Jeanette bumped into Rube halfway back to the house, having got fed up of sitting at the bottom of the staircase and not being allowed to climb it. And it was just as well she’d started back when she had, because Rube was in a state. Her face was bone-white and she was breathing funny, like she had when she’d gone to get her GCSE results last year.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jeanette.  Her first thought was that Rube had had a close call with some kind of dangerous animal, or maybe even a person who’d wandered into the area and started threatening her.  She didn’t even remember that Rube had gone back to check on Sally until she said her name.

“Sally’s gone off somewhere,” mumbled Rube.

That didn’t seem to fit with Rube’s panicky expression.  ‘Gone off somewhere’ sounded a lot less urgent than ‘gone missing.’  “Well… she can’t have gone far, right?  We’ve only been away from the house for…”

“No, I saw her go.”  Rube fiddled with her fringe.  It looked as if she was trying to crush the hair with the sheer power of her knuckles.  “She…. I don’t know what happened…”

Jeanette put what she hoped was a calming hand on Rube’s shoulder.  “Come on.  Tell me.”

Rube looked up at her.  “It…  It looked like she was flying.  I looked out of the window, and she was off in the distance…. I guess she was on a zipwire?  I don’t know where it could have…”

Jeanette couldn’t make head nor tail of what Rube was telling her.  A zipwire?  Flying off into the distance?  Sally could be anywhere by now.  Anywhere, and in any situation.

So Jeanette said the only thing that made sense to her at the moment.  “Let’s go back to the staircase.  You need to see what’s up there.”

(To be continued)