People LIke Her(13)

They both shake their heads. As I am leaving, I hear someone calling after me that I’ve forgotten my bag. I don’t go back.

There’s no sign of my daughter outside the shop either.

We’re on the second floor, down at the John Lewis end, just by the escalators. I run to the top of them, trying not to picture Coco using the escalator on her own, telling myself that surely someone would have stopped her.

The nearest set of escalators is empty.

That is when I first try to call Emmy. Is there anywhere, I want to ask her, that Coco especially likes to go in Westfield? Since I hate the place and everything it stands for, it’s usually the girls who come here on their own while I push Bear in his pram around the park. I try to rack my brain for anything either Emmy or Coco might have said about their trips together. Is there a particular shop she always wants to look in, that she talks about? A particular playground? Somewhere they enjoy going? Nothing springs to mind. Again Emmy’s mobile goes to voicemail.

I’m obviously looking pretty frantic by now. Passing people are giving me sidelong looks, glances of concern.

“A little girl,” I say to them. I do the thing with my hand again. “Have you seen a little girl?”

Apologetic shakes of the head, shrugs, gestures of commiseration. Every time I spot a child, my heart gives a lurch, then sinks as I realize it’s wearing the wrong coat, or it’s the wrong size, or the wrong gender.

I am painfully aware that every decision I make now, every incorrect decision, is costing me time. Do I run down this way, to see if she’s around this corner? In exactly the same amount of time Coco could be disappearing around a different corner in the opposite direction. And every second I spend hesitating, that’s another second wasted too. Is Coco already on one of the lower floors? Has she gone back to the elevators? Has she wandered off to try to find the play area I know she and Emmy sometimes visit? There’s somewhere called Soft Play, isn’t there? Is that in the same building? Or is that somewhere different? I’m picturing a bouncy castle, but inside.

I try Emmy’s phone again.

All around me on the concourse, people are going about their everyday business, drifting along with what seems to me infuriating slowness. I decide to try the elevators first. I squeeze around a couple holding hands, jump right over someone’s wheely bag. In the window of one of the shops, I catch a glimpse of myself as I run past: pale, wild-eyed, on the verge of a meltdown.

What I can’t understand is why no one has stopped her. Would you not stop a lone three-year-old and ask them where they were going, if one passed you in a mall? I mean, somebody must have clocked her. Surely someone, you would think, would have the gumption to stop a little kid like that and ask them where they’re going, where their mummy or daddy—or whoever—is. You would imagine. You would hope.

Apparently you would be mistaken.

I move to overtake someone shuffling along with their head bowed and their eyes fixed on their iPhone, and nearly collide with someone else doing exactly the same thing coming in the other direction.

There is no sign of Coco by the elevators. The display tells me one elevator is on the ground floor, and the other is making its way up to the top—the third floor—where I am. I run back to the balustrade and look over. I can’t see my daughter anywhere. By this time, I’m increasingly convinced that something awful has happened, something really awful. The kind of thing you read about and shudder. The kind of thing you hear about on the news.

That’s when I see her. Coco. Standing outside a bookshop on the ground floor.

“Coco,” I shout. She doesn’t look up. “Coco!”

I take the stairs of the escalator three or four at a time, gripping the sides, practically throwing myself down it, pushing roughly between a young couple standing two abreast, not caring when one of them clucks their tongue after me.

“Coco!” I shout again, leaning over the side of the balustrade on the first floor. This time she does look up, but only to try to work out where the voice calling her name is coming from. I shout it again. Finally, she glances in my direction, smiles vaguely and waves with one arm, then returns her attention to the display in the window, which is advertising the latest in that series of books about a family of wizards and witches.

Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. Thank God.

Not only have I located my daughter, but she has got someone with her, a grown-up. Thank God for that too. That one person in this mall, at least, at last, has shown enough common sense and enough community spirit to intervene when they see an unaccompanied three-year-old wandering about. They are standing next to each other, the two of them, apparently checking out the shop display together.

I feel a great surge of relief.

From this angle and distance, I can’t make out much about the person Coco is standing with—I can see them only from behind and as a vague reflection in the shop window—but I assume, I suppose because of the anorak they are wearing, that they are an older person, someone’s granny perhaps. I suppose it is the colors of the anorak—pink and purple—that give me the impression the person wearing it is female. I can already feel the apologetic words, the effusive thanks, forming in my throat.

A pillar passes between us.

A second or two elapses.

My daughter is standing outside the bookshop on her own.

For a moment, my brain flatly refuses to process this.