by Casey Watson
‘I don’t know, Mike. I just have this feeling …’
‘What feeling?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t think she would have done that. She’d have waited for me. Why would she wander off on her own?’
‘Assuming she has. Couldn’t she just be in the toilet or something?’
I explained about the knitting woman, who’d been pretty clear that Adrianna had gone off to the disabled toilet to get dressed. ‘And never came back again,’ I finished.
‘Because she then went straight down to meet you,’ he said. ‘That makes sense. That’ll be it. Perhaps she got it wrong. Why don’t you go back to reception and ask them?’
‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘I’ll do that. Oh, but Mike, why do I have such a bad feeling about this?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘Why do you?’
‘I don’t know. I just do. She’s not stupid. Why on earth would she go rattling round the hospital?’
‘I have no idea,’ he said again. ‘To grab a coffee? To make a phone call?’
‘She doesn’t have any money.’ And as I said that, the thought soothed me. But the feeling was only momentary. I didn’t actually know that at all, did I? ‘I’ll go back in,’ I told Mike. ‘Have another rootle around.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Keep me posted. Don’t worry, love. You’ll find her.’
‘I hope so,’ I said when I rang off.
I didn’t.
The sky was threatening rain when I walked back across the car park to the hospital entrance. If I’d had a bad feeling when I’d found Adrianna’s bed empty, I had a very bad feeling now. And nothing I saw or heard made it better. I went straight back up to the ward to find that Sister Skaja was apparently on her break, but it soon became clear, because the nurse I asked went and asked everyone she could ask, that Adrianna hadn’t returned to the ward. ‘She’s been discharged,’ the nurse said reasonably. ‘So why would she?’
I then retraced my steps – back to the café, back to the other café, back to the vending machines and shops – and finally joined the enquiries queue back in the main reception. And, after ten minutes that felt like at least twenty, I asked the woman there if she remembered seeing Adrianna at all.
It was a ridiculous question – what must the footfall be in this hospital concourse? Twenty people per second passing through? At the very least, I imagined. Still, I had to try. ‘Tall and pretty,’ I said. ‘Polish. Long dark brown hair. Very long dark brown hair,’ I qualified. ‘Down past her waist.’ Well, hopefully, I thought, remembering the hair scrunchie still in her handbag.
‘I’ve not seen her, love,’ she said. ‘Not that I can remember anyway. In the last half hour, you say?’
‘Around that,’ I said. ‘Maybe longer.’
‘Well, if she was after getting the hospital transport, or a bus, she’d have probably gone out that way.’ She pointed. ‘See that man over there? In the purple fleece? Balding?’ I nodded. ‘You might want to ask him. He’s one of our retired meeters and greeters. He might have seen her. You never know.’
I duly hurried across, and, again, had to wait in a small queue, while he directed various people to various places.
‘And what can I do for you?’ he said brightly, once my turn came.
Once again I explained who I was looking for, and described her.
‘Polish, you say?’ he said, scratching his head with the corner of his clipboard. ‘Foreign, then, is she?’
I nodded. ‘Yes. Do you think you saw her?’
‘Might have,’ he said, looking pleased with himself suddenly. ‘Well, if it’s the one I’m thinking of. Bonny lass. Tall. Was after a bus.’
‘After a bus?’
‘Well, like I said, if it was her. I’m not saying it definitely was, mind. But she was tall and she was bonny …’
‘Carrying a backpack, by any chance?’
‘I couldn’t say, love. No, wait. I think she was carrying a bag, come to think of it. I remember her hands being round the straps – you, know – thinking it’s cold out, and that.’ He slipped the clipboard under his arm and rubbed his own hands together. It was cold. Especially with the automatic doors pinging open and shut all the time. It couldn’t have been a very restful place to work. But perhaps being retired, that was what he liked about it.
‘So a bus to where exactly?’ I asked him, mentally crossing my fingers. ‘Did she say?’
