Lost Girl

by J. C. Grey

  There is blood on the hem of my robe now too, not much but the silk is ruined. Unwilling to turn back, I tear a strip from the edge and bind my toe. Blood immediately soaks through but it is the best I can do. Anyway, all I am doing is taking a look at the attic. It will take just a few minutes.

  Taking a breath, I steady my nerves, turn the handle and open the door. The narrow steps up are wreathed in darkness. I feel around for a light switch and find it; the bulb springs on but weakly. With one hand pressed against the wall, I climb the first few steps. I look back and, already, the doorway looks far behind me.

  I take another few steps. Above me, the stairs seem to narrow further, closing in. I fight the feeling of claustrophobia and force myself to take another few steps. My foot hovers above the next when there is a flash, the light dies and I am in darkness.

  Twenty-three

  April this year …

  Two days later, I am heavy-eyed and leaden-limbed yet resolute. Claire has been with me for two hours but has just left for a client consultation. Marc is due back in thirty minutes from a board meeting. It is a narrow window, but I have had long hours to think since I woke from my stupor, and I know what I have to do.

  When he returns, I am ready. This won’t be like the last time I fled, the running away while his back is turned, without warning. This time I will face him. I am sitting in the chair opposite his office desk, with the idea that perhaps we can be businesslike about this. I know I can. My emotions are utterly spent; there is no more weeping and wailing left in me.

  I have dressed carefully in jeans, sandals and a blazer. My hair is clean and in a topknot, my face made up to conceal my pallor. I am ready. His key turns in the lock.

  ‘Em?’

  I stand, stiffly, as he spots me in the study. He comes to the doorway created by the bookshelves and looks at me quizzically.

  ‘You’re up. That’s great! Why don’t we take a drive up to the shack, have a walk along the beach? I checked the forecast, windy but dry …’

  His voice tails off. He has noticed the travel bag at my feet. He looks up at me, a question in his eyes that turn slowly from warm onyx to flint. ‘No,’ he says flatly.

  ‘I’ve decided,’ I say. ‘It’s for the best.’

  ‘Running away is never for the best.’

  ‘I’m not running away, I’m getting away. I need time alone to think.’

  ‘You can think here.’

  ‘No, Marc.’

  ‘You’re not leaving me.’

  ‘I need to find—’ Me sounds too clichéd. ‘I need to work things out.’

  ‘You won’t work it out by running away.’

  ‘I can’t do it here.’

  ‘Then we’ll go away together.’

  ‘No.’ I think of the Darwin disaster. ‘This is something I have to do, Marc. For a while.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ It is the truth. I have no real attachment to anywhere, no bolthole in which to lick my wounds. Perhaps the place I have been happiest is the shack, but it is his and it is not far enough away. I need distance and space to heal.

  From his expression, I can see that he does not believe me. ‘You must have a plan.’ There is a note of exasperation in his voice.

  ‘North.’

  ‘How far north exactly? Are we talking Manly? Or Mongolia.’

  ‘Somewhere in between, probably. I will find a place that feels right and stop there.’

  ‘That’s crazy, Em. Places don’t feel right; you make them right.’

  I shake my head, disagreeing, but it is too hard to explain that I have no option now but to follow my instincts.

  ‘Em, listen. You must see I can’t let you go. Not after … what’s happened.’

  He still can’t say it; neither of us can. Yet it inhabits us, this room, our lives.

  I stand, lifting the bag. ‘You have no choice.’

  ‘I’m your husband.’

  ‘I’ll contact you in a few days or so.’

  ‘Don’t do this, Em.’

  ‘I must do it, for both of us.’

  His arms are spread across the doorway and I wonder if he will attempt to physically restrain me, but as I approach, he drops them and stands aside.

  ‘I love you, Em.’ It sounds like the last words of a dying man. ‘I can’t bear this after everything …’

  ‘Yes, you will.’ I cup my hand momentarily around his left cheek and look into his eyes. ‘Look after my husband for me.’

