Sophie and the Shopping Centre

The shopping centre on a Saturday sounds like the inside of a seashell — everything at once, and none of it clear.

Sophie had stopped at a window. Behind the glass was a paint set with forty-eight colours in a wooden box, arranged in rows like a rainbow that had been tidied up.

She looked at it for a while. There were four different greens. She was working out which one she would use for a horse's field.

Then she turned round to show Mum.

Mum was not there.

Sophie's heart went fast — really fast, like it does at the top of a slide. Everyone in the whole shopping centre was suddenly a stranger's coat moving past.

Here is what Sophie did not do: she did not run. Running is what your legs want, and it is almost always the wrong idea, because a running child and a searching parent can miss each other for a very long time.

Instead she did the three things she and Mum had practised in the car park, back when being lost was only a pretend game.

One: stop. She put both feet still, right by the paint shop window, so she would be easy to find.

Two: count to ten. She got to seven before her heart slowed down enough to think. Mum said that would happen, and it did.

Three: look for a name badge. Someone who worked there. Someone she chose.

Before she could get to the shop door, a man stopped beside her.

"You look a bit lost," he said kindly. "Have you lost your mum? Come on, I'll help you find her. She'll be up by the escalators, I expect."

And Sophie felt the wobbly feeling arrive right on time, underneath how much she wanted someone to fix this.

Because that was the rule, and the rule was the whole reason they had practised. Go to a helper you choose. Not the one who comes to you.

"No thank you," said Sophie. "I'm going to ask in the shop."

And she walked through the open door of the paint shop, up to the counter, to a woman in a green apron with a badge that said PRIYA.

"Excuse me," said Sophie. "I've lost my mum. My name is Sophie and my mum's name is Claire."

Priya was excellent at this. She did not make a fuss. She lifted a phone by the till, said a few words, and then leaned on the counter and asked Sophie whether she liked painting.

Sophie said yes, mostly horses. Priya said the greens in the forty-eight box were better than the greens in the twenty-four box, which Sophie had already suspected.

Then a voice said "Sophie!" from the doorway, and Mum was there, and it turned out the whole thing had lasted three minutes.

Three minutes. It had felt like a week.

"You stayed put," said Mum, kneeling down. "You found a badge. You said your name and my name. Sophie, that was perfect."

On the way out they agreed on one more thing, which is the part clever families add: a meeting spot. The big clock by the fountain. If they ever lost each other again, that is where they would both go.

"And if I'm not there yet?" said Sophie.

"Then you wait, and you find a badge, and you tell them where we said we'd meet."

Sophie nodded. Being lost, it turned out, was not one enormous scary thing. It was three small steps and a clock by a fountain.