The Boy in the Photo

by Nicole Trope

  ‘Hey, Megan. I just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking of you today. I know how hard it’s going to be. I wish I could give you some advice on how to get through the first anniversary, but I personally took to my bed with a bottle of Scotch. I woke up hours later and then threw up for the rest of the day, so not really ideal. I’m here if you need to talk. I know how this feels. I know how badly you would like it to be over. I know.’

  Megan smiles a little as she reads Sandi’s message. She’d tried wine instead of Scotch last night, but she’d certainly had no intention of getting out of bed. She would like to speak to Sandi but she knows that her friend gets into trouble for sitting on Facebook during working hours. Sandi lives in Brisbane, in the same house she used to live in with her family.

  ‘I sleep in Bella’s bedroom one night and Tasha’s bedroom the next,’ Sandi has written in past conversations. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to my own room. They’ve been gone for three years now and their rooms have stopped smelling like them, but I still need to sleep in their beds, put my head where they used to put their heads. They were ten and twelve when he took them and they’ve both had to have their periods without me. I don’t know why that bothers me so much out of everything – maybe because I had already planned ways to celebrate their becoming women, and now they’re locked in a country where it’s so difficult to grow up as a young woman.’

  Sandi’s ex-husband took her two daughters to visit their grandparents in Lebanon and never came home. Because Lebanon is not part of The Hague abduction convention, there is no agreement between Australia and Lebanon for the authorities to help get them back to her. It means that she is stuck, without her children.

  Tom is online as well. Tom is often online. He rarely sleeps, not since his wife Leah took his daughter and disappeared somewhere in India two years ago.

  ‘I don’t know why she went there,’ Tom had written when he and Megan began chatting. ‘I spent a month over there visiting every major city and every hotel I could get to, showing them pictures of Leah and Jemima, but nothing ever came of it. I finally ran out of money and had to just come home. I feel like I failed her, like I failed my little girl.’

  Megan reads Tom’s message from today, which is simply, ‘Thinking of you.’

  ‘Hey, thanks,’ she types.

  ‘Oh hey. I didn’t know if you were going to be online today.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to. I was planning to sleep all day and just pretend that it’s not a full year since I’ve seen my son, but my mother woke me up and then she came over. I can hear her tidying up the kitchen. I yelled at her, so I feel awful.’

  ‘Don’t feel bad. Just put it down to a bad day. Do you know what makes me feel better when it’s the anniversary of when Jem was taken?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think about the good times we had as a family. I think about the times we went on holiday or on picnics, times when we were all happy.’

  ‘I find thinking about that stuff hurts too much and it’s all tainted now because I wonder for exactly how long Greg was planning to take my son from me. I wonder if, even long before the divorce, he knew it was something he would do. Although that thought is better than believing that me asking for a divorce caused me to lose Daniel.’

  ‘Greg didn’t want the divorce?’

  ‘God no.’

  ‘Leah didn’t either.’

  ‘But you can’t live with someone who makes you unhappy, can you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Megan, I really don’t. Maybe if I had… I don’t know, agreed to try again, she would have felt that I was at least trying, and if we still got divorced, she wouldn’t have been so angry.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself, Tom.’

  ‘But isn’t that what we do? In the middle of the night when we miss our kids, isn’t that all we can do? Maybe it was my fault. I could have been a better husband. A better father.’

  ‘I don’t know. I just know that I thought this would get easier with time but it hasn’t. It’s worse, it’s harder.’

  ‘I hear that. I hope you make it through the day. I’m sending a hug.’

  ‘Thanks, Tom xx.’

  After saying goodbye, Megan closes down the computer. She doesn’t want to speak to anyone else. She curls herself around her pillow, wanting to cry but mostly feeling angry. God, she is so angry. Angry with her parents, who told her to keep the divorce civil; angry with the police in the UK for being useless; angry with the police in Australia for being equally useless. Most of her fury is saved for Greg, and some nights she can feel it burning inside her. She wants to tear his head off, she wants him to die in a fire, to suffer for what he has done. And the rest of the anger is directed at herself.

