Sociable

They were met with solid silence.

‘Anybody home?’ called Kim. ‘Alain? Emma?’

‘Perhaps they went out for a walk?’ said Joe.

Kim’s look at him spoke volumes. He moved sideways into the kitchen and reached for the folder of takeaway menus they kept on the fridge.

‘I’m just going to look upstairs,’ said Kim. ‘Maybe they’re asleep. You choose something and we can ring up and have it delivered.’

She knocked gently on the spare bedroom door and receiving no reply, opened it gently. Emma and Delphine were hunched together on the floor beside the bed and stared as her as she peered in.

‘Whatever’s the matter? You look as though you’ve had a proper fright.’

‘Someone came to the house with three children-’ 

‘That was probably my friend Bella - she’s always asking me to look after her girls. Someone about my age, with long blonde hair?’

Emma and Delphine nodded.

‘Hugo said not to open the door, and we came up here to keep out of the way. One of the children came in through the back door and found the others before they could leave the sitting room.’

‘Oh, that’s okay, they’re very sociable little kids and know us well. I’m not surprised they tried the back door if no-one answered the bell.’

‘Well, anyway,’ went on Emma, ‘we didn’t hear exactly what was said but the other three went off with your friend and the children. Something about babysitting, although none of the children were babies.’

‘It’s a term we use for looking after small children - they don’t have to be babies exactly, simply too young to be left on their own. But anyway, that’s fine - I expect they decided to look after them at Bella’s house, where they have all their toys etc.’

‘After they left, some other people came to the house looking for us. We heard them talking under the window.’ Delphine pointed. ‘So we moved away and kept quiet down here, where they couldn’t see us.’