we were supposed to be doing. No one, but absolutely no one, was to talk. Not one word. Or their life wouldn’t be worth living.

  I don’t think anyone could have learnt the slightest bit from the rest of that lesson, we were all wondering about Isabel. I couldn’t concentrate on anything; that was for sure.

  When the bell finally went to signal the end of the torture you couldn’t see Class 2F for dust.

  ‘Where’d she go? I hope she’s all right,’ said Veronica, voicing what we all felt. Well, what most of us felt anyway.

  ‘You know I always thought she was a bit touched, that Isabel. Bit weird I reckon. Know what I mean?’ said Kevin.

  ‘Kevin,’ I found myself saying, ‘why don’t you stuff a sock in your gob?’

  Luckily for me Kevin realised he was in the minority and, since he didn’t have Short Planks or any of his other ugly Neanderthal mates with him, he instantly shut up. I never knew I could have such an effect on people. Mind you, even if he had hit me I don’t think I’d have cared just then. All I wanted to do was get round to Walton Road and check that Is was all right. The end of the day couldn’t come quick enough.

  But come it did and I dashed down the path and across the road, narrowly missing being knocked down by a car that I hadn’t even noticed.

  By the time I got to the laburnum tree, I could hardly speak, I was so out of breath. My heart was thumping and I had that pounding in the ears that you get when you’ve been running really too hard. Everything looked completely calm and quiet.

  I had expected there to be some sort of commotion going on, but there was nothing.

  I went up to the door and rang the bell. I waited, trying to get my breath back.

  No reply.

  I rang again, with desperation in the way I pushed the button.

  Still no reply.

  Then the neighbour’s door opened and a woman (Mrs Higgins her name was) stuck her head out.

  ‘She’s gone out.’

  ‘Where?’ I gasped, still fighting for breath.

  ‘Dunno. Like I say, she’s gone out.’

  Suddenly I resented this nosy woman with her ghastly nylon floral housecoat and her hair bound up under an equally horrendous bright headscarf.

  She looked at me with little piggy eyes like Mr Phillips too.

  ‘Well you’re a fat lot of help, aren’t you?’ I shouted at her, and instantly I knew I shouldn’t have. Mrs Higgins opened her mouth to say something then changed her mind, stared at me for a second, and disappeared back into her house, slamming her front door shut.

  At that moment a ginger cat appeared and started rubbing itself around my legs. It never knew how close it came to being booted over the garden wall… With no other ideas, I set off dejectedly for home. After running all the way to Isabel’s I took my time walking back, partly to get my breath back and partly because I wanted time to think. When I came to a bus shelter I sat down on the seat, swinging my feet to and fro and looking at the cracks in the pavement. It just seemed to me that life was so horribly unfair. Why should Mr Phillips and people like him get away with being so foul? I couldn’t understand it. And where on earth could Mrs Williams have gone with Is?

  By the time I finally got home it was much later than usual. I shuffled up to the door, aimlessly.

  ‘Where have you been?’ said my mother, the minute I opened the door. ‘We’ve been worrying you’d gone too.’

  ‘Gone where?’ I asked, perplexed.

  ‘Why, with Isabel of course,’ replied Mum, ‘Mrs Williams is in the sitting room.’

  She opened the door and there was Mrs Williams, sitting opposite the fireplace. I could see her eyes were all red as she looked up when we entered.

  ‘Hello, Robert.’ She tried to smile at me, but failed miserably.

  ‘Hello Mrs Williams.’

  ‘Have you any idea…?’ she asked. ‘We thought you might know where Isabel might have got to?’

  ‘I didn’t know Isabel had gone anywhere,’ I answered truthfully. ‘I’ve just come from your house. I went round to see if she was all right, after what happened.’

  ‘What did happen, Rob?’ asked my mother. ‘Oh, she had this big bust-up with old Phillips, that’s all,’ I said. ‘She ran out of the classroom. But we all thought she’d gone straight home.’

  ‘When I got home, I found this,’ said Mrs Williams. And she handed me a tatty piece of paper torn from a school exercise book.

  On it, in Isabel’s handwriting, was a short note: ‘Mum, I’m going away and I won’t be back. I can’t stand things any longer. I’ve gone somewhere where I will be welcome, Isabel.’

  There was no ‘Dear Mum’ or ‘Love Isabel’ or anything like that. The handwriting was strange too. It was definitely Isabel’s but parts of it were like the handwriting she’d done when she wrote her sick note the time we bunked off school, all swirls and flourishes.

  I handed the note back to Mrs Williams with a sick feeling in my stomach.

  ‘I… I don’t know where… where she could have gone, Mrs Williams. I’m sorry…’

  ‘You’re sure now?’ asked my mother in a more aggressive tone than I could ever remember her using.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ I yelled angrily. ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘All right, all right, calm down,’ said Mum. ‘We’re all worried, I know. But I’m sure she’ll turn up soon. I expect she’ll be back when she starts feeling hungry.’

  ‘You don’t know Isabel,’ replied Mrs Williams. How true, I thought.

