When the call comes Megan is trying – and failing – to feed her daughter. There is rice cereal on the tray of the high chair, rice cereal all over Evie’s face and rice cereal on Megan’s hands; but so far none of it seems to have been swallowed by Evie, whose little tongue pokes out indignantly every time the spoon comes anywhere near her mouth.
‘I give up, baby girl,’ says Megan, laughing as she wipes her daughter’s face.
Evie smiles at her.
Megan’s phone starts ringing, and she glances down, seeing it’s Michael. A rare middle-of-the-day call.
‘Hey, babe, what’s up?’ she asks as she lifts Evie out of the high chair and puts her on the floor on her back. Evie immediately flips over and begins trying to get up on her hands and knees.
‘Megan, they found him,’ says Michael, dispensing with the pleasantry of ‘hello’.
‘Found who?’ she asks, watching Evie rock back and forth in the crawling position. She is only days away from being able to move, keen to put babyhood behind her despite being only six months old.
Megan assumes that Michael must be talking about someone from one of his latest cases. Mostly shrouded in secrecy, they are sometimes mentioned over dinner when some of the information is already out in the wide world for speculation and horror. She finds the stories he tells painful to hear but she feels she must listen. She must give the heartbreak of others her attention. Her own pain has strengthened her ability to empathise with those who find their lives shattered in an instant and dwarfed by grief. But he has never called to update her during the day, preferring to talk to her over dinner, use her as a sounding board.
The news is on the television and Megan glances at the screen, where a picture of a young man flashes and words scroll beneath his genial face: missing backpacker Steven Hindley from England. Megan looks around for the remote so she can turn up the sound in case this is the person Michael is talking about, and she experiences a flash of alarm that someone so young may have met a terrible end. She watches as a young woman with short pink hair tells a reporter, ‘He, like, loved Newcastle, you know, said he wanted to visit every part of New South Wales. He said he wanted to go to a rave here. Maybe he’s just back in Sydney and hasn’t contacted anyone.’
Megan turns down the sound. Newcastle is not Michael’s jurisdiction. Michael doesn’t work missing persons anyway, not anymore.
‘They found…’ says Michael and then he stops.
Megan runs through their conversation last night, imagining her tall, broad-shouldered husband at his desk, tapping his pencil to make the rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat sound. The sound signals anxiety, signals the fact that he feels a little out of control.
It could be an old case. Despite now working with serious crimes, he still looks into his old missing persons cases when he can. Closure brings him relief, regardless of the outcome. It could be one of the cases he’s working on now. They discussed a woman whose husband beat her up and left her for dead, and one about a driver who hit an old man then left him to die.
She becomes aware of the silence at the other end of the phone, and without the slightest warning, a prickling sensation crawls up her arms. Her heart rate speeds up. Her breathing accelerates like it does when she’s running.
‘Found who?’ she asks again, slowly, carefully, deliberately repeating the words.
‘Daniel,’ says Michael. ‘They found Daniel.’
Megan slaps at the alarm clock, hitting it off her bedside table, stopping it from letting her know that she has, once again, hit the snooze button. She grabs her phone from the side of the bed and peers blearily at the screen. It’s only seven twenty. Not as late as she thought, but late enough.
She curls herself into a ball, groans a little and finally flings back the covers and leaps to her feet.
She can hear the television is on; morning cartoons blare around the small apartment, bouncing off the walls. Too much wine last night. Too much lonely always leads to too much wine. She knows she will eventually get used to the late-night silence that pervades the apartment, and maybe even learn to enjoy it, but last night it had made her feel trapped and intently aware of her separateness from the rest of the world. The wine had helped. One glass had made her feel better, two glasses had made her feel optimistic about the future, three had made the comedy on television hilarious and then, without her noticing, the bottle was done.
‘All I want to do is love you, Megan. Is that too much to ask?’ She hears the words he spat into her ear, his fingers bruising her jaw. Pushing aside the memory, she washes her face, acknowledging that a lonely bottle of wine and a thumping headache are easier to deal with than her ex-husband Greg’s suffocating, obsessive, controlling company. His version of love cannot be recovered from with some paracetamol, washed down by a cup of strong, bitter coffee and a litre of water.
