Free Losing You by Nicci French

to keep the line clear.’ I remembered where he was calling from. ‘I’m sorry, Rick. How is Karen?’
    ‘The doctor’s seeing her now.’
    ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’d better go. Let me know when Charlie gets back. She will, you know.’
    I put the phone down and turned to PC Mahoney as he came down the stairs.
    ‘Not her?’
    ‘No. You’re going?’
    ‘I’m sure she’ll come walking in through that door right as rain…’
    ‘And if she doesn’t?’ I said dully.
    ‘I’ll send a patrol car round the island now, to look out for her. Perhaps you could give me a recent photograph of her.’
    ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Look, here.’
    I pulled the photograph they had sent me for my birthday off the fridge – Charlie and Jackson, smiling at me, their eyes bright in their young and lovely faces. ‘This was taken a few days ago,’ I said.
    ‘Thank you.’ He studied it for a few seconds. ‘Pretty girl.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Well, as I said…’
    I opened the door for him. I could hear the sea and the wind in the masts of the boats in the yard. A few drops of rain splattered against my burning face. I closed the door after him and leaned against it, dizzy with the unreality of what was happening. My daughter – my beloved, tempestuous, impulsive, honourable Charlie – had run away from home. From me. I took deep, steady breaths through the heaviness in my chest, then went into the kitchen and splashed water on my face. ‘Right,’ I said.
    I dialled Christian’s mobile.
    ‘I’m on the M25. Where are you?’ he said.
    ‘Charlie’s run away.’
    ‘What? Charlie has? But why?’
    ‘I can’t talk now. We’re not coming.’ There was silence on the line. I thought we’d been cut off. ‘Hello? Are you there?’
    ‘Yes, I’m here. What’s happening?’
    ‘What do you think’s happening? Go without us. I’ll be in touch. I’m so sorry.’
    ‘Nina, listen. I’m sure it’ll be all right, but I’ll come back and help you look. It’s going to be all right.’
    ‘You’re breaking up,’ I said, and ended the call.
    I hadn’t eaten anything all day and suddenly felt terribly hungry. I was trembling violently and even thought I might faint. I went to the kitchen, found some breakfast cereal in a cupboard and ate it as it was, in handfuls, without milk. I filled the electric kettle with water. I rinsed out the cafetie`re. I had to dismantle it and hold the pieces under the running tap to rid it of the last of the coffee grounds, cleaning them away with my fingers in the fiercely cold water. I took a pack of coffee beans from the fridge, ground them and tipped some into the cafetie`re. The water boiled and I poured it on to the coffee. I also made a piece of toast and marmalade. I sat at the kitchen table and gulped the hot, black, strong coffee and ate the toast in slow, deliberate bites. After all, what did it matter now? I had lots and lots of time.
    I had woken into a new world, a world that was cold and harsh and entirely different from anything I had ever imagined for myself, and I had to think about it carefully and with clarity. I had got up this morning and been one person and now I was another. I was a woman whose daughter, aged fifteen, had run away from home. I had a daughter who had secretly gathered together a few pathetic possessions and some money and had gone out into a biting December day rather than be in this home with me. There was somewhere else she would rather be, perhaps someone else she would rather be with. Anywhere but here.
    There was something I found hard to confess even to myself. It was the single most shameful thing I had ever felt in my entire life. I felt embarrassed. Gradually, the people around me, family, friends, acquaintances, neighbours, would hear that Nina Landry was a mother whose daughter had run away from home. Parents having terrible rows with their children would comfort themselves by saying, ‘At least I’ma better