  Megan knows that she sometimes forgets, wrapped in her own grief, that there are others who miss her son. Megan’s father and Daniel had been in the middle of a chess game they hadn’t finished. A year later, the chess pieces remain in position, ready for Daniel’s hands to make the next move. Her mother dusts them carefully, one at a time so that they remain in the right places. ‘Sometimes he just sits at the board and stares at the pieces,’ she has told Megan. ‘He hates that he cannot fix this for you, that he cannot find his grandson and bring him home.’

  Megan gets off the bed and goes to find her mother in the kitchen, where she is packing plates into the dishwasher.

  ‘Maybe I’ll shower and we can go to a movie,’ says Megan.

  Her mother smiles at her and Megan can see the shine of relieved tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m ready when you are. Maybe afterwards or tomorrow you can call Detective Kade and apologise for yelling. You want him to keep looking, to always keep looking.’

  ‘I want the whole world to keep looking, Mum. The whole world.’

  Seven

  Daniel – seven years old

  Daniel is sitting up on his knees on the chair so he can look out of the hotel window. There are lots of people in the street. There are lots of children going to school. Some are holding hands and some are shouting at each other. Two boys are kicking a soccer ball to each other as they walk. Daniel watches as the ball hits the leg of an old man. He shouts at the two boys but they just laugh, pick up the ball and run down the street. Soon he can’t see them anymore and he wishes he was with them.

  The sun is shining and if he puts his hand against the glass, he thinks he can feel some of its warmth. It’s nearly summer, which is funny because in Australia, it’s nearly winter.

  He hasn’t been to school for a whole year now. One whole year. At first, he hadn’t minded because he was with Daddy and they had so many adventures. They’d gone from city to city to city, on and off an aeroplane and on and off an aeroplane over and over again. Sometimes he forgot what country they were in. Daddy shows all the people at the airport Daniel’s special new book and tells them that his name is Daniel Ross. Daniel has to stand quietly when Daddy says this because now, he can’t be Daniel Stanthorpe anymore but sometimes he whispers, ‘Daniel Stanthorpe, Daniel Stanthorpe,’ to himself, just so he can remember.

  ‘It’s to keep you safe,’ Daddy says.

  Daddy makes him read every day and he teaches him maths and science stuff. They visit a lot of museums in every country they go to. Daddy knows everything about everything.

  Behind him in the bed, Daddy is snoring. He likes to stay awake at night to look at his computer but Daniel is not allowed to look at the computer or at Daddy’s phone – not ever. That’s the most important rule of their adventure.

  On the first night of their adventure, on the aeroplane, he had asked where Mum was. At first Daddy hadn’t seemed to hear him but Daniel had kept asking and finally he’d said, ‘She’s tired of taking care of you. She says you make too much mess and she needs a break.’

  That had made him cry and cry and he had promised to be better, promised to tidy up his room.

  ‘She doesn’t care, Daniel. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself, b
ut I will love you forever and I will never get tired of taking care of you,’ Daddy had said. ‘I told her she can call you and talk to you if she wants to. If she doesn’t, you know she doesn’t want to be your mother anymore.’

  Daniel has been listening and listening for Daddy’s phone to ring, but even when it does, it’s never Mum. She doesn’t want to be his mum anymore. That makes him feel full of sadness inside. Sometimes the sadness leaks out and he can’t help it and he cries and cries. Sadness is heavy and gets caught in his throat. He wishes he could just make it go away.

  The adventure had been fun at first. There was so much to see and do, and he got to see Granny Audrey and Grandpa William. Granny Audrey had been so happy to see him she had cried and said, ‘Look at you, just look at you.’ She had toasted him crumpets and smothered them in jam and then helped him have a bath and get into bed, and all the time she had talked and talked about how he was just like his father had been when he was a boy, with the same smile and the same eyes. She had sat on his bed for ages, reading stories from a book called The Big Book of Boys’ Stories. He had been afraid that he wouldn’t be able to sleep without his Billy Blanket but eventually he had drifted off, listening to her voice, feeling safe and warm even though Mum wasn’t there.