‘Daniel, turn that down,’ she shouts as she grabs tracksuit pants and a warm jumper from the wardrobe, suitable for the school run. It’s not like she’ll get out of the car anyway. She can’t bear to face all the mothers, not when she’s feeling like this.
A quick glance in the mirror makes her wince. The circles under her eyes are dark enough to look like bruises. She really needs to drink more water, start exercising and generally get her life together. She shakes her head at herself. ‘You’re doing okay,’ she whispers to her reflection, and she’s immediately cheered by the way her brown eyes light up a little. She pulls her long, curly, black hair into a ponytail and smiles at herself. ‘You’re doing okay.’
The affirmations, recommended by a website filled with advice for people going through divorce, made her feel stupid in the beginning, but on days when she questions what has happened to her life, what has happened to her, they help. They really do.
In the living room, six-year-old Daniel is dressed in his sports pants. Bare-chested, his ribs protrude, fighting with his collarbones for angles in almost comical opposition to his chubby cheeks. He is slumped on the couch, spooning cereal into his mouth. How can someone who never stops eating be this skinny? I should look into supplements, Megan thinks as she appraises her son.
‘I can’t find my school sports top.’ Daniel doesn’t take his eyes off the television, where a talking dog is flying through space.
Megan tears around the apartment, looking under the couches and in the bedrooms, opening the washing machine and tumble dryer and finally finding the top, neatly folded on top of the clean laundry. ‘Daniel, it’s sitting right here. If it was a snake, it would have bitten you.’
‘But it’s not a snake, Mum, it’s my sports top.’ He grins. Four missing front teeth, but still beautiful. A rush of love fills her and she kisses each chubby cheek. ‘I’m watching, Mum,’ he protests.
‘Sorry, here, lean forward and put down the cereal for a second.’ Megan pulls the top over his head and he obediently threads his arms through. ‘Now go and find your tracksuit top, will you?’
‘I’m sitting on it. Now you have to pack my lunch.’
‘I know, Daniel, I’m getting a little tired of you telling me what to do,’ she snaps, instantly regretting it. How can my mood change this quickly? I’m doing okay, I’m doing okay.
She takes a deep breath. ‘I mean, I know, baby. I know what I have to do to get you ready for school.’
Annie, the school psychologist, says he keeps telling her what to do because he needs to feel he’s in control of something.
‘It’s a coping mechanism. Divorce can make children feel very insecure,’ the earnest young woman had reported to Megan. ‘Daniel is a sensitive child who needs to feel that he can manage this change. He’s not being rude, he’s just making sure you aren’t late or don’t forget something.’
‘I understand, I do,’ Megan had replied. ‘But sometimes it feels like he’s trying to mother me. I’m struggling to feel in control of my own life too, and being told what to do by a six-year-old only heightens that.’
‘This must be very hard for both of you,’ Annie had said, focusing her sympathetic gaze on Megan, who found herself tearing up at the psychologist’s kindness.
‘Yes… it’s been… just horrible.’
‘Does Daniel get along with his father?’
‘They do, I mean, sort of. It’s funny to see them together because they both have the same curly brown hair and hazel eyes, like carbon copies on the outside, but inside they couldn’t be more different. Greg was always…’ Megan had paused. She hadn’t wanted to say ‘a bully’ because she hadn’t wanted to paint that picture for the psychologist.
She finds this juxtaposition of thoughts about her ex-husband difficult to deal with. She would like to announce his sins to the world but she’s acutely aware that as Daniel’s father, he needs to be spoken of carefully to protect her son. How she sees Greg isn’t how Daniel sees him. She wouldn’t want Daniel to see his father like that.
To her, Greg is a bully, an emotionally – and sometimes physically – abusive man, a nightmare of an ex-husband. To Daniel he is a hero, a joker, a friend to play with.
‘Greg was always the loud kid at school, the sporty one, you know,’ she had explained to the psychologist. ‘He had lots of friends and he played for every team. Daniel is more like me: quiet and he’s very artistic.’
‘Oh, I know, I’ve seen his paintings hanging in the hall at our art shows. You teach art, don’t you?’
‘Yes, although I haven’t had much time to do my own work lately. But hopefully sometime soon.’
