Fatherly advice

How Rayford might have handled the Chloe-Buck thing if he was a human being.

"Hi Rayford," Buck Williams said. "May I speak to Chloe?"

"Yes, just-" He broke off: Chloe was frantically shaking her head and gesturing to put the phone down. "No, Buck. I don't think she wants to talk to you right now."

"Why not?" His tone was all outraged innocence, with just a hint of brattish whining. "Look, Rayford, I want to sort this out with her. But she won't even tell me what the matter is - she just drops these little hints and expects me just to intuit what she means. How am I supposed to work it out if she won't even speak to me?"

Rayford sighed. He knew young people had different moral codes to their elders, but even the brashest teenager would have been able to work out why Chloe was angry with Buck. There was no way a seasoned journalist could be so oblivious. "I don't think it's all that hard to work out."

"You mean you know? What has she told you?" The eagerness in his voice almost made Rayford doubt his previous assessment. It didn't sound feigned: maybe Buck really was desperate to know what he'd done wrong.

But Rayford wasn't about to explain it to him. The conversation would be far more messy than he had the stomach for, especially with Chloe still within earshot. "No, I'm not going to get involved. You respect Chloe, and leave her alone unless she decides she wants to speak to you. And just ... just grow up." He put the phone down before Buck could protest.

Chloe took a tentative step towards him. She looked exhausted, but also grateful. "Thanks for dealing with him."

Rayford shook his head. "I bought you some time, that's all. Eventually, you're going to need to deal with him yourself."

"I don't ever want to see him again."

"I know, but that's going to be hard, isn't it? Are you going to stop going to New Hope? Force him to stop going?"

Her composure broke. She sat down on the bottom step and let the tears start falling again. Rayford sat beside her, stroking her shoulder and feeling utterly useless.

"What would you do, Dad? If you were me?"

For the millionth time, Rayford wished Irene was there. She would have had the perfect advice for a time like this: something that would make Chloe feel better and help her find the best way forwards on her own. He'd never realised how much she did to keep the family going until she was no longer there to do it.

"I don't know, honey. But maybe ... you need to tell him how you feel, in words even he can't misunderstand. If he's got any decency at all, he'll have to..."

"That's it, isn't it? What can he do now? I'm sure he didn't mean to lead me on like this, but now the damage is done."

"It's not up to you to bear the worst of the damage, though," Rayford said firmly. "None of this is your fault. He needs to start putting things right. And ... well, from what he said just now, I don't think he's capable of doing that without you spelling it out for him."

James and the Rapture

Where's Phil? James wondered. Doesn't he always turn up when the world goes to hell?

For the world had unquestionably gone to hell. Even the terrible chaos when Sammy was born hadn't been as bad as this - back then, it had only been James's life that started to come apart at the seams. Now, it was everyone else's life.

Sammy toddled across the room to retrieve her giraffe from the settee. Only a couple of days ago, Claire had marvelled how sure-footed she was at just thirteen months; it seemed like a lifetime ago. Sammy's early walking was now the least incredible thing about her.

The world's children had vanished, in an instant and without warning. The television news was full of nothing else, and neither government nor scientists had anything that sounded remotely like an explanation. Everyone under the age of thirteen was mysteriously gone.

Except Sammy.

"Why...?" asked Claire, staring at Sammy as if she expected her to join the rest at any moment.

"No-one knows why everyone else has vanished," James said. "Maybe if we knew that, we'd know why Sammy hasn't."

Claire nodded vaguely - it was the first time in years that she'd been anything less than completely in control. He'd imagined she would be the one to leap into action, handing out brisk advice until everyone was pulling together again, but she was as shell-shocked as anyone else. Maybe the fact that her useless brother still had his daughter was too much for her to take.

"Can you do me a favour?" he asked. "We're nearly out of milk, and there's not a lot else left either."

"I've only got enough for myself," she said. It sounded like an automatic response. "And the shops are ... I won't go for you."

He shook his head. "I was going to ask if you could stay here while I went. I don't think it would be a good idea to take Sammy, do you?" They would probably tear him apart for not suffering what they'd suffered, then tear her apart because they all wanted her so badly. On his own, he could probably fight his way through the crowds like anyone else who hadn't lost children personally.

"No. I suppose not."

"And ... well, I don't suppose you've got any cloth nappies lying around in the loft? Only, buying nappies probably isn't such a good plan either."

That was enough to pull her back to the surface. "Yes, I've got a box somewhere. Get some food, and I'll go and fetch them."

There was no fresh milk: nothing fresh at all. A wild-eyed woman was loading the shop's entire stock of UHT into a bag, and when James tried to take a couple of packets, she turned on him. "Leave them alone. I need them for my baby."

For a second, he thought he'd met someone else who had been mysteriously spared. Then he noticed the carrycot beside her. Tucked up in the blankets, like a parody of a baby, was a cat. "Let me have a couple," he said. "I've got a baby at home too."

"You have?" The hope in her eyes was so terrifying that he mumbled an excuse and ran towards the soup aisle. There was almost nothing left, but he took a few tins of oxtail, which had to be better than nothing, and found a single tin of Sammy's favourite Cream of Mushroom half-buried behind some discarded boxes. The boost that gave his hopes soon vanished when another mad-looking girl tried to grab his packet of milk, crying something that sounded like a child's name. He stuffed everything into his bag and got out, before it could get any worse.

"Someone was here," Claire told him when he got home.

"What do you mean, someone?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. They banged on the door, but I took Sammy upstairs and hid. There are bad people around."

"What else is new?" muttered James. Unhinged parents with nothing left to lose couldn't do any worse than Piconus's cronies had already tried when Sammy was a baby, but it was no use trying to tell Claire that, especially now. "I didn't get much. I hope she'll eat oxtail soup."

"You're hopeless," said Claire, sounding almost like her old self. "I'll fetch the nappies."

Five minutes after she'd gone, someone banged on the door. James weighed up the possibilities: bad people, or Phil? He squinted through the spyhole, and saw the unmistakeable features of Sammy's uncle. Weak with relief, he unlocked the door. "I knew you'd come. You always come when things go to hell."

#

"I was with the Heart," said Phil. "I didn't even know that anything had happened until I set out into the human world again."

"How could you not notice the children vanishing?"

The look Phil gave him was almost reassuring: one thing, at least, hadn't changed. "Our children, few though they are, have not vanished."

"Why...?" He looked down at Sammy. "I suppose that's why she's safe."

"It seems to be a logical deduction," said Phil. "I explained to you once that Sammy is more elven than human, and this seems to confirm it."

James imagined a whole community full of children, untouched by whatever had taken their human counterparts. "Aren't you worried that your children will vanish as well?"

"Are you worried that adults will begin vanishing?" asked Phil.

