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RACHEL
This time, I made no attempt at conversation as Zhang drove me home.
I stared out of the window and thought about Ruth and Ben, and how much they loved each other’s
company. I was transfixed by the sight of schoolchildren walking home with parents, or in messy
groups without adults, shouting, laughing, jostling each other, dropping bits of rubbish, which the
wind picked up and blew around them. It was the start of half-term this afternoon, as Ruth had said,
and they were in celebratory mood.
‘Can we go to Ben’s school?’
‘We can. Why?’ Zhang said.
‘I want to get his stuff. It’s half-term.’
She only hesitated momentarily. ‘Of course,’ she said. She pulled into the forecourt of a petrol
station to turn around and we got stuck behind another car. It was impossible not to see the headlines,
murky as they were behind the thick plastic of the forecourt newsstand. The front pages of two
newspapers showed a photograph of me at the press conference, beside one of my sister in her
nightie, berating the journalists outside my house. This is what I read before Zhang pulled away:
FINCH FURIES
INTIMIDATING: Benedict’s auntie lets rip
SISTERS: who aren’t afraid to look SAVAGE
FEARS GROWING: 5 days missing and counting
And on another paper, underneath a photograph of my boy:
MYSTERY OF BEN’S CLOTHING
New Timeline of Ben’s Disappearance Inside
Zhang still said nothing. I wasn’t sure if she’d seen them or not. I pulled up the hood of my coat and
sank down into my seat. I was afraid of somebody recognising me and I was afraid of what they might
say if they did.
Ben’s school was almost deserted as we arrived. We had to manoeuvre around some orange traffic
cones that had been placed as a loose barricade across the entrance to the teachers’ car park. Only a
few cars remained there, most of the spaces were empty. Zhang parked in a spot where we had a view
of the playground, a small tarmacked space with football posts painted on one wall and colourful
murals on the others. It was a modest little school, with the old Victorian schoolhouse at its heart, and
various unprepossessing modern additions tacked on to it over the years.
Right up until the moment when we parked, I thought it was a good idea to visit the school, but as
Zhang undid her seat belt and pulled the keys from the ignition, I found myself paralysed by the fact of
actually being there.
It was the sight of the playground. It reminded me that this was Ben’s world, his other world, and
that the last time I was here was to pick him up the previous Friday afternoon.
As Zhang turned to me, wondering why I wasn’t moving, images flooded my brain.
The playground on Friday: it had been heaving as usual, crowds of parents waiting for children