Annie had leaned across the desk, covering Megan’s hand with her own slightly rough one. ‘I’m sure you’ll get back to it very soon. You and Daniel are going to be just fine.’
Megan had been oddly grateful for the words. From a stranger, they seemed to carry more weight than from her mother or her brother, Connor, or his husband James.
‘Everything is packed and ready,’ says Megan, remembering the psychologist’s platitudes. ‘Are you ready for a great school day?’
‘Ready!’ shouts Daniel.
At the school drop-off she gets out of the car, just long enough to hug Daniel.
He grins up at her. ‘Have a good day, Mum, enjoy your art stuff… Look, there’s Max, Max, Maxie,’ he calls and he runs off without looking back.
‘Love you,’ shouts Megan to his back. Three children turn around. She could be speaking to any one of them. She spots Olivia, Max’s mum, who gives her a thumbs up and holds her hand up to her face, miming ‘call me’ as she pulls away from the drop-off zone.
Back at home, Megan tidies and sips coffee as she gets ready for work. She’s starting the day with a new class of people from the aged care home. Megan loves these art classes. They are all so supportive of each other, all so excited to be there. There’s no competition, no comparisons. They are all past that, at an age where merely being alive is cause for celebration. They are joyous to be around.
Her hours at the art studio pass quickly, and over lunch she gives silent thanks for Mr Pietro and his support. When he’d first heard her news he had said, ‘As many classes as you want, my darling, you just tell me. Divorce is a terrible thing, but sometimes to stay married is even more terrible.’
She had loved Mr Pietro in that moment, loved him for understanding without her needing to explain just how hideous things had become.
Her boss had never indicated that he was aware of what was going on at home, but sometimes he would bring a cup of tea into her studio and say, ‘I thought something hot and soothing would be nice. I think this morning was, perhaps, not that good a morning.’
‘Oh no, I love my classes,’ she would reply quickly, panicked that he thought she wasn’t happy in her job. It was, after all, the place where she could forget that she had been labelled a whore over breakfast for wearing red lipstick.
‘I mean this morning at home, Megan,’ he would reply quietly, taking off his little round glasses and polishing them. Even though she wanted to tell him he was wrong, it had been easier, on days like that, to simply nod her head.
At the end of the day she stands outside the school, watching the primary-school students tumble out of classrooms, laughing and talking, greeting parents with enthusiastic hugs as though they have been apart for years. Even at three thirty, the light has already started to change as they see out the last month of autumn. Megan wonders how her first winter in the flat where she and Daniel have had to move will go when it’s dark by five o’clock in the afternoon. She worries about feeling claustrophobic in the small, stifling space after having had the vast expanse of her garden to enjoy.
‘Megs, over here,’ she hears. Olivia is dressed for court with her hair tightly wound in a bun and wearing a pants suit that only seems to accentuate how small she is.
‘I thought you’d be in court all day?’
‘Nope, the whole thing degenerated into complete chaos with the husband swearing at the wife and the wife’s mother standing up and threatening to kill him, so it was all adjourned with stern instructions from the judge for everyone to learn how to behave. Honestly, you would think it was an episode of Suits the way these two are acting.’
‘I wish you could tell me who they are.’
Olivia brushes her fingers across her lips. ‘No way, Megs. It’s all strictly confidential, but you would have seen their photos in all the tabloids. Anyway, the good news is that I get to pick up Max. Roy wants to take us out to dinner.’
‘Lucky you. Celebrating something?’
Olivia looks down at her high-heeled boots and her face clouds. ‘We’re going to start trying IVF.’
‘Oh, babe, I’m so sorry you have to, but it’s a good thing, right? You’ll be pregnant in no time and complaining about back pain and nausea.’
‘I guess,’ agrees Olivia. She looks up at Megan. ‘The two of us, hey? We really need a few good months.’
‘If Greg would just stop emailing and texting me constantly, I would be happy.’
‘He still doing that?’
‘Yep. Still hoping I’ll come back to him. It’s been two months since we signed the parental orders and finished mediation. I thought he would have given up by now but he keeps telling me how much he’s always loved me, how much I’ve hurt him, how I don’t deserve to have a child because I’ve broken our family, and the latest is, “You’ll know this pain one day.” I know it’s all just idle threats but it still gets to me.’ The words emerge with a flippancy that Megan does not feel.