‘Just to town, love,’ he said, pointing to a bus that was just arriving. ‘One of them. Hope you catch up with her!’ he trilled as I hurried off.
I called Mike again, once I’d climbed back into the car. ‘She’s got on a frigging bus!’ I wailed at him. ‘Can you believe it? What’s she doing?’
‘Well, if it was her –’
‘I’m sure it must have been. The man I spoke to seemed pretty certain.’
‘Well, not home then, evidently. Not if she’s got on a bus to town.’
‘So where then?’ I stopped. I had just answered my own question. ‘She’s bolted again, hasn’t she?’
‘Bolted?’
‘Run away. Run away from us, Mike!’ I still couldn’t quite believe it.
‘But why?’
‘Because … Because – God, I don’t know. Why would she do that? Why now? When she’s confessed everything to me. When she’s told us the truth? It just doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Perhaps it does,’ Mike said. ‘Perhaps that’s precisely why she’s done a runner. Because she wasn’t exactly planning on the truth coming out, was she? She had no choice but to confess, did she? And now she’s thought about everything, perhaps she’s scared –’
‘Scared of what? Of us? Christ, we’ve done nothing but offer her a home and some breathing space. What exactly does she have to be afraid of?’
‘Of everything. What’s going to happen to her. What’s going to happen to her when she leaves us. She must have been thinking about it – you know, what the repercussions might be. Who knows what she’s been thinking, love? We’ve barely been able to make sense of her up till now. Course, that’s if she has done a runner. Which you don’t actually know yet … How d’you know she hasn’t just got herself confused? How d’you know she hasn’t, I don’t know, taken it upon herself to pay a visit to the shopping mall on her way home?’
‘Mike, stop being ridiculous! She knew I was coming to get her. And besides, she has never been anywhere without me, has she? Or Lauren or Tyler being with her – Mike, she wouldn’t know where to start!’
‘You don’t know that for definite. Perhaps the message got confused.’
‘How could it? What’s so difficult about whatever nurse it was I spoke to telling her I’d be picking her up this lunchtime? Besides,’ I added, shutting the car door and putting the key in the ignition, ‘she doesn’t have any money.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘But she must do. If she’s got on a bus.’
‘But where would she have got it from?’
‘Who knows? What’s that noise?’
‘The car.’ I’d started the engine. And it had come to me finally. What her plan might have been. ‘I’m going to go and try to find her,’ I told Mike.
He exhaled. ‘How exactly can you do that when you don’t know where she’s gone?’
‘I think I do. If she’s running away, where’s the most likely place she’d head to?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘The coach station,’ I said, swivelling round to grab the seatbelt. My hunch was fast resolving into a definite conviction. ‘I know what’s she’s thinking.’
‘Case,’ Mike said, ‘isn’t that just the point? That we’ve never known what she’s been thinking?’
I knew that. As I pulled out of the car park it really started falling into place for me – that Adrianna had been a mystery from day one. That we’d spent all these weeks managing to learn absolutely nothing about her – nothing. She’d fooled everyone. And now? I didn’t have a clue.
&nbs
p; But I did have a clue. ‘I get the coach.’ Wasn’t that what she’d said? Something like that, anyway. That was it, I remembered. It is very cheap on the coaches to go a very long way.
It was a long shot. But the only shot I had of catching up with her. And as I turned onto the dual carriageway it didn’t feel like a terribly long shot at all, not when I scrolled back though all the other things she’d said to me. I don’t deserve … I feel so guilty … my friend Ffion … like a sister almost … She would be bound for London. Definitely. I’d have staked my life on it.
Chapter 12
Not having a sat nav, I had to drive mostly on memory and instinct, just like they did in the olden days. And when that failed – when I was halfway round my third confusing roundabout – I realised that there was nothing for it. I would have to use my mobile.
I pulled in at the next layby (which was a bus stop, but I had no time for by-laws) and, after spending some time trying to remember all the lessons Kieron had taught me about how to use the ‘maps function’, remembered that I could just go online instead, via my browser, type in ‘coach station’ and hopefully pin the place down. That was what the GPS thing was there for, wasn’t it?
