Page 12 of A Very Happy Halloween

Crap. “Uh, I’m sorry for your loss.”

As well as the house and the stable yard, there was a vast walled area that might have been an old kitchen garden, but the only door I could see that led inside was securely locked. Outside the walls lay acres of parkland dotted with trees, and beyond the parkland was a forest rich with the reds, yellows, and browns of autumn.

“Alfie!”

I stood more chance of finding a competent plumber with immediate availability than I did of locating my son in this sprawling estate. Could he be hiding? I wouldn’t have put it past him. He’d grown bored yesterday, and he hadn’t been keen on coming back today. Wait, what if he’d followed Primrose? He liked dogs.

I called Chip again.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Not yet. You?”

“Same, but the house has thirty-seven rooms, so…”

“Is the dog with you? Primrose?”

“No.”

“Alfie likes dogs. If he saw her…”

“He might have followed? Got it. I can track the dog.”

“How?”

“She has a GPS tag on her collar. Maybe you should get one for the kid?”

I was about to retort that Alfie wasn’t an animal when I realised a GPS tag actually wouldn’t be a bad idea, especially if it stopped me from having a coronary.

“Ah, fuck,” Chip muttered.

“What? What is it?”

Chip didn’t answer my panicked question, but I heard the muffled sound of running. A yell. Barking. A loud splash. The splash came from the other side of the wall—the ten-foot-high wall—and it’s amazing what adrenaline can do to the body. I practically ran up the nearest tree, slithered along a sturdy branch, and belly-flopped onto the brickwork.

Oh hell! Alfie was in the bloody swimming pool, splashing around in the water with the dog, a giant wolflike thing who thought it was a great game and kept trying to grab his arms. But Alfie was panicking. His screams sounded anything but joyous. I tried to jump off the wall, bracing for impact, but found myself dangling in midair when my leather belt caught on a metal bracket halfway down. All I could do was swing and shriek.

“Alfie!”

My heart thudded against my ribcage as a floppy-haired man in sweatpants and a white T-shirt sprinted from the house and dove into the deep end with no hesitation whatsoever. A moment later, Alfie was sitting on the edge of the pool while the dog paddled to the far end and clambered up the steps.

Alfie was okay.

Alfie was okay.

My phone rang, and I managed to get it out of my back pocket, but my hands were shaking so much that I dropped it. I swung helplessly as it bounced off a stone plant pot and came to rest with a shattered screen. Dammit. I blinked back tears as I focused on trying to get myself unhooked, but I couldn’t reach the top of the wall to pull myself up, and my weight kept the belt buckle pulled tight.

“Easy, Janie.”

Chip wrapped his arms around my legs and lifted me high enough to unhook the belt, then lowered me gently to the ground.

“You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

But everything wasn’t okay. When I looked up, I realised why his voice had seemed familiar. Why I’d felt so weird around this place. Why even now, my thighs were clenching from being so close to this stranger who wasn’t actually a stranger.

Eyes.

Or rather, Eye, because now he was wearing a patch over the right one. Before I could stop myself, I lifted a hand, but he reacted quicker than I’d ever seen a man move and blocked my slap with his forearm.

---