The Time We Lost Our Daughter

For about an hour and a half, I genuinely thought something might have happened to my daughter.

Everything turned out absolutely fine in the end, but there was a point where we had no idea where she was, nobody could find her, and every minute that passed made the situation feel worse.

It all started with a school trip.

She'd been away for three days on one of those outdoor adventure trips. We used to call them PGL when I was younger. Climbing, abseiling, team-building exercises and all that sort of thing.

The plan was simple. The coaches would arrive back at school, we'd pick her up, help her with her suitcase and go home.

What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, apparently.

I got there early because parking around the school is awful at the best of times. Unfortunately, the places I'd normally park had been reserved for the coaches, so I ended up a few streets away waiting for them to arrive.

We got a message from the school saying the coaches were running a little late. No problem.

My wife was finishing work nearby, so I asked her to head over and see if there were any parking spaces closer to the school. A few minutes later I rang her.

"They're already here," she said.

Perfect, I thought.

I got out of the car and started walking towards the school.

Halfway there, my wife appeared walking back towards me.

"She's not there."

"What do you mean she's not there?"

"She's not on the coach."

That was the moment things started getting strange.

At first we assumed we'd simply missed her. Maybe she'd already walked further down the road where I usually park. Maybe she'd gone around the other side of the school. Maybe she'd seen one of us and we'd somehow crossed paths.

So we split up and started looking.

Nothing.

Back to the coaches.

Nothing.

The driver remembered seeing a suitcase with a unicorn on it, which matched hers, but couldn't remember seeing it come off the coach.

Other students couldn't remember seeing her either.

That wasn't exactly reassuring.

One of the teachers stopped to ask if we'd found her.

When we explained we hadn't, she said she didn't remember seeing her since they'd arrived.

Again, not reassuring.

She then joked that maybe they'd left her tied to a tree.

There are moments for jokes.

This wasn't one of them.

By now teachers were helping search. People were checking classrooms, corridors and toilets. Staff had radios out. Parents were looking up and down surrounding streets.

And still nobody could find her.

The thing that made it difficult was that we had no way of contacting her.

She didn't have her phone because phones weren't allowed on the trip. She didn't have her keys because she'd left them at home. She didn't have anything we could use to work out where she'd gone.

All we could do was keep looking.

As time went on, my brain started doing what I imagine every parent's brain does in that situation.

You start with reasonable explanations.

Maybe she's with a friend.

Maybe she walked the wrong way.

Maybe she's waiting somewhere.

Then the less reasonable thoughts start appearing.

What if something happened on the way back?

What if somebody grabbed her?

What if she got lost?

What if she's hurt?

You spend most of your energy trying not to think those things while simultaneously thinking about nothing else.

I was trying to stay calm because somebody had to. Outwardly I was convinced she'd be fine.

Internally I was starting to panic.

After more than an hour of searching, I decided the only thing left to do was get in the car and start driving around the routes she might have taken.

The problem was I didn't actually know which route she'd have chosen.

She walks home different ways depending on who she's with, so I was mostly making it up as I went along.

Then, in the distance, I saw someone pulling a suitcase.

At first it was just a shape.

Then I noticed what looked suspiciously like a unicorn on the front.

Then I realised the person pulling it looked very familiar.

It was her.

Just casually walking home.

I pulled over, jumped out of the car and ran over to her.

She looked up and smiled.

"Hey Dad."

Like we'd bumped into each other at the supermarket.

Meanwhile we'd spent the last hour and a half searching half the town.

When we'd both calmed down enough to actually talk about what happened, the explanation turned out to be surprisingly simple.

She'd been one of the first people off the coach.

Because she'd kept her suitcase with her instead of putting it underneath, she'd got off before most of the other students.

She walked to the spot where I normally park, waited there for a while, and when nobody appeared she assumed something had happened and we couldn't get there.

So she decided to walk home.

Perfectly logical.

The problem was that while she was waiting for us, we were searching everywhere else.

Then when she started walking home, we were searching the school.

By the time we'd expanded the search further out, she'd already moved on again.

We'd basically spent an hour and a half chasing each other around without realising it.

The thing that impressed me most was how calm she was about the whole thing.

She never panicked.

She never got upset.

She simply decided that if nobody was there, she'd solve the problem herself.

Her plan was to walk home, press the doorbell and wait until one of us answered.

It's hard to argue with the logic.

At the time it was terrifying.

Looking back now, it's one of those stories that's funny because of how ordinary the explanation turned out to be.

But I also learned something that afternoon.

If you ever wonder how you'd react if your child went missing, even for a short time, the answer is: not very well.