The Space Between Heartbeats

My youngest child stayed behind after school today to take part in a football club. It's the first time he's shown any interest, so we've encouraged him dutifully. Even ignoring the fact that football, and indeed most sports, bore me to tears. Epic parenting on my part there I feel. Anyway. This meant that I didn't have to collect him in the usual scrum of parents and siblings. My walk to the school was eerily quiet.

On arrival at our designated meeting place (the school office), I noticed that there were quite a lot of children walking around the side of the building with their parents. I stood there for a minute, and then walked against the tide to see if we had to collect our nippers from the teacher. Finding a tracksuited chap on the playground, I asked him if he'd seen my son. To which he said, sure, he was probably still getting changed. I stood about for a nother minute or so and watched the torrent of muddy kids trickle off. And I still didn't have my child. The tracksuited chap also noticed, and went to look for him. I told him I'd wait at the front of the school, where we'd agreed to meet. I'd reminded my son of that fact three times on the walk to school this very morning.

The tracksuited chap wasn't back in a minute with my son. He wasn't back in two. And somewhere between two minutes and five, in between two heartbeats, the thought entered my head that he might not be in the school. That my child might, for some unknown reason, have gone. Our old friend the panic rat woke up from his sleep, yawned, stretched, scratched himself a bit and then began his determined ascent. Still no tracksuited chap, and still no child. It's impossible to stand still when you realise something might be wrong. I jigged, I started walking one way, then another. I'd walk around the perimeter. No, I'd wait here. He might come and I'd miss him. In this state of indecision I let my guard down, and the awful, fatalist voice which lives in us all whispered: every minute could make the difference. And in my head, I'm already debating ringing the police.

Then the dreaded sight of the tracksuited chap and a teacher walking towards me. Their faces grim. Concerned. Because they still don't have my child. And I swear, in that moment, I was reaching in to my pocket for my phone. That's when the missing child came wandering up the footpath beside the school. He'd been waiting where I drop him off at the end of the lane.

Did I grab him in relief and hug him until he couldn't breathe? Kiss his head and thank everything that is Holy that he was safe? No. I screeched like a fishwife. My terror gave way to fury. I told him he was a silly boy for wandering off, that we'd agreed to meet here, and that he'd scared me witless. He responded by getting equally furious at me, and we stalked home in stony silence.

Did I overreact? Yes, probably. All's well that ends well, and all that. But those ten minutes where I didn't know where my child was seemed to last hours. Time is so hideously elastic you see. And the most hideous ideas can be born in the space between heartbeats.