  But the adventure is not so much fun anymore. He’s tired of always having to take his clothes out of the suitcase and of never being allowed any toys because they can’t take them with them. He wants to go home to his Billy Blanket and his Cookie Monster poster and all his Legos. And he wants Mum; he can’t help wanting her even if she doesn’t want him.

  Daniel watches a little brown dog sniffing around a small clump of bushes on the side of the road. This place is called Holland. Daddy told him that twice already so he’s trying to remember it because Daddy gets angry if he doesn’t remember. He’s also trying to not think about Mum because if he talks about her or asks about her or cries for her, Daddy shouts.

  ‘After everything I’ve done for you, you ungrateful little shit. She didn’t want you anymore – don’t you get it? She said she’d had enough of having to deal with you.’

  His mum doesn’t love him anymore and that makes him so, so sad. He wishes he would have been a better boy so she could keep loving him. His daddy says he should hate his mum for not wanting him anymore, but even though he tries very hard to hate her he still misses her and he misses Billy Blanket and he misses Nana and Pop and Uncle Connor and James and Max. He misses Max a lot because they were both learning how to play Minecraft, and now he knows that Max will be better than him because Max is probably still allowed to go on the computer but Daniel must ‘never ever touch it’.

  If he touches the computer then the police will come and get them and they will send him home to Australia. He will be sent to live with a horrible family who would hurt him and make him eat yucky food because his mum doesn’t want to take care of him anymore.

  ‘Maybe I can live with Nana and Pop?’ he once said to Daddy.

  ‘They don’t want you either. No one in that family does. I’m the only one who truly loves you, Daniel, the only one.’

  He is hungry but he won’t wake Daddy up. He gets angry if he’s woken up. He touches his cheek because he can feel he’s crying again and he’s not allowed to cry. He is not allowed to be ‘weak’. But sometimes it’s hard not to cry when there is a ball of sadness inside him all the time. He wishes he could make it go away but he can’t. He’s almost used to it now and he knows to only cry quietly so Daddy doesn’t hear him.

  He wipes his face. He needs to be strong and he needs to be grateful that Daddy loves him. He can’t cry. He has to be strong and he has to be grateful.

  Eight

  As they climb into the car together, the news is on the radio again. ‘Steven Hindley,’ begins the reporter before Michael turns it off.

  ‘Wait, don’t do that,’ says Daniel.

  ‘Did you want to hear it?’ asks Megan, and she turns the radio on again. The announcer has moved on to speaking about house prices.

  ‘No,’ he says, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  Megan looks at Michael and turns off the radio again.

  The trip home is conducted, mostly, in silence. Silence from Daniel but not from Megan, who tries to ignore what feels like a simmering, angry heat coming off her son from the back seat of the car. She understands how he feels. They took away his knife and he has nothing left, except the phone, that belongs to him. Even she doesn’t belong to just him anymore. He had no idea he was coming home to a new stepfather, to a new man in her life. How will he feel about all the other changes to his world?

  ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she says and then bites down on her lip to stop herself from asking, Did you miss me too?

  ‘Everyone has missed you,’ she says brightly. ‘Nana and Pop and Connor and James and Lucy – you remember Lucy? She was only two when you… She’s eight now and such a big girl.’

  At each of Lucy’s birthday parties over the last six years, Connor had toasted Daniel with the words, ‘He’ll be here next year,’ and in the last couple of years the words had simply disappeared into the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ without the power to make Megan clutch at her stomach to keep the nausea at bay.

  ‘Do you remember Lucy, Daniel?’ Megan asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh… well I’m sure once you see her… although she looks so different now, she spends so much time on her phone playing games that Uncle Connor says…’

  Michael puts his hand on her knee and she knows he’s telling her to try and avoid prattling on but she doesn’t seem to be able to stop herself. The questions stream out of her.

