by Nicole Trope
What did he do to you? she thinks, and a sharp pain spears her chest at what her little boy would have suffered at the hands of a man like Greg, a man who she had taken years to see was a true sociopath, incapable of feeling anything for anyone except himself. What might he have done to her son as a means of punishing her? What levels of anger and frustration at his loss of control would he have taken out on a defenceless little boy? Greg had managed to take a confident young woman, sure of her place in the world, and turn her into someone who struggled to choose a dish off a restaurant menu. What might he have done to a child?
‘All you have to do is tell me what you want, Daniel,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t be afraid – you can tell me exactly what you want.’
He locks eyes with her for another brief moment and she reads the panic there. Then he looks down at his hands. ‘I want two more pieces of toast,’ he says as though he were asking for something impossible.
‘Then that’s what you’ll have,’ she says, and her reward is the smallest and quickest of smiles. Megan wants to sing with joy. There you are, Daniel, I can see you now, there you are.
Even if he’s dead, he will still be in Daniel’s head, she reminds herself, knowing how long it took her to get Greg’s sneering, belittling tone out of her own head.
She leaves him eating his second serving of toast to go and get Evie changed. In Evie’s room she puts her daughter on the floor, where she goes back to practising her crawling, and Megan sinks down into the rocking chair. She is completely exhausted and she calculates that she has only spent half an hour with her son. They used to sit on the couch together on a Saturday night, legs tangled, sharing a bowl of popcorn, watching a movie together. Once, when speaking to Olivia, she had jokingly referred to him as the best kind of date. ‘We laugh at the same stuff, can share a pizza because we both like it the same way, and he goes to bed early – what more could I want?’
He had been her son but also an entertaining and sweet and interesting person, and she had loved the time she spent with him. She cannot quite believe that she has just left the same boy in the kitchen. She cannot quite believe what has happened to him, and she is afraid, very afraid, that what she’s seen of him so far is only the beginning.
Eleven
Megan has to stop twice to ask a nurse if she is heading in the right direction at the hospital. The large building is filled with ramps and corridors leading to radiology and oncology and maternity and the paediatric wing, and Megan finds it difficult to navigate. All around her people are walking with purpose, completely sure of where they have to go. The slightly chemical smell of hospital hangs in the air, drawing Megan back to when she was in labour with Daniel. His heart rate had slowed towards the end of her labour, worrying the nurse, who had called her doctor. In an instant Megan’s room had been filled with people, and Greg – who had been holding her hand and breathing with her through each contraction – had been pushed to one side.
‘This baby needs to come out immediately,’ Dr Sakasky had told her, ‘but I’m here and everything is going to be fine.’ Megan can recall nodding at the doctor, certain that she was safe in her competent hands. Daniel had been helped out with a suction cup but was absolutely fine and Megan can remember her deep gratitude to the hospital staff.
Finally, she and Daniel stop outside the door of an office where DNA samples are taken. Megan breathes deeply. The smell of antiseptic is stronger here. ‘We’ll get this done and have a lovely day,’ she says to Daniel, who stares at her but doesn’t reply.
‘Hi, we’re here to…’ she says to the nurse behind the desk but then she simply hands her the sheaf of papers from the police station.
Daniel stands behind her, silent in his dirty clothes and a pair of Megan’s purple flip-flops. She wants to explain to the nurse that she is taking her son shopping for new clothes, that she would never normally allow her child to dress like this, but realises the futility of trying to explain her situation.
The nurse nods as she reads through the papers. ‘Right, just come through here, Daniel,’ she says, indicating a door that leads to a small room stocked with what Megan assumes are DNA kits.
‘Can I stay with him?’ she asks.
‘Of course,’ says the young nurse, with freckles across her nose and her hair pulled back into a high ponytail. ‘Sit here, Daniel,’ she says. ‘This will just take a minute. I’m going to swab your cheek with this, see?’ she says as she shows him what looks like a long cotton bud.
