Ben's face gazed impassively back at her while the ringing continued on her tablet.  I never did like that photo of him, she thought.  The black and white makes him look so distant and severe.  He looks tense, he always hates to have his photo taken and this selfie doesn't do him justice.  I wonder why he chose this for his icon? The rings continued, sounding indistinct and out of phase then stopped.  No answer.

Hardly surprizing, she thought.  The connection between the small cottage in Normandy and the campus in the deep South of the US wasn't great.  So she carried on trying, hoping not to sound like a smothering, overanxious mum.  She sent a brief email, a sticker and a message on his favourite soical media site.  No bites.

Finally she contacted Lucas, Ben's roommate by text:

Hi Lucas!  Haven't heard from Ben in a while.  Can you remind him his mum wants his news?

Hi.  I was going to contact you.  Ben went out yesterday morning and hasn't come back.

What?

He didn't show up for classes this morning either but we were hoping he'd be back by now.

She re-read the text once, twice and breathed in and out before she typed:

Where did he go?

He said he was going for a swim.

Alone?

He was supposed to go with Guillaume but Guillaume had an essay to finish for today and couldn't.

She paused before replying.  Her thoughts began to race.  Ben had been out of contact with her and his roommates for more than 36 hours now. Scenrios spun through her head each one with Ben in danger: robbery at gun point, mugging with the threat of a blade, a body on the tarmac as a car raced away...  This doesn't make sense.  Ben goes out in plain daylight for a swim and doesn't come back.

Can you remember anything unusual about Ben that morning?  

Well, he did seem to take a bag, a big bag, much larger than what you need to pack swim gear.

Anything else?

We found his phone by his bed.  He left it.

Do you think he forgot it?

No.  It's been put beside his computer.  It looks to me he left them both.

So Ben wasn't laying in a gutter unconscious somewhere.  He had made a decision.  To leave. And to cut himself off from the world.  To disappear.

Edited story

'So, you'd reccommend hitchhiking as a means of travel ?' prompted the interviewer.

'Just try it,' came the reply,'Just go for a little trip. 10 miles down the road to the next town. If you like it go a little further the next time. You'll never want to travel any other way again.'

She switched off the radio, sipped her weak milky tea. The clock ticked. The fridge squealed and sighed. She scratched her chin and looked out the window as the last leaves on the willow waved in the southwesterly breeze. The sun slipped towards the grey horizon.

She remembered herself at 20, hitchhiking, a hot afternoon from Haifa to Jersualem, wearing an unfamiliar skirt while Ivan scrouched down behind a boulder.

'That's it,' he called, 'show a little leg. Someone's gonna stop when they see that...and the Canadian flag on your backpack...for sure,' he added quickly.

A big truck did pulled over and Ivan popped up to squeeze in the cabin with her. Her cheeks burned as the driver glanced down at her knees. She felt a cheat and didn't like to think of herself as bait.

35 years later she smiled to herself. Such ploys wouldn't work now. She noticed a new brown patches on the back of her hand holding the mug of tea and wondered how her shapeless jeans had become so short. She wore a huge red fleece, scarf, walking shoes and grey socks. Had she bothered to put in earrings this morning ? Most of her jewellery lay in the sewing basket upstairs. Jane had selected certain items : a twisted bangle from Chiang Mai, a garnet pendant and a pair of turquoise Navajo earrings.

A robin tisked-tisked outside. She looked again and wanted to feel air brush her face. She got up, emptied the rest of the tea in the sink and put the kettle on to boil again. 'Hitchhike'. Go for a little trip'.

The kettle switched itself off.

When he got home the kitchen was full of steam. Condensation traced down the window like tears down a cheek.

1 fact + 3 fiction; 3 facts + 1 fiction

On September 11 2001 I drove back from the Institut Godegrand confidant that I had found an appropriate special needs school for Justine.  I didn't expect to see smoke pouring out of the windows of our stone house with the bodies of our ducks and chickens strewn on the road and the hacked down trunks of the pear tree and wysteria collapsed in front of the kitchen door.


Jeannie, 5, ran into my arms and I hugged her hard and then pulled back, appalled.  The left side of her face drooped and drool slipped from her mouth. Her left eye lid was half-closed. I glanced at John who said, 'Don't worry!  That's just Jeannie pulling faces as usual; she's such a clown!'