This scene was briefly mentioned in one or two paragraphs in the chapter, but I wanted to "play it out", so to speak. Hope you enjoy!
Sarah Collingborne was not somebody who held onto hopes for long. Adam, her beloved husband and Great Paxford's vicar, was a prisoner of war. Though she wished he'd come home safe, alive, she knew it was never to be. But, as the vicar's wife, the town needed her to be stronger than them. And she needed the town.
I can't let them see how much it pains me. I have to pretend like I know he's alright, that I pray with all my might he's alive. But I do pray, don't I? There's no pretending there. He always believed God was watching over us. But God wouldn't let him be taken, would he?
Even though pretending seemed to be Sarah's strong suit, she couldn't mask the anxious feeling that Noah, the son of her sister's late husband and his accountant, wasn't one of the lucky ones. Two days earlier, Sarah and her sister had learned that Noah had run away from his new boarding school. No one had any clue as to where he was now. An eight-year-old boy, all alone, miles away from Great Paxford.
But that night, Noah and Adam weren't the only two missing. Sarah's elder sister, Frances, hadn't returned. It was past midnight. Sarah sat up, waiting, for any sign of Frances, or a phone call from the boarding school's headmaster. Claire, Frances' maid and somewhat of her protégé, had retired a few hours earlier for bed—someone had to stay by the phone all night, just in case there was any news about Noah.
Sarah shivered. She shifted her legs so that she was sitting on them, to keep herself warm, and pulled the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. It's cold, she thought, even inside. Must be colder outside. She didn't dare imagine Noah, freezing cold in a cornfield someplace far away, missing his… missing Frances. If she wasn't Noah's mother, what was she? The wife of his father? The only other innocent in the ten-year affair between Peter and Helen?
Sarah heard a faint noise, like timid footsteps, coming from Claire and Claire's husband, Spencer's, quarters. She could only imagine what Claire was doing, but Sarah was pretty sure the young woman was pacing. She's loved Noah just as much as his own mother did, Sarah reasoned. No wonder she's anxious, too.
Anxious wasn't even the right word for how Claire Wilson née Hillman felt at that moment. Distressed was more like it. Possibly even just as distressed as Frances. The maid had no children of her own yet, so to Noah she'd become a sort of third mother. His second mother was Frances, who'd become a de facto parent to the boy, while his first and biological mother would continue to be Helen. Helen, who'd died in the car crash with Peter, causing all sorts of grief and shock for both Frances and Sarah.
Sarah focused on the clock that sat nearby. It was nearing one in the morning. The soft yet audible tick the clock produced just reminded Sarah more of Frances' missing presence.
Where are you, Frances?
Sarah decided to look out the window. There, drawing back the curtains to peer into the night, she found her answer.
Alison Scotlock, a woman Sarah had thought she'd seen the last of after Alison allowed criminals into the Barden factory, resulting in it being shut down, was carefully making her way toward the house. In her hand she clasped Frances', leading her home. Sarah flung open the door to greet them, practically running down the path. Raindrops were falling heavily, soaking her; she hadn't been able to tell it was raining from within the house.
"Where have you been?" she exclaimed, embracing first Alison and then Frances. Alison let go of Frances' hand, placing it in Sarah's. Sarah inhaled sharply.
"You're freezing," she remarked, placing Frances' cold hand to her own cheek, just to verify how cold her sister actually was. She frowned. "Frances, where've you been? I've been waiting forever."
"I needed air." Frances blinked once, as if one hundred percent sure her explanation was satisfactory to Sarah. It wasn't.
"It's past midnight, and pouring, for Heaven's sake! Of all the reckless—" Sarah stopped mid-sentence when Alison cut in.
"I'll allow you to continue chiding her, Sarah, in the morning. Right now she needs to warm up, and you both need to be in bed."
Sarah couldn't help hearing a little bit of her and Frances' mother in Alison's tone, which compelled her to obey.
"Yes, of course. Please come in, Alison. You must be cold too."
The three women then found themselves seated in Frances' living room—Sarah's too, temporarily, while Noah continued to be missing. In Frances' hands she held a glass of brandy, sipping to warm herself up while Alison and Sarah conversed. All of them were wrapped in blankets to dry off.
"We've been calling the headmaster daily. He's well and truly missing, it seems. You should see the state Claire and Spencer are in, always busying themselves with unnecessary tasks to keep their minds off him. And I've been staying here the past two nights, so that there's one extra person to watch the phone should there be any news."
"Does anyone else know?"
"I don't know who else Frances has told—"
"No one except you, Claire and Spencer, and now Alison," Frances clarified.
"So nobody except the people currently in this house," said Sarah.
"I had no idea this was going on. I'm so sorry," Alison sympathized. "Frances confessed her fears to me, and I can't imagine where he's run off to. I know he's trying to find his way back, though, to Great Paxford."
"You don't know that," Frances said quietly. She'd shifted positions so that she was now laying horizontally with her head on her sister's lap.
Alison glanced briefly down at her own lap, where her fingers were entwined together. She looked up again.
"No, you're right, I don't. But I do know Noah, and I know he hasn't forgotten you and Sarah."
Sarah forced a smile. "Thank you, Alison. I'm sure that assumption is correct. Brandy?"
Sarah tried to rise to fetch Alison a cup, but Frances held her down.
"Alison can get a cup for herself. I'm too comfortable to move."
Sarah laughed and remained seated, while Alison poured herself and Sarah some brandy. She walked back to her chair, stopping to hold out one of the glasses to Sarah.
"No thank you," Sarah declined, "I'm warm enough, and I'd rather keep my head as clear as possible in case the phone rings."
Alison smiled and nodded, and offered the glass to Frances instead, who drank it gratefully. Alison then resumed her conversation with Sarah, talking about smaller, less-anxiety-inducing topics, such as Miriam's new baby. After just a few minutes of this, however, they lapsed into silence. Neither woman knew what else to talk of, since most of the recent news managed to be discussed in under ten minutes, being so minor.
Sarah absentmindedly stroked her sister's strawberry-blonde curls with one hand, while tapping the nails of her other on the arm of the sofa. Alison stared into her mug at the clear brown liquid. Sarah's thoughts flew to Nick, the officer who'd once tried to kiss her, who was now married to the local school teacher, Teresa Fenchurch. Then, because Teresa crossed her mind, she began to think of Alison, and how the two had lived together for about a year before Teresa's marriage. And thinking about Alison brought Sarah to a topic that now seemed to be dissolved and forgiven: Alison's involvement in the closure of the Barden factory.
In all fairness, once someone saved another from freezing to death, it seemed fit for one to forgive them. And that was supposedly what'd happened, although Sarah wouldn't know, having not been there. She resolved to ask Frances later.
Speaking of Frances, Sarah noted that both she and Alison's dog Boris had fallen asleep—although Boris was always being lazy, so it wasn't a big difference on his part.
She gently stood up, placing Frances' head on the sofa. Alison rose too.
"I should be going. Boris will spend the entire night if he could, but it's late and I don't want to be up all night."
Sarah smiled and nodded. "Take the blanket, you'll need it to keep warm and dry."
Alison thanked her, gently tugged on Boris' leash, prompting the dog to grudgingly stand up and follow her out. The door closed softly behind them. Sarah glanced up at the ceiling, where Claire's pacing had long since stopped.
She's probably gone to bed. As everyone should.
Sarah then covered her sister with another blanket, a dry one, deciding not to move her, and retired to the spare bedroom. In the morning she knew she'd have to deal with another telephone call from Noah's brainless headmaster, and she'd need her strength.