He looks up at the nurse and then he looks at Megan and slowly raises his hand a little. It takes Megan a moment to realise that he wants her to hold it, which she does, feeling relieved and grateful at this display of his need for her.
‘It won’t hurt at all,’ says the nurse, registering the panic in his eyes.
He nods slowly but doesn’t say anything. With his other hand he takes his mobile phone out of his pocket. He doesn’t turn it on but begins stroking the dark screen, his thumb moving back and forth, smudges building up until the screen is a mess. Megan resists the urge to tell him to stop.
The phone is beginning to bother Megan. Although she knows there is no reason it should, it’s almost disturbing in its innocuousness. He had held it in his hand all the way home from the police station, stroking it, like a pet.
‘Open up,’ the nurse instructs as she opens her own mouth. Megan feels her own lips part, the same way they do when she spoons food into Evie’s mouth. The nurse swabs the inside of his cheek and then it’s done.
The nurse repeats the process with Megan as Daniel watches, his hand still tightly gripping hers.
‘Right, sign here, please,’ she says to Megan. Megan tries to get Daniel to release her hand but he’s holding on tightly, squeezing her fingers together. She uses the pen the nurse has given her and scrawls an approximation of her signature with her left hand.
‘All done. That wasn’t so bad, was it?’ she says.
Daniel is silent. He stands up, still holding Megan’s hand, and together they walk awkwardly out of the back room and into the office. She feels like her fingers might be going numb because he’s squeezing so hard.
At the door of the office he yanks his hand away from hers so fast she stumbles on her feet.
‘I’m sorry you had to go through that,’ she says as they make their way back to the car.
He shrugs.
Megan tries not to sigh as she pulls her car out of the parking lot. ‘I called Erin, my hairdresser, before we left the house and she says she’ll fit you in if we drop by, so let’s do that first.’
‘Whatever will make you happy.’ His eyes are fixed firmly on the road ahead so he doesn’t see Megan shudder at his words.
At the hairdresser’s he sits in stony silence while Megan and Erin discuss what to do.
‘What do you want to do, Daniel?’ Erin asks. ‘Any ideas on a style?’
He doesn’t reply.
‘I think just cut it so it’s acceptable for school,’ says Megan.
‘Okay, no problem,’ replies Erin, raising her sculpted eyebrows.
Megan doesn’t have the energy to explain more than what she told her on the phone: ‘My son Daniel is… is home from overseas and he needs a haircut, but he’s a bit sensitive so I’m not sure how he’s going to react.’
‘Why don’t you sit down and read a magazine and I’ll sort this young man out with a wash first,’ says Erin, sweeping back her own long, blonde hair and clipping it on top of her head.
Megan lowers herself into the chair next to Daniel, pretending to read the magazine in her hands but watching her son, the angles of his face becoming more pronounced as the hairdresser works. He remains focused on his own reflection in the mirror, barely moving throughout the haircut. Only his thumb moves on the screen of the mobile phone that he has placed on his lap. At one point it gets covered with hair and Megan opens her mouth to tell him to put it away, but something about the way he is stroking it stops her. He is soothing himself as his hair d
isappears and a different face appears. She cannot ask him to stop.
‘All done,’ Erin finally says.
‘Wow,’ says Megan, ‘you look so grown up. It really looks good, Daniel, what do you think?’
‘It doesn’t look like me.’
‘You’ll get used to it,’ says Erin jovially.
‘It doesn’t look like me,’ he repeats, and Megan’s heart sinks.
As they leave the hairdresser’s, Megan gestures to the coffee shop next door. ‘How about something to drink?’ she asks, desperate to turn the day around. Daniel doesn’t reply but he follows her into the small café, where the barista raises his hand in greeting as he sees her. The smell of coffee hangs in the air and the whooshing sound of steaming milk drowns out the conversations between other customers.
She grabs a table at the back, wanting a quiet spot.
