My morning at Badger TV is spent trawling through emails, trying to get to grips with a myriad of urgent things I’m apparently now responsible for. The pitch off itself is just one small cyclone in an endless storm. Michael tells me to delegate but even delegation feels beyond me. Everything requires a level of knowledge I just don’t have. My inbox is a torrent of tax code questions, building lease amendments, data protection registration, union petitions, staff training requests, a notification about the expiry of my Bamph retention agreement, commissioner meetings, budget meetings, shooting schedule meetings, pre-meetings, post-meetings, wrap-up meetings. How can one person need to be in quite so many meetings? There’s even a meeting scheduled to discuss meeting schedules. I’ve had to block out my diary with pretend meetings just to stop anyone from putting more meetings in.
Trying to focus on something as frivolous as ‘thinking up new TV shows’ also feels impossible. My head keeps jumping back to Sam, to the pain in his eyes as he told me about Chloe. That pain must be mine too, lying dormant somewhere. If my memories return, will that grief come back too? I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to lose a child. Selfishly, I’m not sure I want to know.
By lunchtime I need to take a break from creating fake meetings, so I nip to Selfridges to try and return all the crazy stuff I bought. Well, most of the crazy stuff, I’m not giving back the boots. Unfortunately, the man at the returns desk won’t accept the purple suit. He claims it’s been worn, and that the tags have been sellotaped back on. Outrageous. And he isn’t at all sympathetic when I explain that I didn’t know about having to pay for the nanny and the mortgage and the loft cladding and all this other boring grown-up stuff I’m supposed to spend my money on now. It doesn’t help my case that, for some reason, I don’t have the card I paid for it all with in my wallet. When I lie down on the floor and beg, the manager eventually takes pity on me and offers me sixty per cent of the purchase price in store credit, if I’ll stop making a spectacle of myself.
Just as I’m wondering whether Maria might agree to be paid in Selfridges vouchers, Sam calls. The thought of speaking to Sam adds a little bounce to my step, but as soon as I answer the call, I know something is wrong.
‘Have you heard from Felix?’ Sam’s voice is stricken with panic.
‘What? No. Why?’
‘He ran away from school. They don’t know where he is.’ Sam takes an audible intake of breath; he can hardly get the words out. ‘They wanted to check he hadn’t gone home before they called the police. He didn’t say anything to you on the drive to school, did he?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ I say. My heart starts pounding in my chest and my lungs contract, leaving no room to breathe. My mind races, trying to remember what Felix and I talked about in the car this morning.
‘He doesn’t have any money; he can’t go anywhere.’ Sam’s voice catches in his throat, as though he’s on the verge of screaming.
‘Sam, my bank card is missing,’ I say, with a horrible sinking feeling as I remember Felix going through my purse to look for his library card. ‘He could have taken it. Where would he have gone?’ The thought of Felix, out alone in the world, possibly in danger, causes an animal ache in my gut followed by a rising tide of panic. What if he’s been taken? What if he’s hurt? A knot of primal fear tightens in my chest, so overwhelming, it feels like I might pass out.
‘The tracker on his iPad,’ Sam says. ‘Find My Child. If he has his backpack with him, you might be able to see where he is on your phone.’
Keeping Sam on the line, my hand shaking, I search my phone screen for the app. A low hum of dread sits in my stomach, as though this is all my fault. The app opens and I see an icon labelled ‘Felix’s iPad’ moving across the map on the screen.
‘He’s between Aldershot and Ashvale,’ I tell Sam, but the dot is moving. ‘He’s . . . he’s on the train.’
‘The train?’
‘He’s coming to London.’ As I say it, the knot of fear releases an inch.
‘Why would he be going to London?’ Sam asks.
‘I don’t know. I’ll go now, intercept him at Waterloo.’
‘I’ll call the train line,’ says Sam, ‘alert a guard, ask someone to keep him safe until he gets to you.’ Sam’s voice shifts from fear to anger. ‘I’m going to kill him. What is he thinking?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
But then maybe I do.
Chapter 26
After shooting a text to Michael to explain that, yet again, I have a child-related emergency, I reach Waterloo in time to see a red-faced Felix being escorted off the train by a guard. ‘This one yours?’ he asks me.
‘He is.’
‘This your mum?’ the guard asks Felix, and there’s the briefest pause as Felix picks something out of his nostril before acknowledging that I am indeed his mother. ‘All right, Dick Whittington, off you hop.’
Crouching down to his level, I pull Felix into a hug. At this busy station, next to the tall guard, he looks so small, so vulnerable. ‘We were so worried. What were you thinking?’
‘You wouldn’t look for the portal,’ he says, his small brow set in a frown.
‘What were you planning to do – wander around London looking for this random depot?’ He nods. I’m learning that children are oblivious to both sarcasm and any perceived shame in picking their noses in public. Taking his hand, I start walking towards the main concourse. ‘Come on, there’s a train home in ten minutes.’
‘Can’t we just have a quick look, now I’m here?’ he pleads, tugging on my sleeve. Looking down at his face, into eyes that look so much like mine, I feel myself relent. He believed in this plan enough to run away from school, to take my bank card and get on a train all by himself.
‘It wasn’t fair for me to get your hopes up by posting on that forum. I shouldn’t have let you believe there’s a magical fix for any of this.’ I pause, pinching my forehead. ‘You do realise how insane this whole plan is?’
‘Yes,’ he says sombrely.
‘And if we look for the depot, and we don’t find anything, will you drop it – the websites, the hunt for a portal, everything?’
‘Yes.’ He nods his head rapidly up and down, his eyes dancing with delight.
‘Fine. I’ll call your dad.’
Sam answers before the phone even rings. ‘I’ve got him.’
‘Thank God. I’ll call the school,’ Sam says. ‘What was he doing?’
‘He believes there’s a portal that brought me here from the past. He thinks if we find it, he can send me back.’ Sam is silent on the line. ‘It’s my fault, I told him about this wishing machine, the last thing I remember.’ Turning my back to Felix and lowering my voice, I say, ‘He knows he’s in trouble for running away, but this whole situation has been hard on him too. I think it might be good if I just spent some time with him, one on one.’
I’m expecting Sam to object, but he says, ‘Fine. If you think it will help. He’s still in trouble, though. Tell him no screen time for a week, no, two weeks. School will want words with him, too.’
I turn back to Felix, the phone still to my ear. ‘Your dad says no screen time for two weeks.’
‘And tell him I love him and I’m glad he’s okay,’ Sam says, a raw, ragged edge in his voice now.
‘Love you too, Dad,’ Felix calls towards the phone.
‘Okay, we’ll see you later then. We might be a while.’
‘I love you,’ Sam says. Before I can work out how to respond, he’s gone.