by Nicole Trope
‘I used wood, heated it in a fire and burned them on,’ says Daniel. Megan can hear some pride in his voice at the achievement.
‘Who… who taught you to do that?’ asks Constable Mara.
Daniel looks at her. ‘No one,’ he says finally.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to take that, Daniel,’ says Constable Mara. ‘It’s illegal for you to carry a knife. Why didn’t you tell me about it before? Where have you been keeping it?’
‘In my pants,’ he says. ‘It’s mine. I wanted to show you,’ he says quietly, looking at Megan. ‘I made it and I wanted to show you.’
Megan nods, unsure of what to say. The knife is clearly an artistic project to him. He wanted to show her that he was still doing something creative. She wants to tell the constable that Daniel should be allowed to keep the knife but that’s obviously impossible.
‘I’m sorry, you can’t keep it,’ she says.
He looks down at his feet and shrugs.
‘Right, home time,’ says Michael, forced cheer in his voice.
Daniel sweeps his eyes up and down Michael’s body. ‘I live with my mum now,’ he says. And then he walks towards the front of the police station and out the door.
Six
Tuesday 20 May 2014, One year since Daniel was taken
Megan is woken by her mobile phone. She ignores it, burrows under the covers, licking her dry lips. She could use some water, some coffee, something. She knows it will be her mother on the phone, knows that the fact that she has ignored the call means Susanna will be getting in her car right now to come and check on her daughter. Her mother has just turned seventy-five. She should no longer have to offer this level of care to one of her children. Megan can feel guilt over her behaviour gnawing away at her, but it is nothing in comparison to the agony of this day.
I can’t bear it.
I can’t bear it.
I can’t bear it.
Last night she had prepared for today with two bottles of wine, meaning to sleep through most of it, but now her mother has called and she is awake and thirsty and engulfed by misery. She flings back the covers and silences her phone.
It’s 8 a.m. Too early to be awake, too early to be dealing with this.
She gets up, uses the bathroom and then stands in the kitchen, greedily drinking a glass of water when she hears her mother’s key in the lock.
‘You didn’t answer your phone.’
‘I was asleep, sorry.’
‘I was worried.’
‘I’m not going to off myself, Mum. I got drunk and overslept, that’s all.’ Megan watches as the brutal words cause hurt and pain. Susanna doesn’t like to think about what Megan has dubbed, humorously she thinks, ‘the night of the sleeping pills’. She hadn’t meant to take so many, she is sure; she just wanted to be able to sleep for more than an hour without waking again. She is certain she would have just had a very long sleep if her mother hadn’t come by and found her sprawled on the couch. The trip to the hospital was unnecessary. ‘I only took six pills,’ Megan had stated at the time.
‘Yes,’ the emergency room doctor had agreed, ‘but you were only supposed to take one and you mixed them with a bottle of wine.’
Now, Susanna looks pained as she examines her daughter. ‘Is alcohol the solution then?’ she asks. Megan can see her getting ready to deliver one of her ‘you have to be strong for Daniel’ speeches.
‘Please, please don’t lecture me, not today, not now.’
‘I’m not… I’m sorry, that wasn’t what I came to do. I know you’ve taken the day off so I wanted to know if you’d like to go out for the day. We can go to a movie or shopping? We could have lunch at that Italian place you like.’
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can cope with much except going back to bed.’
‘Megan, I know this is a hard day…’
‘It’s been a hard three hundred and sixty-five days – a hard year, Mum. Today is just a reminder of how hard.’
‘I miss him too. We all miss him but you’re doing so well now. You’re back at work and out of bed. I know this is going to be a difficult day, but I don’t want you to let it overwhelm you.’
Megan scratches at her arm. Sometimes she wants to lash out at her mother, spit scathing accusations. Her grief stirs itself up into anger with little provocation. You told me to try and be nice to Greg. You told me to keep it cordial. You told me you didn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t let Greg get Daniel a passport so he could take him to visit his parents.
As quickly as the impulse to hurt her mother flares, it disappears and guilt takes over, and she regrets ever having the thought. She was the one who signed the papers to allow Greg to organise Daniel’s passport – she is the one to blame.
At the time she had said, ‘I think he’s too young to travel overseas without me, Greg.’
‘So, my parents don’t get to see him ever again? Isn’t it enough that you’ve taken my son from me, that you’ve broken up our home? You’re going to deny him his grandparents too?’
‘Greg, please.’
‘Just let me organise it, Megan. Nothing will happen until you say he’s ready. I want to be able to tell my parents that they’ll see their only grandchild again. Please, Megan, please let me just do this.’ His voice had flipped from aggressive to low and seductive, reminding her of the Greg she had been desperate to marry. His voice used to send shivers up her spine.
‘Fine, Greg, okay, I’ll sign the papers, but he’s not going anywhere with you until I say it’s okay.’
‘Of course not, not until you say it’s okay.’
Thinking about Greg’s parents makes her burn with anger as she remembers the call she made to them one year ago today, remembers how she was dismissed by Audrey.