‘What can I get you?’ asks the waitress, who has followed them over from her spot behind the counter.
‘I’ll have a peppermint tea and a chocolate chip muffin, and he’ll have a chocolate milkshake,’ she says without thinking. Daniel’s favourite treat was always a chocolate milkshake.
‘I don’t want that,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ says Megan, flustered as the waitress stares down at them. ‘What do you want?’
‘Coffee.’
‘Coffee?’
‘Yeah, coffee.’
‘You drink coffee?’ she asks when the waitress leaves.
‘I like it.’
‘You never used to like it. I mean, you were too young for it but you once asked for a sip of mine and hated it. Nana used to joke that she’d never seen a child as dedicated to chocolate milkshakes as you were.’
‘I’m not that child.’
‘You’re still Daniel,’ Megan replies, her heart racing.
‘Maybe I’m not Daniel,’ he says, meeting her gaze.
Megan feels a prickle of anxiety and then he smiles at her. It was a joke, just a joke.
‘And Dad… Dad didn’t mind you drinking it?’ she asks.
‘No, he didn’t care.’
‘I’m sure he cared.’
‘No, not really,’ he says. ‘He didn’t care about much. He let me do what I wanted as long as I followed a few rules.’
‘What were his rules?’
He shrugs, looks around the coffee shop and then rubs his hand over his hair.
‘You know it’s going to be different now that you’re home, right?
‘Is this home?’ he asks, staring at the table of people next to them.
‘It… is, Daniel, of course it’s home.’
‘In your home you like lots of rules,’ he mutters, meeting Megan’s eyes with his flat, hazel gaze.
‘I guess I do.’ Megan laughs uncertainly.
‘You like rules and order and you don’t like anything to be out of place. You like things to look right even if they aren’t right. You like everyone to smile and be nice even when they don’t feel happy.’
‘That’s not… that’s not true,’ Megan stutters, stung by his unemotional tone. She knows as she hears the words that she is once again hearing her ex-husband, which only serves to make the words hurt more.
Greg had repeated the same things to her. He hated to be criticised in any way. If she asked him to take out the garbage and he didn’t, she wasn’t allowed to remind him, even if the bag overflowed onto the kitchen floor. One reminder was greeted with a sigh of distaste, and if she did it again, he would stop whatever he was doing, stomp into the kitchen and wrench the bag out of the bin, spilling garbage on the floor, shouting and swearing about everything having to be done on her ‘bloody timeline’, about her ‘absolute lunacy’ of needing everything to look in place and about how she ‘never gave a shit’ about what he was trying to do with his time.
‘You were playing video games,’ she had responded to one of these rants and had earned herself a night of cleaning up the garbage after he went tearing out of the house and grabbed the bag from the outside bin so he could bring it in again and throw it all over the floor. After that she had taken the garbage out herself. It was easier than getting into an argument with Greg. After nine years together, seven of them as a married couple, just about everything had been easier than getting into an argument with Greg.
‘Sweetheart, listen to me,’ Megan says as she watches her son drink his coffee after adding three teaspoons of sugar. He’s clearly not enjoying it, unable to hide the grimace on his face every time he takes a sip. ‘Your father and I got divorced because we didn’t get on, but you need to know that the things he’s told you about me are just his opinion. I’m not the person he’s described to you.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Daniel spits.
‘But how, Daniel? How am I that person?’ Megan asks, earning herself a look from the people at the next table.
‘He said you didn’t want to find me and he was right. I had to find you.’ Daniel strokes his mobile phone compulsively as he speaks.
‘That’s not true,’ Megan protests at the unfairness of what he is saying. ‘I looked for you… I looked for you for years, Daniel.’
‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘he said you would say that if I ever saw you again. That’s exactly what he said you’d say.’