  ‘Well, she can’t have got far. But we ought to let the police know, oughtn’t we? Just to be sure, don’t you think? Should have done that straight off really. Come on Penny, I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Mrs Williams, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand as I had seen her doing once before.

  ‘Of course.’ Mum went out and got her coat. ‘Robert,’ she called from the hall, ‘you’ll be all right here for a bit won’t you? If Isabel turns up, just make sure you keep her here, okay?’

  ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘Right, well you know where we are…’ and with that, Mum ushered Mrs Williams out of the front door and into her Mini.

  They drove off down the road with a great crashing of gears while I went up to my bedroom to reflect on these latest developments.

  * * *

  I think everyone really expected Is to reappear the next day, like my mother said she would. But when she didn’t, we started getting more worried.

  The police turned up at school without warning the day after that. Kevin went visibly pale when he saw the police car drawing up outside the school. I wondered what it was he had to hide exactly…

  But they hadn’t come for Kevin. They’d come for Mr Phillips, although not to arrest him, more’s the pity. They just came to talk to him to see if he could shed any light on Is’s disappearance.

  Needless to say, he couldn’t.

  By the end of the week, Mrs Williams was at her wits’ end. And when I got home one night and picked up the local evening paper, it was full of Is’s disappearance. There, right in the middle of the front page, was a picture of Is staring out at me. The way she looked it seemed as if she was pleading to be left alone. ‘I don’t want to be found,’ she appeared to be saying.

  There was a long interview with Mrs Williams. It wasn’t the first time Isabel had
run away, apparently. She’d done it twice before. But she had always come back within a day and usually she turned up at a friend’s house, which was why Mrs Williams came straight round to us I suppose.

  It seemed they had lived all over the place too. First they were somewhere near Manchester. That’s where they were when Is’s father died. Then in London for two years and for a while they lived down in the West Country with relations. But, according to Mrs Williams, she was hoping that this time they would stay put. She thought Is was much happier than she had been. And then this happened…

  Dad said he didn’t think the police were doing enough. Someone must have seen Is or given her a lift or something. But it was as if she had simply disappeared into thin air.

  As you can imagine, life at school was even worse than usual. Everyone went round with long faces. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. Even Mr Gregory and Mr Phillips turned almost human for a while. I expect they thought it was somehow their fault. I certainly hope so. With luck they had really rotten nightmares. That’d teach them. It was time they were taught something, instead of inflicting their stupid lessons on us all the while.

  One evening I remember was particularly horrible. I had got home and had my tea early because I was planning to go round and see Brian a bit later on, after I’d finished a plastic ship model I was building.

  I was in the sitting room, fiddling with part of one of the masts that wouldn’t fit, when a voice from the corner brought me up sharp.

  ‘Today the body of a young girl was discovered in woods near Basingstoke,’ it said. ‘The body, which has not so far been identified, was found by a walker who noticed a torn fragment of a red plastic mac caught on a nearby bush…’

  Red plastic mac? Did Is have a bright red mac?

  I stared at the television set in horror.

  ‘The girl, believed to be around twelve years old, had been brutally attacked and the body has several stab wounds…’

  I felt sick. Surely it couldn’t be? It mustn’t. ‘The police are appealing for information. Anyone who was in the vicinity in the last two days is asked to contact their local police station or the Basingstoke police on…’

  I didn’t know what to do. More in anger than anything else, I rushed over to the television and thumped the switch off. Then I tore upstairs to my bedroom and threw myself on the bed. I could feel that prickly sensation you get in your eyes just before you cry.

  But I didn’t cry. Instead I thumped the pillow with all my might, nearly splitting the material with my fist.

  ‘Rob, whatever’s the matter? What has got into you?’

  I looked over my shoulder to see my mother framed in the doorway. Her face was pained and concerned.

  ‘What is it?’ she repeated.

  ‘Nothing… oh, it was just something that was on television, that’s all.’

  ‘What? What was on television?’

  ‘On the news. They say they’ve found this dead body – of a girl – she’s Is’s age.’

  ‘It’s not Isabel, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know: that’s the point.’ And with that I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. I blubbed like a baby and Mum came over and put her arm around me, holding me tight.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. We’ll find out. But I’m sure it’s not Isabel, they’d have said. Come on, Love, there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment, really there’s not.’

  Reluctantly I allowed myself to be led downstairs and sat in one of the armchairs. Mum went off to make some tea and came back a few minutes later with a steaming mug in her hands.

  ‘Here, have this. And take these too.’

  She held out two aspirins or paracetamols or something.

  ‘I haven’t got a headache.’

  ‘They’re for tension.’

  I took them and swallowed both together with one gulp of the hot, sweet tea.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Don’t feel any different.’

  ‘You will.’

  And surprisingly I did. And later on I heard that it wasn’t Is that they had found at all. It was some other poor girl. They had an interview with her parents too; the mother could hardly speak, she was so distressed. It was really painful to watch.

  Yet at the same time I felt a huge wave of relief that it wasn’t Is – and then felt immediately guilty for being so callous.