Only weeks after Daniel had been taken, a letter had arrived from her former mother-in-law, sent, it seemed to Megan, to almost gloat over the pain she was suffering. Megan had read it in her bed, unwashed and greasy-haired. As she’d read and reread Audrey’s words, she had felt herself sinking into the mattress, wishing that she could simply close her eyes and disappear. There was no way she could find the energy to refute the things Audrey had written, and she knew that this was part of Greg’s plan because that had always been part of Greg’s plan. You could only say, ‘But that’s not what happened,’ so many times before you ran out of energy to counter every argument and just subsided into silence.
Dear Megan,
I thought it best to get in touch with you by post rather than on the phone. I find things tend to get misheard and misconstrued in a phone conversation, which is something that doesn’t happen when the words are written down and cannot be disputed.
I want you to know that I speak for both William and me. I also want you to know that when Gregory told us the two of you were getting married, we were over the moon, and you know how delighted we were when Daniel was born. I am just sorry that we never got to see him more than we did. I know that Gregory wanted to come and visit every year but that you said it wasn’t good for a child to travel so much. That’s possibly true when they are young but I couldn’t help feeling that you didn’t want to share our grandchild with us.
I have to say that I wasn’t surprised when Gregory told me about the divorce. We have always been very close, my son and I, and I know he had been unhappy for a long time. Being a wife and a mother and taking care of your husband and son was the most important job you had, but over the last years of your marriage you made Gregory feel that he was unimportant, that he was not wanted and that he was only there to provide financial support for you and Daniel.
I always encouraged Gregory to try and be understanding of your needs, even though he knew I believed you were not treating him the way he deserved to be treated. He is, as is his father, a bit of a difficult man – but it is up to us women to use our ways and means to always make the men in our lives feel wanted and loved.
When Gregory took Daniel, I am sure he did it as a cry for
help. You didn’t just break his heart, Megan. You shattered it. He never stopped loving you, regardless of the way you treated him, and I am sure that if you had reached out to Gregory with love and acceptance, he would have been persuaded to bring Daniel home. Instead you sent the police to our home to accuse us of hiding Daniel from you. What kind of a person does such a thing?
You have no idea of the humiliation that William and I both felt when police turned up on our doorstep and demanded to search the house. They went through all our rooms and William’s computer and our mobile phones. I know that Gregory thought something like that would happen. He is a very clever man and no doubt wanted to protect his parents. Because of that he did not contact us and he still has not contacted us. I don’t know if we will ever hear from him again. Do you understand what you’ve done? You have broken Gregory’s heart and tried to take his son away from him, and you have left him with no other option but to take Daniel away from you. In doing this you have not only taken my grandson away from me, you have taken my son. Do not be confused, Megan. This is all your fault and you have brought the most terrible grief to William and myself.
There is little else I can say about this except I now regret ever telling Gregory that you would make a wonderful wife and mother. You clearly have been neither.
Please do not, under any circumstances, contact me or William again or I will be forced to go to the authorities.
Audrey Stanthorpe
She had known, as she went through the letter again and again, that Greg was telling Daniel lies about her, just like he was telling his parents lies about her. She had no doubt that he’d told lies about her to every person he’d ever met.
She had been too stunned to respond to Audrey’s letter for a few days, but in the end she had because she knew it was possible that there would come a day when Greg contacted them. She laboured over at least six letters – handwritten because Audrey hated email – in which she explained the truth about her marriage to Greg in the hope that Audrey would understand that Greg had painted her and their marriage in a horribly biased light. She kept writing until she received one final, two-line letter.
Please stop contacting us. We will no longer open your letters.
Megan wonders now how much Greg must have laughed at her naivety when she signed the forms to get her son a passport. She wonders how she let herself be manipulated, time and time again.
In her bedroom, her phone rings again.
‘It will be Connor or James,’ Megan says. ‘Please answer it. I really don’t want to speak to anyone.’
Her mother leaves the room to get the phone.
‘Megan,’ she says, returning and holding the phone out, ‘it’s Detective Kade.’
‘Oh, oh God.’ A rush of nausea, a thrill of anticipation.
‘No, Megs, it’s nothing about Daniel. He’s just phoning to find out how you are. He’s just checking in.’
‘Just checking in?’ Her body fires up with rage. ‘I don’t need him to check in. I need him to find my son. Find my son, just find my son.’ Her throat cracks as she shrieks in the direction of the phone. Her mother colours, puts the phone against her ear. ‘I’m so sorry, it’s a challenging day. I’m sure she’s… grateful for the call.’
‘Stop speaking for me!’ Megan yells and then she stomps to her room, a teenager in the middle of a tantrum. Her head is pounding. She wants to scream until she has no voice left. He’s been gone for a year. One whole year. Where are you, Daniel? Is your dad being kind to you? Do you miss me? Is he treating you well? Do you think about me? Do you cry for me?
Megan flings herself down on her bed and opens her laptop, accessing her ‘Find Daniel’ blog. Her comments section is filled with messages of support from those who know what day it is.
