A Proper Family Christmas (36 page)

‘I think she’s dying,’ he said. ‘It’s making me worried. She needs a kidney.’

‘Kidney!’ said Granddad Bill. ‘I could do with some of that myself. Haven’t had kidneys in years. Let’s go and see if we can’t get some.’

‘Get some where?’ Jack asked.

‘They’ll have them on the meat counter. Come on, Jack. Steer us back into the shop. You’ve made me want some kidneys now.’

‘Granddad Bill, can I get one too?’

‘If you like, son,’ said Granddad Bill. ‘Come on. Let’s hurry along.’

The queue at the cafeteria checkout seemed endless. Someone at the front had dropped a tray loaded with a teapot and four cups and most of the staff were busy cleaning up the broken crockery. Jacqui and Ronnie were absorbed in watching the whole palaver. They didn’t notice a small boy and his great-grandfather setting off for the meat counter and thence to the high road in an electric wheelchair capable of eleven point six miles an hour.

By the time Ronnie and Jacqui had paid for their refreshments and were looking around the vast cafeteria for Jack, Bill and their table, Jack and Bill were well on their way. They left the supermarket with no problem whatsoever. No one thought to stop them. People smiled as Jack and Bill sailed by.

‘Isn’t that sweet,’ they said. ‘He’s giving his grandson a ride.’

They didn’t know that Jack was only six and that Granddad Bill’s dementia meant Jack was most definitely the one in charge.

Ronnie sank down on to a hard plastic chair just inside the entrance to the supermarket. The moment she realised that Jack and Bill were not in the cafeteria, she dumped her tray full of teacups on the nearest table and raced to the supermarket’s door with Jacqui close behind her.

‘They won’t have gone far,’ said Jacqui. ‘They can’t. Jack’s only six and Bill’s in his wheelchair.’

‘Who says they’re together?’ said Ronnie. ‘Jack! Jack! Where have they gone?’

‘Jack wouldn’t leave Granddad Bill,’ said Jacqui. ‘We told him not to. And who’s going to take both of them at once?’

‘Where are they? Where are they? Has anybody seen my son?’ Ronnie shouted. ‘He’s about this tall. He’s got blond hair. He’s wearing a blue Puffa jacket and a Doctor Who baseball cap.’

‘And he’s with an old man in a wheelchair,’ said Jacqui. ‘His great-granddad. He’s wearing a Coventry City scarf, a brown overcoat and a pair of carpet slippers.’

‘What’s going on?’ a security guard asked them.

‘I can’t find my son,’ said Ronnie. ‘I left him with his great-granddad.’

‘His great-granddad’s disappeared too,’ Jacqui said.

‘Then they’re probably somewhere in the shop,’ said the security guard. ‘Having a look at the toys, I’ll bet. He’s probably getting his old grandpa to buy him something or other for Christmas. They’ll be all right.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Ronnie. ‘My grandfather has dementia. He shouldn’t be in charge of a child.’

‘But you left them alone together?’ the security guard pointed out.

‘Only for a minute,’ said Jacqui. ‘We hardly let them out of our sight. We were paying for our tea.’

‘I should never have left them together,’ said Ronnie. ‘We shouldn’t have taken our eyes off them for a second.’

‘I’m sure they won’t have come to any harm,’ said the guard. ‘We’ll find them.’

The guard took Ronnie and Jacqui to the toy aisle. As they moved, he radioed his colleagues.

‘Anyone seen an old man in a wheelchair with a six-year-old boy in tow?’

The supermarket was full of old men in wheelchairs that morning. Having drawn a blank in the toy aisle, Ronnie and Jacqui and the security guard raced from one end of the enormous shop to the other to ID potential Granddad Bills. Likewise, there seemed to be hundreds of small boys in Doctor Who hats. As they responded to one false alarm after another, Ronnie and Jacqui grew more and more anxious.

‘They must have left the shop,’ said the guard after they’d been up and down every aisle several times.

‘Why didn’t somebody stop them?’

Ronnie ran out on to the street but the pavements were thronged with Christmas shoppers, who blocked her view as they meandered from shop window to shop window, oblivious to the crisis unfolding in their midst.

‘They’ll be OK,’ Jacqui insisted. ‘They’ll be together and who would want to steal Granddad Bill?’

‘Oh Mum.’ Ronnie clung to her mother. ‘I can’t stand it.’ Jacqui helped her back to the plastic chair just inside the supermarket’s doors. Ronnie’s legs gave way beneath her. ‘This is a nightmare. I just want my baby back. Where have they taken my baby?’