  My hand drops and I walk to the door.

  ‘Don’t go, Em. Please. Stay with me.’

  I walk steadily to the door. In a burst of motion he is there, his hand flat against it, slamming it shut as I open it.

  ‘Let me go, Marc. If you love me let me go.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, his hand falls to his side. I touch his fingers fleetingly with mine, open the door and walk quickly through it.

  Present day, early morning

  All I can see at first is the faint mist of my breath on the air, which is suddenly even colder—icy even. I shiver reflexively and my hand loses contact with the wall. Before I can panic, I have found it again, and this time I plant one hand on the wall at each side to centre myself before taking another step.

  Beneath my robe, my heart is racing. My injured foot throbs. The pump of blood warms me a little within, reinforcing my depleted reserves of courage as I ascend another two steps. My eyes are adjusting to the gloom and ahead I can just make out what looks like another doorway. Spurred on, I continue steadily upwards, my arms still braced on either side of me.

  Not only is the air icy, it seems rarer up here, as though I am at high altitude, even though I must have only climbed four or five metres. When I look back, though, I cannot see the landing, save for a sliver of queasy yellow light from far below. It looks a world away.

  The stair wall has disappeared and I remain stock still until I am steady without support. I am perched on a small landing with nowhere to go but ahead, through the low doorway that matches the one at the bottom of the stairs. Something sounds faintly through the timber, a clack-clack-clack.

  The sound is rhythmic until it stops for seconds at a time before starting again. Leaning close, I press my ear to the door. I think I hear the murmur of a voice.

  Before I can change my mind, I bump my knuckles softly against the door. ‘Louis? May I come in?’

  The voice stops although the clack-clack-clack continues. Perhaps I hear footsteps, I am not sure. Perhaps I just expect to hear them. But the door does not open as I anticipate.

  I turn the knob, expecting it to be locked like the room below, but it is not. Heavy and old, it opens slowly a crack under my hand. I push it open just as the first feeble glimmer of grey daylight washes through the line of pointed windows, illuminating the great sweep of the roof space save for the low corners still swathed by shadow.

  Quite what I expected to see, I am not certain, but not this. Instead of a jumble of storage boxes, old papers and outdated furniture, there is a large, old-fashioned train set covering the floor. An engine moves steadily clack-clack-clack around the track until it hits a twisted rail section and overturns, the wheels spinning uselessly. Next to it lies an empty, old-fashioned pack of orange Jaffas.

  My eyes dart around the attic, seeking the small figure I know must be here, but there is hardly anywhere he could be hiding. An antique rocking chair stands close to the bank of windows, and under the eaves, shelves are lined with children’s toys of all kinds—tin soldiers and board games and a spinning top. There are piles of books, too, stacked haphazardly. A cushion lies on the floor between the chair and the train set, the imprint of a small body suggesting that he has just that instant risen from watching his train circle the track.

  There is more dust and cobwebs than a parent would normally permit in the vicinity of their child, but in every other respect it is a well-used, working playroom.

  As before, I sense him more than hear him, th
e softest of footfalls behind me. I force myself not to look in case I frighten him. In any case I am too terrified to turn around.

  ‘I like your train set.’

  He comes closer. ‘She broke it.’ The boyish voice has a faint lisp and holds a note of annoyance.

  I glance at the mangled piece of line. ‘Who did?’

  ‘The lady. She didn’t want to play with me.’

  ‘Didn’t she?’ I probe, wanting him to keep talking. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know. She told the men she wanted to make a … a nursery home. I heard her.’

  I frown, thinking about what Robert Sanders has told me. ‘A nursing home?’

  ‘Yes. She wanted to throw all my things out. But she didn’t.’ The little voice is smug with childish satisfaction.

  ‘Didn’t she?’

  ‘No. She fell.’ He laughs the laugh of a child who got his way. ‘She tripped over the train and hurt her leg. Then she went away.’

  ‘And you stayed here?’

  ‘Yes, it was quiet when she went away. When they all went away.’