Her mother had tried to reassure her that it was all just hot air and anger from Greg, that all he was doing was trying to scare her and that she shouldn’t take any notice of him at all. But Megan worried that it was more than that, that Greg was angry enough to do something to really hurt her or Daniel.
‘Hang in there, babe,’ says Olivia, dragging her away from her thoughts. ‘He’ll find someone else to control soon enough. There’ll be some young thing who has no idea what he’s really like, and she’ll be swept off her naive feet.’
‘Just like I was. Poor thing,’ Megan says, thinking about the charm of Greg’s attention and flattery, his beautiful eyes, his ability to make her feel like the luckiest woman in the world. ‘I imagine she’ll be swept away by the smile and the sports car as well. I feel like I should warn her.’
‘Not your problem. Oh, hey, Max.’
‘Hi, Max,’ Megan says to the dark-haired little boy. ‘Where’s Daniel?’
Max shrugs. ‘Mum, did you know that an ant can carry ten to fifty times its body weight?’
‘Really?’ Olivia smiles. ‘Fascinating. I’d better get him home and changed, Megs. I’ll call you tomorrow.’
Megan waves goodbye to Olivia and Max and looks back at the kids pouring out of the school. The stream has slowed to a trickle now. Megan sighs. Daniel will be somewhere staring at a bird in a tree or an overfull rubbish bin or a piece of paper scrunched up on the floor. He dawdles and wanders, finding everything he sees fascinating, if he’s not with Max, who hurries him along. Megan waits, tapping her foot. When the high-school students start funnelling out ten minutes later, her irritation grows.
She sighs, giving up on waiting. She walks into the school, drawing curious glances from any teenager who can be dragged away from their phone.
It takes her ten minutes to cover the primary school, walking quickly and peering into any unlocked classrooms. When she finds herself back where she started, panic starts to rise inside her. She does another lap of the school, panting and sweating, fear making her mouth dry. Daniel is nowhere. Primary-school students are not allowed onto the high-school section of the school, and regardless of what might have caught his attention, Daniel would not have disobeyed that rule.
Muttering, ‘Where are you, Daniel?’ she runs to the administration office, bursting into the reception, startling the school secretary, Mrs Roberts, who calls the students ‘luvvy’.
‘My son, my son Daniel,’ pants Megan.
‘Ooh, darling, just calm down now, what is it?’
‘My son Daniel, Daniel Stanthorpe from year one. I can’t find him. I can’t find him anywhere.’
‘My goodness, oh my goodness. You just sit yourself down now. I’ll call… I’ll call Mr Nand. I’m sure the little mite is somewhere – you know children. Maybe he’s hiding, playing with a friend?’
‘No, no, no.’ Megan shakes her head vehemently. ‘I’ve looked. The primary-school kids are gone. The high-school kids are nearly all gone as well. He’s not here. He’s not anywhere.’
Mrs Roberts picks up her phone and has a whispered conversation.
Down the hall, a door opens and Mr Nand, the principal, strides out. ‘Mrs Stanthorpe, I understand you can’t find Daniel,’ he says. His tie is royal blue and his suit crisp and neat.
Everything’s going to be fine, Megan thinks. ‘Actually, it’s Ms Stanthorpe,’ she says. ‘I wanted to go back to my maiden name after the divorce but Daniel…’ She shakes her head. Idiot, idiot, why are you telling him this?
‘I’m sorry, Ms Stanthorpe. Please don’t worry. I’m sure he’s somewhere. He’s a bit of a dreamy one, quite the little artist. Maybe he’s in the art classrooms at the high school. I know the final year students are having a display of their work this afternoon.’
Relief floods through her. ‘Of course, of course.’ She smiles.
‘I’ll just see if I can get hold of his class teacher; maybe she knows where he might be. And Alice, could you call up to high-school reception? See if the lad is just getting some inspiration.’
‘Oh, yes, yes I’ll do that.’
Megan sags in her chair while Mr Nand looks up the mobile number for Daniel’s class teacher.