‘There’s no “they”,’ Jacqui said forcefully. ‘No one’s taken Jack anywhere. He’ll be with Granddad Bill. They’ve just wandered off. They won’t have gone far.’

By now the supermarket security team had alerted the police. A community officer was there within minutes, taking details to be circulated to her colleagues. Ronnie showed the community officer her most recent photograph of her son. Jack had taken a selfie using her phone just that morning. Ronnie could hardly bear to look at his grinning face. Where was he? Who was he with?

‘We’ll find them both,’ the community officer promised. ‘We’ll have everyone looking for them and they’ll be back before you know it.’

Jacqui phoned Mark and Dave and texted Sophie. She texted Chelsea too, though Chelsea was too far away to help down in London. Feeling somewhat furtive, Jacqui also composed a text to Annabel. She didn’t have time to send it. They were interrupted by the security guard they had first approached when they’d realised Jack and Bill were gone.

‘The CCTV shows your son and his great-granddad leaving the store about half an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Your boy is steering the wheelchair.’

Outside on the high street, Jack increased the wheelchair’s speed to eight and a half miles an hour. The passers-by who had smiled to see the young boy and old man having such fun together were a little more concerned now they had to jump out of the way. Jack was taking no prisoners as he steered a route right down the middle of the pavement.

‘Those things are too fast!’ someone commented.

‘Hooligans!’ shouted a mother as she snatched her toddler out of the wheelchair’s path.

‘We’re on a mission,’ said Granddad Bill to a pair of old ladies who were blocking the pavement ahead of them. ‘Get out of the bloody way.’

‘Don’t say bloody!’ Jack yelled.

Jack pushed forward on the wheelchair’s speed control and it quickly reached its maximum. At eleven point six miles an hour in just under ninety seconds, they sailed across a pedestrian crossing on a red light, narrowly missing being squashed by a bus.

‘Steady on, boy,’ said Bill.

‘We’re in a hurry,’ Jack reminded him as they bumped down another kerb at such speed that they were almost tipped out into the gutter.

‘Where are we going again, lad?’

Jack wasn’t sure. He’d assumed Granddad Bill was navigating.

But what Jack didn’t understand was that Granddad Bill was in one of those episodes where the years had dropped away and he couldn’t remember that he had a son, let alone three granddaughters and three great-grandkids. That afternoon, Bill was a lad again and this trip with Jack was just a great adventure between two friends. He thought Jack was an old pal from school.

‘Let’s sing!’ Bill said. ‘That’ll make these slowcoaches get out of the way.’

Bill began to sing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’.

When Jack took up the words – he knew most of his great-grandfather’s repertoire – Bill concentrated on his usual, windy percussion.

The singing and belching certainly made the Christmas shoppers notice Jack and Bill, but they still didn’t question what the pair were up to, or where they were heading.

‘We’re not going fast enough,’ Jack complained, even as the electric wheelchair was breaking new records. ‘We need to get on a bus. Which bus is it, Granddad Bill?’

‘We’ll have to ask a policeman,’ Bill said.

‘There’s one,’ said Jack. The uniformed woman was actually a traffic warden, but when Jack told her where they were headed, she happily told him he was looking for the 172.

‘There’s the 172!’ Jack trilled, spotting the bus coming down the street. ‘There’s the bus stop. We can get on it. Quick.’

Pushing the wheelchair to warp speed, Jack steered towards the queue. Again, no one seemed at all bothered by the sight of a six-year-old driving his great-grandfather’s chair. They just tried to make sure they didn’t get run over.

‘You having a nice day out, are you?’ an elderly lady asked.

‘We’ve got a kidney,’ Jack explained.

‘Oooh, kidneys,’ said the elderly lady. ‘I love a bit of kidney, me. Youth of today turn their noses up at offal though, don’t they?’ She addressed this last comment to Bill. ‘You want to share yours with me?’ she asked with a flirtatious wink.

Jack was horrified. ‘You can’t have it. We need it.’

He clutched the supermarket carrier bag close.

‘If you were the only girl in the world … burp …’ Granddad Bill sang to his new admirer. She blushed and fluttered her eyelashes as though she were just a girl once more.

‘Granddad Bill,’ said Jack impatiently. ‘Stop singing. We’re getting on.’

The bus driver lowered the disabled access ramp and Jack steered the wheelchair forward. He found it tricky to get the chair properly lined up but he and Bill were soon assisted by a couple of young men in the queue. The proximity of Christmas was making everyone feel happy and helpful. Still no one asked whether Jack and Bill should be heading out of town on their own.

