Three
Matthew and Luke arrived home from school at four thirty in the afternoon to find their father sitting at the kitchen table with an empty coffee cup.
‘What are you doing here, Dad?’ Matthew asked.
‘You OK, Dad? You look upset.’ There was no hiding anything from Luke, he was almost as perceptive as his mother when it came to reading Paul’s emotions. Luke sat down opposite his father, while Matthew turned into the pantry to find something to eat.
‘I don’t know how to say this, but your mother seems to have disappeared.’
‘What?’ Matthew was out of the pantry and standing in the kitchen with a packet of biscuits in his hands. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She didn’t turn up at school this morning, she hasn’t called me and I haven’t been able to find out where she is.’
‘Did you call her?’ a
