How could he let her go alone? Outside the Berkeley, the doorman flagged down a black cab and together Tony and Martha jumped in. Ensconced inside the hotel, they hadn’t even realized it had begun to rain. Now as they made their way to Hampstead, the taxi’s windscreen wipers struggled to cope. Thunder was rumbling, the sky had darkened to slate gray, and lightning crackled overhead.
‘There’s no point in you coming with me.’ Martha’s face was taut with anxiety. ‘You can’t look for him. Eunice mustn’t see you.’
‘I can keep out of her way.’ He wanted to hug and reassure her, but it wasn’t the time. ‘How did it happen anyway?’
‘Henry’s always loved the heath. Sometimes we take him there for a walk. Eunice took him today. It was still sunny when they got there. They sat down on a bench and she dozed off.’
‘Dozed off ?’
‘She’s exhausted. You can’t blame her; she never stops. Anyway, it was only for a couple of minutes. But when she woke up, Henry was gone. No sign of him anywhere. And then it started to rain. Oh God, this is my punishment for not going with them. I came to see you instead and now he’s lost.’
‘Stop it, don’t panic, nothing’s going to happen to him.’ Tony was firm. ‘Trust me, he’ll be found.’
But when they eventually reached Hampstead, Henry was still missing. The taxi driver stopped at the bottom of Millfield Lane, close to the Highgate ponds. Martha, on the phone with Eunice, ascertained that she was up by the most northerly of the ponds.
‘I’ll head on up there. She’s distraught. There are park rangers out looking for him.’ She opened the door of the cab and was drenched within seconds. ‘Please, Eunice mustn’t see you. Leave this to me. You go home.’
‘OK, I’ll do that. Call me as soon as you can.’ Any kind of kiss would be hideously inappropriate now. Tony let her go. The moment she was out of sight, he paid the driver and jumped out of the taxi. Where Martha had turned right, he checked that no glimpses of her lemon-yellow dress were visible through the trees and turned left.
The rain was hammering down like gunfire. There wasn’t anyone else about and the branches of the trees were being wrenched this way and that, whipped into a frenzy by ferocious gusts of wind. Martha had told him that Henry had gone missing on Parliament Hill, but his favorite section of the heath was where the ponds lay. Getting wetter by the second, Tony headed towards them. His shoes, unaccustomed to the terrain, slipped and slid as he made his way through mud and stones and wild undergrowth. Right, here he was at the water’s edge. Still no one else in sight, and the pond was less than enticing, gray and cold-looking, the surface whipped up and pitted with rain. Even the ducks had done the sensible thing and taken shelter. Grasses, long and rough, clung to his trouser legs like seaweed. The next moment he stopped dead in his tracks as something dark bobbed up in the water in the center of the pond. But it wasn’t a head; it was a discarded carrier bag. Panic over. God, his heart was thudding now. It could have been Henry. Trudging on, Tony blinked water from his eyes and kept searching. At one stage, in the far distance, he saw a tiny figure up on the hill and heard a voice, barely audible, yelling Henry’s name.
Ten minutes later it happened. Did he hear a noise or was it sheer chance that he turned and looked to one side and saw a bare foot sticking out of the undergrowth ten yards away? Back came the fear, because what else did that mean he was about to find? Stumbling across the uneven ground, Tony saw the leg attached to the foot, clad in sodden brown trousers. Then a long thin body, long arms, the head… yes, it was definitely him…
‘Hello?’ Tony approached with caution. Henry was half-sitting, half-lying beneath a tree with his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open. He looked like a carved wooden statue, abandoned in the rain.
Then the eyes opened and Henry was looking at him. ‘I’m wet.’
Alive, then. Not dead.
‘Henry? Are you OK?’
‘Yes, thank you. I’m wet.’
‘I can see that. What happened to your shoes?’
Henry gazed in bemusement at his bony bare feet. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m quite wet.’