How To Be Brave by Louise Beech Page A

don’t even think she could see the water and she’d barely responded when I moved her upstairs.
    ‘Let’s think where she might be,’ said April, putting her tin on the table.
    ‘She needs her insulin,’ I said. ‘She’ll get ill without it.’
    ‘When did she last have some?’
    ‘After supper last night. She has four shots a day, with breakfast, lunch, tea and supper.’
    ‘I’m sure it’ll be okay for a few hours more.’ April opened her tin. ‘Now why don’t you put the kettle on and I’ll wash your pots and we can have a nice biscuit and think where else she’ll be.’
    ‘I can’t sit around eating biscuits!’ I cried. ‘I’ve got to find her.’
    ‘You should stay here in case she comes home,’ said April. ‘My Jenny went missing when she was about ten. I bit off most of my nails with worry. Then she walked in bold as you like, said she’d been “picking daisies with Mary in the next street.” Rose will turn up.’
    ‘It’s not the same,’ I snapped. ‘Your daughter wasn’t diabetic. What if she’s hurt somewhere? What if she fell over and she’s injured under a bush or something and it gets colder. She’s not just any child.’
    ‘I know,’ said April. ‘She’s your child.’
    ‘No, I mean she’s vulnerable.’
    April found a clean plate in my cupboard and put five biscuits on it. ‘Let’s wait ten minutes. She’ll come home when she’s hungry and she can have one of these. I put real lemon in them, you know.’
    ‘She can’t eat fucking biscuits!’ I grabbed the plate, spilling the biscuits all over my gravy-stained work surface.
    She barely blinked at my outburst. Suddenly I felt warmth towards her, bad for ruining her lemony bakes.
    ‘Have you definitely checked everywhere?’ she asked, practical, unmovable, solid: just what I needed.
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    ‘Cupboards? Wardrobes?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Garden? Shed?’
    ‘Yes.’ I stopped. ‘Well, not the shed.’
    ‘Why not, lovey?’
    ‘We never use it. It’s just full of junk and spiders. Rose hates spiders. She’d never go in there and besides she can’t reach the bolt.’
    ‘Can’t hurt to check,’ said April.
    She was right. So I walked the length of our skinny garden, gold leaves sticking to my slippers and breath smoky in the chill air. Our wooden shed hid behind a holly tree, as though embarrassed. Every winter Jake patched it up, hoping to get another year out of it. Wood overlapped wood, nails stuck out like bookmarks, and the roof sank at the back where wet leaves from April’s oak tree had weighed it down over the years. I looked towards the house; April stood on the step.
    One week over, still no ship .
    ‘What?’ I called.
    ‘Didn’t say anything, lovey,’ she said.
    I reached for the shed’s bolt and realised it had been pulled back already; the door swung open easily with a little shove. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. Fustiness and the smell of doors-closed-too-long hit my nostrils first. Then I saw her – at the back, on a pile of old carpet. Rose. Curled up, shivering, dressed only in a yellow onesie. Relief rendered me briefly speechless.
    I knelt down beside her. ‘What on earth are you doing? You must be absolutely frozen, you silly girl.’
    She elbowed me away. The whites of her eyes shone like a warning in the darkness. ‘I’m all right!’ she hissed. ‘I’m just waiting.’
    April called from the house, asked if all was well, and I shouted back that Rose was there, we’d just be a moment.
    ‘What do you mean you’re waiting?’ I tried to help her up. ‘It’s past breakfast time. You must be starving.’
    ‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I’m waiting for him! He told me to come here!’
    ‘Who did?’ I demanded.
    I asked who, but didn’t I already know?
    ‘He comes to see me in the dark,’ she whispered. ‘He smells kind of … you know, like the fish and chips at Hornsea? He said last night that he’d meet me in here, near the boxes.’