‘He’s this way,’ I say, keeping my voice low so as not to scare him. ‘He’s . . .’
My legs buckle as I stand looking at the empty flower bed. He’s gone.
‘He was here,’ I say, turning to the police officers. ‘I don’t understand. He was here just moments ago.’
‘Mrs Rafter,’ the male officer begins.
‘It’s Ms,’ I say, still staring at the flower bed. ‘I’m not married.’
‘Ms Rafter, you told the operator that the child you saw lives next door, is that right?’
‘Yes,’ I say, my heart lifting. ‘Yes, he’s their child. I don’t know his name . . . she’s called Fida . . . they’re from Iraq. You have to go next door and search for him. He was trying to get my attention. Please, you have to find him.’
The two officers look at each other and nod. They’re taking me seriously, I think, as I lead the way back into the house. Maybe the boy is known to them; perhaps he’s on some sort of ‘at risk’ register. Oh, please let them find him.
‘Okay, Ms Rafter,’ says the male officer as we open the front door. ‘We’ll go and see what’s going on.’
‘I’ve heard screams,’ I say as they step outside. ‘I’ve heard him screaming every night. It’s horrendous. You have to stop them.’
The female officer nods her head and I watch as they make their way down the driveway.
‘Please,’ I say to myself as I close the door and go into the living room to wait. ‘Please God let him be all right.’
Finally, after an interminable wait that seems like hours, but can only have been minutes, the doorbell rings. I jump out of the chair and run into the hallway.
‘Oh God,’ I say as I open the door and see their grave faces. ‘Is he . . . Please tell me he’s . . .’
‘Ms Rafter, may we come in?’ asks the male officer. He puts his arm out as if calming a flighty gelding.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But please tell me he’s okay.’
I lead them in through the dark passage into the kitchen. Their radios splutter and tinny disembodied voices trail in their wake. Panic rises in my chest as I gesture to the chairs but the officers stay standing. The woman looks around the kitchen. She still has that odd expression on her face and I notice her eyes rest on the box of sleeping tablets that I’ve left on the kitchen counter. She catches my eye then speaks in a slow Kentish drawl.
‘Ms Rafter, we’ve been next door and the woman who lives there tells us she doesn’t have a child.’
‘What?’ I exclaim. ‘Then she’s lying . . . she must be.’
It’s then that I smell it: a strong, stale odour of wine. It clings to my clothes and my breath tastes sour. I step back towards the sink, hoping the police can’t smell it too.
‘She’s talking nonsense,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen him and heard him several times since I’ve been here. He was out there on my mother’s flower bed. I saw him. Did you search the house? What about the loft? She might have hidden him in there.’
My head spins as I talk but I have to tell them everything; they need to know how serious this is.
‘That woman next door,’ I continue. ‘She’s all very nice, chatting to me and smiling, but I know what she’s up to. I know what I saw, officers. It was a boy . . . a little boy.’
The officers look at one another awkwardly and then the man speaks.
‘Mrs Rafter –’
‘I’ve told you, it’s Ms Rafter.’
‘Sorry, Ms Rafter, I just want to reassure you that we’ve done all we can this evening based on what you told us on the phone. We haven’t found anything next door that concerns us. There was no sign of any children there. No toys, no child’s bed . . .’
‘Well, there was certainly a sign of him when I woke up,’ I reply. My brain is jumbled with wine and the words lie heavy on my tongue. ‘There was a scream . . . a child’s scream. It sounded like he was in terrible distress . . . I looked out of my window and he was there as clear as you are now, curled up on the flower bed.’
‘So you’d just woken up when you saw him?’
The female police officer looks up from the notepad in which she is recording my account. My brain creaks like an old wheelbarrow as I try to think.
‘Yes, I’d just woken up,’ I reply. ‘But a couple of nights ago there was another scream and the day before that I heard a child laughing in the garden. But when I looked, there was no child there. You should put an alert out on your radios: tell your colleagues to keep an eye out for a small child with dark hair. You know, the first few hours are crucial in missing child cases. I know what I’m talking about, I really do. I’m a journalist.’
It all comes out in a stream of words and I feel breathless. I lean back against the counter to steady myself.
‘What time did you go to bed?’ asks the male officer. He smiles condescendingly. It makes me angry. It’s like they are dealing with a confused old woman.
‘I can’t remember,’ I reply. ‘I got back to the house sometime between eleven and midnight.’
‘So you’ve been out tonight?’