{Becky} "Missing" Chapter 1 - Book

Chapter 1

Raven's heart jumped. She felt her face flame. Her eyes were glued to the felt hat and black coat worn by a man walking in the opposite direction. The footpath was crowded and Raven, standing still, was jostled in the seething flow of people rushing for trains or buses and the warmth of their homes.
Someone's bag knocked her leg, snapping her out of her shocked paralysis. She stood on tip-toe, dodging left then right.
A hand grabbed her arm.
Raven flinched.
Sarah's mouth was moving, but Raven couldn't hear what her friend was saying. It was just noise. Raven pulled her arm free and plunged into the crowd, her heart beating hard and painfully.
In just a few seconds, scarcely long enough to gather her thoughts, the man had disappeared. She couldn't see him along the footpath nor on the pedestrian crossing. Frantically she cut across the stream of people and headed toward the shop entrances nearest to the last spot she had seen him.
Florist? she wondered, and looked, and looked through the front window.
Inside was only a tired-looking woman sshizing thorns from rose stems with wide metal tweezers.
Raven moved to the men's clothing store next door and peered in.
There he is!
He was stroking ties on a rack as though the feel of them was more important than the colour or price.
Raven wrenched the door open and a blast of overwarm air from a heater escaped into the cold afternoon. The salesman looked surprised. Raven's back, under her maroon blazer and backpack, was damp with perspiration. She marched past the rack of suits and jackets to the man in the familiar hat and coat and tapped his shoulder.
He spun around.
'Oh ... I ... I ...' Raven's stuttering never made it into a complete sentence.
This man's face was all wrong. His moustache was as lush and tended as a prize garden. A protruding forehead sheltered deep-set grey eyes and his chin was rough with stubble. He looked confused.
It broke her heart. Raven felt it splinter into little pieces and fall ever so silently onto the carpeted floor.
The salesmen frowned, perturbed that the elegant quietness of his store had been interrupted by an overexcited girl in a school uniform. 'May I help you, miss?'
Raven swallowed the sick taste that came up into her throat. "I wish you could.'
She turned away, not wanting them to see how much it hurt that the familiar hat had been shielding a face she had never seen. The coat protecting a body she had never hugged.
Disappointed, embarrassed, she hurried to the door. As she pulled it open, cold air slapped her face.
'Wait!' called a voice from behind her. It must be the Stanger in the hat. His tone, warm and sincere, was different to that of the salesman's.
'Sorry,' called Raven over her shoulder as she shot through the door. 'I thought you were someone else.'
She blended back into the crowd, hoping people would think the cold winter wind was making her eyes water.