Free Stolen Girl by Katie Taylor

quiet the silence was deafening.
    I sniffed at the air. There was no smell of cooking either. Instead the house smelled of dust, as though it was dead.
    ‘Mum?’ I called, but there was no reply.
    I heard someone shush their voice. The noise was slight, barely a whisper but I followed it all the way to the kitchen. The door was closed, which was unusual. It was always open, but not tonight.
    She must be in there,
I told myself.
Maybe she was hiding? Maybe she was behind the door, waiting to pounce out and shout ‘boo!’…
    I burst in through the kitchen door with a huge grin on my face; this had to be a wind-up. But when I opened it, Mum wasn’t there, only Dad. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, and he looked exhausted. My eyes shifted to someone else standing beside him. A tall, slim dark-haired man I’d never seen before. It was odd because neither man was speaking; Dad stared straight ahead whilst the strange man looked anxiously over at me. A forced silence hung in the air but it felt like it was packed with explosives, as though something might go off at any moment. I looked at Dad and then at the man but no one said a word. I knew I’d interrupted an important conversation, one I wasn’t privy to. Then it dawned on me: they’d shut up the moment I’d come through the front door, that’s what the ‘Shush!’ had been. Dad had a secret he didn’t want me to know, but who was the man? I was only twelve, but I was old enough to sense the atmosphere between them. Something wasn’t right.
    My father’s face looked tired and drawn as if he’d not slept a wink. The strange man seemed jittery and nervous as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he should say hello.
    ‘Where’s Mum?’ I demanded.
    Both Dad and the strange man flinched at the mention of her name. I didn’t know the man and I was sure that Mum wouldn’t know him either, so why was he looking at me like that?
    Dad’s eyes were sad and somehow he suddenly looked older.
    ‘She’s at Diane’s,’ he said, pointing his hand in the direction of our neighbour’s house.
    Diane was the same age as Mum and lived a few doors away from us at the bottom of the road. They were good friends and were always popping into each other’s houses for a cup of tea. It wasn’t odd that Mum was there but it was strange that she wasn’t here making tea and getting ready to leave for work. I closed the front door and ran to Diane’s house to find out what was going on.
    My heart beat fast as everything raced through my mind. I thought about the cold cooker, no tea, the strange man standing in our kitchen…Who was he? Dad hadn’t even introduced him, yet usually that’s the first thing he would’ve done because that’s how my dad is – friendly and polite. Nothing made much sense.
    Grabbing the gate to Diane’s front garden, I pulled it up high on its hinges so it would open. The gate had been like that for as long as I could remember. Diane had nagged her husband Chris to fix it time and time again but he was always busy with something else – fixing his car mostly, she complained.
    I walked around the side of the house towards the back door. Diane had known me since I was a baby; she would have been shocked if I’d have knocked at the front. Clenching my fist, I tapped lightly on the glass. I didn’t even wait for an answer – it wasn’t how you did things around there. Diane’s door was always open to us.
    ‘Mum?’ I called out before the door had even fully opened.
    I stumbled into Diane’s kitchen to find them both sitting at the table. Diane looked a little startled when she saw me – as surprised as the strange man had been. A pot of tea sat sadly in the middle of the kitchen table. There were two mugs in front of them. They were full to the brim with strong builder’s tea but they looked untouched, stagnant and stone cold. I guessed just by looking at them that Mum must have been there for ages.
    As soon as she saw