"I ... hadn't really thought about it. If I did, I'd probably crack up."

Phil nodded. "Just so."

"But ... Do you think Sammy would be safe now, with your people? The Heart said she was special and everything..."

"She wouldn't be physically harmed," said Phil. "But old taboos take a long time to die. She wouldn't be received with warmth either."

James sighed. "I don't think she'd be safe here at all. Everyone who's lost children - I suppose it's like Melly a million times over."

"It has to be your choice. You are her only living parent."

He could give Sammy to Melly, and not worry that he was handing her over to certain death. In fact, it sounded like things were ticking over just as normal in the elven world, so he would probably be sparing her a lot of pain. Did she know him by now, well enough to miss him, or was it just that he would miss her more than he could bear?

Rather than confront the question, he asked, "So what's caused it?"

"I don't know."

"I know you aren't certain, but you've got some ideas, haven't you?"

Phil shook his head gravely. "You think that just because it's incomprehensible to you, I must know all about it. But this is not an elven thing. The only elves it touches are me and Sammy - and it touches both of us indirectly. Whatever it is - and its nature is strange and shadowed - it is a human thing."

"In other words, not your problem. Oh, Jesus Christ. What a mess."

Foven meets Nicolae, Part 2

I walked into Nicolae's office, ignoring the sweet-smelling woman who ran after me, shouting something I didn't understand. "What have you done with Mellio?" I asked.

He spoke a sentence or two in six unfamiliar languages before finally coming out with some fluid, unaccented Hembrai. "My dear Foven. I understand how distressed you are, but I have done nothing with your young friend."

I think he expected me to be impressed that he knew my name, and who Mellio was. I wasn't: Onis Reeve could probably have done the same. "If you didn't take him, you know who did," I said, also in Hembrai.

"My dear Foven, if I knew who had taken the children, do you really think I would keep it to myself?" Andaroi this time, as smooth and accentless as his Hembrai. Again, I had the feeling I was supposed to be impressed, but the Guild is full of mages who can do that.

I answered in Andaroi, just to show him he couldn't outdo me. "Yes. You are a deceiver."

"A deceiver? You wound me. I want only to lead the people of the world through this terrible time and into peace."

"That might be what you want." I couldn't keep up the Andaroi, so I switched to Arinese. "But that's not what's going to happen. I know someone just like you - he's full of the best intentions, and somehow all he ends up with is a bucket of warm piss."

"You are speaking of the healer Dasil," he said, in perfect Arinese. "It's quite understandable that you distrust him, but he has your best interests in his heart - just as I do."

That unnerved me. How did he know I was thinking of Dasil? Had he checked me out so thoroughly, or could he somehow sense my thoughts? Either possibility could be terrifying, but having come this far, I couldn't let him see my fear. "Dasil's concern for my best interests always seems to make me feel more wretched, and I have the feeling yours may work out the same way."

"My poor Foven." His voice brimmed over with pity that sounded all too genuine. "Open your heart and trust a little."

"I've read about you," I said. "The Final Era book. It lays out exactly what you're going to do. What you've already done."

"Lies." He took a couple of steps towards me, and I had to back away. "Lies, spread by misguided fools. I'd like to help them all to see the error of their ways, but life is just too short."

He reminded me more and more of Dasil with every word. Something about the aching pity in his voice, and the way he tried to wriggle out of everything. "If it's all lies, what's the truth? What's your real agenda?"

"I already told you, my friend. Bring the people of the world through this terrible time and into peace."

It was a dangerous thing to want, even if he was telling the truth. I knew my history - rulers started out trying for peace, and ended up compromising themselves into oblivion. And the way he was going about it - persuading the rest of the world to join with him and give up their most powerful weapons - could only end in disaster. "You know you're bound to fail," I said. "And I didn't come here to argue about that. Tell me where Mellio is."

"Foven." His voice had a hard edge now, no more of that bleeding pity. This was the point where Dasil would have shoved me towards the refectory or poured something down my throat, but Nicolae could do much worse. "You do not wish to oppose me. It is not wise."

He was right, of course. But since I caught the pox, my life has been one long series of things I didn't wish to do and still did. As for wisdom, I'd long ago decided that was the province of whole mages.

"My only agenda is to bring peace." His voice seemed to drill into my mind. "Your presence here is a wasteful distraction."

Dasil could have come out with the same thing, nearly word for word. And, just as I'd lost my temper with Dasil so many times, I lost it now with Nicolae. "Now listen, you pissing little idiot. Last year, I saw a dragon - an actual fire-breathing dragon. The man who summoned it wanted me to drink its blood and live forever, and I told him to piss in his kecks. Do you think I'm going to let you fool with my mind?"

"Fool with your mind?" The pity was back, like an unwanted touch that made my skin crawl. "My dear Foven, I would never do such a thing."

"You would. You just did. Do you think I can't feel magic being worked, just because I can't read glyphs any more? I'm blind, you fool, not stupid."

"All I want to do is bring peace-" he started again, this time in Hembrai.

That was when I realised there was no getting any sense from him. I hit him the hardest blow I could manage with my staff, and left.

Foven meets Nicolae

Waking up and finding Mellio gone was almost worse than waking up from the pox. Even as I first came out of sleep, I knew I was alone in the room; it went beyond the absence of his breathing into a definite sense that he was gone. I didn't think for a moment that he was at the privy or gone early to the refectory.

What I did think was that Dasil had taken him. Our truce had been holding fairly well for a month or so, but he was quite capable of moving Mellio into a different room to help me take whatever step he thought I should be taking next. And however much Mellio and I complained, neither of us had any right of appeal.

I lay for a while, trying to work out the best way to confront Dasil, but none of the outraged phrases that came to my mind ever made it to my mouth. While I was waiting for him to come in, I heard the most terrible sound from outside. Screams, cries, names called in desperation, swallowed up as more and more parents woke to discover their children gone.

The first few days were terrible. Parents stormed the Guild, insisting that the Masters had to find their children. No matter how many times Previs Corvus explained that they were doing all they could, they kept coming. I think they must have been doing the same thing to the sheriff's office, because Faric Faber threatened to put the city under martial law if they didn't disperse.

The Guild itself was less affected than the rest of the city: research mages don't usually have children. Some, like Noen, had had nephews and neices, and a handful of the students had had brothers young enough to be among the vanished, but Mellio was the only disappearance from within our walls. All the same, it changed us. Anything that didn't have a direct chance of finding the children was pushed to one side, and huge working groups formed to try different methods of searching. Algen, Tilf and Falla, of course, were at the heart of one of them, running the highest powered viewing spells there had ever been.

