where's my small ... boy?

F10 went missing last night. The classic props were all there – the open gate onto the back … the chain and padlock dangling from the hasp … a cricket bat tossed aside suggesting the stepping stone in the journey from garden to field to off, off and beyond.
The front gate was open too. This was wrong. It is always to be kept shut to keep the ghastly dog in, although it’s time I questioned the wisdom of this. Off you go love, the big road’s that way. Most poignant of all were a pair of scruffy little socks left scattered on the grass, clues to his final moments.

Which way to go? With panic building, I scanned the field, then faux-sauntered out of the front. The saunter was necessary to convince me that all was still normal. I strolled down to the right. And then back and to the left. A trot became a bit of a sprint (all terms are relative).
Given the recent shenanigans, various endings were playing out in my head. Had I given him a decent last half hour, a decent life being too much to claim. Yes, I told myself, we’d had a nice walk with the dog. We’d taken a cricket bat (he has rounders today, I thought that some practise might help), I had been throwing it at him, he’d been thwacking it. We had played catch. I had been kind and encouraging. I had said things like “oh, good throw” and “my fault, too high.” Angels were busy in heaven with my brownie points. Even when we had to tussle with the dog to let slip half a shagged-out blackbird it had all been quite pleasant. Relative terms, remember.

Then we'd returned home. While he stayed outside to play at bowling, I had felt I deserved a glass of wine. Some might like to pause here to ponder, with an admiring moue, on the late hour, 8.30, of the first glass of the day. We can forget the small but necessary gin at 7, too tiny to mention.
And here the reflections, all taking place in seconds, morphed into the imminent police investigation. If the road continued not to proffer up my son, I’d have to be on the blower, 999. The sirens, the heavy shut of the door, the swagger of the policeman hoicking up his trews, the belt loaded with cuffs and phones.
“So, Milla, you were drinking wine and you checked on your child .. when?”
“5 to 9,” I mumble in my mind.
The sarcasm is heavy. “A whole 25 minutes elapses, how extremely good of you, Milla, to remember him at all. Let me top up your glass.”
The sergeant and the constable exchange glances, sigh heavily. Lips are pursed. The At Risk register will be consulted, and amended.

My sprint intensified, which means that speed would possibly be detectable by an alert passer-by, an Old seized by a need to vacuum the car.
Up ahead a blur of blue. Some tuneless whistling reaches me. F10 strolling back.
“Oh, hi, mum,” he burbled huskily.
I scooped him to me.
“Where were you!?!” I said, my face buried in his ledge wig.
“Oh, you know, I was looking for my barbecue man.”

His barbecue man is, what? 3cm tall. He is from a Lego barbecue kit (featuring lights, a parasol and a leg of chicken, all eminently losable, naturally) and occupies a domain of joy shared with a ring, a rabbit …. He has developed a huge back-story and doles out chicken to all and sundry with impressive regularity. We’re all rather sick of it to be honest. Mmmm, more chicken. Yum. It had fallen out, he assumed, while off on the walk so he had gone back, in the gathering dusk, to search through long grass in three fields for his Lego man.

His childhood has been littered with such hunts. “Where’s my pirate’s foot … where’s my small mazagine” being perennial and plaintive cries from his early years. When a pirate’s foot belongs to a Playmobil man and the small mazagine is the instructions to the Playmobil man, no, we never knew where they were, but we measured out our hours in looking for them. The sticky possession of important items vital to his being. Sometimes the memory of them would echo in my head, lulling me to sleep. It’s become a catch phrase for anything misplaced nowadays.
“You know not to go anywhere without telling us!” I said.
“But my man …!”
Some things transcend rules.

Lego man was found among the socks. Thrilled he was. He squeaked. Then put it down. “And where’s the barbecue?” he said, heading towards the gate.
Give me strength.