Tried and Tested

Chapter 8 : Tugging at Heartstrings : Olive

"Mum? Where's Enoch?" Olive frowned slightly as she stared around the room and slowly walked up behind the chair her mother was sitting in. Not wanting to draw much attention she leaned down over the back of the couch and kept her voice down. "He came in didn't he?"

"Not in here, I assumed he was still with you?"

"No..."

"Well I wouldn't be too surprised if he's off on his own. I'm sure he hasn't gone anywhere."

Unsurprisingly, getting the Christmas present her grandparents always insisted on giving individually took longer than she'd anticipated and by the time Olive was back with the rest of the company, Enoch wasn't anywhere in sight. But if he was off by himself, which she had no doubt he would prefer, there were only so many places he could be and she'd already walked through half of those.

She felt terrible, though admitting it would only make her boyfriend say "I told you so" for dragging him here. He really hadn't wanted to come and she'd made him and now nobody liked him anyway.
Then the last person she would have expected to care that Enoch had disappeared spoke up as if he'd read Olive's mind.
"If you're looking for him," Her dad piped up and Olive's head whipped around to face him with raised eyebrows. "I thought I saw him go up the stairs awhile ago."

"...Why would he go upstairs?"

Enoch might have limited social skills, which were just part of who he was, but he was hardly the type to snoop around an elderly couple's home uninvited and all that was upstairs were a few bedrooms and a bathroom anyway. Had he so desperately wanted to get away, despite what he said about not caring, that he was just leaning in the empty upstairs on his phone? Actually...put that way, it was less unlikely.

"Don't ask me. Why does that boy do anything?"

Olive sighed. The goodwill could only extend so far. She had a strong feeling that if it weren't for her, her father couldn't have cared less whether Enoch was in another room or on another planet. Oh well. It was a jolly good thing Olive refrained from mentioning that Enoch sometimes visited her in Cambridge whenever she talked about school to him. Theo Elephanta would have exploded.

"Thank you, Dad." She said pointedly and was quite thankful for the tutted
'Theo...' she heard from her mother as she sidled past him and into the hallway.

"Enoch?" It was worth a try, despite making a few heads turn curiously to look at her through the doorway. She smiled sheepishly before taking to the stairs at a quick little trot.
Despite what she had been expecting, Enoch was not just around the corner in the darkened hallway brooding and keeping to himself. This was silly. Enoch wouldn't be up here, it was more likely he would have grabbed his coat and gone back outside than snuck around up here.

Olive had just turned around to go back downstairs when Claire's bell-like laughter sounded down the corridor from a room whose door was slightly ajar and streamed a streak of light across the floor. Claire. That's who was up here. It was a longshot, but she might know if Enoch had slipped by unnoticed.
She had just laid a hand on the door and opened her mouth to say something when an extremely unexpected and delightfully Cockney accent stopped whatever she had been about to say.

"I am not namin' a blood-bloomin' doll."

There was no way. Olive's ears had to be deceiving her. That was not Enoch talking to Claire. She wasn't sure which was more unlikely, who he was speaking to or the fact he was minding his words.
She had heard it, but Olive absolutely did not believe it. She needed to be certain it was Enoch talking. Placing a palm flat on the door, she gently pushed it. It opened silently, mercifully, and just far enough to show Claire smiling and sitting down at a child's pale mauve tea table. Across from her, cross legged on the floor with half his face visible to Olive, was indeed Enoch.