  It made me think, though. While I was safe and secure at home, Is could be anywhere. Anything could happen to her. She had to be found. Someone had to find her and I knew who that someone was. Me.

  11

  Thumbs Up

  It was at the end of the second week after Is had gone that it came to me. What had she said in her note? ‘I’m going somewhere where I will be welcome.’ That was it.

  But where could she go at this time of year? It wasn’t exactly hot at the beginning of April, after all. I was in the kitchen eating my cereal and while I was thinking I was looking at a calendar my mother had on the wall. On it was a picture of a tiny cottage in the country, all wreathed in roses and what they call picturesque. But I wasn’t looking at the cottage. I was looking at the date: Friday April 7th.

  And then something Is had said to me came rushing back: ‘…it’s the only day of the year that it does that. Isn’t that amazing…?’

  Of course! Sunday was the 9th of April. Isambard Brunel’s birthday. The day that the sun is supposed to rise through that tunnel at where was it? Box. At Box! That’s where she’ll be. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was. I remembered the look on her face when she told me the story.

  ‘Of course…’ I said out loud, without meaning to. ‘What, dear?’ asked Mum as she reappeared with the morning’s post.

  ‘Oh, nothing… anything good in the post?’ I asked, trying to change the subject.

  ‘Bills by the look of it,’ she replied going through them. ‘And more bills,’ she added disgustedly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What’s the time, anyway? Come on, Rob, you’d better eat that up and get going. You’ll be late for school otherwise.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Don’t start that attitude, Rob. You’ve got to go to school, you know you have.’

  ‘Isabel’s not.’

  ‘That’s a different matter. Now come on, get a move on.’

  So I shovelled the last of the Frosties into my mouth and grabbed my blazer and satchel.

  On the way down the road to school I realised I couldn’t tell my parents what I suspected. It sounded too bizarre for words.

  As I walked a plan began to form itself in my head. I would get down to Wiltshire somehow the next day. Then I would only have to find a place to stay for one night and I could turn up at the tunnel on Sunday morning…

  At dawn…

  I shuddered at the thought of having to be up so early. Still, it would be worth it. I knew it would. I wondered what to say to Mum and Dad. What could I say I was doing? Perhaps I could say I was staying with a friend for the night, I thought. No, I didn’t know anyone that lived more than a few roads away really.

  I’d just have to leave a note and make my own way. At least it would say I was coming back, not like Is’s note. Anyway, if I left late afternoon or early evening I could travel through the night. So I’d hardly be away for more than a few hours when you come to think of it…

  As long as I went when Mum and Dad were out it’d be no problem. I knew that on Saturday afternoons Mum would be out shopping and Dad often popped round the corner to his friends in Warwick Street, but I’d still have to be quick.

  So that Saturday I went off with some friends to the recreation field for a game of football in the morning and then after lunch told Mum I was going to have tea with one of them.

  Instead I came back around half past four. As I let myself in the front door, there was no sign of Mum. ‘So far, so good,’ I said to myself as I headed for the kitchen.

  Opening a wall cupboa
rd, I grabbed a couple of packets of biscuits, some crisps and a Mars Bar. I didn’t know Mum even bought them. Then I saw a Swiss roll, so I swapped some biscuits for that. There were some apples and bananas in a fruit bowl on the windowsill, so I chucked them in too.

  Then I thought about clothes. I went into my bedroom to get a jumper, which I threw into the duffle bag together with a pair of socks for good measure. Though what I thought I needed with a clean pair of socks I have no idea. I never normally bothered with such things.

  I crept back down the stairs and was just about to let myself out of the door when I started having pangs of doubt.

  Was this stupid or what? I mean, what was I doing rushing off like this, to somewhere I’d never been before, just on a hunch that Is would be there? What if something happened to me? I should tell them I was going, shouldn’t I? But how could I?

  The minute I said where it was, they’d be down there like a shot and we’d lose the chance of finding Is. In my muddled brain I reasoned that the only way was for me to go on my own.

  I got out my dad’s map of south-west England and pored over it, looking for this place called Box. I found Bristol easily and then Bath, but no Box. Finally, after staring at the map until my eyes started going funny, I methodically followed the railway line with my finger until I came to it. There it was!

  I stuffed the map into my duffle bag and then grabbed an old coat. It was only at that point I realised I had nothing to sleep on. Upstairs I ran again and pulled open a big drawer under one of the wardrobes to get the sleeping bag I knew was there. But it wasn’t.

  I was starting to panic a bit now. I looked at my watch. Five o’clock. Mum would be back soon. I had to hurry. Looking at my watch reminded me I would need an alarm clock too.

  No time. No time…

  I tore into the spare bedroom. Maybe they’d put the sleeping bag in – yes, there it was, pushed on top of the wardrobe. I stood on the bed but couldn’t reach it and, in desperation, started jumping up and down to try to grab it.

  On the third attempt I caught a corner and dragged it with me to the floor.

  Quickly I rolled it up and tied it with one of my belts. Then I remembered the alarm clock and grabbed the little black battery one by my bed.