Free Jubilee by Eliza Graham Page A

Lost suggested that you’d put something down and forgotten where it was. It suggested that the fault somehow lay
with you. Had she been at fault at the party twenty-five years ago? These days parents seemed to keep their children under closer scrutiny. It hadn’t been like that a quarter of a century
ago; not in this village, at least. Children had come and gone pretty well at will, subject only to school hours and household chores. And Jessamy had been at a village party, surrounded by
friends. She’d been ten, not three: old enough to remember repeated warnings about not going off with strangers.
    As she had so many times before Evie ran through everything that Jess had done in the days and weeks leading up to the Jubilee. And there was nothing. Her daughter had been playing outside quite
a bit; but it was early summer, with long, light evenings. And Martha had been out on the farm, keeping an eye on things. Officially Martha was the shepherd, but the role had always encompassed
more than watching sheep. Martha helped with the cattle, the crops. She was everywhere. Too much so, perhaps. If it hadn’t been for the centuries binding the Winter and Stourton families
together Evie would have found a way to pay her off years back. But she had never been able to do this.
    No, if there’d been strangers hanging around Jessamy, Martha would have noticed them. Nor could the gypsies have had anything to do with this. The afternoon after the disappearance police
had been seen leaving the caravans the gypsies lived in during the summer months. That night every pane of glass in the caravans’ windows had been shattered. Evie had walked past to see them
picking the shards off the grass. Her cheeks had burned and she’d wanted to tell them she was sorry. Rosie was helping her mother to pick up the glass. Her feet were bare. Suddenly
she’d squealed and held up her foot, a red drop of blood already forming where she’d stood on a shard. Evie had walked on.
    Sometimes she woke from her sleep convinced she knew what had happened to Jessamy, had seen it all in her dreams, clear and distinct. But even as she grasped for the images they curled up round
the edges.
    The wind scooped up paper plates and spun them over the lawn. It blew scraps of conversation, loudspeaker announcements and children’s shrieks out of earshot. Tablecloths fluttered as it
caught them. Evie felt on edge. But of course she did. They’d all been so kind to her, giving her tea and finding her somewhere more sheltered to sit, but it was impossible for her to settle
here this afternoon. She scoured the green, walking from group to group, looking, always looking, sometimes turning on her heel as though someone might just be slipping out of view behind her.
Perhaps a child eating a bun or the laughter of a group of young lads would trigger a memory. It could be anything, anything at all.
    And if Jessamy were going to reappear this was surely where she’d come, to the same place from where she’d vanished twenty-five years earlier. A portal, that’s what this party
might be, a gateway to the past. Evie was proud of herself for having picked that word up from a children’s science fiction programme.
    She pictured a parallel universe in which Jessamy had not disappeared, in which she was still at this party with her mother, organizing the sack races or pouring cups of tea, chatting to people
she’d known all her life. For the first years of Jess’s disappearance it had been easy to imagine that her daughter still moved beside her. Evie had seen her outline clearly. A quarter
of a century on, the details seemed to have blurred. Would Jess have worn her hair short? Would she have put on a dress this afternoon or would the cold wind have made her favour trousers?
    Jessamy must be here, somewhere: by the face-painting stand, or looking at the display of Coronation photographs beside the marquee. It was just a question of willing her to appear,