Free The Image in the Water by Douglas Hurd

these days to sudden changes of plan.
    â€˜We’ve got to get down to Hillcrest. As quickly as we can make it.’
    â€˜Right, sir.’
    Mark the driver and Sam the protection officer knew theroad to Hillcrest well. It was the preparatory school in Berkshire attended by the Home Secretary’s two sons, young Roger and his brother Tom.
    There was little point in hugging his privacy too tightly to himself. Mark and Sam would soon learn the story once they reached the school. Indeed, it might fall before long within Sam’s responsibility as a police officer, though strictly speaking his job was to protect the Home Secretary, not the Home Secretary’s family.
    â€˜Young Roger has disappeared. Not been seen since breakfast. Missed his first class. Probably some simple explanation.’
    â€˜Quite so, sir.’ But if the Home Secretary really thought that, they would not now be moving fast down the Cromwell Road.
    â€˜Excuse my asking, sir, have the school authorities notified the local police?’
    â€˜Not yet, Sam. They’re hoping the lad will turn up. He’s only been missing four hours.’
    â€˜Quite so, sir.’
    A pause. The traffic thickened through Hammersmith.
    â€˜Excuse me again, sir. Would you like us to use the siren?’
    Protection officers loved the siren because of the speed and the audible authority it conferred. Drivers liked it because it showed their skill and appeared to raise them above the law. Roger hated it. They slowed down behind a long truck loaded with bright new cars. He was tempted. The siren would cut the journey by fifteen minutes, perhaps thirty. Waiting for bad news could be worse than the bad news itself. But he resisted. At moments of crisis it was better to stick to one’s standards in small things. He tried to put himself into young Roger’s mind. But soon he was looking into his own mindinstead. He cursed the selfishness that he and Hélène had shown a few hours back over the morning tea. They had worried about each other’s feelings and forgotten about the children. At the Lyceé Felicity would be all right: she had her mother’s tough, rather narrow French realism. Their second son Tom was tough, too, a small English schoolboy devoted to Arsenal. But Roger … A politician had no right to have young children.
    Rain glistened on the rhododendron leaves as they sped up the school drive. There were tears, too, on the cheeks of the headmaster’s wife, who stood to greet them at the top of the steps. Roger’s heart stopped as he saw that the woman, virtually a stranger to him, was upset. He could hardly bear to shake hands. He felt a final irrational burst of anger. What right had this pale, scraggy person to shed tears for young Roger? It was the school’s job to keep him safe, not to weep over him.
    But, thank God, he had misread the signs. Her tears meant nothing mournful. In the Gothic entrance hall, dimly lit by tiny squares of pink and green stained glass, she explained that her husband was teaching the third year, as if that was important. As for young Roger …
    â€˜He’s just come back,’ she said. ‘That awful newspaper … I haven’t even had time to clean him up.’
    Then Roger was alone with his son. Young Roger was exhausted beyond the point of tears. His bare legs were splashed with mud, where he must have run and fallen. Blood from a small cut was oozing through the dirt on one knee. He ran to his father then, after a brief embrace, turned away.
    â€˜Sit down, Roger.’
    They were alone together in a bleak sitting room withchairs back against each wall as if prepared for a seminar. Reproductions of Constable and Turner combined as decoration with photographs of rugby and cricket teams. They conveyed no cheer.
    â€˜What’s it about, then? You tried to run away?’
    Young Roger nodded. ‘But it was too far,’ he said. And then, worst of all,