The Portal

You tend to remember the day your parents disappear. It's one of those things that stick in the mind. Even years later, William found he could recall not only the day and the date, but things like what shoes his mother had been wearing, and the headline in the newspaper his father had been reading at breakfast.

Most of that day had been perfectly normal. After breakfast, William and Daniel had gone to school as usual. At four o'clock, the bus had delivered them back to the bottom of the road, as usual. They had watched Mrs Duggan's dog, Timber, collect Amy, as usual, then walked up the lane to the house, pushed their way in through the back door… and after that, nothing was ever normal again.

On a normal day, there would have been bread and butter set out on the kitchen table, and Mrs Seward would have been standing by the stove, putting two eggs into a saucepan to boil as she smiled a greeting and told Daniel not to leave his bag on the floor. Then Dad would have appeared from his office and asked how things were in the big wide world of school, while he filled the kettle and made the tea.

That was how it was supposed to be. That was how it had always been.

Until now.

‘Where are they?' asked Daniel.

‘Maybe they're working,' said William, and he buzzed the intercom on the wall, which connected to Dad's office at the other end of the house. But there was no reply. Which could either mean he was busy, or that he wasn't there.

Daniel went out to the hall and pushed open the door to the dining room. Their mother's plant books were spread out on the table – she was halfway through an Open University degree in botany – but there was no sign of Mrs Seward. The two of them went all through the house, calling for her, and then did the same outside, checking the barn and the outhouses before coming back to the kitchen.

‘Looks like they had to go out,' said William,
though without much conviction, because they both knew Mr and Mrs Seward never went out. Not together. They went out one at a time to the shops, or to take the boys to the cinema, but there was always one of them left in the house. There had to be, because of Dad's work. It was why they never all went on holiday together. There
always
had to be someone in the house.

William looked round the kitchen to see if there was a note or anything that might explain what had happened, but there was nothing.

‘Are you going to ring the number?' asked Daniel.

‘Not yet,' said William. ‘We don't know if it's a real emergency.'

But two hours later, when there was still no sign of his parents, he gave in and picked up the phone.

William wasn't sure when Dad first told him about the number, but it must have been when he was very young. He could remember his father's big square hands showing him how to push the buttons on the special work-phone in the hall, and explaining how the numbers he should press were written on a piece of card pinned to the wall above it.

‘If anything goes wrong,' his father had told
him, ‘if there's any sort of emergency, that's what you do, OK?'

When he was older, William had asked what sort of emergency his father had in mind, but Mr Seward only laughed. ‘There won't be any emergency,' he had said, ‘but if there is, that's the number of the people I work for. They'll know what to do.'

At half past six, William rang the number and was a little disappointed when all he got was an answering machine.

‘Hi,' said a woman's voice. ‘You have reached the office of Lawrence Kingston. Please leave a message, and he'll get back to you as soon as he can.'

William left a message. He said who he was, where he lived, and that he was a little concerned by the fact that his parents seemed to have disappeared. They might simply have gone out for a walk, but if they had it was unusual and… he was concerned.

Two hours later, there was no reply from Mr Kingston, still no sign of his parents, and William did the only other thing he could think of and rang Mrs Duggan.

‘I was wondering if you knew what was going on,' he said, after he'd explained the situation. ‘Like where they might have gone.'

‘No,' said Mrs Duggan, who was a woman of few words.

‘They didn't say anything to you about going out? Or something they had to do?'

‘No,' Mrs Duggan repeated. Then, after a pause, she added, ‘You want me to come up?'

‘Yes,' said William. ‘Yes, I would.'

Mrs Duggan was a large, red-faced woman, with frizzy hair tied into a bunch at the back of her head, and dressed in bib-fronted dungarees tucked into a pair of wellingtons.

‘Still not here?' she asked.

‘No,' said William.

Mrs Duggan looked carefully round the kitchen. ‘They didn't leave a note or anything?'

‘I've looked,' said William, ‘but I can't find one.'

‘Your dad's office?'

‘It's locked.'

Mrs Duggan nodded. The office was usually locked, whether Mr Seward was working in it or not. ‘Rung the number yet?' she asked. ‘The emergency one?'

William was surprised that Mrs Duggan knew about the number, but said yes, he had dialled it, and left a message.

‘Do you think I should ring the police or something?' he asked.

‘No,' said Mrs Duggan. ‘Don't think your dad would like that.' She thought for a moment. ‘Might be a good idea if I stayed here tonight. That OK with you?'

‘Yes,' said William. ‘Thank you.' It was odd how much better he felt at the thought of having someone else in the house.

‘I'll get Amy.' Mrs Duggan headed for the door again. ‘And I'll take a look around outside. Check everything's OK.'

Mrs Duggan's daughter, Amy, arrived at the back door ten minutes later carrying a small overnight bag. She was dressed entirely in pink – pink shoes, pink jeans that hung low on her hips, a crop top decorated with glittering, pink beads, and a pink band in her hair framing a face that some would have thought had rather too much make-up for an eight-year-old.

Timber, Mrs Duggan's black-and-white collie, was with her. The dog waited until William had taken Amy inside, before going off to find his mistress.

‘Mum says we're staying here tonight,' said Amy, ‘because your parents have disappeared.'

‘Yes,' said William.

‘What's happened to them?'

‘I don't know,' said William. ‘Daniel's in his room, OK?'

Daniel had bunk beds in his bedroom and Amy had often slept there before. The two children were almost the same age and spent a good deal of time together, though William sometimes wondered what a girl like Amy could possibly have in common with a boy whose main interest in life was collecting the skulls of dead animals.

While Amy went upstairs, he waited in the kitchen for Mrs Duggan, who appeared a little later with Timber.

‘Done the henhouse,' she said.

‘Oh, thank you.' William had forgotten the chickens. His mother was the one who usually made sure they were locked up for the night.

‘Had a good look round while I was at it,' Mrs Duggan continued. ‘All looks like it should.' She glanced at the clock. ‘Nearly nine. Think I'll make up a bed on the sofa and turn in.'

William watched television in his bedroom for an hour before going to bed himself. He lay there, staring at the ceiling, his mind running through some of the things that could have happened to his parents, none of them very pleasant. It wasn't easy to sleep, but he must have dozed off at some point because he was suddenly aware that he could hear voices. The clock by his bed said it was seven minutes past midnight and, throwing on a dressing gown, he
came downstairs to find Mrs Duggan talking to a man in the hallway.

The man was elderly, with a head of closely cropped white hair and a trim white beard that framed a pair of startlingly blue eyes. He was dressed in a loosely hanging, rather crumpled suit, and mopped at his face with a large spotted handkerchief. His face lit up in a smile when he saw William.

‘Well, well, well!' He held out a hand in greeting. ‘Look at you! Almost a young man!'

‘Who are you?' said William.

‘This is your Uncle Larry,' said Mrs Duggan.

‘My uncle?' William looked at her blankly. ‘Are you sure?'

‘I'm not, strictly speaking, a blood relative,' said Uncle Larry, ‘but that's what your father used to call me, when he was little.' He shook William's hand. ‘Lawrence Kingston. Your parents and I go back a long way.'

‘Do you know what's happened to them?' asked William.

‘I do indeed.' Uncle Larry reached into his jacket pocket. ‘And I have a letter for you from them.'

‘They've gone on holiday,' said Mrs Duggan.

William stared at her.

‘It's all in here.' Uncle Larry held out an
envelope. ‘When you read it, you'll realize there's nothing to worry about.'

The envelope had
To William & Daniel
written on the front in his mother's handwriting and inside William found a single sheet of paper, also in his mother's writing. It said:

My dearest boys,