Conrad & Eleanor by Jane Rogers Page B

not to have told her, if he really is missing. Also, El wants an ally in not telling Con and Ailsa’s mother. She can’t see any point in telling the old lady; Con only visits her a couple of times a year, it will be quite a while before she misses him. Anyway, he’ll be back. El adds phoning Dan and Megan to her list; she must be sure they are both up to speed on what is happening, now Cara is going to Munich. All four children are hypersensitive to being left out of any information known to their siblings. El thinks about Dan, in his nasty little box of a room in student accommodation. Not that Dan seems to mind a nasty little box. He has his bed, his desk and his computer; Con reported him isolated but perfectly content, last time he visited.
    Dan has been extremely calm over Con’s disappearance so far – is that likely to change? El hasn’t seen him really upset for a long time; he’s grown out of the inconsolable rages he suffered as a child. Those rages were about frustration, El was sure – about not being able to do or have something he’d set his heart on. Now he’s seventeen he’s got more control, and a better grasp of what is possible; also he’s good at something. He’s applying his mind to computer programming, with excellent results, and excelling is always good for the spirits. El knows she has always been right about Dan. It is Con who has been wrong, demanding tests and visits to specialists, bandying words like autism and Asperger’s, looking for nameless psychological woes. El has always maintained that Dan is fine, and so he is; look at him now, flourishing in his first year at university despite his youth. If it was down to Con he’d have been languishing in some special school, rather than finding his own path through the jungle of the comprehensive, leaping ahead a year and learning how to protect himself from bullies and idiots. Yes, Dan is different. Yes, he’s a loner. But there is nothing at all wrong with his brain; he’s the brightest of the four. So far he has reacted to Con’s absence with his usual blankness. Hopefully that will continue, but if he seems upset she will have to tell him to come home. She wonders whether Paul has talked to him. If so, she really must ring him, because Paul will have wound him up. She underlines Dan on her list. Megan, on the other hand, will be easy. How much better it would be if Megan could come home. El imagines her efficient thoughtfulness; she would not have left the table littered with dirty glasses and biscuit crumbs, she would not be treating her mother as prime suspect. She would probably be coming up with very sensible avenues of search to pursue. But Megan is on stage in London every night this week. She keeps more or less nocturnal hours, El can’t phone her before lunchtime. El has a pang for her older daughter’s level-headedness; how much more practical than Cara’s weepy hysteria and Paul’s hateful anger.
    Abruptly she refocuses on work, and lists the most vital things she needs to do today; pours herself a bowl of muesli and chops an apple into it, and consumes her breakfast rapidly. Conrad’s driving glasses are on the table. She stares at the navy blue case for a while before checking its contents. If you were leaving for good, you would certainly take your driving glasses. Those glasses have been there for a long time, she thinks. For days, maybe weeks. Has he got a new pair? Come to think of it, has he actually been driving? His car is always in the garage with the door shut when she gets home from work, and there’s nothing unusual in that because she leaves before he does and gets home after him. But the little heap of car keys, garage keys and glasses that always used to irritate her on the dusty ­flower stand in the hall hasn’t been there for a long time. She rises quickly to check – no, not there.
    He must have been