Megan resists the urge to drag him home and show him her blog, the newspaper articles, the television appearances that are still recorded on her computer to prove to him exactly how hard she had looked for him, but she takes a deep breath and says, ‘We’ll shop today, Daniel, and then tonight I’ll show you all the things that happened when you were away and I was trying to find you, okay?’
‘You weren’t—’
‘No, I was, I was and you can ask Nana and Pop and Connor and James and even Lucy because we have all spent the last six years looking for you and hoping that you would come back to us. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ he says finally. His fingers move over the black screen of the mobile phone over and over again. He has abandoned his coffee but finished the chocolate muffin she ordered – as she suspected he would.
‘Do you want to show me some pictures of you and Dad?’ she asks.
He shakes his head but then he says, ‘Do you really want to see?’
‘I do.’
He turns on the phone. ‘I’ll show you one. Just one.’
‘Okay.’
He scrolls through his gallery of pictures as Megan drinks the rest of her tea. He holds the phone close to him like a poker player with his cards, occasionally glancing up at her to see if she’s trying to catch a glimpse. She keeps her eyes on the table and waits. Finally he turns the phone around to show her a photo of him and Greg standing next to the giant Christ the Redeemer statue at the summit of Mount Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro. They are standing at the base of the towering statue, clutching ice-cream cones, both wearing red peak caps. Crowds of people are visible in the background.
‘When were you there?’ Megan asks, staring hard at their huge grins. Her son looks older than six but she can’t be sure if he was seven or eight. Why were Greg and Daniel not found if they were using their passports? Would Greg have been capable of producing a false passport? He was brilliant with technology and worked in cyber security he would have been capable of anything, even changing her son’s name to keep him away from her.
They both look so happy, she can’t help a pang of anger assaulting her. She had been struggling through every day while Greg travelled the world with their son, having all the experiences she had always dreamed of sharing with him.
‘When I was seven or eight. I can’t really remember. We went to lots of places. And then we had to come back to Australia because we had no more money.’
‘Where else did you go? And when did you come back to Australia? How old were you?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ he says. Suddenly he stands up from the table. ‘Bathroom,’ he says.
‘It’s right through there.’ She gestures, shocked at the sting of his words. I would
like to know. I would really like to know. Didn’t you miss me? Didn’t you ask for me? Didn’t you ask to come home when you returned to Australia?
Megan would like to get hold of the phone and look through all the pictures by herself even though she knows seeing her ex-husband and son so happy together will break her heart even as it makes her angry. So far Daniel hasn’t let it out of his sight. Last night when she looked in on him, he was sleeping with it tightly gripped in his hand. It’s his new Billy Blanket.
She has seen that ‘Daniel and Dad’ has been scratched into the plastic on the side of the phone. ‘It’s obviously a security object,’ Michael had said. ‘We need to let him hold onto it as long as he wants to. It’s his last connection to his father, and it’s basically his history over the last six years. Everything else was burned in the fire. He will eventually want to share the pictures with you but for now don’t push him.’
Daniel returns from the bathroom and stands next to the table.
Megan smiles up at him. ‘How about we take your phone to a store and get a new SIM for it,’ she says. ‘I mean, if they still have them for phones like that. It’s pretty old. I’m happy to buy a new one for you.’ She had set out to buy him a phone for his twelfth birthday but, in the store, the terrible thought that she would not be able to call him on it had stopped her making the purchase. ‘I think most kids carry them by the time they’re twelve and Lucy got one for her last birthday. I know Max has one.’
‘Max?’ he says, and Megan hears an edge of something in his voice, a kind of longing excitement.
‘Yes, you remember Max, don’t you?’
Daniel nods. ‘I remember Max.’
‘Would you like to see him? We can go and see him whenever you want.’
‘I… no,’ he says and he turns to leave.
Megan gets up and hurriedly pays the bill, following him out onto the street. A cold wind whistles through the air and Megan worries about Daniel’s feet in flip-flops. ‘We need to get you some shoes, but do you want to stop and get a new SIM card first?’