‘Will you let us know when we get there?’ Jack asked them.

They assured him that they would.

Meanwhile, Ronnie and Jacqui were pounding the streets near the supermarket with a team of security guards, police officers and well-wishers keen to help. But they had sorely underestimated how far and fast an electric wheelchair could travel in half an hour and nobody had even considered for a moment that Jack and Bill might be on a bus. They kept their search to the immediate surrounding area of the supermarket and of course they found no clues. No one had seen them. Everyone was too focused on finishing their Christmas shopping to notice even such a peculiar pair. Plus, the boy was with his great-grandfather. Where was the need to panic?

If only they knew. Ronnie was in pieces. This was worse, far worse, than when Sophie had gone AWOL in Lanzarote back in the summer. Jack was so young and Bill was so daft. Who knew what kind of trouble they might get into? Might already be in! Together with Jacqui, Ronnie made a list of all the places Jack might have wanted Bill to take him. Someone called ahead to the toyshop and the pet shop, warning them to be on the lookout. Someone else was checking the park. The staff at the children’s library were alerted. And then they made a list of all the pubs in the city where Bill had ever had so much as half a pint. It was a long list.

‘We’ll contact them all,’ said the community officer. ‘Don’t you worry.’

How could Ronnie and Jacqui not worry?

It was starting to get dark. While Jacqui and Ronnie continued to scour the city centre on foot, as they waited for Dave and Mark to join them, social media swung into action. Chelsea, who had called Jacqui as soon as she got her text, immediately put a plea for help on Twitter. The local radio station put out an alert to its listeners and featured a picture of Jack on their Twitter feed too. Sophie, who had been hanging out in the town centre with her friends, came to find her mother and grandmother. Sophie also tweeted and Facebooked. Her friends, who all knew and loved her little brother, spread the message. Izzy saw Sophie’s plea for help. She sent her a message at once.

OMG. Stay calm. They won’t have gone far. I’ll tell Mum and Dad.

Annabel covered her mouth with her hands as Izzy told her the news.

‘Poor Ronnie,’ she said. ‘Tell her if there’s anything we can do to help.’

‘Tell her I can be there in forty-five minutes,’ said Richard. ‘If she needs an extra pair of eyes and ears.’

The fact that Ronnie had stormed from their house spewing curses was soon forgotten.

Izzy called and spoke to Sophie.

‘They were last seen taking Granddad Bill’s wheelchair out of the supermarket,’ Sophie explained. ‘The police have been informed. They’re sending Jack’s picture to all the border agencies. Oh, Izzy. What if somebody’s kidnapped my brother? I can’t stand the thought of it.’

‘Then don’t think it, Soph. Jack is going to be fine. Seriously, who in their right minds would want to kidnap Jack and Granddad Bill? After two minutes of listening to Jack talk about Minecraft and Granddad Bill doing his burping songs, they’d bring them both straight back.’

Sophie tried to laugh but she couldn’t.

‘I hope you’re right,’ she said.

‘I wish I could come and help,’ said Izzy. ‘I love your little brother. We all do. Dad wants to know if he should drive over and help.’

Sophie asked her mother.

‘No,’ said Ronnie. ‘We don’t need their help.’

Sophie protested.

‘There are plenty of people looking already,’ Ronnie said.

Sophie didn’t push it. She passed the message on to Izzy but without mentioning how angry her mother had seemed. An hour had already passed since Jack and Bill were last sighted. Mark had arrived. He hugged Sophie and consoled his wife. Dave appeared minutes later. He had a photograph of Granddad Bill, though it was a decade out of date.

Then, suddenly, a breakthrough.

‘There’s been a sighting,’ someone shouted. ‘They were seen heading towards the bus station about half an hour ago.’

‘Oi! Laurel and Hardy!’ shouted the bus driver. ‘Shall I let you two off here?’

‘Yes, please,’ Jack called back up the bus.

The wheelchair ramp was lowered. Jack and Granddad Bill had no trouble getting off. They’d been entertaining their fellow passengers all the way with a Christmas singalong (it was amazing how many of the passengers were able, like Granddad Bill, to burp ‘Away in a Manger’) and everyone who was able to leapt up from their seats to help them. None of them quite understood where the odd pair were going but they wished them well. And the old lady who had asked Bill to share his dinner with her even pressed a fiver into Jack’s hand.