And I was on the outside. Oh, Dasil put me to work folding sheets and carrying teas for the mages who cracked under the strain, but there was nothing useful I could do towards finding Mellio and the others. I could only sit and listen to whole men doing their part, and simmer in the bitterness I thought Mellio had helped me banish.

But maybe I had banished it. I wasn't willing to accept, as I once had, that the situation was hopeless. I couldn't help by reading the glyphs, but I'd learned another way to take action. I could search for answers in my own way - I'd done it once, and I could do it again. So I asked Onis Reeve to find out what he could, and I kept my own ears open in the refectory, and between us we put a few pieces together.

There was never any direct evidence - it was even worse than the dragons. But this Nicolae Carpathia kept cropping up on the edges of conversations, until I wasn't ready to believe it was a coincidence. If he hadn't taken the children himself, he knew who had.

Wallen Ross's old assistant found the only piece of real evidence among Wallen's private books. It was a strange thing, an Andaroi translation of something from across the other ocean, and even worse written than that ridiculous Ersh book Mellio and I struggled with. It was about the "Final Era" - their idea of how the world was going to end. It began with the children vanishing into air; after that, a charismatic leader emerged who would bring war and chaos. They even named the leader: Nicolae.

The moment we'd finished reading, I asked Onis to find me a passage across the ocean.

Feasting on the Word

Buck lay on the guest bed of the house Bruce had helped him find. The former owners were with God, so it seemed all wrong to criticise their decor, but he couldn't stomach the weight of kitchy junk in the master bedroom.

There was one advantage, though: plenty of Bibles to hand. Buck had spent long enough listening to Bruce going on about "feasting on the Word" to decide it was something he wanted to try his hand at. He'd lifted the Bible from the master bedroom - with creased pages, pencil annotations, the lot - and now he was trying to make sense of it.

He started on one of the pages with the heaviest underlining, and followed the notes from there. But flipping backwards and forwards just gave his mind plenty of time to wander. This wasn't working the way he'd hoped.

Weren't the Gospels where it was supposed to be at? He leafed through until he found them, and there at least was some dialogue, and a plot he could more or less understand. What a revolutionary Jesus turned out to be, when you read it properly. All the things he'd thought he knew were wrong. This guy was a radical - almost a hippie.

If you want to be rich, give your money away. If you want to be exalted, humble yourself. Love your enemies, and pray for the ones who put you down.

He knew he was on the verge of something important, but he couldn't quite wrap his head around it. It was all so paradoxical. Of course, he knew that you just had to trust in God and everything else would fall into place, but he couldn't quite suspend his old beliefs. If someone put him down, it was only natural to strike back. How was anyone supposed to overcome that?

An image of Chloe came between him and the words. Sitting there with her hair all sleek and shiny - how good would it be to run his fingers through that hair? Tousle it up good and proper, and then steer her head gently downwards...

Jesus! He was supposed to be studying the Bible, not indulging his impure thoughts. Deep breath, get himself under control, and back to the Word.

The first shall be last and the last first. Everything was all back-to-front and upside-down. Did Bruce understand this stuff? He'd been at it for longer than Buck, of course, but if he could make sense of it, it wasn't impossible. Blessed are the meek...

No. It was no good. All the words in the world couldn't drive that picture of Chloe out of his head. Two-thousand-year-old words versus one of God's more delicious recent creations - there was no contest really. Jesus would probably understand anyway - wasn't He supposed to be all about love?

He reached for the phone.

Conversions 7

"The Antichrist?" said Gary. "You mean like Damien or something?"

"Well, sort of," said Paul. "According to the checklist, the Antichrist is going to be a charismatic politician, probably at the UN."

They sat round the table in Paul's office: Paul, Gary, Patrick, and Kate, with all the Rapture leaflets and books Kate had accumulated. The dreadful predictions barely varied from one leaflet to another: at least they knew exactly what was coming.

"That Nicolae Whatsit," said Patrick. "He's charismatic - did you hear that speech he gave?"

Paul nodded. The new leader of the United Nations, hastily sworn in after his predecessor was confirmed among the disappeared, had spoken simply and emotionally about the need for unity in this time of horror. He had stressed the need for the nations of the earth to pool their resources, since this was their only hope for finding their missing children or preventing more disappearances.

"That's another warning sign," said Kate. "The Antichrist is going to be all about peace."

Gary picked up one of the leaflets by the corner, as if he was afraid it would give him fleas. "So the Antichrist is the opposition, is he? He's fighting the ba- the Rapture God?"

"Eventually." Kate sounded tired, as if the angry energy that had sustained her in church had finally run out. "He's going to run around wrecking things for a while, before God shows up and beats him senseless."

"But we're on his side, right?" said Gary. "If he's fighting God, and we're fighting God..."

"There are worse things to be than on his side," said Patrick. "Everything he said in that speech was something you can really believe in."

Kate shook her head. "It was all a lie. There's a war coming, and he's going to start it. Oh, he probably won't mean to, an idealist like him, but that's how it's going to work out."

"You don't know that," said Patrick. "Maybe if someone talked to him, showed him the prophecies, he'd know what not to do."

"He's already seen them," said Kate. "He must have millions of advisors, and the Rapture people are everywhere. Someone must have made the connection by now, even if he didn't know about it before."

"So he knows," said Patrick. "He knows what would start a war if he did it, and he won't do it."

"Or he'll decide some things are worth starting a war over," said Kate. "If he's the Antichrist, you think he'll have a problem with a little war?"

Gary looked from one to the other, wearing an expression of complete bewilderment. "So which side are we on?"

"Nicolae's," said Patrick. Kate shook her head, but didn't say anything.

"The Antichrist is fighting against God," said Paul, "but he's not fighting for us. It's between the two of them, and we're just the battlefield."

"Oh," said Gary. Now he looked as if he understood - and rather wished he was still confused.

"We can still help Nicolae, can't we?" said Patrick. "Or ... at least give him some sort of support."

Paul shook his head. "He's going to do some terrible things, especially to followers of the Rapture God."

"Serve them right," said Gary.

"You think it serves Lucy Woolford right, if she follows the Rapture God in the hopes of seeing her children again, and dies horribly for it?"

"Anyone who's stupid enough to worship that bastard..." grumbled Gary. "No, I suppose not. But what's the alternative? The Antichrist, or that..."

The three of them looked at Paul. Patrick, still wanting to believe the best of Nicolae; Gary, willing to consider any opposition to the Rapture God; Kate, miserably disillusioned with every option. They all needed something from him.

He looked down at the pile of books. "It doesn't say anywhere that there can only be two sides."

"But what other side is there?" said Gary.

"The side of humanity," said Paul. "The side of the people who are going to get hurt by all this. We won't be able to keep everyone safe, but we'll do what we can."

