Dying Fall

baby and now she’s … nowhere. Lost. In Limbo. In the liminal zone between life and death so beloved of Erik. The floor tilts and she has to grip onto the sides of her chair to stop herself from falling. She looks up, trying to remember where she is, and, as she does she so, she becomes dimly aware that one of the spinning shapes has materialised into Nelson.
    ‘Give me the phone.’
    She can hear Nelson barking into her mobile, telling Cathbad to stay where he is, to contact the police, to retrace his steps. At the same time Nelson is pulling her to her feet and propelling her across the atrium and through the double doors. All this happens without her once being aware of her feet moving. She has left her body and is hovering somewhere among the cast-iron rafters and industrial lifting devices.
    She is in Nelson’s car and hurtling towards Blackpool at the speed of light before she manages to take a proper breath. Her ribs ache and she feels as if she’s about to pass out.
    ‘It’ll be OK,’ Nelson is saying. ‘I’ve seen this hundreds of times. Kids wander away, parents panic, ten minutes later they’re back together again. Lots of tears and wasted police time. No harm done.’
    Ruth glances at his set profile and wonders why sheisn’t more reassured. Because there’s a muscle going in Nelson’s cheek and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel? Because Cathbad hasn’t rung back to say it’s all a terrible mistake and he and Kate are enjoying complimentary Krabby Patties in Sponge Bob’s Snack Shop? Because deep down she has always known that they will get her – the shadowy figures who killed Dan and goaded Pendragon to his death. And how better to get her than to attack the most precious thing in her life?
Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home.
Oh why hadn’t she flown back home as soon as she received those texts? Why is she still here, in this nightmare world where people are thrown into the air for pleasure and cartoon animals guard a land where children can disappear forever? She starts to cry.
    ‘It’ll be OK,’ says Nelson again. ‘We’ll find her. She’ll have just wandered off to see Dora.’
    ‘She loves Dora.’
    ‘I know. I saw the book by your bed.’
    Will she ever read to Kate again? She would give everything –
everything
 – to be lying beside her sleepy child, ploughing through Dora’s interminable adventures. Please God, she prays fiercely, I’ve never believed in you but, please, prove me wrong. Please find my darling daughter.
    Nelson screeches to a halt on double yellow lines outside the Pleasure Beach. They run through a hall full of people queuing for tickets, and out again to more queues and a row of turnstiles.
    ‘Have you got day passes sir?’ asks a polite doorman. Nelson waves his police badge and pushes Ruth past theoutraged pleasure seekers. Ruth rings Cathbad as she runs. He says he’s waiting for them outside Nickelodeon Land.
    ‘Have you found Kate?’ asks Ruth though she knows that, if he had, it would have been the first thing he’d said.
    ‘No.’
    They run past ghost trains and carousels and people hanging upside down in the air. A vast skull in a Viking helmet guards the entrance to something called Valhalla. The giant raven of the Raven Falls spreads his baleful wings, as black as night. For Ruth, the place could not seem more hellish if there were actual devils manning the rides. The visitors to the Pleasure Beach resemble not happy families in search of an innocent thrill, but sinister misshapen creatures, their features smeared with face paints, ghastly smiles enhanced by comedy hats and T-shirts saying ‘I’m with Stupid’. Some of these monsters are clutching the furry corpses of stuffed animals won in arcades, others are swilling lurid drinks from oversized plastic glasses. Many of them are wearing the Simon Cowell masks Ruth first saw on the pier. The effect is of hundreds of dark-haired, icy-toothed showbiz supremos on the rampage. It’s as if Cowell has been cloned by some evil pharmaceutical lab intent on taking over the world. Ruth rushes past these abominations, head down, phone clasped to her heart. She hates everyone for not being Kate.
    A white-faced middle-aged man is standing by a ride featuring demonic cartoon children with oversized teethand knowing leers. Screams and splashes fill the air. A giant sign exhorts riders to ‘Hold on to your nappies’. ‘By the Rug Rats log flume,’ Cathbad had said,