The Way Back

by Kylie Ladd

  Charlie opened her eyes and stared up towards the ceiling. Her bedside lamp cast the same shadow it always had; the same boy bands and ponies looked out from the posters on her wardrobe door. They were probably uncool now, those boy bands, she should probably take them down. Britta could tell her who she should put up instead, but maybe she’d leave it for a while. Right now it was good to just have everything exactly as she remembered. She went to roll onto her side, but her legs hit an obstacle. Blue. ‘You’re meant to be on the floor,’ she told him. He wagged his tail but didn’t move, and she stretched out one hand to pat him. Her mum would have a fit if she knew, but then again maybe her mum wasn’t worrying about that right now.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she’d asked Charlie when Charlie had told her that she was going to sleep in her own bed, eyes narrowed and cautious.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Charlie had said, and she was. She couldn’t say why. It had been more than a month now since Col had died, five or six weeks probably, so it couldn’t be that. She had just wanted to, somehow. Britta had come over for dinner, the same as every Tuesday night, and Dan had asked Hannah too. It had been good fun and great to see them both, but very noisy and as they said goodbye she had found herself looking forward to the sanctuary of her room, of being all alone in her bed with Crush, and Blue on a rug on the floor.

  ‘That part didn’t quite work out, did it?’ she asked him, scratching his head, and he closed his eyes in bliss and stretched, looking perfectly at home. Did he remember his old life? Did he ever miss Col? She hoped not. Surely he’d forgotten him by now. Charlie herself didn’t think about him as much anymore, not like she had when she first came back. Terry had driven over to the house to tell her he had died. At first she thought it was because of the burns but Terry had said No, he killed himself quite matter of fact, and her mother had gasped and put her hand up as if she wanted to push the words back into Terry’s mouth. Later that night Charlie had overheard her talking about it with her dad, telling him that she wished Terry hadn’t, that now maybe Charlie would blame herself, but her father had just said But if he’d told her he died because of the fire she might blame herself for that too. Charlie had pretended to be asleep when her mother got into bed beside her an hour or so later, but she’d thought about it all night. She didn’t feel bad that Col had killed himself. Was that wrong? She didn’t feel happy either. She was hugely relieved that now there wouldn’t be a trial, but that was as much as she wanted to think about him and his death. Col dying was like when she released the guinea pigs, she decided. It was just better that way.

  She was getting sleepy. Her fingers reached to turn off her lamp, then drew back. She couldn’t quite do it; couldn’t offer herself up to the darkness, all alone, the way she had lain for so many nights in the stable. Just the thought of it made her heart race. She began to get up, to take refuge once again in her parents’ bed, but Blue looked so disappointed at her trying to move him that Charlie made herself lie back down. Escape plan she told herself. Use the escape plan. It was something that Jo had suggested and they had worked on together: somewhere she could go in her mind if things got too overwhelming. Charlie inhaled deeply, right down to her stomach, just as Jo had taught her, and made herself imagine the scene they had decided on—that day she went to visit Tic Tac with Dan and Hannah. She thought about how good the sun had felt on her face, and how Tic Tac had nickered when he’d seen her, and how funny it had been watching Dan riding him. He held his hands up way too high and he looked startled every time Tic Tac shifted gait, but apart from that he actually wasn’t that bad. And Hannah had looked so proud of him. It was weird, seeing someone else love her brother, someone outside her own family. Weird, but nice. It even made her a little teary. As she lifted one hand to wipe her eyes she realised that she felt better. Her heart had slowed down, had stopped thumping in her ears. What was it that Jo had said? That what had happened to her would always be with her, would never go away, but that it didn’t have to define her. She was more than those three months, that stable, the rope around her waist. She had a whole life still waiting for her to fill up with other memories.