Conversions 6

The church wasn't as full as it had been in the first hours: some people were grieving in private, and others were looking for answers that had nothing to do with God. But enough people had come back - drawn, Paul guessed, by curiosity as much as anything.

"You've probably already heard the Rapture theory," he said. "You've probably seen the new converts preaching, or read their leaflets, or seen their videos. They're claiming that it was God who took the children, that this is the beginning of the end of the world."

A few nods, a few murmurs of agreement. Did that just mean that they'd heard the theory, or that they believed it?

"They're partly right," Paul said. "The predictions they've made about the end of the world - they're coming true so far. Even if there was another explanation for the disappearances, this is the only one that fits all the facts. Something - someone - with a power we can't even begin to understand - has taken our children, and is now making these prophecies come true."

He looked across at Patrick, who was staring at him in something like horror. Quickly, he cleared his throat and went on.

"This is the work of a God, but not the God I've believed in. The God you'll find in the Rapture leaflets is arbitrary, petty, jealous, vindictive. All He has is power - the only reason to worship Him is fear. And I'm not going to worship any God out of fear."

Patrick looked faintly relieved, but none of the other faces held anything so encouraging. Some looked frightened, others disgusted, still others stared back at him as if he'd started speaking in tongues.

"I believed in a just and loving God. I no longer know whether that God has any existence outside my imagination, but I believe that He represents something worth honouring. Even if He isn't real, we can make the world a better place by living as if He was."

A couple of nods, but they were outweighed by the blank stares.

"If the Rapture God is really the only God, this is a dangerous thing to believe - I know that. The future doesn't promise much safety for any of us, but defying the Rapture God is a worse risk than appeasing Him. I can't ask anyone to stand with me in that kind of defiance. If you want to leave this church today and save your souls before Him, I won't stop you."

"What about our children?" Lucy Woolford asked. "If God's taken them, surely we should be praying for their safe return?"

Paul took a deep breath. "If the Rapture theory is true, your children are ... well, they're dead. If you pray to the Rapture God, you might see them again in Heaven - that's the only hope that's left. I'm sorry."

"In that case," said Lucy, "that's all the more reason not to defy God."

"I thought that for a while," called a woman's voice from the back of the church. Paul didn't recognise her, and it was only the look of joyful recognition on Patrick's face that told him it was Kate. "I thought I should kiss His holy backside until he let me be with Demi. But it won't work."

"Why not?" demanded Chris Green.

"Because He's a bastard, a real twenty-four carat tosser," said Kate. "You can't trust someone like that, can you? You grovel to them, do everything they say, and then they turn round and say, 'Sorry, there's one little stupid thing you missed, so you're out of luck.'"

"So you're saying we should do nothing?" said Lucy. "Or do you think effing and blinding like that is going to help?"

"Nope," said Kate. "Whatever we do isn't going to bring the kids back, and it probably won't get us near them afterwards either. So all that's left is to forget them and just do what's right."

No-one liked the sound of that, and Paul could hardly blame them. They'd just heard - probably the first time anyone had spelled it out - that their children were as good as dead, and that God was directly responsible. Now Kate was blasting into what illusions they had left, and they were going to shoot the messenger.

"She's right," he said, as loudly and as forcefully as he knew how. "We've all lost loved ones before - not in this terrible wholesale way, but we all know the pain of bereavement. In the end, all we can ever do is try to live our lives in the way our departed friends would have wanted."

"But what you're saying," said Chris, "we can't even hope to see them in Heaven. Not if we ... well, if she's right about everything."

"It's difficult," said Paul. "I can't even begin to imagine how difficult. And if you want to follow the Rapture God, I won't stand in your way. But St Andrew's will be a refuge, for anyone who wants to believe in something better. However thin that hope might be."

Getting things straight

[So I was thinking: could I make Buck sympathetic?]

"Well, well, well." Verna looked Buck up and down twice. "I never thought I'd see the great Cameron Williams screw up like this."

Buck swallowed. When Bruce Barnes had talked about the terrible things the Antichrist would do to anyone who opposed him, Buck had thought he was talking about physical dangers. His new faith had brought new courage, and the prospect of physical danger didn't frighten him. He hadn't expected this battering to his professional pride.

Everyone thought he'd screwed up. Every attempt he'd made at an explanation just sounded like a particularly incoherent excuse, and in the end there was nothing he could do but bow his head and let them go on thinking that. The worst part was how many people seemed happy to see him in disgrace: his old attitudes had rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

"Just show me where my desk is," he said. "The sooner I can get settled in..." He left the sentence hanging in the air. Getting started early had seemed like a good idea - it beat hanging around on his own, nursing his injured pride - but from the look on Verna's face, she didn't care what felt best for him.

"Not so fast, Cameron," she said. "First of all, we need to get a few things straight."

"Buck," he said. "Please call me Buck - no-one's called me Cameron since my mother died."

"I'll call you Cameron," she said. "It's the name on your driver's licence, isn't it?"

"Yes, but no-one calls me it. Seriously, Verna-"

"I expect my subordinates to call me Ms Zee."

Buck winced as he remembered the way he'd spoken to her last time he was in the Chicago office. He'd acted like a complete dick, throwing his weight around and telling her off for doing the best job she could. Now, she was the one in charge, and she was getting her own back. "I see."

"I hope you do see, Cameron. I don't want any of your stupid alpha-male antics disrupting things here. It's hard enough now Lucinda's gone, without you adding to it. And if that doesn't motivate you, remember I just have to tell Stanton Bailey you're not up to the job."

She didn't trust him, and probably for good reason. It wasn't just the supposed screw-up: for years, he'd put his ego before his work. He was trying to change, but Verna had no way of knowing that.

"I understand," he said. "I won't give you any problems."

"You'd better not."

"Would you show me where my desk is now?"

She smiled. "We don't have a desk to spare for you just at the moment. You'll have to share with Alice."

That couldn't be right - surely there would be at least a few spare desks that had belonged to disappeared staff? But the smile, and the look in her eyes, explained it. This was another way of putting him in his place. "OK. What's my first assignment?"

"Assignment? Oh, Cameron, you really don't understand, do you? You can't be trusted with assignments. You'll be helping Alice with the filing and coffee for a few weeks. If you do a satisfactory job of that, I might let you do some background reporting - without a by-line."

The worst of it was, he couldn't blame it all on Carpathia. If he hadn't antagonised Verna so badly, she would have found him a few hard-to-screw-up assignments and let him work off his disgrace naturally. This was just the consequences of his own actions, coming back to haunt him.

He sent up a silent prayer for humility as he followed Verna to his new desk.