I did at least know the coach station – I’d seen both kids off on various school and college adventures from it over the years – but, as is often the case, when you’re in a flap, and coming from the other side of a sprawling city, I had little idea how to get there from where I was.
My route was also complicated by the web of city-centre one-way systems that had, in recent years, started to spring up all over the place. And could, I knew, send me hurtling off anywhere. But luck was with me, it seemed, because no sooner had I typed it than the local coach station – well, a map showing where it was, apparently – popped up on screen, and even asked me if I’d like some directions. And, having perused them, I was at least half-sure of where I was going, and a comforting three-quarters sure of where I currently was.
Even so, it was a fraught drive, because my mind was now racing despite the reassuring tones of the treacle-voiced navigator who lived in my phone. Suppose I was wrong? Suppose Adrianna hadn’t decided to go back to London? Suppose she was planning on going somewhere different altogether? Suppose – and now I did have to rein myself in, sternly – the man or men who’d trafficked her had tracked her down? Suppose she’d gone with them, under duress?
I chided myself – that couldn’t happen, surely? Someone would have seen something, no question. You couldn’t just walk onto NHS wards and abduct 14-year-old girls. No, 16-year-old girls, I corrected myself, remembering.
But then a new thought occurred to me. Mike was right. We barely knew Adrianna. We had formed impressions, that was all, based on shared culture and values. Who was to say any of those impressions were correct?
There was also the matter of Adrianna’s access to the internet. No, she might not have a phone, but she’d know as much about the web as the next savvy teenager. Who was to say that she hadn’t befriended all sorts on social media? Who was to say she wasn’t still in touch with her old friends?
That thought reassured me. I was certain that if she was headed anywhere it would be London – the way she’d spoken of her friend Ffion, and how bad she’d felt leaving her and lying to her. Now, perhaps, she felt some compulsion to return to her. To take her chances. To evade the spectre of all that ‘detention centre’ nonsense.
I was now at least in a road system I recognised more confidently. And though the traffic was heavier, I began to feel hopeful. I couldn’t be more than five minutes from the coach station and I reckoned she couldn’t have more than, say, a 40-minute start on me. And what were the chances of her fetching up there and of a coach bound for London leaving immediately? They surely didn’t run more than one coach an hour, did they?
If she was even going there, of course.
Life is full of irritations, isn’t it? Things not going the way you want them to. Petty inconveniences are part of life, and it doesn’t do to get your knickers in a twist over them. Parking, in my case, wasn’t terribly often one of them. Yes, I had the odd huff in the odd supermarket car-park situation, and I was as impatient as the next person in the weeks running up to Christmas, when you couldn’t get a space in the multi-storey for love or money. But, on a day-to-day basis, parking issues didn’t tend to be my issues, so when I turned into the coach station and was immediately waved at, I thought that waving – just waving – was exactly what the man was doing. Perhaps even waving me to a parking space.
He was not. ‘You can’t park there,’ he said, indicating where I’d pulled up. ‘There’s 20-minute waiting at the far side of the station. You just need to turn around, go back round the one-way system, then, just before the Prince of Wales pub, look out for the arrow.’ He did a little snake motion with his hand. ‘Hang a right there.’
I pondered this new inconvenience for no more than a second, nodding as I did so, to give the impression that I’d absorbed all his instructions, and would do exactly as he’d said. And then turned around, exited the coach station and parked on a double yellow.
I would not be there long, I reasoned (whether I’d caught up with her or I hadn’t), and if anyone in uniform came up and challenged me I was fully prepared to cry, scream or run for it. I was relatively safe, I knew – no way could they get a clamp on the car in less than an hour.
Thankfully, no one did challenge me, and I bolted back into the coach station, which was thoughtfully divided into easy-to-manage sections – local buses on the near side, long-distance coaches on the far side, each with a destination clearly displayed on the front.