A month after Daniel was taken, Olivia had suggested starting a blog. It was meant, Megan knew, to be something tangible she could hold onto and maybe something that would eventually get her out of bed and back to walking around in the world.
‘Think of it as an online diary, Megs, just some place to put your thoughts down and maybe connect with other people going through the same thing.’
‘Why would I want my pain out there on the internet for everyone to gawk at?’ she had protested.
‘There will be other parents going through the same thing, other people who know exactly how you’re feeling.’ Olivia had been standing in Megan’s bedroom at the time, asked to come over by Megan’s mother.
Just find a way to get her out of bed, Megan had imagined her mother saying to Olivia.
Megan had known that she smelled and her hair was a mess but she hadn’t cared. It had been a month since Greg had taken Daniel, and the first few weeks of press and intense police involvement were over. Megan’s emotional plea for Greg to return their son had been on every television channel for nearly a week. She had stared out at the camera with her parents behind her. ‘Please, Greg, I’m begging you, just bring him home and we’ll work this out.’ A women’s magazine had run a story with an awkward picture of her clutching Daniel’s Billy Blanket and looking grief-stricken. ‘Just bring back my baby,’ the headline had screamed – words that Megan had not used.
Daniel’s photo had been shared on Facebook twenty thousand times. Strangers had sent Megan information about child recovery teams, ex-military men and women who were trained to fly overseas and snatch your child back from the abducting parent.
‘If it comes to that, we’ll find the money to pay them,’ her father had assured her.
Every day had brought new leads – or supposed leads, because nothing led her to her son. But the news cycle was always hungry for fresh stories, and soon her search was mentioned in the news bulletin and then it was just a line at the bottom of the screen and then her story was no longer of interest. Everyone, it seemed, had other things to get on with.
Megan had known by then that Greg had left the country with Daniel to go to the UK. And she knew that he had never shown up at his parents’ house – or at least that was what they said. No evidence of Greg and Daniel being at the home of Audrey and William Stanthorpe had been found; the trail was cold and they had simply disappeared. She’d known all these things but it had seemed to her at the time impossible to comprehend. How could a man and a child simply disappear? The father of her child, her baby boy?
The blog she had begun had helped her come to terms with that unbelievable fact. It had put her in touch with other mothers and fathers who knew exactly how easy it is for people to disappear.
Now she reads through the messages from broken-hearted mothers and fathers who also have a day this year where they mark just how long it has been since they’ve seen their child.
‘Thinking of you on this sad day.’
‘Wishing you the best for today. Sending you courage.’
‘Hoping you have the strength to survive today.’
What else can you say to someone who has had their child torn from them, and not by a stranger but by the person who was supposed to love them?
She opens Facebook, looking for messages from the only two people she really wants to hear from: Sandi and Tom.
As the months passed messages and contact on her blog had slowed down quickly, and only a handful of people were left messaging her.
Sandi’s first message had captured the way she was feeling so clearly that Megan had wondered if they had known each other in another life.
‘Believe that he can feel you missing him. Believe that when you touch his things you are sending your love to him. Believe that he will always remember how you raised him and loved him and that he will take comfort in this. But most of all believe that he will come back to you, regardless of what the police and the people around you say; believe it with all your heart. The bond between a mother and her child is the strongest there is. He will come back to you. And whatever you have to do to get him back – be open to doing that. He will come back.’
Megan had thanked Sandi for her message, s
wiping tears away as she did and adding her as a Facebook friend so they could speak privately. This woman understood her, and she knew she needed her in her life.
Tom’s message was different but no less personal and profound. Megan had been reluctant to speak to a man at first, firmly entrenched in the idea that because Greg had done this terrible thing, all men were capable of only terrible things. At one point she had even felt herself pulling away from her father and Connor and James. But Tom had made her aware that there were fathers who had lost their children, and that their hearts were as broken as hers was.
‘I know that you will go into his room because I go into her room. I sit on her bed and then I lie down and hold the soft, ragged doll that she used to sleep with, and what kills me is that my wife didn’t take it with her. I don’t know how my little girl has been sleeping without her doll, without her Jessie. I hate to think of her missing her doll as much as I hate to think about her missing me.’
Megan had felt Tom’s pain even through her own. Greg had left Daniel’s security blanket the blanket he had named ‘Billy’ when he was three behind, and for the first week she had cradled it next to her head, wondering how he was able to sleep without it, imaging his tears and Greg’s frustration that she feared could turn violent. His Billy Blanket had been by his side since he was a baby. On the same day he’d been taken from his mother, he had been taken from his security object. How frightening the world must have seemed to him on that day. The thought tortured Megan as the weeks and months passed.
She had added Tom on Facebook as well. His Facebook picture was of his daughter, Jemima, a child with tumbling gold curls and wide blue eyes, laughing at the person taking the photo.
Most of the parents used Facebook photos of their children as their profile pictures, a banner to show the world what was missing in their lives. Sandi’s was of her two daughters: slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed little girls with gentle smiles.
Today both Tom and Sandi are online. Both of them have messaged her.