Page 3 of 59 Minutes

MRS DABB

Wipe eyes, straighten back, clear throat. Tomorrow, she can unspool in private but today she just has to knuckle through for a few more hours. She can do it. She’s done it for so many years now. Even if it’s getting harder, not easier, it is just one day.

The kitchen stove is lit but the warmth doesn’t reach her bones.

She can’t even smell the baking stockpiled throughout the afternoon.

Mounds of scones heaped on the side, a Victoria sponge, sticky jam tarts.

It looks grotesque now, gluttony masquerading as a shrine.

She never gets this day right, never knows how to mark the anniversary in a way that will mean something to Bunny while not peeling the skin slowly from herself.

It’s Bunny who seems to know what to do with this date and has since she was tiny.

At four, off her own back, she began the ritual of starting a joke before school and giving her mum the punchline when she gets home, ‘to stop you being sad all day’.

This morning, she’d barely got up in time to catch the bus, toast half-chewed, juice half-drunk, but still, ‘Knock knock,’ she shouted as she pulled on her shoes and grabbed her bag.

‘Who’s there?’

‘Dejav.’

‘Dejav who?’

It hung in the air even after the door was slammed.

Any moment now, the school bus will deposit her daughter back home again.

Then a swish of a school skirt, the rattle of a bag and Bunny will be up the little path and bursting through the front door, bubbling with laughter as she blurts out the punchline.

Immediately embroidering some joy over the pain.

An engine rumbles outside and she rushes to the window, squinting outside.

The school bus takes so long to weave through all the villages, that in winter, it is dark by the time it arrives.

Through a gap in the shutters, the bus noses into view, shaking a little in its canine way as it appears to slow, but then moves off again without stopping. That’s not right.

She pulls open the front door and jogs after the bus as it trundles away, until finally the driver spots her in his mirror and shudders to a stop twenty metres down the lane. The light from the vehicle renders everything around it dense black.

‘Alright there, Mrs Dabb?’ the driver says, as he opens the door.

He’s nearing retirement but sits ramrod straight while she tries to catch her breath.

God, she’s so horribly unfit. ‘My daughter should have got off,’ she puffs, as she looks into the belly of the bus.

‘Bunny,’ she prompts, though he knows this very well.

There aren’t many pupils left and they’re dotted around the seats, all in the same uniform. She looks down at herself, at the flour dusted on her ratty old sweatshirt, slippers collapsing around her feet. Bunny would be mortified if she was here, but she’s not. Where on earth is she?

The bus driver frowns. ‘She missed it today, love.’

‘What?’

‘She was on here this morning, but a no-show tonight.’ He smiles, like he sees this all the time. Like he finds it whimsical. ‘Probably too busy nattering or something, lost track of time. Or maybe she was kept back at school and didn’t want to tell Mum.’

She shakes her head. Not Bunny. She’s never been in trouble in her life and none of her friends, carefully vetted from the sidelines, would keep her ‘nattering’.

They are all Good Girls?. And besides, Bunny knows how important today is.

It’s important to her too. So even if she suddenly decided to tumble into teenage clichés, she wouldn’t do it today. It’s unfathomable.

‘I’m sure she’s fine, Mrs Dabb,’ he says, his accent a local rumble. ‘But I really need to get this lot home.’

‘But—’

‘Can’t you just call her mobile?’ A hint of impatience, underscored by the wheeze of the bus.

‘No, I … She doesn’t have one.’

The look he gives her is clear. Oh , it says, you’re one of those .

‘I’m sure she’ll show up, but I’ll get on the radio to the other school bus drivers, tell ’em to keep an eye out. If they see her, they’ll tell her Mum’s worried. Alright?’

She steps off the bus and onto the tarmac.

‘Alright,’ she says, but feels anything but.

He pulls away even before the door has fully closed.

She troops back towards her own front door, left hanging wide open.

They can still do that out here, leave doors open and cars unlocked.

They can but not her. She must be more careful.

Heart thundering, she looks at the little notepad next to the landline.

Runs her finger down the short list of names of Bunny’s friends’ parents and starts to make calls.

But no one has seen her since lunchtime and all their girls are safely home.

‘Jazzy says Bunny had a note from you excusing her for the afternoon,’ Jasmine’s mum, Daphne, says. ‘Is that right?’

‘What? What note?’

Muffled discussion. ‘Jasmine thinks it was a doctor’s note, but she’s not sure.’

‘A doctor’s note?’

‘Maybe a doctor’s note, she doesn’t know for sure. Have you called Bunny’s phone?’

‘She doesn’t have one. I … I was thinking of getting her one for Christmas.’ A lie.

‘That’s … hmm.’

‘What?’

‘Well, I just thought Jazzy said she was on the phone to Bunny the other day.’

‘We have a landline, I’m talking on it now.’

‘No, it was when Jazzy was off sick and it was at lunchtime, so Bunny was at school. I must be … it must have been someone else. Hang on, I’ll just check.’

The conversation is muffled and protracted. What takes this long if the answer is a simple no, of course she doesn’t have a mobile phone ?

‘She says I must have heard wrong.’

‘What else did she say?’ It comes out as a bark. ‘Why would my daughter be going to the doctor by herself anyway?’

There’s a pause, the sound of footsteps and a door closing. ‘I …’ Daphne starts, her voice lowered. ‘Look, Bunny’s obviously forged a note of some kind to get out of school.’

‘But, she’s not like that!’

‘And Jasmine’s insisting I’m wrong but I really thought she was talking to Bunny on the phone the other day, and she’s definitely said something before about messaging her. I trust my daughter, I really do. Usually. But I think she might be covering.’

‘Covering for what?’

A pause. ‘Oh, I’m probably losing my marbles,’ Daphne says and the moment is lost. ‘Perimenopause brain, probably. I put the electric kettle on the gas hob the other day.’

‘You think my daughter’s hiding things from me?’

‘No! I didn’t … I wasn’t saying anything like that, but … well, did you write her a note to get out of school?’

‘No.’ It’s almost a whisper.

‘Look, I’ll let you know if Jasmine gives me any other intel. But I’m sure Bunny will turn up. And you know, she’s thirteen. Probably just trying to carve out a little independence.’

‘No,’ she says, her voice breaking. ‘Not Bunny. Bunny knows not to … She wouldn’t do that to me, not today.’

‘I’m sorry, love,’ Daphne says, and though the words are kind, the tone is slightly impatient. ‘I have to go. Good luck.’

She replaces the handset and looks at the time.

Five o’clock. Bunny is now an hour late and has been unaccounted for since midday.

It’s dark, cold and the anniversary of the worst day of her life.

She pulls open the front door, the emptiness of the dark air slaps her in the face. ‘Oh, Bunny,’ she says. ‘Why today?’

Silence is the reply.

But then it starts.

The sound reaches her ears, her hands, so that she crouches down, palms pressed against the side of her head before her brain understands what it’s heard. And still the sound whoops and whines, soaring and dipping like an electric bird.

The unmistakable wailing of a siren across the moor.