The Way Back

by Kylie Ladd

  Rachael rinsed herself clean and turned off the taps, a new energy bristling through her. Last time they had lost Charlie, all Rachael had been able to do was sit at home and cry and wait. This time, she was going to fight. She would wrap her arms around Charlie and not let her go. Moving as quickly as she could, she towelled herself dry and pulled on some clean clothes. Then, stopping only to drop a kiss on her sleeping daughter’s forehead, she went to find Matt. It was time they started talking again.

  Terry took another sip of his Big M before continuing. Cayden glanced across at him, waiting. Was it Terry’s imagination, or was that scorn in the CIB officer’s eyes? Cayden was no doubt the latte type. Ridiculous, they were. One sip and they were gone. Where was the value in that?

  He wiped his mouth and picked up his pen again. There was no need to make notes—the tape recorder was getting it all—but the truth was the pen gave him something to do with his hands. He hadn’t settled into the pre-trial interview, though it had been going for almost two hours.

  ‘So, Col,’ he continued. ‘You kept Miss Johnson imprisoned in an outbuilding on your property for approximately seventeen weeks. How often did you visit her in that time?’ Visit. Fuck. He’d made him sound like a gentleman caller, not a rapist and abductor. Had Cayden noticed? Heaven knows Cayden was the one who should be running this, with all his fancy qualifications and that CIB sheen. But it was his own fault. He’d insisted on it, had been adamant that he should be the one to interview Charlie’s captor, that he’d been involved with the case from the very start and wanted to see it through to the end. The powers that be had acquiesced, as long as Cayden supervised him, but now Terry almost wished that they hadn’t. Oh, he could do interviews, that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that he was too enmeshed, too tangled up in the whole damn thing. He didn’t want to ask Col questions. He wanted to kill him; he wanted to drag the man out of his hospital bed and choke him until he pissed himself.

  ‘Oh, every day. Sometimes a few times a day.’ Col’s head bobbled up and down earnestly as he answered, like one of those nodding dogs on the dashboards of cars. ‘I gave her food and talked to her.’ His voice was still scratchy from the smoke damage. Terry despised him.

  ‘What did you talk about?’ Terry asked. ‘I don’t imagine she really wanted to chat with you.’ Cayden cleared his throat. It sounded like a warning, but Terry ignored him. He knew what he was doing.

  ‘Her horse, I think. My dog. Maybe the weather.’

  It took all of Terry’s self-control not to snort. The weather. As if.

  ‘Did Miss Johnson ever ask to be released?’

  Col’s eyes darted towards the door. Fat chance, Terry wanted to tell him, but restrained himself. Col was bloody lucky they hadn’t dragged him down to Russell Street for the interview, injuries or not, but even so there was no way some doctor was going to come in and let him off the hook. All hospital staff were under strict instructions not to interrupt them, and there was a constable outside the door just in case.

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so,’ he faltered.

  Terry dropped his eyes to his notepad as if consulting it, though in fact it was blank.

  ‘You don’t think so. And yet Miss Johnson alleges that she requested to be freed on numerous occasions, and made at least two attempts to escape.’ He looked up again, making eye contact with Col. ‘What can you tell me about that?’

  ‘Ummm … ahhh … I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  Col shook his head, cowed.

  ‘Let me remind you, then,’ Terry said, leaning forward in his chair. ‘Miss Johnson has reported that at a point early in her captivity when she tried to run away, you set your dog on her, then locked her up without food or water.’

  Col stared at the sheets, the bandages on his hands pockmarked with dried blood.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he mumbled again.

  ‘And then,’ Terry went on, ‘later, when she indicated to you that she was bleeding and needed treatment, you kicked her in the stomach and again failed to feed her for a number of days.’

  Col said nothing. A gurney rumbled down the hallway outside his door; the urgent wail of an incoming ambulance rose in the distance. When he finally spoke his voice was barely a whisper. ‘She was trying to trick me.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Terry asked.

  ‘Trick me,’ Col muttered. ‘She hadn’t really hurt herself. She just wanted to trick me.’

  ‘But she was bleeding, yes?’

  Col nodded, a weak, defeated little tremor.

