The Missing Link by Kate Thompson Page A

absence was even louder than his presence, and we missed him terribly.
    We shared some more chocolate and were jostling for position under the blankets when we heard the farmhouse door click open. The window of the shed had no glass in it, and the sound seemed horribly close. Then a torch beam began to strobe across the darkness, a man coughed, and slow footsteps advanced towards our door.
    Tina went rigid with fear. Danny’s breath rasped like a saw, until I whispered to him to hold it. For once, he did. Above our heads, Darling dropped down from the rafters and drifted out through the window like a leaf on the breeze. The footsteps were closer, and we heard the soft creak of a log basket meeting the ground. There was no escape now, and we were all wondering what to do and say, when the shrill, urgent tones of a ringing phone began to sound.
    The man swore and retraced his steps, more rapidly this time, back to the house. With our hearts in our mouths we jumped up and felt around for our gear in the darkness. The log basket went flying as we pelted out and across the yard to the gate and the public road beyond. Danny moved faster than I had ever seen him go; covering the ground in long, gallumphing strides. We didn’t slow down until we were well clear of the farm and quite sure that no one was coming after us. As we were recovering our breath, Darling caught up with us.
    ‘Phew! That was lucky,’ said Tina.
    ‘Call it luck if you like,’ said Darling, clinging to the front of my jacket and trying to open the zip with her beak.
    ‘What do you mean?’ I said, opening it up and helping her into my pocket. She nestled down comfortably, then stuck out her head and performed the perfect telephone noise all over again.

3
    OUR EXHILARATION WAS short-lived. We walked through most of the night, along winding roads which seemed to have far more uphills than downhills. In the darkness our map was useless, and once again we found ourselves relying on Darling. I wondered how we would have managed without her.
    To keep pace with Danny I fell into a meditative amble, like a monk taking a constitutional around his cloister. With our bodies on automatic and our minds on standby we trudged on through the darkness until eventually, just before dawn, we found some trees and a high wall leaning together like conspirators. In the inky shadows they created, we dropped to the ground and slept like the dead.
    I was woken by a clamour of unruly voices. Above me the trees were black and fluttering, and for a moment I thought the world had gone mad. Then I realised that it was starlings, thick as foliage on the bare branches. A solitary rook perched among them, lonely as a teacher in a playground.
    Darling was lost in the clamouring mass, just one among hundreds. ‘Darling!’ I called, and my urgency woke Tina. ‘Darling!’
    There was something vaguely wimpish about being so attached to a little bird, but I was still missing Mom and Maurice, and now Oggy, and I wasn’t ready to lose someone else as well, no matter how small they might be. But she wasn’t lost. She floated down from among the masses and landed on my blanket.
    ‘Don’t panic, Christie,’ she said, picking small twigs and bits of leaf-mould out of my hair. ‘I was just gathering a bit of information, that’s all.’
    Beside me, Danny woke up and stretched.
    ‘Good riddance to that mist,’ he said.
    I hadn’t noticed the obvious. Through the network of branches and between the circling starlings, the sun was shining bright.
    We finally figured out how to use the tin opener on my penknife and, while we were eating, another flock of starlings came sweeping across the white sky like a swarm of bees. Their wings sounded like flitters of cloth in a breeze.
    Darling bolted her share of tuna and vanished among them, making me anxious again. Their chatter was deafening, containing the most amazing variety of sounds, and I found that I could imagine how it contained