to catch his breath, but his pulse was still racing as he dipped beneath the shade of the oak. Jasmine was standing on the other side of the railings. She had her arms open wide and her eyes closed.
‘Can you hear anything?’ Sam asked.
The girl stumbled back in surprise and the notepad she had been holding dropped to the ground with a flutter of pink paper. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ she said, backing away.
‘Hey, it’s OK,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry if I gave you a wee fright.’
The girl reluctantly collected up her things and clambered back over the railings while Sam remained at a safe distance. He waited until she was standing on the correct side of the barrier, her head bowed with guilt, before he broke the bad news. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got Miss Jenkins in a bit of a flap. I’d better ring her and let her know to call off the search.’
Jasmine’s head snapped up. ‘She won’t tell my dad, will she?’
The sudden look of horror on her face was difficult to ignore and Sam did his best not to reflect her concern but to give her a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he promised.
After making the call and telling Miss Jenkins they were heading straight back, Sam was as reluctant to escape the shade of the tree as was Jasmine. ‘So,’ he asked, ‘did you get a reply from the Wishing Tree?’
‘All I could hear was it groaning,’ she said before shaking her head. ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’
‘Run away?’
‘Asked for a wish,’ she corrected. ‘I think it does feel pain, you know.’
Sam considered telling her that the Wishing Tree was only a figment of his own imagination and that it was no more aware of their secret desires than the pink paper she had used to scribble her wish on. But one look at her told him that she needed something to believe in and so instead, he found himself saying, ‘I don’t think it feels its own pain, Jasmine, but there are times when I think it feels ours.’
Jasmine looked thoughtful for a moment as she glanced from Sam to the tree. ‘Maybe we should leave it in peace then,’ she said, and Sam didn’t argue.
Rather than welcome arms, Jasmine’s classmates greeted her with scowls as if disappointed that the drama had been drawn to a close without an exciting climax.
‘I wanted to see the scuba divers going into the lake,’ Matthew muttered as the teaching assistants gathered everyone into line for the final trek to the school bus.
Miss Jenkins was bringing up the rear and only when she’d finished counting her charges for the third time was she satisfied. ‘Sorry, I’m not going to have a chance to ask you about your sketches now,’ she told Sam. ‘We’re late getting back as it is.’
‘I could always drop them off at school for you,’ he offered.
She tilted her head and snared him with her smiling eyes. ‘I do have a life outside school, you know.’
Anna Jenkins was ten years his junior and although he could remember being thirty, he had nothing in common with the man he had been back then and for the life of him couldn’t see what this young woman saw in him, assuming she was interested at all. The answer to that question came soon enough when she added, ‘You have my number, Mr McIntyre. Why don’t you invite me out some place where I can call you Sam and you can call me Anna?’
The flush rising in his cheeks was obscured by his beard, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if Anna could feel the heat of his embarrassment. His eyes darted from left to right until he found his means of escape. Gesturing towards the fully loaded bus, he said, ‘I think your group’s about to lose their teacher if you don’t hurry up.’
Anna was forced to leave without receiving her answer and voiced her regret at not casting her own wish into the Wishing Tree.
Sam’s flat: Wednesday 7 October 2015
‘It seems like Jasmine made quite an impression on you,’ Harper said.
The detective had remained standing in the middle of the room, his feet wide apart and hands shoved in his trouser pockets as he looked at Sam with his head cocked to one side. He couldn’t yet appreciate the effect Jasmine had had on Sam – and why would he? Sam had been deliberately vague about that first meeting, skimming over the details of the Wishing Tree story, playing down Jasmine’s earlier disappearance and only briefly mentioning that she had made a wish. But he wasn’t the only one who knew more than he was letting on. Sam couldn’t yet tell how much Harper had been told and so, for the moment at least, he would have to be cautious about volunteering any information that might only add more substance to the detective’s potted theories. It wouldn’t bring the little girl home to her mum any sooner.
‘She was just a lost little girl,’ he offered.
‘Until you found her.’
An image came to mind of Jasmine standing amongst her classmates beneath the Allerton Oak. She had looked so insubstantial that Sam had thought that if he blinked she might have disappeared completely. ‘She must have run away again,’ he said with unshakeable conviction.
‘Why do you say that?’
Sam blinked, and this time Jasmine did disappear. ‘Because the alternative is unthinkable.’
Harper stared at the polished floor and battled with his own thoughts. ‘I hope you’re right, Mr McIntyre, but in my line of business the unthinkable happens more often than you’d imagine.’
Sam was starting to cool down after his run and his sweat-sodden T-shirt felt ice cold against his skin but when he shuddered, it had nothing to do with the temperature. His mouth was so dry he could barely speak. ‘Can I get a drink of water?’ he asked, already getting up from the dining table.
Harper stopped him. ‘We’ll sort that,’ he said and nodded towards the uniformed policeman who had been standing guard by the one and only means of escape.
‘Thanks,’ Sam said, not quite sure why he should be grateful for the offer of a glass of water in his own home. What was quite clear, however, was that the police were making their presence felt that little bit more.
As he waited for his drink, Sam played nervously with the green square of origami paper. If he weren’t careful he would start folding it into the shape of a crane, so he pushed it out of reach and clasped his hands together …
‘Now,’ Harper continued, ‘tell me why one little girl amongst an entire class should catch your eye.’
Sam refused to be goaded. ‘Shouldn’t you be out searching for her rather than wasting time with me, for pity’s sake?’ he asked.
Harper didn’t appear fazed by Sam’s reaction and took a step towards the bookshelves, which held little more than a thin scattering of books and journals. He briefly scanned the titles, which were exclusively related to gardening and horticulture, then his eyes settled on a shoebox that had been decorated in brightly coloured
