Free Random Acts of Unkindness by Jacqueline Ward Page A

days, he was thinking Aiden had run away. Coming round to the idea.
    I’d seen Sal’s statement, that Aiden had taken his passport and bank card, but left a rucksack with some clothes in it. Uniformed had been round and searched Sal’s flat half-heartedly. They had filed a report saying that he had ‘gone out prepared.’
    When I queried this, they queried why a fifteen-year-old would have taken his passport, if he had just nipped round the corner to a mate’s? It’s not a normal thing to do, they said. And it planted a seed of doubt in my mind.
    Maybe they were right. Maybe I was a complete bitch of a bad mother and he had run away. I wondered if it was the biannual foreign holidays, or the expensive trainers that had done it? Or maybe the entertainment system he demanded for his room? Sal dutifully reminded me that ‘stuff’ couldn’t make up for a mother’s love, and wondered out loud if I had maybe loved my job a little too much.
    But even then I knew that Aiden hadn’t run away. He’d never make himself suffer like that. He couldn’t live on the streets or in a squat. He couldn’t last five minutes. Also, he loved me. Underneath the bravado, the toughness, the black looks, and tantrums, he still loved his mum.
    His goodnight hug was firm, and he sometimes slipped his arm around my shoulder. Taller than me at five-ten, he would tilt his head until his cheek rested on my hair. Only when no one was around, in the queue for the chip shop, or sometimes at the cinema. I could hear his heart beating. I knew that deep down he was a caring boy who wouldn’t hurt me. Or Sal. He wouldn’t.
    A tear trickles down my cheek and I wipe it away before Mike can see it. Maybe the TV appeal would work. If he was out there, and he saw it, maybe it would melt his heart. I text Sal, who will be pleased that I’m giving in to his constant nagging.
    Mike was driving toward Old Mill, where we would spend the morning on observations. Photographing people coming in and out, registrations of goods wagons, cars, that sort of thing. This afternoon we’d go back to the ops room and report the information and pull out the best leads for ourselves.
    I had to do it. I still needed to survive. It’s a catch-22. You feel like you’re dying inside yet you have to appear normal outside. I thought it was bad when my mother died, shortly followed by my father. I felt like I was going mad and took two weeks off, which made it worse as I had to sit at home under Sal’s daytime television regime.
    It was school holidays, and he insisted that Aiden shouldn’t go to the childminder because I was home. I explained that I was sick, needed time alone and he told me I was selfish. All three of us spent a full two weeks curled up on a sofa, watching Midsummer Murders and Catch Phrase , and a cacophony of children’s cartoons.
    Sal and Aiden loved it, but I swung between worrying about work and wanting to scream and cry for my dead parents. When I returned to work, I was in worse shape than before my time off, but managed to hide it and gradually recover. Not this time.
    My anger is seeping out of every pore, and as we park up at the end of Nelson Lane, where the Old Mill stands, I’m shaking.
    Mike gets out the camera and the iPad. I usually take the notes, verify times and registrations. There’s an embarrassing silence between us and it makes things much harder than usual because I know Mike really does care about me. Sometimes I catch him looking sideways at me, making sure I am all right.
    Container vehicles are queued up outside Connelly’s mill by eleven thirty, a backlog of unloading clearly holding them up. Several drivers have gotten out of their cabs and are drinking tea and coffee at a nearby portable food cabin.
    With no words needed, we get out and sit on rickety white plastic chairs. We’re often undercover together and it just comes naturally now. Mike gets the drinks. I set up the conversation. I quickly get into role. I should