The Instinctive awareness that something must be wrong unleashed shivering horrors from some-place hidden deep inside, a colleague answered my desk phone across the room from where I stood.  Maybe some subliminal alarm in his voice, or perhaps a shadowy glimpse of unease darting from his eyes forewarned me, but, for whatever reason, I had already half crossed the floor before he mentioned my wife seemed to be upset.

My torturous drive home, frantic and furious, took much longer than it should.  Thick winter sleet fell unceasingly through foggy freezing air, obscuring the road beneath a slippery-wet, dangerous frosted slime.  Maniac drivers blocked my way, bottlenecking traffic at lights, cutting each other up at blind corners with horns-blaring, foot-jab-stopping before angry jolt-starting began it all again.  Impenetrable blackness crushed in round every side as the rain, dense cloud and onset of night reduced clear visibility to only a few miserable yards.  My windscreen misted over and nothing that I did seemed enough to clear its fog for more than just a briefly passing phase, crazed headlights stabbed at me which ever way I turned.

As I reached the key toward the lock, Linda flung the door wide on its hinges to fall sobbing in my arms.  Cathy, our only child, had still not returned home from school. 

I tried to ease Linda’s mind, telling her that there had to be some simple reason for Cathy being late; that she must have gone to her friends, or been delayed by some after school club she’d forgotten to tell us about.  “Kids are like that,” I said “always forgetting to tell their parents things,” deep down inside my stomach churned; Cathy wasn’t like that.

I rang the school, but no-one answered.  I tried again and again, eventually one of the cleaners picked up the phone, “Sorry, there are no kids left in the building” she said. 

I asked her to check, but she just repeated that there were no kids inside the building, she knew there were none, they had just locked the front door, and that meant the whole building was sealed off. 

Telling Linda to stay in the house as Cathy would likely come home before I got back, and that she was to ring me on my mobile the second she did turn up, I dashed out to the car and drove the route I knew our girl used to walk home.  I had to drive agonisingly slow because the black weather made it difficult to see the footpaths clearly.  I stopped time and again, trying to penetrate the blackness, trying to see down the bleak alley-ways and into any quiet shadowy places, desperate to find my girl.  For all I knew then I could have been the only living thing on the planet, the streets were so deserted and vacuously still, why in Christ’s name did I ever let her walk those streets alone.