I was lost for exactly seven minutes.
I know because my father checked his watch approximately fourteen times after finding me.
To me, however, those seven minutes lasted half a lifetime.
We were at a crowded book fair.
One moment, I was walking beside my parents.
The next, I stopped at a stall because a giant illustrated atlas had caught my attention.
I opened it.
There were maps of imaginary worlds, drawings of sea monsters and tiny notes about explorers.
I forgot everything else.
When I finally turned around, my parents were gone.
At first, I was not afraid.
Obviously, they were nearby.
I walked to the next stall.
Then the next.
No Mum.
No Dad.
The hall suddenly seemed much larger than it had five minutes earlier.
Thousands of people were moving in every direction.
Every adult wearing a blue shirt briefly looked like my father.
Every woman with long hair made me speed up.
Nobody was them.
My clever solution was to retrace my steps.
Unfortunately, every stall looked almost identical.
BOOKS.
DISCOUNT.
NEW RELEASES.
CHILDREN’S SECTION.
I began walking faster.
Then I remembered something my parents had told me many times:
If you get separated in a crowded place, do not keep wandering.
Find a responsible adult and stay in one location.
It was excellent advice.
I wished I had remembered it three minutes earlier.
I approached a woman wearing an organiser badge.
“I can’t find my parents.”
She immediately became calm in the way adults become calm when they realise a child is not.
“What is your name?”
I told her.
“Parents’ names?”
I told her those too.
“Phone number?”
Blank.
I knew my own number.
I knew our Wi-Fi password.
I knew the name of every member of my favourite football team.
I did not know my father’s phone number.
That felt like an important design flaw in my education.
The organiser took me to the information desk.
An announcement began.
Before it finished, I saw my father.
He was moving through the crowd at a speed I had never seen him achieve voluntarily.
Mum was behind him.
My relief arrived so quickly that I nearly laughed.
Dad did not.
He hugged me first.
Then examined me as though I might have lost a limb without noticing.
Then came the questions.
“Where did you go?”
“Why did you move?”
“Do you know what time it is?”
Apparently, seven minutes had passed.
Only seven.
That evening, Dad made me memorise both my parents’ phone numbers.
I complained.
I repeated them anyway.
The atlas that caused the entire disaster came home with us.
Dad bought it.
I still have it.
On the first page, in his handwriting, are two phone numbers.
I memorised the numbers years ago.
I have never erased them.