  ‘So this is a thirteen-year-old girl who has been dragged from her horse and locked up in a stable in the dead of winter for, what? A month? And she’s bleeding and she tries to tell you and your response is to kick her in the guts and then starve her?’ Terry grabbed at Col’s chin, forcing it upwards so that that man had to look at him.

  ‘Mate,’ Cayden cautioned behind him, but didn’t intervene.

  ‘Do you think that’s fair?’ Terry asked, his voice spiralling upwards, joining the cry of the ambulance. ‘Did it even cross your mind that she was scared and hungry and desperate? Did you think about her? And the rest of it, the other allegations.’ One corner of his brain, the part that was still functioning, warned him to stop it, to halt right there; that this had to be done properly, impassively, professionally, that he was going about it all wrong, but though he tried to heed it and rein himself back the words tumbled out of his mouth, determined to be spoken. ‘Charlie also alleges that you raped her. You raped her. I suppose you don’t remember that, either?’

  Col’s good eye brimmed with tears. He was a mess, Terry thought, a total, disgusting mess. A third of his nose was gone, melted into his upper lip; the whole left side of his face was charred and weeping, and half a shrivelled ear was fused to his scalp.

  ‘Charlie,’ he croaked. ‘Charlie. How is she?’

  Terry released him and slumped back against his chair. The adrenalin coursing through his body had left him cold and shaky, and he had to make an effort to stop his teeth from chattering. He hoped Cayden didn’t notice.

  ‘She’s not good,’ he muttered. ‘Not good.’ He should have ignored the question, he knew that, but what the hell? The standard protocol had already gone to shit. ‘She can’t sleep, she can’t settle, she’s got the bloody media hanging around every moment of the day trying to ask her questions or making up stories.’ He paused. In for a penny. ‘And she’s terrified. Terrified of having to relive it all again in court, terrified of seeing you. It’s fucked. Her life is fucked.’

  Col winced as if Terry had struck him. ‘I didn’t mean to …’ he began. ‘I didn’t want … I didn’t think …’ Tears ran down his intact cheek, crept out from under the bandage covering his left eye. He dropped his face in his injured hands, sobbing loudly now, a drip jerking and pulling from the puckered skin on the back of his wrist. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said again, the words muffled and sodden. ‘I wish I could tell her that. I wish I could say sorry.’

  Cayden cleared his throat and stretched out his legs, clad in a fine grey suit. ‘Bit late for that, sunshine.’

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ Charlie said, frowning at the floor of the waiting room.

  ‘Neither do I,’ said Matt, before remembering his lines. ‘But you’re here for me, remember? And I’m really glad you are.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Charlie picked at the skin at the side of her thumbnail, refusing to meet his eyes. ‘You must think I’m pretty dumb if I’ll believe that.’

  ‘No,’ said Matt, dumbly.

  ‘Fine,’ Charlie snapped. ‘So I’ve been abducted, locked up, half-starved and … and abused, but I’m only going to see a psychologist to support’—she mimed inverted commas—‘my dad?’

  Matt sighed, glancing across at the closed office door, squinting to read its brass plaque. Dr Joanna Shriver, Clinical Psychologist. Where was she? They had arrived on time. He wished she’d hurry up. He hadn’
t rehearsed any answers for this. ‘But I do need your support,’ he began, then gave up. He’d never been much of a liar. ‘Look, it was Terry’s idea,’ he confessed. ‘He knew it didn’t go too well with that other woman you saw, Dr Finnegan.’

  ‘Flanagan,’ Charlie corrected him, finally looking in his direction. ‘She was crap.’

  ‘Yeah. Right. But Terry felt guilty about it, and your mum’s worried about you, and I am too of course, so we all wanted to give it another try with somebody else.’ He took a deep breath. ‘So Terry came up with this plan that we should say that I was the one who needed counselling, and ask you to go along to support me.’ He half-heartedly made the same inverted commas that Charlie had.

  ‘Wow,’ Charlie said. ‘Masterful. I was completely taken in. Not. Why on earth would you need counselling?’

  ‘I know, right?’ Matt agreed readily. ‘I told them it was a stupid idea.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not as if you completely lost it while you were at work,’ she went on, ‘supposedly serving the public but then beating up an onlooker instead.’ Something hovered at the edges of her lips, a ghost of a smile.

