His bedroom door slightly ajar, Jack peered through the gap into the living room. Jean and Daniel were speaking to two policemen: Constable Rafter and Lieutenant Speers.
Rafter was the older with short black hair, a square face, once harsh but now relaxed and worn. Speers was young and gangly with a face that looked like it had been in a press; all nose.
‘Mr and Mrs Bennett,’ Rafter was saying, his police cap held in his hands, ‘like I told Mrs Jeffries, I’m sure she’ll turn up soon enough. Kids do this sort of thing all the time. It’s just their way of getting attention.’
Jean could barely control her anger. ‘An eleven-year-old girl goes missing, and you think it’s an attention-grabbing exercise?’
Speers spoke in a nasally, slightly snotty voice. ‘Calm down, Mrs…’
Daniel cut him off. ‘Look, officer, don’t tell my wife to calm down.’
Speers seemed on the point of retorting but Rafter waved him down.
‘Take your hat off inside, son.’
Annoyed, Speers took off his hat. The two silently conversed, wondering how they could defuse the situation. Jean and Daniel surveyed each other also. They realised it was the first time they had shown support for each other.
Jack bumped the door with his leg, the soft noise causing Daniel to turn and spot him through the crack. Jean, Rafter and Speers followed his gaze. Daniel gestured that they should move away.
Jack closed the door. He crawled onto his bed, grabbing the telepathy cards in the process. He held his temples and tried sending a message.
‘Mel? Mel? Are you reading me, over? Mel?’
Frustrated, he pushed the cards off his bed. They fanned out on the floor. He was just about to turn out the light when he noticed the new heart card. He picked it up with infinite care.
‘Mel…?’
Sitting down on his bed again, he tried sending the heart instead. Tried with all his might. Giving up, finally, he turned out his light, and pulled the cover over his head. What had Daniel and Juliet said? They could sense the living. They could sense those with life in them. But once they passed out of this world, they sensed them no more. For this was it. This life was all there was.
If this life was all there was, and dream, and the aspiring imagination counted for nothing, then Jack knew he had best be done with it now.
The old fridge glowed in the moonlight.
A sliver of light passed over his eyes.
A sigh moved the grass outside his window.
All was quiet.
Jack’s eyes snapped open and he sat up in bed as Mel entered through the wall as a mist, before becoming whole and substantial. She was in a white, gossamer dress, like the one she’d greeted him in during their shared fantasy of the secret garden.
She was humming the plaintive chords of Polovtsian Dances.
‘Mel,’ he whispered. ‘I’m… I’m sorr…’
Mel smiled warmly and leant over him. ‘Shhh.’ She tapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re it!’
She half stepped back through the wall, as if falling into a lake.
‘No, Mel,’ pleaded Jack, grabbing her hands.
She winked. ‘I’ll show you.’
Jack let go and stepped back. ‘I can’t.’
Now only her head was still visible, sinking back through the wall. ‘Yes, you can. We’re going to play the game of Hide and Seek.’
Her head bobbing under the surface, Jack found his courage and tried to step after her but instead crashed into the plaster. Coming to his senses, he ran to the next room.
Mel was walking through the front windows, the curtains either side slightly moving.
She turned her head back to him, her chin resting on her shoulder. ‘Don’t give up, Jack. You always give up.’
The night enveloped her outside. Jack stood there a moment, looking at the panes with their slight breath of condensation. His eyes then wandered to the door handle. His expression changed to one of joy. He’d catch her all right!
He checked behind the Cunningham Casuarina, where the moon perched in its topmost branches. She wasn’t there. Spinning round slowly, he just had time to glimpse her stepping round the corner of the house, doing her own pirouette in turn.
‘Don’t give up, Jack.’
Jack sprinted after her.
He came to a halt at the wall of hay bales. Breaching them at their weakest point, he made his way amongst the junk Daniel had tried to hide.
‘Don’t give up now,’ came Mel’s voice, mellifluous and clear.
He spotted the old fridge and walked up to it. Kneeling down, he leant on it a moment as though it were a coffin, laying his split ear on its cold surface and listening for a heartbeat. Sitting up, he pulled at the handle, throwing it open with one sudden flourish.
His voice was triumphant.
‘I’ve found you!
Toco Productions 