Conversions 5

Once it became clear that this wasn't the beginning of another wave of disappearances, the fate of the two men in Jerusalem was no longer news. If they'd left family that cared what had happened to them, the rest of the world didn't get to hear about it. Everyone was too busy trying to cope with their own everyday problems.

Chris Green, like half the parish, had lost his job, and had no idea how to keep up the mortgage payments. "The sensible thing would be to move somewhere smaller," he told Paul, "but I just can't do it. The kids' playroom is just how they left it, and their swings and things are in the garden. Besides," he finished defiantly, "if they come back, we need to be where they can find us."

Sally Lansbury was nursing her dying mother, who wasn't lucid enough to take in the news of the Event. "It's hardest on my sister," she said. "Whenever she comes round, Mum wants to know why she hasn't brought Ned with her, and every time, she has to explain that he's gone."

Janice Sutton's body still lay in a drawer somewhere, while medical examiners worked through the deaths the Event had indirectly caused. Gary fretted, impatient for the funeral that was all he could now offer his wife or his unborn child.

Paul, feeling like he was held together by nothing but his nerves, listened and answered as best he could. He was sleeping badly, and waking every morning with dread in the pit of his stomach. During the day, surrounded by other people's suffering, he managed to ignore his own worries; in the last hour before sleep, they came back with double the force.

He couldn't keep running away from it. Sooner or later, it would have to be faced, and putting it off wouldn't make it any easier. He told himself his parishoners needed him, but what use would he be to them if he didn't find a few minutes to take care of himself?

The church was empty, for the moment. Paul walked up to the altar and knelt at the rail, as if he was going to receive communion. It was time to say the prayer he'd been putting off for days.

"God, I don't know what to think," he said, not softly enough to keep his voice from echoing. "I believed in You, but it seems like You're not really there at all. Or not really who I thought You were. Have I been praying all my life to someone who doesn't even exist?"

He took a deep and shuddering breath. "I want to believe in a good and merciful God, but a good and merciful God wouldn't have done something like this. It's shattered everyone's lives, taken so much away from them, and why? Just to prove how powerful you are? That's no way for a God to behave."

For a moment, he half expected the Rapture cult's God to strike him down for blasphemy, but nothing happened. "I can't do this by myself," he said. "If You really don't exist, what am I supposed to do? Everyone in the parish is hurting, and there's nothing I can do for them. If You don't care what happens to us, what comfort can I give them?"

It was as if Someone was standing beside him, lifting the worst of the burden from his shoulders. Someone reassured him gently that he was doing all he could, and that what seemed like nothing to him could mean the world to his parishoners.

"Yes," he said, forcing the word past an obstruction in his throat. "But I don't know how long I can go on doing that. Not if there's no-one out there."

Someone said, "I'm as real now as I ever was."

"Do you mean you're still real, or you never were?"

Someone just repeated, "I'm as real now as I ever was." Then, as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone.

Paul blinked away tears and looked up at the huge image of Christ on the cross that hung behind the altar. It was the essence of what he had believed in: someone who loved humanity so much that He would suffer on the cross in order to redeem them. Someone who would suffer, and be almost overwhelmed with pain, and still keep going out of love.

Whatever else he had lost, he could still believe in that love. A love that he saw reflected every day, in the parishoners' struggles to hold everything together, and even in the ache of their loss. A love that he tried to live up to himself, when people came to him in pain. That love was still there, within him, as real now as it ever had been.

"I believe," he whispered. And the tears flowed freely.

Conversions 4

"The only positive is that she told me what they said to her." Paul pushed the leaflet across the desk towards Patrick. "Have you ever heard of the Rapture?"

"Robert might have mentioned it. I don't really remember."

"It's nonsense," said Paul. "I mean, it always seemed like nonsense. You can read the Bible from cover to cover, and you won't find anything about the Rapture unless someone explained the code to you first. They've taken a handful of verses out of context and stitched them together to make this pseudo-prophecy about the faithful getting into Heaven without dying."

"Religious nutcases," said Patrick.

"Yes," said Paul. "But religious nutcases who predicted the Event years before it happened."

Patrick shuddered. "That's impossible."

"I wish it was," said Paul. "They've always been there, saying it was going to happen, and no-one's ever taken any notice. Well, it looks like they were right after all."

"But that would mean God's ... well ... playing games with us."

Paul nodded. "You can see why Kate took it so badly." The Event, terrible as it was, could still be a part of God's incomprehensible plan. But the God he had loved and trusted could never be the God of the Rapture cult.

"And you didn't manage to convince her it's not true?"

"They've got all the evidence on their side," said Paul. "All I could try to do was-"

Before he got any further, the door burst open. Gary staggered into the room, white-faced and breathless. "Reverend," he said. "Thank Go- I mean, you're safe."

"What's happened?"

"More disappearances," Gary said. "On the TV. Had to make sure you were still here."

Patrick looked from Paul to Gary. "Kate," he said, and dashed out.

Paul poured Gary a cup of water. "More people have disappeared?"

"That's what they were saying on the news. I didn't wait for the details - I was afraid you were one of the ones..."

Paul switched on the TV in the corner. One of the civil servants from the Event Commission was speaking to the camera. "...no theory at this time, but we would urge the public to remain calm and let the emergency services do their jobs." Across the bottom of the screen ran a ticker saying Breaking News: Further disappearances?

The civil servant finished talking, and the newsreader appeared on-screen. "Footage from Jerusalem this morning suggests that last week's Event was not an isolated occurrance. Potentially the start of a second wave of vanishings, this incident has sparked widespread panic."

The newsreader was replaced by a grainy video of a jostling crowd. "Here in Jerusalem," a reporter said, "everyone has their own explanation of what caused the Event. Tensions are higher than usual as different splinter groups blame each other for bringing down what they call 'God's punishment'. The security forces are at full-" A flash of light blotted everything out for a second. "Jesus, what was that?"

The video played again, this time in slow motion and with part of the image circled. Two men rushed at one pair of preachers, obviously incensed at something they'd just heard. After the flash, they were nowhere to be seen. The preachers, chillingly, were still speaking as if nothing had happened.

"We're not sure at this time whether this new incident is connected to the Event or completely unrelated," said the newsreader. "Dr James Tobin, professor of-"

Paul switched the TV off.

"It doesn't sound that similar," said Gary. "There was no blinding flash when ... with the Event. And it was everyone at once, not just two people."

The Rapture cult leaflet was still lying where Patrick had let it fall. Paul picked it up and turned to the explanation of what the prophecy claimed would happen next. The second paragraph described two preachers in Jerusalem, with anyone who attacked them struck dead by fire. Would that explain the flash?

"It's not the same thing," said Paul. "But it's connected."

Conversions 3

"Kate? Kate Walton?"

"Who is this?" Even through the intercom, Paul couldn't miss the fear in her voice.