‘Oh, Jenny, yes hello, it’s Peter. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about but Ms Stanthorpe is here, Daniel’s mother. She can’t find Daniel.’
Megan watches Mr Nand nod once, twice, the office lights glinting off his rimless glasses. ‘Yes… yes, I understand. Okay, I’ll tell her. Just keep your phone on and nearby, will you, in case we need to speak again.’
‘Ms Stanthorpe, Ms Abramson said that Daniel was picked up by his father at the end of the day. She said your hus— ex-husband was standing outside the classroom when the final bell rang. Daniel seemed really pleased to see him and she assumed that he had arranged with you to fetch him.’
‘Oh,’ says Megan because she cannot think of anything else to say. ‘Oh.’
She pulls out her phone and calls Greg. She waits for it to go to voicemail and leaves a cheery message, straining to sound normal. ‘Hey, Greg, it’s me. I didn’t know you were picking up Daniel. Give me a call, okay, so I know what time you’ll have him home.’ Then she rings his landline at the flat he has only just leased. ‘This number is no longer in service. Please check the number before calling again.’
She calls his mobile again. Voicemail. She rings the landline again after double-checking the number. ‘This number is no longer in service. Please check the number before calling again.’ She does this for ten minutes, one number after the other while Mr Nand and Mrs Roberts watch her. Fear clawing at her, she looks up at the principal. ‘He wasn’t supposed to pick him up. He’s not answering the phone and it says his landline’s not in service anymore. I think… I think I need to call the police.’ She can feel the thrum of her heart in her neck and beads of sweat prickling her body. She takes a deep breath, trying to stop herself from panting. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, repeats inside her head.
‘Oh, surely not,’ says the ever-optimistic Mrs Roberts.
‘Call the police, Alice. Tell them we have a missing child. Tell them it might be a case of parental abduction.’ Mr Nand’s face is grave. He fiddles with his tie. ‘I’ll check the procedure on this,’ he says before going back to his office.
‘There’s a procedure for this?’ asks Megan, looking at Mrs Roberts as she puts down the phone.
‘Oh yes, luvvy. You know there’s a lot of divorce about these days and it can get a little complicated. The police are sending over two constables. They’ll be here soon.’
Megan drops her head into her hands. ‘One day you will know what this pain feels like,’ she hears Greg say, taunting her.
‘What have you done, Greg?’ she whispers. ‘What have you done?’
She looks up again. ‘Thanks. I’ll just call my mum. I’ll tell her to go to my apartment and wait in case they turn up.’
‘There you go, I’m sure that’s exactly what will happen.’
‘Yes, yes, I’m sure,’ Megan replies robotically before going outside to stand in the afternoon sun. She calls her mother, Susanna; she explains once, explains twice. She struggles to get the words out, to make sense, as though just by saying them she makes what’s happening real. She takes one deep breath after another, trying to calm herself, but her heart will not be slowed, her body will not be comforted.
‘I’ll call Connor and James. You need to call Greg’s friends and maybe ring his parents?’
‘His parents are in England, Mum.’
‘Of course. Is there anyone in Sydney?’
‘He has a cousin in Adelaide.’
‘Well, call them then. Call whoever you can and we’ll all keep trying his mobile phone. Maybe he’ll pick up if he doesn’t recognise the number. It’s so like him to do something this selfish. He has to know that you’d be worried sick.’
‘I’m sure that’s exactly why he’s done it.’
‘Oh, Megan, I’m sure it will be fine, don’t worry. Daniel will be safe home in bed tonight but you probably need to tell the school that Greg is never allowed to pick him up without your permission.’
‘Obviously I need to do that.’ Why didn’t I do that before? She has worried over every access visit Daniel has had with his father, counting the minutes until her child is home, opening her front door every time she hears voices. She has worried about the access visits but she has not thought to worry about school. How could she have been so stupid? But Greg had never, in all the years they were married, picked Daniel up from school. Not once.
‘Don’t snap, darling. I’m sorry, I’m just worried.’
‘I know, Mum. I’m sorry, I’m just worried too.’
‘I’ll be at the apartment in a few minutes.’
‘Okay, don’t forget your key.’
Megan calls Greg’s cousin, Les, in Adelaide. She phones his fri. . .
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