Tideline by Penny Hancock Page B

rash.’
    When
am
I going to let him go? I haven’t really thought it through properly. Maybe it will be on his birthday as he imagines. Anyway, soon, before Greg and Kit come home. Before he edges
further towards adulthood. Today though, I want to savour every second I have left with him, and I want him relaxed and happy, not anxious like this.
    ‘Tell me what I can bring you, Jez. Remember I’ll get you anything you like.’
    After a pause he lets his head fall back against the pillows. ‘I could do with a smoke. There’s some weed in my jacket pocket.’
    ‘I’ll bring it.’
    ‘But I need my hands free. I need a piss, Sonia! How am I supposed to go for a piss like this? Or a shit. I’ve got to go!’
    I look at him, spreadeagled on the iron bed. His bad foot wrapped in its bandage, lolling over the edge. He can’t go anywhere with his ankle like that.
    ‘I’ll take these silly scarves off then, if you promise not to try anything daft like you did yesterday.’
    ‘No. No. I promise.’ He says it as if he’s weary with playing the game but knows it’s in his best interests to continue.
    We smile at each other and I untie the knots slowly, watching him all the time. I run my thumb over the red welts the scarves have left on his wrists. ‘I haven’t hurt you, have I? I
didn’t mean to hurt you.’
    ‘No,’ he says, shaking his hands as I pull the silk away. ‘No, it’s OK. That’s better. Thanks.’
    ‘Good, then I’ll be back soon. With weed and croissants. And I’ll bring Simon.’
    A bustle this morning as I go along the alley to the shops. A brisk spring wind blows ripples across the river so the boats speeding in both directions rock on the choppy
water. Students in scarves and hoodies gather in little groups in the university gardens, kids bound along on their way to school. People hurry towards the pier to get the Clipper up to town.
Everyone’s on their way somewhere. I’m going to buy croissants from Rhodes for me and Jez and Simon who’s due later. I may grab some of their fabulous panini, too, for Jez to have
for lunch. He’ll have an appetite by then. While I’m there I’ll treat him to one of their chocolate brownies. It’s one of those shops, Kit used to say, where you can’t
buy just one thing however resolute you are when you go in. She used to make me buy her slices of their Princess Cake, with its marzipan icing, and she’d eat the layers one at a time, licking
up the creamy filling between each one as she went.
    There’s a spring in my step this morning. Michael notices this as I pass. He works in the Anchor and is sweeping the paving stones outside.
    ‘You’re looking perky this morning, Sonia,’ he says. I wave and hurry on towards the village. I cross the road, about to pass the newsagents, and then stop.
    There, staring from the rack where the local papers are stacked, is his beautiful face. What’s he doing there, on the front page? Smiling over to his right, caught unawares, his mouth half
open, as if he’s just spotted someone special. Who? I peer at the caption under the photograph:
    Jez Mahfoud, who disappeared on Friday.
    I buy the paper and hurry to the steps opposite the Cutty Sark, which has been shrouded in white stuff since the fire destroyed it. The wind keeps lifting the corners of the pages as I start to
read and I have to bat them down. The white awnings flap around the Cutty Sark, and the blue hoardings slap and rattle. The wind unsettles me. It takes me longer than it should to grasp the meaning
of the words.
    Fears are mounting for the safety of a young man who has not been seen since he left his aunt’s house in Greenwich to meet his girlfriend
on Friday afternoon. Jez Mahfoud was last seen on Friday lunchtime by his aunt, Helen Whitehorn, with whom he was spending a week while on vacation from Paris.
    Inspector Hailey Kirwin said it was out of character for him to be missing for so long without contacting a family member or his