Half the World Away

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I’ve arranged to drop Finn and Isaac off for breakfast club, and Nick has a meeting with the friend who’s designing his website. Nick’s plans have been shoved aside in the upheaval but the friend has carried on with the work and has mock-ups ready for Nick to consider.

I’m seeing Grace.

She’s already in her office and there is a rich smell of coffee from the machine she uses.

‘Jo!’ She gets up, gives me a quick hug and offers me coffee, which I accept.

‘Any news?’ she says, pouring it, adding milk.

‘No. So we’re going out there, Tom and I, to help with the search.’

She nods. Puts the cup in front of me and goes to sit at the other side of the desk.

‘We leave Thursday,’ I say, ‘if everything goes smoothly.’

‘Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine…’

‘I know. It still feels unreal.’ As if I’m in a play that I never auditioned for and I’m making up my lines as I go along, waiting for somebody to clap their hands together and tell us the performance is done, and we can all go now and resume our real lives. ‘And then you read about the girls missing in Nigeria.’ Over two hundred of them abducted from a school by a militant group called Boko Haram.

‘God, yes,’ she says, ‘and no one seems to be doing anything about it.’

I take a breath. ‘We do know that Lori hasn’t left the country. It doesn’t narrow it down much, though, the size of the place.’

Grace runs her fingers over the folder on her desk. I drink some coffee. Feel a rush of nausea.

‘We’ve booked for three weeks,’ I say.

‘As long as it takes, and don’t worry. We’ve sorted out cover – Andrea. A lot to learn but she’s quick on the uptake.’

‘How’s everyone else?’ I ask.

She blinks quickly, and her hand stills on the folder.

‘What?’ I say.

‘Zoë,’ she says. ‘She’s just been diagnosed.’

‘Oh, no.’ On top of the miscarriage.

‘Bowel cancer,’ Grace says. ‘She should hear about the treatment plan tomorrow.’

‘Oh, God,’ I say, ‘you should have told me.’

She throws me a look. Don’t be daft. ‘On a brighter note, I’m going to be a grandma. Patsy’s pregnant.’

‘Really! Brilliant.’

‘Twins, actually.’

‘No! Grace, how amazing. When are they due?’ Suddenly I feel like crying, so I force myself to drink more coffee and concentrate on that.

‘November, but they’ll probably induce her a few weeks early – it reduces the risks apparently.’

‘We didn’t make parents’ evening,’ I say.

‘You got their reports?’

‘Yes, Finn’s was fine but Isaac’s…’

‘Not found his niche yet,’ Grace says. ‘Give him time.’

‘But the biting, the tantrums.’

‘We’ve a strategy, and I’ve told Sunita to come to me if she needs more backup. We’ve dealt with much, much worse,’ she says darkly, making me laugh.

It’s true. There have been some seriously disturbed children in school over the years, children with challenging behaviour, needing one-to-one care to cope with the school environment.

‘Me being away won’t make things any easier for him,’ I say.

‘Maybe not, but kids are resilient. He’s in a loving home, well cared for. You can’t not go.’

We embrace again as I leave and she wishes me luck, adding, ‘Please ask Nick to let us know when there’s any news.’

‘Of course,’ I say.

‘Lori’s a great girl,’ Grace says. ‘I do hope everything’s OK.’

I’m glad she hasn’t told me everything will be OK and pretended false hope. I wake each morning and there’s a new number in my head, so many days. Today it’s twenty-four. I’d be a total idiot to imagine everything is all right.

So we have to fly to China but perhaps, if we’re lucky, it will all come right again.

The nurse at the travel clinic checks my destination on the computer and tells me I need hepatitis A and a booster for diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus.

‘Is it a holiday?’ she says, as she cleans my skin with a special wipe. ‘That’s where they have pandas, isn’t it? My neighbours went there.’

I swallow. ‘No, my daughter’s gone missing out there.’ It sounds so blunt in the small, neat room.

‘Oh, God,’ she says. ‘I am sorry.’

At this moment all I want is for her to give me the jabs so I can escape. But I have already learned to talk about Lori at each and every opportunity. Word of mouth, the best publicity. So while she prepares the vials and administers the injections, I go through it all and ask her, please, to tell people about it. She gives me the travel medical card, which lists what I’ve had done, and wishes me luck, her manner subdued.