  ‘So you play up here on your own?’

  ‘Yes, I wish I had someone to play with. Will you play with me?’

  ‘I’ve never played trains before.’ Slowly, awkwardly because of my cut foot, I sit down cross-legged on the floor and set the overturned train to rights. ‘How does it work?’

  Still keeping my eyes averted, I can see only the quick practised movements of small hands in my peripheral vision, still carrying the plumpness of babyhood. My heart squeezes for an instant.

  He quickly sets the train back in motion and we watch, spellbound, for a minute or two until it ends in predictable disaster.

  ‘If you let me take it away, I could see if it can be fixed,’ I offer.

  ‘No. No! You can’t take it. It’s mine.’ The footsteps retreat to the far corner of the room.

  ‘Okay.’ I keep my voice relaxed. ‘Who bought the train set for you?’

  ‘Nobody. It was Grandpa’s. He said I could play with it.’

  ‘Was his name Brigadier St John?’

  ‘No, it was Grandpa,’ he says, in the voice of a child used to stupid adult questions. I nearly smile.

  ‘What about the other toys? And the books?’ I point to the shelves in front of me.

  ‘My first mummy bought them, before she went away.’

  ‘Your first mummy?’ I consider asking him if her name was Evelyn and decide against it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Only what Grandmother and Grandpa said. She went away when I was little.’

  ‘Why did she go away?’

  ‘Because I was bad.’

  The explanation is matter-of-fact, and spoken with such candour, my breath blocks my throat.

  ‘Why?’ I breathe. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I was borned.’ He sounds as though he is parroting something he has heard many times. ‘I shouldn’t have been borned, Grandmother said, so Mummy had to go away to Inkland.’

  ‘England?’

  I sense him nodding. ‘Grandmother told me I could have a new mummy but she must have forgot.’

  ‘Your new mummy never came?’

  ‘No, and then everybody else went away and nobody came.’ He sounds resigned, but a second later, I feel him at my side. He sits next to me, head leaning against my arm. ‘Not for a long, long, long time.’

  Still, I don’t look down but slowly, so slowly, I raise my hand and place it on his head, feeling the soft little-boy curls under my fingers.

  We sit like that for what seems an age. The sun is up now, sending a palely cheerful glow through the dusty filter of the window. I don’t dare to move, thinking he has fallen asleep. But then he stirs and murmurs into my arm.

  ‘Will you be my new mummy?’

  The jolt to my heart is fierce. I must have moved because, in an instant, the weight against my arm is gone. Clouds block the fragile sun. ‘I can’t …’ I stammer.

  At that precise moment, we both hear it. Marc is calling for me from downstairs, although I cannot hear the words.

  ‘I have to go now.’ I stumble to my feet, scooping up my robe.

  ‘No. Stay with me. Tell him to go away!’ The little voice is sullen, the lisp more pronounced.

  ‘I have to go to him but I’ll come back. I …’

  ‘No you won’t!’

  ‘I promise!’

  ‘Em? Em! Where are you?’ Marc’s voice is distinct now, as are the sound of his footsteps. He is on the main stairs.

  ‘Make the man go away!’

  ‘Louis, I—’

  ‘Make him!’ The little voice spits a volatile rage that fills me with fear, and the scent of oranges is suddenly overwhelming.

  I rush to the door, shouting. ‘Marc! Stay where you are!’

  ‘Em? Are you okay? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m all right. Go downstairs, Marc. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  ‘Are you in the attic? I’ll come up. Shit, there’s glass everywhere.’

  ‘He has to go!’ Louis hisses and it is more frightening than any roar for its venom.

  ‘Christ! Em, there’s blood. Are you okay?’ His footsteps are thudding on the attic stairs and I rush towards the door to stop him.

  Louis screams in fury. And suddenly, there is a terrible groaning sigh of old wood and ancient nails, and as I rush through the doorway I see that a whole section of the rotten staircase is coming away from the walls.