  ‘I didn’t beat him up!’ Matt protested. ‘I just, um, punched him. Once. But he crossed the line! He was part of the media. He deserved it.’

  ‘He probably did,’ Charlie nodded. ‘So that’s how they teach you to react at fireman-school, is it?’ She was practically grinning now. ‘Yeah, there’s no way that you need any professional help.’

  ‘Matt Johnson?’ A small woman with dark curly hair was standing in the doorway of the office he had been studying, calling his name. He stood up slowly, slightly confused, and with the sinking feeling that he’d been had.

  The psychologist’s room was warm. Too warm, Matt thought at first, pulling off his jumper, but after a while he realised that for the first time in ages he felt calm and even a bit drowsy, in a good way, comfortable and comforted. It was probably designed like that. Was Charlie feeling it too? He peeked across at her, seated on the soft yellow sofa next to him. It was so deep and wide that her feet barely touched the ground, making her look more of a child than an adolescent. She’d barely said a thing so far. All of Dr Shriver’s questions—Jo, as she’d asked them to call her—had been directed at him. Terry must have worded her up.

  ‘Have you ever talked to a psychologist before, Matt?’ Jo asked him. He shook his head.

  ‘No need.’

  ‘But you must have been through some pretty awful experiences as part of your work?’

  ‘I guess so.’ He shrugged. ‘But that’s just part of it, if you do what I do. It’s the job. You know that going in.’

  ‘I suppose,’ she nodded. ‘Still, it must be different once you’re actually involved yourself, and it’s real—seeing people injured or dead, fearing for your own safety.’

  Matt shifted on the sofa. This was supposed to be about Charlie. ‘A bit,’ he said noncommittally.

  ‘Do they offer you counselling at work, Matt? When you’ve been through something particularly traumatic, I mean?’ Her grey eyes were kind and interested. It was disarming.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve never had any, though,’ he said, pre-empting her next question. ‘I didn’t really think it would help. It was better just to put it behind me and get on with things.’

  ‘Is that what you think Charlie should do?’

  He sat up. Charlie sat up. They found themselves looking each other square in the eye, shocked into contact. Matt broke the gaze first.

  ‘No! Of course not. But that’s different. It’s completely different, what she’s been through. You can’t even compare it.’

  Dr Shriver leaned forward. ‘I think you can. Everything that Charlie endured—well, that’s absolutely terrible. Horrifying.’ She glanced across at the girl, features frank with sympathy. ‘Yeah?’ Charlie nodded mutely, and Dr Shriver reached out and briefly placed her hand on Charlie’s knee. Then she turned her attention back to Matt. ‘But what you’ve been through, that’s pretty awful too. The agony of losing Charlie, of not knowing where she was or if you’d ever see her again. All that fear and longing, all those sleepless nights. And not even just that, though that’s enough—every trauma you’ve ever been through at work as well, just doing your job, as you say. There aren’t many occupations that ask as much of their practitioners as yours does, the regular exposure to pain, injury, stress, even death. It all adds up.’

  Now it was Matt’s turn to stare at the floor. He thought he might cry, but that was ridiculous. What would Charlie think? She was the one who should be crying, not he. Dr Shriver sat back in her seat and scribbled something in her notebook. A clock ticked softly on the wall behind Matt; Charlie was motionless next to him. The room seemed to hold its breath.

  ‘OK,’ Dr Shriver said, closing the notebook and putting it aside, looking from one of them to the other. ‘I’m going to cut to the chase. I wouldn’t normally do this, but I know that neither of you really want to be here, which is fair enough, and I don’t want to waste your time if it isn’t going to achieve anything. I think you both have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. PTSD, you might know it as. Have you heard of it, Charlie?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said, plucking at a thread on the couch. ‘Like soldiers, after war?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Dr Shriver said. ‘But it can affect anyone, of any age, who’s been through something dreadful, like you have. Or it can arise after a number of smaller upsetting events, which I suspect is the case with your dad.’ She smiled at Matt. ‘Though he’d probably deny it.’ He had been about to do just that, but he swallowed and closed his mouth instead. ‘Let’s not get into that,’ Dr Shriver went on. ‘Let’s just go with it for now. The label’s not important, anyway. What is important is that hopefully I can help you both. If I don’t, you don’t have to come back, OK?’

  ‘Help in what way?’ Matt asked.