"My name's Paul Webb, from St And-"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't talk now." The intercom went dead.

Should he leave her alone with her pain? He imagined her cowering inside the flat, thinking he was another of the "religious nutcases" come to deliver even more devastating news. Could he at least ease that fear, or would his best efforts only shake her further?

He stabbed the buzzer again. "Your friend Patrick asked me to speak to you."

After a long silence, she said, "You're not one of them, are you? You wouldn't say Patrick's name like that."

"I don't know who you mean by 'them'," said Paul, although he had his suspicions. "But Patrick seems like a decent person, and he's definitely worried about you."

"I suppose you can come in," she said. The worst of the panic was gone from her voice, but the deadness that remained did little to reassure Paul as she buzzed him in.

The flat stank. It wasn't hard to spot the cause: the bathroom and the child's bedroom both held little piles of disposable nappies, bundled up and left to lie. Kate followed his gaze and said, "I know. But they're all that's left of her. I can't just throw them away."

"No, of course not. If it helps you to hold onto them for now..."

"Nothing helps," she said, in the flat tone of someone stating an unpleasant but indisputable truth. "I just can't bring myself to throw away anything she touched."

"Patrick's worried about you," he said. "He told me you had some visitors and they ... made things worse for you."

"They told me the truth," she said, still in the same flat tone. "They told me where Demi went."

Paul had seen people who thought they knew what had happened to the vanished children - everything from aliens to mad scientists to wormholes - but all of them had drawn some kind of hope from their theories and worked with feverish energy to reverse what they thought had taken place. For Kate, it seemed to have had the opposite effect. "Where did she go?"

"It was the Rapture," she said. "Jesus came for the faithful and the innocents."

"You can't know that's what happened," he said. "The Rapture is a crazy fringe theory, based on-"

"So was relativity a crazy fringe theory, until they got proof." She sparked into a kind of life for a moment, went over to the table and picked up a leaflet. "Read this. They've been predicting this for years, and it's happened just the way they said."

Paul took the leaflet from her trembling hand and opened it. One side held a photocopy of what looked like a much older article, explaining that the End Times would begin with Jesus transporting the faithful and the innocents bodily to Heaven. The other side held a set of hurriedly-typed notes pointing out that the Event fitted the prediction perfectly.

"You understand now?" she said.

"It could be a hoax." A very thorough and incredibly sick hoax, but Paul had seen the worst of humanity often enough not to rule it out.

"They showed me the article that was taken from," she said. "They showed me a book that was published in 1978 or something. They showed me a clip of someone saying this was going to happen, and there were children playing in the background. It's the truth."

"Well, maybe." They had completely convinced her: that much was certain. "But if it is true, shouldn't it be a comfort to you that Demi's safe with Jesus?"

"How much did Patrick tell you about me and Demi?"

Paul shrugged. "Only that you were on your own with her and taking her disappearance hard."

"When she was about a year old, we had some really bad times. This place was a mess - worse than it is now. She was crying all night, and I got stressed out with losing sleep."

"Yes?" It was a common enough story, but he didn't understand why it mattered now.

"Well, I don't really remember what I said, but it was something about how it might be better for us both if I stuck a pillow over her face. I didn't mean it, but social services heard about it and they thought I did. They did an investigation, and I thought they would end up taking her away."

"Are you saying you blame yourself?"

She shook her head. "If they had taken her, do you think it would have been a comfort that she was safe with them?"

"When you put it like that, I don't suppose it would."

"Well, what's the difference? Jesus decided I didn't measure up to His standards, so He took her away without even doing an investigation first. And I don't get a right of appeal."

The Jesus Paul had directed so many prayers to would never have caused her this much pain. But since the Event, it seemed more and more as though that Jesus was just so much wishful thinking.

"They said they'd be back," she said. "They wanted me to say a prayer. 'Dear God, I'm really sorry for making You do this to me. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again.'"

That summed it up: the Rapture cult's idea of God was just an abusive partner made bigger and scarier. Kate's fear made perfect sense now. "But you don't want to say the prayer?"

"I don't know," she said. "Sometimes I think it's my only chance of ever seeing Demi again, and I have to take it. But then I think I'm not good enough at pretending, and He'll know I'm not sincere. Then maybe He'll do something even worse."

Conversions 2

Two days later, Paul was still trying to work out what had happened.

The vigil had ended, the congregation drifting home to their private grief. Paul stayed, thinking perhaps someone would need whatever help he could still provide. Enough people came to justify his presence, but nowhere near enough to occupy his mind. Most of them just wanted to talk - even to rant - in front of someone who knew how to listen sympathetically. A couple of them asked, like the latecomer, why God would do such a thing; Paul still had no answer.

Towards midday on the second day, a vaguely familiar young man arrived. He had been at the back of the church with the others, but it took Paul a few moments to work out where else he'd seen him. He helped out every year with Christian Aid Week, but didn't often come to services. Paul had heard second-hand that his boyfriend had converted to some particularly nasty strain of Christianity, ranted at him about what a sinner he was, and cleared off. He didn't look as if he blamed Paul for this.

"I'm worried about a friend of mine," he said, without preamble. "She's on her own - she lost a little girl - a toddler."

Paul knew single mothers, knew how close they could be to their children. Sometimes the children were the one positive thing in their chaotic lives, and to lose them... What comfort could anyone offer to someone in that situation?

"She was taking it about as well as you'd expect," the young man went on. "I was sort of looking after her, making sure she didn't ... making sure she could cope. And she was coping - just about - until someone came round. I'd gone out to get some bread - they were leaving when I got back."

"Someone?"

"I think they were some sort of religious nutcases - no offence. She didn't tell me who they were - she wasn't really up to talking. She went right downhill after they came round. It's almost as if ... as if whatever they said to her was worse than her daughter disappearing."

Worse than losing her daughter inexplicably and without a moment's warning? Paul shivered.

"Do you think you could go and speak to her? Tell her that whatever they said, God isn't really like that? They had Bibles - the only bit of the Bible I know is 1 Corinthians."

It wouldn't do any good to ask what he should do if God really was like that. Any arguments the Bible might make were a good deal less convincing than the spaces where children used to be. "I can speak to her," Paul said. "What's her name? Come to think of it, what's yours?"

"Oh! Sorry, didn't I say? I'm Patrick Coleman. She's called Kate Walton. I wrote her address down..."

As he searched through his jacket pockets for Kate's address, the door opened. "Sorry," said an all-too-familiar voice. "I didn't realise you were busy."

Patrick produced a slip of paper, mumbled something about getting going, and left Paul face-to-face with the latecomer.

"I came to say sorry," he said. "I don't know what came over me."

Paul's heartbeat began the return to normal. "It's OK. After what happened..."

