Our daughter is missing!

It was one of those times you hear about on the news, but you never really think it’ll happen to you. Our daughter, who is 13 missed the school bus this morning and had to catch the regular bus from our village to her school in the next village along, a journey of about 2.5 miles. I was cycling to work along the same road and was overtaken by the bus she should have been on, but she wasn’t so I phone home and we agreed she’d probably be on the next bus and I continued on to work. As soon as I arrived my wife was on the phone really distressed that our daughter still hadn’t shown up at school. It would have taken me too long to cycle back home so a colleague kindly drove me there. At this point we were both very worried as our daughter doesn’t bunk off school or anything like that so we knew something had happened. I phoned 999 for the police and reported her missing, as soon as I’d hung up the school rang, she’d finally arrived having taken the wrong bus. We jumped in the car and picked her up, relieved that she was OK. Although she was only missing for a short time nevertheless the panic that hits you is horrible and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. We listened to her story and at least we can now laugh about it since she’ OK. She got on the bus and realised after a while it was going the wrong way, but assumed she must have taken the circular route bus. She eventually plucked up the nerve to ask the driver who confirmed she was on the wrong bus. He let her off and told her where to get the bus back, but some how she ended up on the wrong side of the road and the next bus she stopped was also going the wrong way. She walked to the next stop, sat down to read her book and waited, but as the shelter had been vandalised and the windows were no longer see through when the bus came the driver didn’t see her and didn’t stop, now she had to wait again for the next bus, which finally took her to school. To cap it all this had to be one of the few days when she didn’t have her mobile, so couldn’t call and let us know. Needless to say she feels a bit silly for getting on the wrong bus in the first place but everyone is relieved that nothing really bad happened.