“Linda, where are you? I am
really worried, you're over an hour late. Call me as soon as you can
darling.”
Linda hadn't answered her
phone since Charlotte had started calling her earlier in the evening.
It wasn't like her to be late; or at least it hadn't been like her
for some time. The television pulsed its glowing blue tales of death
and misery to an indifferent room. Who cared about the tragedies
half a world away when the mind could create much worse closer to
home?
The familiar nauseous pit
began to open up inside of her whilst dark thoughts took flight.
Questions tumbled over and over, but always beginning with the same
two simple words. What if.
What if she had been hurt?
What if she had fallen? What if she was lost? What if she had been
attacked?
The momentum gathered as her
breathing accelerated. Charlotte paced. Five short steps in front
of the sofa before wheeling and returning. Never making progress,
too distracted to do
more. A visual reflection
of the worn tracks that her thinking had now settled into.
“Oh Mark, what if somebody
has taken her?”
Mark climbed out of his chair,
placing the folded newspaper down and resting his glasses on top. He
always managed to appear calm, but a close observer would have
noticed the slight tremor in his hand and realised
this was a façade. Well practised, potentially convincing to
somebody whose thoughts might have been elsewhere, but false
nonetheless.
“Come on darling, there is
always a good reason. We might not understand the reason, but it's
always good once she's explained it.”
This was a frequently
used script that
served both to control his own anxiety and reassure Charlotte. If he
could convince her he wasn't worried, then maybe there wasn't
actually anything to be worried about.
But…
His mind betrayed him as that
word crept in.
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