brown as Jason’s, his two front teeth wonky with a large gap in the middle.
I tried to think rationally. Maybe the only reason he seemed familiar was because I was looking at him through the prism of the cage. Maybe it was because its pixelated version of the world mirrored those blocky computer mock-ups the forensic artist had done of Barney at various future ages.
Jason had a line of the mock-ups Blu-Tacked to the walls in the spare room, the fakery of the pictures growing more and more obvious as the distance widened between the last real photo of Barney and the forensic artist’s increasingly diluted guesswork. The first image had him sporting a childish bowl-cut, the second a tracksuit top zipped to his chin, and then the ‘oldest’ had him in a white open-necked shirt, his hair cropped and stiff with gel. In all of the images his face wore the same half-smirk and dead eyes.
Was this him? Could it be?
It didn’t matter what I thought. The one person who would know immediately was his father.
I looked through the cage and round to where the man had disappeared into the storeroom. I could hear the chink of bottles being moved as he hunted for champagne. Jason was teaching forty miles away, at a community college. If I called him now, he could make his excuses and be here within the hour. I was reaching for my phone when the man returned to the counter.
‘Here you go,’ he said, brandishing a bottle of Moët.
I placed the money in the metal drawer and tried for one last look. The boy was sat cross-legged on the floor, oblivious, tucking into his chocolate booty.
Grabbing the carrier of bottles, I backed towards the exit, unsteady in my heels, and tested behind for the door handle. Outside, in the daylight, I half-ran, half-walked to the car.
I tried to straighten my thoughts. My heart felt as fat and red with blood as if it had been my own daughter back there, but finding Barney so close to home after all this time was outlandish. I didn’t want to bring Jason here on some wild goose chase, but my reaction to the child had been so immediate, so visceral. That could not, in good faith, be discounted. Still, I hesitated. Should I just call it in to the police?
In the car I dialled Jason’s number, but his phone went through to voicemail. Of course. He kept it turned off in class. I started the engine. The man in the off-licence didn’t seem to have realised that I’d recognised the boy, but I couldn’t be sure. For all I knew, right this minute he might be bundling him out the back of the shop and into a van; already moving the child on to somewhere else, somewhere dark and secret that we’d never be able to find. There might not be much time.
I’d go to the college and talk to Jason in person. I’d persuade him to come back here with me now, before it was too late.
Chapter Two
I barrelled down the college hallways, the tick of my heels loud on the herringbone parquet. I reached Jason’s classroom and approached the door’s small, square window. Inside he was writing on a blackboard, his students sitting around him in a semicircle. He’d just said something that had made them all laugh.
He looked up from his notes and, on reflex, I took a step back away from the window.
The drive had dampened my fervour.
I kept thinking about probabilities.
Ten days earlier there had been another setback in what was now a five-year search for my husband’s son. A British family on holiday in Istanbul had seen a boy matching Barney’s age-progression photo, begging with a street gang in Taksim Square. It had been a credible lead and everyone had got their hopes up, especially Jason. But within a few days the police were able to confirm the child’s connection to a local Turkish family. Jason had been crushed.
After that, what was more likely? That I’d just happened to chance upon Barney? Or that, because of recent events, I’d wanted so badly for someone, anyone, to find him that I’d projected him onto the next child I’d come across?
Jason asked for a volunteer. A track-suited man in his mid-forties came forward and got down on the ground. Jason knelt beside him and, after lifting the man’s knee into a right angle, he laid his arm out wide and gently tilted him into