Free Gone Again by Doug Johnstone

to tell Mummy I jumped in with no discs. She’s going to be so proud of me.’

12
    Back in the flat it was unbearable. He checked every room when they got in, nothing had changed, no sign that she’d been home. He opened the underwear drawer, felt the heft of the gun box at the back, but didn’t take it out.
    He called her phone again. He had a routine now, every hour on the hour. His pulse pounded as he listened to it ringing. She wouldn’t answer, but that didn’t stop him tensing every sinew in his body with each ring, then crackly silence, then ring, then crackles, then ring. Same voicemail message. He hung up.
    As they’d walked up Marlborough Street he had a similar pounding of hope, checking all the cars. But no black Volkswagen Golf. It was a company car, which got him thinking about his visit to the office. That was only this morning. Seemed like a different universe. He thought about Gavin Taylor. Had Ferguson been to speak to him yet?
    He flicked up a picture of Lauren on his phone. Just a snapshot, from a rare night out together, in the tapas place round the corner, one of the girls from Nathan’s old nursery babysitting for a few hours.
    He stroked the screen. Zoomed in. Zoomed in again, to the edge of resolution. Moved the focus around, looked at a green eye with flecks of grey through the iris. The split ends on her auburn hair. Thin lips smiling. Lines around the eyes. Years of love in those eyes. Looking at the individual elements of her face, he struggled to get a sense of her. Was she already fading in his mind?
    That night in the restaurant they had mostly talked about Nathan, unable to remember what they did with their time before he arrived. That was before they had baby number two coming. They had quite a bit of red wine, both of them unable to drink like they used to, out of practice and bone-tired from parenthood in a way Mark could never have imagined when he was younger.
    They’d also talked about Lauren’s work that night. He tried to remember. But the truth was he only half listened when she did shoptalk. She had the usual gripes about colleagues, nothing serious. Just letting off steam. He tried to think what she’d been like before yesterday, before she was gone. What had they last talked about? Was she worried about something?
    He screwed his eyes tight and actually rubbed at his temples, like a cheap showbiz mind reader.
    He opened his eyes and checked the time. Had an idea.
    Went through to the living room, where Nathan was plugged into Horrid Henry on CITV.
    ‘Come on, we’re going out.’
    ‘Aw, I’m watching telly.’
    ‘You can play your DS in the car.’
    That knocked him into shape. The telly was off in a moment and he was trotting behind Mark towards the door.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    They were at the door when Mark thought of something. ‘Hang on.’
    He went to Nathan’s room and opened the cupboard door. A pile of toys stacked up in a heap on top of a set of drawers full of more of the boy’s junk. He pulled open the first drawer, knew what he was looking for and found it straight away. Nathan’s Star Wars binoculars. Or ‘optical command unit’ as they were officially called. The kind Luke uses in the first film to search for R2-D2. A favourite from a year ago. Nathan used to sleep with them under his pillow. As Mark remembered it, they were actually half-decent binoculars. He stuck them in his pocket and headed for the door.

13
    He stopped on a double yellow line two hundred yards down the road from the office, handbrake on, engine off. The sounds of rush-hour traffic trundling across the cobbles, the wind making the car squeak and rattle, lightsaber and blaster noises coming from Nathan’s DS. The boy hadn’t lifted his head the entire journey. It had taken Mark longer than expected from Porty, a busier time of day than before.
    He focused the toy binoculars on the Caledonia Dreaming front door, then looked at his phone. Ten to five. While he had his