As she walked down the drive, she felt like a puppet. It was as if someone else was controlling her voice and the scream that wanted to escape did not

About an hour and a half later, Fiona had just topped up her glass and looked up at the clock again. Where the hell were they?

She went to the window and looked out. The wind was now blowing in squalls of fury.

The branches on the magnolia tree were swaying and the leaves billowing all over the lawn.

The phone rang.

“Yes?” Her voice was urgent.

“Just me, Fi.”

“Oh, hi, Martha. How’s things?”

“Good, just checking Jamie’s still on for the football tomorrow?”

“Yeah, fine, he’s really excited.”

“You okay? You sound weird.”

“They’re late back, he was due home half an hour ago.”

“For God’s sake, Fi, don’t you remember our mums used to have near panic attacks with us?

“We always dawdled on our way home after the last house.

“In fact, we used to go home via the swings and sit there chomping on all the sweeties and things. Felt sick when we eventually got home.”

Fiona leant back against the kitchen chair and sighed.

“Of course, that’s what they’ll be doing. “Thanks, M. I had him kidnapped by some crazy child snatchers.”

“That was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Fi. Got to rein in that imagination of yours. Right, see you tomorrow at one.”

The doorbell rang.

“Oh, that’s the bell. See you tomorrow!” Fiona flung open the door. Two ghouls stood there.

Grave expression

“We’re really sorry but we’ve lost Jamie, we’ve looked everywhere but . . .”

There was a noise behind them. Two figures crunched up the drive, Jack with his dad at his side.

Fiona had only met Chris a couple of times but she did not recognise his grave expression.

“What d’you mean, you’ve lost him? How is that possible?”

“Fiona, they came to us about 20 minutes ago and I’ve been out on the green with them just now, can’t see him anywhere.

Three of the lampposts are out and it’s really dark down there so we can’t see. I just got a big torch from home.”

Fiona felt her heart lurch. She yanked her coat off a peg and struggled to put it on.

She was about to shut the door when she stopped then ran back to the kitchen table to grab her phone.

She pulled the door to, leaving it slightly ajar, then stomped off after the boys.

As she walked down the drive, she felt like a puppet. It was as if someone else was controlling her voice and the scream that wanted to escape did not.

Instead she said, in a composed voice: “Right, where did you last see him?”

Wednesday, January 7 1880

Ann Craig sat at the window seat in her black gown and gazed out at Magdalen Green.

The wind had got up and the trees along the shore were swaying.

She was watching Miss Graham walk over the grass, stopping every now and then to point something out to James and Lizzie.

The governess was holding on to her hat and her skirts were swirling around her.

Ann lifted the field glasses and noticed that she was wearing grey.

She had apologised that she had no more black clothes, but had asked for leave to go to her home in Broughty Ferry to fetch more.

Ann swung the glasses east a little and noticed someone standing under a lamppost, as if watching them.

The thin figure – and as she peered through the glasses she could see it was a man – was huddled, as if trying to obscure his face and body.

She got to her feet and turned up the focus on the lenses.

Frock coat

The man was holding on to a top hat and wore a long dark frock coat. She could see nothing else as his face was turned towards the sea and the children on the green.

James ran along the grass, his hoop and stick beside him. She smiled as she watched him stop and lift the stick in the air, as if brandishing a sword, and the hoop wend its way, wobbling, in front of him.

He ran after it, stooped down to pick it up then set it off once more, sprinting beside it.

Lizzie was slower, she was skipping with the new skipping ropes with beautiful wooden handles she had been given for Christmas.

She’d been thrilled when she had unwrapped them. This was only the second time she had been out with it as the weather had been so bad and then, of course, there was the accident.

Ann shifted the glasses back on to the lamppost: there was no one there now, the figure had gone.

She continued to watch the children at play, wishing she could be out with them, but it was unseemly for a lady in mourning to do anything other than stay at home and grieve. For months.

Besides, even if she were not in mourning, it would be frowned upon for a lady to run along the green with a skipping rope.

Childhood

She sighed, remembering her own childhood up the glen.

All the children would take the washing lines down when the mothers had gone to fetch water from the spring and use them as skipping ropes.

They raced along the road, skipping as fast as they could, until the women came back down the hill.

They were usually tight-lipped and scowling, demanding the ropes back.

Most of the children would get a skelp around the lug; James and Lizzie would not even know what a skelp or a lug was.

Her children were about to come home to a table laid formally with china cups and saucers and silver teapots, with hot scones served on silver ashets.

When she was a child, after playing in the filthy streets, she would go into her mother’s tiny croft, which was invariably cold, and find little more than a chipped cup of sour milk if her mother had been to beg some milk from Bessie who worked at the big house.

She shivered at the memory.

More tomorrow.