  ‘In dealing with the symptoms of PTSD—anxiety, upset sleep, panic attacks, guilt, flashbacks, depression. I can’t turn the clock back. No one can, but I can help you learn to live with what you’ve been through, to make your peace with it, to feel better in yourselves.’

  ‘Do I have to talk about what happened?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Not unless you want to,’ Dr Shriver said. ‘Some people find it helpful, but for others it’s the opposite.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Charlie said.

  ‘That’s fine.’ She folded her hands in her lap. Tiny hands, Matt noticed, the nails clean and buffed and oval. ‘Let’s talk about the future then, Charlie, instead of the past. What do you want?’

  The simplicity of the question floored Matt. What did she want? She wanted her old life back, surely. She wanted the abduction to have never happened. Yet both those things were impossible, he knew that now. So why hadn’t they asked Charlie the same question themselves? What did she want?

  The room went quiet again. The clock ticked on. Charlie was silent for so long that Matt began to wonder if she was going to answer, if she had an answer. Dr Shriver sat still and patient, as calm as a cat asleep by an open fire.

  ‘There’s a few things,’ Charlie said finally.

  ‘OK,’ said Dr Shriver.

  ‘One, I don’t want Blue to be put down or sent away. It wasn’t his fault he killed Tikka. He didn’t know any better. He was never trained, but I could train him.’ She gripped the cushion beneath her, hands trembling. ‘Two, I don’t want to go to court. I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Dr Shriver asked gently.

  Charlie shook her head mutely, staring at her lap. A tear fell onto her jeans, then another. Dr Shriver passed her a tissue and she blew her nose. ‘Because of school,’ she whispered when she had finished. ‘Because I don’t want them all to know. Because they’ll never let me forget.’

  ‘OK,’ Dr Shriver began again, but Charlie hadn’t finished.

  ‘And three,’ she said, raising her chin, Matt’s heart contracting in love and pride at the effort she had made to
do so. ‘Three is that I don’t want that man locked up. Col. The man who took me.’

  He couldn’t help himself. ‘But he has to be, Charlie,’ Matt said. ‘He did the wrong thing, so this is his punishment. Plus he might do it again if he isn’t.’

  ‘I know,’ Charlie replied, the tears returning. ‘I know. It’s stupid of me. But it’s horrible to lock people up. It’s horrible, it’s horrible!’

  Matt moved to put his arms around her, but Dr Shriver beat him to it. Three wishes, he thought. Just like in the fairy tales. Number one might be possible, even number two at a stretch. But number three? Oh, Charlie. His poor, poor Charlie-girl.

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ Charlie said as the car turned off the bitumen and onto a dirt road. ‘Can we please go home?’

  Hannah swivelled around from her position in the front seat. ‘It’s going to be OK, Charlie, I promise.’ Dan caught her eye and she smiled at him. He hoped she was right. Charlie didn’t say anything, just kept staring out the window, the shadows from the trees surrounding them flickering across her face. Dan sat alongside her, fretting. Had all this been a stupid idea? Charlie had been doing better these last few weeks. So much better—eating more, talking more, not rushing off to take a bath every five minutes. She hadn’t returned to school, true, but who could blame her? Anyway, it was only Year Seven. It didn’t really matter. Plenty of time to catch up later. She’d started leaving the house too, at first just with their dad, to see the psychologist. Your psychologist, she never failed to point out to their father, and then he’d agree and they’d laugh together as if it was some sort of joke. That had been the first step. Then a fortnight ago their mum had taken her to puppy school with Blue on a Sunday morning. Blue was hardly a puppy, but he was still young, their mum had said, and he needed some training. No one had mentioned Tikka, even though they were all thinking of her, and Charlie had looked sad when they left but when she got back her face had some colour in it and she’d eaten all her lunch. How’d he go? Dad had asked, and Mum had rolled her eyes and said I don’t think he’s going to be top of the class, but Charlie had jumped in and told them all that Blue had done brilliantly. They’d attended again the following week, and then two days after that Mum had taken Charlie to Northland to choose some new sheets for her bed, even though she still hadn’t slept in it since she got home. And? Dan had overheard his father asking after he thought Dan was out of earshot. His mother had sighed. Plenty of stares, but at least no one said anything.