In a recent post for the Daily Mail, a well-known mum-of-two opened up about the evening she was plunged head first into every parent's worst nightmare.
Saira Khan, who rose to fame on The Apprentice in 2005, cast her mind back to an evening last July when the warm summer night she has been enjoying with her husband, Steve, dissolved suddenly into fear and panic.
Having put her seven-year-old son, Zac, to bed, Saira was stunned when she received a phone call twenty minutes later informing her that her little boy was not where she left him.
Replaying the conversation she had with her the matron from her son's school, she wrote: "I don’t want to alarm you, but we’ve just had a call from a lady saying she’s found a little boy wandering the streets of Oxford. He says his name’s Zac and he goes to our school."
Stunned that she might be referring to her little boy, Saira, presenter of The Martin Lewis Money Show, recalls replying: "Don’t be silly, I’ve just put my son to bed. It must be another Zac."
On the matron's polite, but insistent advice that the mum-of-two check on her little boy, Saira and her husband realised Zac was not where they assumed.
'Zac’s not in his bed', Saira recalls her husband saying as he stood in the doorway of the room, his face white as a sheet.
Thankfully, the matron was able to swiftly inform the distraught couple that their little boy was in the safe hands of a friend's family, and while a wave of relief ran through Saira, she remembers the shock she felt at the realisation he son was not safe at home with his family.
"How did this happen? Did somebody take him? At that stage I could see no other explanation." Saira recalls thinking as they made their way to the home of Zach's young friend.
In the heartfelt post, Saira recalls the events which unfolded in her home opon Zac's return, writing: "Steve took Zac into another room and for five or ten minutes I just heard this incredibly stern voice spelling out: ‘If you EVER do that again..."
Upon questioning their little boy for the reasoning behind his night time excursion, they were reminded of a playdate Zac had been promised.
When busy mum Saira failed to make good on that promise, Zac informed his friend he would honour the date without the help of his mum.
"His mate, quite reasonably, countered that he would never actually go through with it. Zac, who obviously loves a challenge, insisted he would," wrote Saira.
Recalling the timeline of events, Saira explained that Zac, wearing just Gruffalo slippers, spaceman pyjamas and a dressing gown, approached a woman for assistance before proffering 'a little hand-drawn map that showed ‘Zac’s house’ and a wobbly line leading to his friend’s."
Eternally grateful to the woman who ensured her child was cared for in her absence, Zac's disappearance ignited a concern within Saira that her career may have played a role in her son's lack of fear that night.
"People come up to us all the time, on the bus, in the supermarket, on holiday or just walking down the road. Looking at it through Zac’s eyes it’s obvious that everybody knows us, so what is there to be scared about in talking to a stranger?" she questions.
Having instilled the notion of Stranger Danger in her son, Saira is certain her son now sees the error of his ways and Saira realised the importance of honouring a date for her "little entrepreneur", writing: "Now, when Zac says ‘I want a playdate, mummy’, I sort a date and carry it out."
Proud of her son's determination and adventurous nature, Saira,finishes her post with the words: "Meanwhile, I shall remain secretly in awe of my rather amazing little boy."