I made my way across the various stands, passing ambling shoppers and stepping over various bags and holdalls, till I came to an open-sided booth with a single strip light, in which stood a cold-looking man. Worryingly, there were two empty coach stands adjacent to it.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the next coach to London.’
‘Oh, you’ve missed that,’ he said, and my heart sank to my boots. Then rose again when he added, ‘That one left over an hour since. The next one … let me see … twenty to three now. Not too long.’ He looked me up and down, presumably in search of signs of luggage. ‘Have you pre-booked? Because if you haven’t –’
‘No, no,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I’m meeting someone. Thank you.’
‘Off it?’ he began, but I’d already hurried away, because if she was here, and I could do nothing more than hope that she was, she would surely get out of the cold and sit in the waiting room.
It was seeing Adrianna without a coat that really shook me. Because it really brought it home to me that, had I been too late, that might have been the end of it. She could disappear out of our lives as abruptly as she’d entered them. Just disappear. Leaving nothing but that battered leather jacket. And perhaps – no, what was I talking about? Almost certainly – almost certainly – we would never see or hear of her again. Because we would have no way to trace her. Did we even have a photo of her? Yes, of course, I thought – Tyler had some selfies on his mobile. But that was all. No address, either previous or forwarding, no next of kin to get in touch with, no passport, no nothing. Just a Polish birth certificate that would be no use at all. She would melt into our memories and we would never know what had happened to her. Would forget her even? Not us as a family, but social services, definitely. They barely had a file on her. She’d simply become the girl who never was.
It was sobering, and, seeing her, I felt a jolt of determination. No way was I going to let that happen. She was turned half away from me, thankfully, and the doors were pneumatic, so I was able to enter the waiting room silently.
I looked around then, casing the joint like a TV detective, checking out the locations of the two other travellers currently holed up there, and, as far as I could see, there was no exit she could flee from. Satisfied I had her cornered, I approached.
I say approached, but something primal can take
over a person sometimes. Particularly when it’s a woman. When it’s a mother. When it’s me. It was, therefore, more of a march than a walk, and my tone slightly short of ‘calm and measured’.
‘Adrianna,’ I barked. ‘What on earth d’you think you’re doing?’
Her head snapped back. Her mouth opened. She uttered something like ‘Oh!’ Then something else, flustered sounding, in Polish.
I plonked myself down on the adjacent red plastic seat. ‘Seriously. What were you thinking? What were you – are you doing?’
‘Casey, I am so sorry –’ she began. ‘You have been so –’
‘That’s not an answer,’ I answered.
‘I am sorry –’ she began again.
‘Adrianna, answer my question. What are you doing here? Where are you planning on going? London?’ She nodded slightly. ‘I knew it,’ I said. ‘And on what exactly? Shirt buttons?’
‘Casey, I am sorry.’ She held her hand up now, clearly determined not to be shushed again. ‘I am sorry for making so much trouble for your family. I was going to write to you, I promise. I have your address. And I would – will – send money. For keeping me. I just have to go now. I have to work –’
‘Money? For heaven’s sake. Money?’
I regrouped. Took a breath. ‘But why, sweetheart? Why? What ridiculous notion have you now got in your brain?’
‘I am not ridiculous,’ she answered, and there was a spark in her eyes. ‘I am too big trouble, and now I have made everything worser. I think and I think and I know I cannot stay here. I am too old. Is all too much big imposition.’ She stumbled slightly over the word. ‘I must not be a scrounger. I must not expect you to keep me and feed me. I must work, and earn money, so I can prove I can be mother –’
‘What you must do is stop talking such nonsense, Adrianna,’ I huffed. ‘Stop it right now this minute!’
She blinked at me, and I realised she’d never seen me so fired up before. But now she would. Oh, yes, now she would. ‘You are not an imposition, or a scrounger, or a nuisance. Or too old, for that matter. You are a child.’