  Charlie got out of bed, but only to push back the curtains. She stood at the window for a moment, looking out, then climbed back under her covers. Maybe she would ride Tic Tac next time they visited him. Or sit on him, anyway, with her hands in his mane and his warm body beneath her. Or maybe Hannah could ride him and she could hold on behind her, just until she felt like riding him herself. Hannah wouldn’t mind. They could go after school one night, now daylight saving had started again, if Hannah’s brother would drive them. Not that she had to worry about school, she thought, hugging herself, ever since she’d got the tutor, but Hannah did. It was cool, having a tutor. They did things at Charlie’s pace, mostly only stuff that interested her—and no French, which was a relief. Just the two of them, she and Anna, at the dining table in the quiet of the morning while Kiev and Parma bock-bocked on the lawn outside. It was a relief—she couldn’t deal with a lot of noise, or a lot of people at the moment—though she’d probably go back to school one day. Maybe next year. Maybe a different one. Or maybe not—it would be good to be with Britta again, and the other friends who dropped around to see her: Georgie, Araminta, Liam just last week. Especially Liam. Her dad had told her there was no hurry to decide. When she felt ready; when she wanted to.

  Her hand reached for the switch on her lamp again, and this time she turned it off. Charlie held her breath, trying not to panic, but it wasn’t so bad. Her room wasn’t pitch black, as she had feared. There was a faint glow from outside, the moon and stars; there was the hallway light creeping under her door. She could hear Dan softly strumming his guitar in his bedroom next to hers, she could still feel the place on her cheek where her mother had come in to kiss her goodnight. Blue panted softly at the foot of her bed; in the kitchen her dad would be stacking the dishwasher or making himself a coffee. They would all still be there in the morning. It would be OK to close her eyes for a bit.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I first became interested in the ideas behind The Way Back over a decade ago, when US teenager Elizabeth Smart was reunited with her family nine months after she was abducted from her bedroom in the middle of the night; nine months in which the Mormon girl had been regularly bound, drugged and raped. The media focused mostly on the details of her captivity and release, though what really intrigued me was how on earth Elizabeth could possibly recover from what she had been through—would it warp and twist the rest of her life, could she ever put the anger she must feel and the abuse she had suffered behind her? Elizabeth later wrote a memoir, claiming to have done just that … but then, it seemed to me at least, long-missing girls started turning up everywhere. Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped eighteen years previously and recovered in 2009; Natascha Kampusch, abducted as a ten-year-old in Austria in 1998 and held for almost nine years; Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, imprisoned, bashed and raped in a Detroit house for a decade.

  As both a psychologist and a writer, what fascinated me wasn’t so much how these girls had endured what they did, but how (and if) they were able to pick up the pieces of their old lives and start again. The lost child is a popular trope in Australian arts and literature, but I was interested in exploring this from a slightly different angle: not focusing on the loss per se but what happens next, when what is lost is found.

  And then too, there was this: when I was eight years old, a classmate of mine was abducted from her bed in an upmarket Melbourne suburb in the middle of the night. Despite a manhunt and media frenzy that was at least the equal of the Daniel Morcombe case a quarter of a century later, Eloise was never recovered. The Way Back is not about her, but is in memory of her. It is about enduring not only an abduction, but also the return to daily life that comes afterwards, and whether such victims are ever truly released.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All novels start with an author but are delivered by a team. Thank you, once again, to mi
ne: Jane Palfreyman, Genevieve Buzo and Virginia Lloyd at or through Allen & Unwin, and Pippa Masson and Grace Heifetz at Curtis Brown. You’re all incredible and I’m so grateful to have you on my side.

  To Sergeant David Spencer of the Victoria Police and Tony Franklin of the Melbourne Fire Brigade—thank you for answering my many questions about your work, and indeed for the work you do. Any errors regarding police or emergency service procedures are mine, not theirs.

  Like Rachael, I lost my beloved mother during the final stages of writing and editing this book. It gave me new appreciation for how difficult and all-consuming loss and grief are, and for the family and friends who kept me afloat at that time: my much-loved sister and sister-in-arms Nikki, my brave and selfless father John, my endlessly supportive husband Craig, my wonderful kids Dec and Cam (sorry if there was a bit more yelling about homework than was entirely necessary), my dear friend Kerri for all the texts, and my wider online writing and social media community, too many to name—you were amazing. Thank you.

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