"No, I know I wasn't thinking straight. I wanted to lash out anywhere. I just don't know what good I thought it would do."

"It's OK," Paul said again. "Grief does strange things to us. You scared the hell out of me, I won't deny that, but it's over now."

"Yes," said the other man. "It's all over." He fiddled with his belt buckle, looking as if he still had something to say. "I know it's a lot to ask, after what I did, but would you help me with Janice's funeral? I want to give her ... give her..." Sobs choked him again.

"I can do that," said Paul. A funeral would be almost a relief, a reminder of the days when suffering came a little at a time, and understandably. "If it'll help at all, I'll be glad to."

The sobs slowly subsided, but the man remained tense. Whatever he'd come to say, he hadn't finished saying it.

"You never told me your name," Paul said, when he thought the other man would be able to speak.

"Gary. Gary Sutton." Gary took a deep breath and burst into words. "I've been thinking about what you said, about sinking to God's level and me being all I've got. Was it just something you said to try to calm me down, or did you really mean it?"

Paul remembered that moment, but he couldn't recapture the answer that had been so close. "I don't know," he said. "Does it matter now?"

"I suppose not," said Gary. "I just thought if you meant it, maybe ... I don't know."

"I'm sorry," said Paul. "I wish I had some answers for you."

Gary sighed and got to his feet. "Well, thanks anyway, Reverend. I'll see you about the funeral ... when they finish the paperwork ... it's going to take a while before they release the..." Tears filled his eyes, and he wiped them away with his sleeve. "I'll let you know."

At the church door, he stopped and turned back towards Paul. "Reverend? Do you still ... you know? Believe in God?"

Paul shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know the answer to that either."

Conversion

Paul had never seen the church so full. A sea of faces looked up at him, faces he saw every day in the shop or the post office, but never in church until now. Waiting for him to give some words of comfort from a God he wasn't sure he still believed in.

He concentrated on the unfamiliar faces: it was easier than thinking about the familiar ones that were missing. The Hooper boys weren't giggling over their hangman game, and little Mary Ellis wasn't wriggling beside her mother. A handful of older villagers were gone too; Paul didn't know whether they were vanished like the children or more explicably dead in the chaos. He didn't think he wanted to know.

He opened his prayer book and read every prayer that seemed even slightly appropriate. O Lord, comfort us in our hour of great need. Let it not be as bad as it seems. Bring our children safely back to us. As he prayed, he couldn't shake the thought that a god who would allow something like this to happen was either impotent or sadistic.

When he got to the end of the book, he started again from the beginning. Halfway through the first prayer, a commotion at the back of the church caught his attention. He trailed off in mid-sentence as the latecomer shoved his way roughly through the crowd.

"There's room for everyone in God's house," said Paul. "Please, find a space as best you can, but don't-"

"I haven't come to pray," said the latecomer. He was close enough now that Paul could see him, although he didn't recognise him. Someone from one of the farms, most likely, not often in the village. In his right hand, he gripped a shotgun.

"What have you come for?" Paul asked.

"This is God's house, is it?" said the latecomer. "Well, I'd like to speak to God." He stood right beside Paul now, close enough for Paul to notice that there was no smell of alcohol about him. This terrible mood owed nothing to the bottle - which made it all the more terrible.

"Prayer is the only way I know of speaking to God," Paul said. "Everyone here is in the same situation, and perhaps if you pray with us you'll start to feel-"

"I don't want to pray. I want to speak to God, and I want the bastard to answer me."

Several people in the congregation gasped. Paul wondered irrelevantly whether it was simply because of the profanity, or because someone had put into words what they had thought but dared not say. "It doesn't work that way," he said. "If you pray, and make yourself very calm, you might hear the voice of God within you."

"Not good enough," said the latecomer. He raised the shotgun and put it against Paul's head. "You tell God that I want some answers."

"He knows." Visions of what a shotgun would do at that range tormented Paul. He probably wouldn't suffer, but the congregation would. "He sees everything, and He understands what you're feeling now. If you put the gun down and pray with us-"

"Let me tell you something, Reverend. Yesterday, I was painting the nursery. Getting ready for the baby coming. I've not done so well for myself, but he wasn't to know that, was he? It was going to be a fresh start for me."

Paul swallowed. "What about your wife?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be comforting her?"

"There's no comforting her now. When the baby disappeared, she started to haemorrhage. I called an ambulance, but it was such a mess they couldn't get there in time. At least I got to hold her as she died, though. More than I can say for the baby."

"You don't know the baby's dead," said Paul, painfully aware of how inadequate that was.

"So what I want your God to tell me," the latecomer went on, as if Paul hadn't said anything, "is what possible justification He could have for doing that to me? And none of that crap about God's plan not making sense to us. If He's going to hurt us like this, He can damn well explain himself."

It was a good question, and Paul had no answer. Either you had faith in a divine plan that would make sense in the end, or you didn't. Paul suspected he no longer had that faith, but he had to pretend, for his congregation's sake.

"Well, God?" The shotgun tapped again Paul's temple. "Answers, or I blow your man's head off."

"Listen," said Paul desperately. "Suppose you're right. Suppose God is just a ... suppose He doesn't have any justification for this, and you shoot me. What have you achieved?"

"Shown Him I won't put up with His bullshit any more." Was the pressure of the shotgun less firm now, or was that just wishful thinking?

"But I didn't take your baby. I didn't let your wife die. If you shoot me to send a message to God, how do you justify that?"

The shotgun definitely wavered this time, but his voice was still defiant. "He started it."

"So you're going to sink to His level?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

In one moment of terrified clarity, it all made sense. Paul groped for the words that could express it. "If God is as bad as you say, then you're all you've got. Don't you think you owe it to yourself to be better than that?"

The shotgun thumped on the carpeted floor. The latecomer slid to the floor and curled up by the base of the lectern, sobbing like a child.

An answered prayer

I knew as soon as it happened that it was God's doing. What was it, something like five percent of the adult population that disappeared, and that just happened to include Mom and virtually her whole church, that had been predicting this for years? No way was that a coincidence.

But just because God had proved he existed didn't mean I was going to fall on my knees and start worshipping him. I couldn't get my head round this idea of a supposedly loving God that would split families up the way the Event did. If I could have talked to Mom about it, maybe she would have been able to explain it, or maybe not. But that was the whole point: she was gone. Everybody that could have made sense of it for me was gone, and I had to try to put it together on my own. When I first went away to college, I thought I was pretty smart, but this was way beyond me.

I tried talking to Dad about it, but he was coping in his own way. When he wasn't wallowing in guilt over all the times he'd come close to cheating on Mom, he was praying and trying to convince me I needed to join him. I told him how nasty and spiteful this God sounded, how I couldn't pray to any God who would do such a thing until I understood why, and the only reason he could give was that if I didn't kiss God's ass nicely, he might do something else even worse.

