Little Bee - Chris Cleave [105]
Lawrence handed his phone to Little Bee, and turned back to me. I stared at him dumbly.
“I know it sounds extreme,” he said, “but the police are good at this. I’m sure we’ll find Charlie before they get here, but just on the off chance that we don’t, it makes sense for us to bring them in sooner rather than later.”
“Okay, do it,” I said. “Do it now.”
Little Bee was still standing there, holding Lawrence’s phone in her hand, staring at Lawrence and me with large and frightened eyes. I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t already running.
“Go!” I said.
She still stared at me. “The police…,” she said.
Understanding buzzed dully in my mind. The number. Of course! She didn’t know the emergency number.
“The number is 999,” I said.
She just stood there. I couldn’t work out what the problem was.
“The police, Sarah,” she said.
I stared at her. Her eyes were pleading. She looked terrified. And then, very slowly, her face changed. It became firm, resolved. She took a deep breath, and she nodded at me. She turned, slowly at first and then very fast, and she ran up the steps to the embankment. When she was halfway up, Lawrence raised a hand to his mouth.
“Oh shit, the police,” he said.
“What?”
He shook his head.
“Never mind.”
Lawrence ran off. I began shouting again for Charlie. I called and called, while the tourists stared, and the breeze left me shivering in my wet jeans. At first I called out Charlie’s name as a sound for him to home in on, but as my voice began to go I realized that another line had been crossed and I was shouting the name just to hear it, to ensure its continuing existence. I realized that the name was all I had in the world.
Then a voice came from behind me. It was Lawrence.
“Sarah?” he said. “It’s okay. I found him.”
Lawrence held Charlie in his arms. My son was filthy, and his bat cape hung straight down, heavy with water. I ran to him, took him into my arms and held him. I pressed my face into his neck and I breathed in his smell, the sharp salt of his sweat and the sewer tang of the dirt. The tears streamed down my face.
“Charlie,” I whispered. “Oh my world, my whole world.”
“Get off, Mummy! You’re squashing me!”
“Where were you?”
Charlie held out his hands to the sides, palms upward, and answered me as if I was simple.
“In mine bat cave.”
Lawrence grinned and pointed at the wall of the embankment.
“He was right inside one of those drainage pipes.”
“Oh Charlie. Didn’t you hear us all shouting? Didn’t you see us all looking for you?”
Charlie grinned beneath his bat mask.
“I was hiding,” he said.
“Why? Why didn’t you come out? Couldn’t you see how worried we all were?”
My son looked forlornly at the ground. “Lawrence and Bee was all cross and they wasn’t playing with me. So I went into mine bat cave.”
“Oh Charlie. Mummy’s been so confused. So terribly silly and selfish. I promise you, Charlie, I’ll never be so silly again. You’re my whole world, you know that? I’ll never forget that again. Do you know how much you mean to me?”
Charlie blinked at me, sensing an opportunity.
“Can I have an ice cream?” he said.
I hugged my son. I felt his warm, sleepy breath on my neck, and through the thin gray fabric of his costume I felt the gentle, insistent pressure of the bones beneath his skin.
I looked up at Lawrence and I said, Thank you.
eleven
THE POLICEMEN CAME AFTER five minutes. There were three of them. They came slowly, in a silver car with bright blue and orange stripes along the sides and a long bar of lights on the roof. They pushed through the crowds on the walkway and they stopped beside the steps that led down to the sand. They got out of the car and they put on their hats. They were wearing white short-sleeved shirts and thick black vests with a black-and-white checkered stripe. The vests had many pockets, and in them there were batons and radios and handcuffs and other things I could not guess the names of. I was thinking, Charlie would like this. These policemen have more gadgets than Batman.