  My disbelieving eyes meet Marc’s wide ones and then he is falling, falling in a cascade of splintered wood to the landing below.

  Twenty-four

  April this year …

  One of the best things about a sporty little car like the Audi is that it requires you to actively drive instead of sitting back and letting the vehicle do all the work. You have to use the clutch, down-and up-shift—all of which takes concentration and brain space. It is a reasonably effective antidote to grief and panic. Walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon might be better but all I have is the Audi.

  I did not lie to Marc about my intentions. I drive north through city streets busy with afternoon traffic, both pedestrians and drivers. Cars clog the ramp onto the Harbour Bridge, inching forwards, but finally there is the glitter of water below and the wheeling of gulls against the autumn sky. The Opera House disappears behind me and before long I am on the freeway and whipping towards an unknown destiny.

  They talk about white line fever, but I think it is more like driver’s hypnosis, watching the white line unfold, kilometre after kilometre, stretching on, unending into the distance. I feel as if I could continue on forever, but somewhere north of Newcastle the traffic thins and I am losing the light. With daylight saving a distant memory, in another hour the light will be gone.

  Noticing that I will need to refuel before too long, I turn off the freeway at an unfamiliar intersection and drive west simply because turning left is easier, eventually stopping at a service station. After filling up, I scoop up some orange juice, water and a bag of trail mix, and approach the counter to pay.

  ‘Where am I?’ I ask.

  The man says something but it means nothing. Working out a plan of action is too hard so all I can do is continue on. I see signs for Gloucester and Stroud. I have perhaps heard of them, although maybe I am thinking of the English towns they presumably were named after. All I know is that I am surrounded by pretty countryside, turning dusky pink in the late afternoon light, and soon after to a dim blur.

  I am not conscious of turning off the main road. Perhaps I don’t and the main road has become minor. Either way, when I am next aware of my surroundings, it is fully dark. The clock indicates it is after seven. The road is a low-lying narrow ribbon. Trees crowd the overhead space so that I feel as if I am in a subterranean tunnel.

  Slowing, I ponder what to do. There is no obvious place to turn so I can do nothing but continue on. Night mist drifts in fine tendrils
across the road, wraith-like, lingering before drifting on. I slow further as the mist intensifies and lean forward. I can barely see five metres in front. My dream-state has vanished and I am on full alert.

  Suddenly and terrifyingly, a bright and blinding light bursts through the car from behind me. Brakes and tyres shriek and an angry horn blasts. Gasping, I look away from the road to the rear-view mirror. The double headlights of a monster truck glare angrily from behind and I can see the silhouette of the driver’s face, contorted with fear. He cannot stop his rig in time.

  Automatically, I smack my foot hard down on the Audi’s accelerator. The sporty engine responds, welcoming the sudden thrust, and leaps forward just a second before impact. One accident is averted but I am driving too fast in the mist in my panic. I nearly steer off the road, making the bend at the last moment. But I have overcorrected and the road is behind me now. I am on some kind of unmarked track.

  Back on the road, the truck rumbles on. With a conscious effort to put aside my alarm at its sudden appearance behind me, I slow to a crawl. The track is dropping gently down into a valley. The Audi’s tyres thud over what sounds like a wooden bridge. All around are trees, their bare branches reaching through the mist like ghostly fingers and tapping on the windows.

  I almost drive straight into the wrought-iron gates that mark the end of the lane, but a gasp of wind whips the mist away at the last, and I see them with a moment to spare, rising up, black and imposing, just in time to apply the brakes.

  After cutting the engine, I get out stiffly and walk to the gates. I peer through the handsome curlicues of iron up an overgrown drive. In the headlights, I can just make out the imposing portico and tall chimneys of an old house. No lights shine from the gothic-style windows, but perhaps whoever lives here is at the back.

  All I need are directions. I could turn back and continue along the road but for how long? The problem is the rusty padlock looped around the gate, but when I touch the lock, it crumbles in my hands, and the gate slips silently open.