That might have suited Dad nicely, but it didn't suit me, so I didn't join in with his prayers. I did go to the church to see if the pastor guy could explain it any better, but he was too busy coming out with Bible geek stuff about how the weird preachers in Jerusalem tied in exactly with some prophecy or other. Dad just ate it all up, but it didn't come close to answering any of my questions.

I was praying though, kind of. At least, I was talking to Mom, as if she could still hear me, as if she could somehow answer me. We didn't always see eye-to-eye before, but now that she was gone I realised how many little things she'd done for me and how much I depended on her being there. I suppose I was putting on the rose-tinted glasses a bit, but the way she used to drive me nuts with her Bible quotes for every occasion didn't seem to matter as much as the fact that she was there for me and always had time to listen.

That was where things were at when we went to New York. Dad was meeting Hattie, the flight attendant he'd come closest to cheating on Mom with, and he wanted me along to prove how completely above-board everything was now. He wanted to tell her how God was behind the Event, and how she'd better get praying for the good of her soul, and he didn't get how creepy that was going to come across however I explained it. He was just utterly convinced that he was doing what God wanted him to do.

The scariest thing was, I thought he might be right.

Anyway, Hattie introduced Dad to Buck, this journalist guy who had been on his flight when the Event happened. For some reason I didn't really get, Buck wanted to interview Dad for the piece he was writing about the Event, which would have made Dad's day if he hadn't been so concerned about saving Hattie's soul. Buck and I cleared out to give him time to do that, and we spent a while wandering round the airport talking.

Well, Buck did most of the talking. I got the feeling he never really talked to anyone in depth: he seemed so grateful for the way I listened and let him pour it all out. And somehow we got drawn into flirting with each other, even though ... I mean, we didn't have a lot in common, apart from both being lonely. I guess the Event had thrown us both off a bit, and it was easier to hold onto someone else than to stand up on our own. Part of me felt like a bit of flirting was nothing to be ashamed of, but another part of me felt terrible at the way I was leading him on. Not to mention, how could I be thinking of things like that so soon after Mom...?

I didn't want to sit around listening to Buck interviewing Dad, so I sneaked away to the ladies' room. Hattie had the same idea, and we ended up standing awkwardly in front of the mirrors. Just looking at her, I could tell that however bad I'd thought Dad's salvation pitch was going to be, he'd somehow managed to make it worse. If this was what being on God's team could do, I wanted no part of it, ever.

But I didn't want to believe this was what God was really all about. I already knew how much power he had, and if he was that much of an asshole - I didn't want to think about it. But Mom had been on God's team for much longer, and she had never done anything like that. Maybe Dad was just making mistakes because he was new to the whole thing. You don't know how much I wanted to believe that.

So as soon as I had a minute to myself, I said another of my "prayers" to Mom. Asked her if she could sort of have a word with God, get him to send me some kind of sign. Just to let me know that Dad was wrong, that this wasn't the whole of God's will. And you know how sometimes when you pray, you get a calm, hopeful feeling inside as if someone really was listening? When I'd finished praying, that's how I felt.

There was still the problem of Buck. I still hadn't worked out whether I had anything to be ashamed of, but I felt like I did need to apologise for leading him on and make it clear that I didn't want things to go any further. The last thing I needed in my life was relationship drama. So I hung around after the meal to try to explain, but I couldn't find the right words. He seemed to think my talking to him meant I was interested, and I ended up giving him a vague brush-off about how he would have to look me up if he was ever in Chicago, which wasn't one of my better moments. He said something intense about how that would be sooner than I thought, which kind of gave me the creeps.

And when I got on the plane home the next day, who was sitting right next to me? I don't suppose it's a particularly impressive answer to a prayer, coming from someone who has the power to vanish millions of people in an instant, but maybe he couldn't be bothered to do more. After all, I was only the daughter of one of his believers. Besides, it got the message across effectively enough.

There's always something else

David slumped in front of the television, no longer taking in the images of weeping parents and grim-faced experts.

His ex-girlfriends had both called, five minutes apart, to confirm what he had known and not wanted to believe. His son was gone. His daughter was gone. It still didn't seem real: how could so many children just disappear like that?

A knock on the door dragged him out of his seat - perhaps it was news. Not much chance of that, maybe, but he had to keep believing.

Clare stood on the doorstep, her eyes red and puffy from crying. "Can I come in?"

David shrugged. "If you like."

"She's gone," Clare said. "The only thing I ever did right in my life. I didn't even know ... I was asleep."

"I know." She had called him so many times, crying over her failed relationships and her failed business and her epic credit card debts. It had become almost a ritual, that she would say she'd failed at everything she tried and he would reassure her that she had a happy, healthy daughter who loved her more than anyone else in the world. But now her daughter was gone. "How are you coping?"

"How are you coping? Did your boy...?"

According to the news, not quite all children had vanished. Most of the survivors were teenagers, but here and there a few as young as ten remained. He shook his head. "They're both gone."

She started crying again. He wanted to snap that she didn't even know his children: she'd seen his daughter maybe twice in her life, and never seen his son except in pictures. But he knew she was most likely crying for her daughter, or crying over the incomprehensible scale of the disaster.

Finally, she fished a soggy tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose noisily. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just ... I've lost Elspeth, and when I look at you I just see that same loss, and it's even harder to bear. I'm not making any sense."

"None of this makes any sense." He was used to having an answer when she cried, and he had nothing. He was dangerously close to tears himself.

"I was going to go up to the bridge," she said. "She was my only reason to go on living, and now ... But I remembered that thing about, 'There's always something else you can do.' Do you think that's still true?"

Was anything still true, in a world where your children could just disappear? "I don't know." He reached for her and pulled her close. "Maybe."

They held onto each other for a while. It didn't fill the gap his children had left, but it made the emptiness easier to bear. There was still someone in this cold, childless world that he could hold, that he could-

"Clare, what are you doing?"

"I can't live without her," she said, unfastening his belt. "You don't know what it was like before she was born, when I had nobody. I can't go back to that. I can't."

"No, but you can't ... this isn't the way to cope. This might only be temporary. You can't just ... replace her."

"I have to do something. Otherwise I might as well just jump off that bridge."

David thought about all the bits of his children's lives that he'd missed, one way and another. Didn't he want, deep down, to try again and get it right this time? Not to replace his children, no, but when they came back, he could tell them they had a new brother or sister. He could find a way, somehow, to take care of them all.

It was wrong, of course, but so was a world where your children vanished without so much as a warning. And she wanted it badly enough for both of them, so he let her have her way.