I walked into the kitchen to find that Mum was not there. I stared into the log fire, and thought to myself how foolish she must be to leave it alight. My eyes strolled along the crème wallpaper and dropped when they reached the approximate location of our kitchen table. There was a note. I must admit that I thought nothing of it at this point, and expected it to say something like ‘gone out for bread; back in a bit.’

I opened the note and took a sharp intake of breath as I read the words which appeared before me. They were arranged from scrap pieces of magazine articles, and read ‘The woman is with us. She will not be harmed, but will not be released until you pay us the sum of £30,000.’

Admittedly, my natural reaction was to panic, in fact I did this for quite some time. I finally realised however that panicking was not going to bring my Mum back, and I picked up the phone. It felt cold against my clammy hands, which were by this point shaking. I slowly tapped three nines into the keypad, asked for the police, and was put through to my local station.

‘How long as she been missing?’

‘I don’t know, I’ve been at school. All I have is this note, and I have no idea how long it’s been here!’

‘So she could have been gone for up to eight hours now,’ he paused, ‘can you think of why they would want her, or how they could have broken into your house?’

‘Well, they want her for the money, I would have thought that was a little obvious,’ I snapped. I immediately felt guilty; it wasn’t his fault!

‘Please be patient, we need to gather as much information as we can in order to progress with our investigation!’

‘I know, I’m sorry.’ I swallowed and closed my eyes for a moment before continuing, ‘I suppose they may have chosen to take her because they know we’re a rich family. You can tell that just by looking at our house! I have no idea who would have done such a thing though. It could have been anyone; everybody’s jealous of us.’

‘Alright, we will begin our investigation and get back to you the second we get any more information. I would advise you to stay at home and close all doors and windows. We don’t want any more kidnappings tonight.’

With that, he put the phone down, leaving me only with the monotonous beep of the disconnected phone to keep me company.

I’m not sure how long it was before I thought to put the phone down myself. It was most likely a mere thirty seconds, but felt more like an hour. Even so, however long that had lasted, it was nothing in comparison to the long, dark night I faced alone.

I sat at the table with the ransom note in my hands and a tear rolled down my cheek. As I stared at the words before me, I realised what had happened.

My Mum was gone.

I was alone.