  ‘How long were you in England?’

  ‘How long have you been back in Australia?’

  ‘Have you been going to school?’

  ‘Did you have your own room where you lived?’

  ‘Do you play any sports? Not sport, you don’t like sport. Do you play a musical instrument?’

  Daniel doesn’t reply. He sighs and occasionally grunts. She subtly wipes away a stray tear and determinedly looks out of the window, biting down on her lip. He’s here, he’s back. This is everything she’s wanted for the last six years.

  ‘I live in a different suburb now. Well, Michael and I do. And Evie.’ Megan laughs and even to her own ears she sounds slightly hysterical. ‘I almost forgot about Evie. You have a sister, Daniel, a little sister.’

  ‘A sister,’ repeats Daniel. ‘I have a sister,’ he says but it doesn’t sound like a question.

  ‘Yes, a sister.’

  ‘How… how big is she?’

  ‘She’s six months old.’

  ‘Yeah but how… big is she?’ he asks again.

  ‘Big enough.’ Megan laughs. ‘She’s really heavy.’

  ‘Really heavy,’ he repeats and then he subsides back into silence.

  ‘Yes, and we live a couple of suburbs away from where you and I used to live. It’s a really nice house. It has a big garden and a pool and I even have a room to use as a studio – you can use it too if you’d like. If you want to start painting again, I mean, but you don’t have to, of course.’

  ‘Megan,’ says Michael quietly.

  She scratches at a small stain on her pants, thinking desperately of something else to say.

  Michael covers her hand with his. She leans her head back against the headrest and closes her eyes, and she is reminded of the first time she met Michael in his office. ‘I will find him for you,’ she remembers him saying as he wrapped a large, warm hand around her cold, clenched fist. ‘I will find him.’ Now she knows that he should never have said those words. He was not allowed to promise things he didn’t know he could deliver, but he has told her that – despite doing his work for years – he had found himself profoundly moved by her.

  ‘You looked so completely lost and I could feel your love for Daniel in the air, like a mist. I just wanted to help you, and when I looked at you, I had that feeling that
people talk about when they say “love at first sight”. Even though you’d been crying, even though I could actually hear you grinding your teeth, you were the most beautiful woman I’d seen in a long time. I shouldn’t have touched you, not even your hand, but I just needed to feel your skin. I’d never believed that love or infatuation could hit you like that. I thought it was all bullshit for movies and television, but I felt it when I looked at you.’

  The memory fades and Megan opens her eyes, blurting out another question. ‘What do you like to eat, Daniel?’

  ‘Chips,’ he says.

  She turns around to look at him and he looks back at her, looks through her, observing himself being observed. Goosebumps rise along her arm and she turns around again. ‘Oh look,’ she says, ‘McDonald’s. I think we should stop. Are you hungry, Daniel?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Megan’s heart skips. She can feed him; that she can do. ‘What would you like to eat?’ she asks as they stand in front of the brightly lit signboard, peering up at the choices while all around them families talk and laugh and yell at each other.

  ‘Chips.’

  ‘And what else? How about a burger?’

  ‘Burgers are expensive,’ he says, and for a second Megan hears Greg’s voice: ‘Living is expensive, Megan – you don’t know that because you don’t pay the bills.’

  ‘Oh,’ Megan replies, flustered. ‘You can have one – they’re not too… too expensive.’

  He looks at the floor. ‘I would like a burger.’ He lifts his head and looks directly at her for a moment. ‘Please.’

  Megan would like to buy him one of everything on the menu.

  She finds herself unable to eat anything, content just to stare at him, admire him, while he is distracted by the food.

  ‘You must have been hungry,’ she says quietly as he wolfs down his food, and he shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘I need the bathroom,’ he says, looking at a family with a toddler strapped into a high chair, banging a plastic spoon on the tray.