by Anni Taylor
The new pills had had unexpected side effects. They’d given me extraordinarily vivid dreams. Dreams that were of Tommy. Always of Tommy. I couldn’t see him anymore in real life, but I could visit him in dreams. I could see him and smell him and touch him. I could even direct the dreams to some extent.
I’d asked my psych about the episodes, and she’d mentioned lucid dreams. In a lucid dream, you were conscious that you were dreaming and you could make things happen within the dream. Everything was sharp and real and intense. I could be in the middle of a field of wildflowers, with Tommy in my lap, listening to him try to sing a song (he’d hum most of the words). I could walk with him down a city street, his tiny hand in mine, just walking and experiencing the world together. I could put him to sleep in his bed and brush his streaky blond hair back from his forehead. I’d never realised how precious those small things were when Tommy was here.
The worst times were when I’d wake from a dream of Tommy. My heart would tear in two all over again. I’d curl myself up tightly and bawl (being careful not to wake Luke).
I’d become an addict to my dream world.
Last Saturday had marked a whole six months of Tommy being gone. Six months. My dreams were my only path back to him.
I must have alarmed Dr Moran in some way when I’d spoken to her about the dreams because she’d said that it might be an idea to switch back to the old sleeping pills.
A week ago, the pills stopped having the same effect. I’d sleep dreamless sleeps. I was in darkness, searching, but finding nothing.
In desperation, I took an extra tablet.
That night, I’d woken outside in our courtyard. In the moonlit darkness. I’d been watching Tommy play with his set of trucks. He’d loaded the pebbles from the garden into the dump truck and giggled hysterically as he tipped the pebbles out again (everything was hysterically funny to toddlers).
Even inside the dream, it’d seemed wrong that I was allowing him out here at night. Bad mothering. But he was so happy, I didn’t have the heart to tell him to come in. When I tried to pick him up, he somehow slipped through my fingers.
Then I’d woken fully. Alone in the courtyard.
It was the first time my dreams had physically taken me to another location.
I should have stopped the pills then.
But I couldn’t stop.
I’d woken in different rooms of the house every night of the past week.
Once at the front gate of the house.
But I had Tommy back again.
I lived for the nights. I’d spend all day in a depression so deep, I was buried in it.
Every week since Tommy had gone missing, the news websites seemed to have some new snippet of information about what might have happened to Tommy. But none of it led to anything. My hopes would be raised and crushed. Raised and crushed.
Speculation. So much speculation. Maybe it was the mother. Maybe it was the father. Maybe he fell into the harbour, after all, and became entangled in the ropes of a boat and then had been taken so far into the heart of Sydney Harbour that no one would ever find him. And the media reminded people that the harbour was full of sharks.
The police talked of lonely, desperate women who took other people’s children sometimes. They talked of people who were prepared to pay a kidnapping ring to snatch the child they want and pretend to themselves it was a type of adoption. The other endings for Tommy were worse. Being murdered by a paedophile or psychopath.
It was all talk. I was bone weary of the talk. No one knew anything. It was all what if and what could be. It was all continuing investigations and leads. In the end, it was just all goose chases and finger pointing and gossip.
All I remembered of the minutes before Tommy went missing was a strange sense of dread and the stop of transmission in my mind. But was that because of what was about to happen to Tommy or something else?
5.
LUKE
Tuesday night
I GAVE PHOEBE A CALL AT six, to remind her about the dinner tonight.
As I predicted, she’d forgotten.
There was never any guarantee she’d remember what we had scheduled on any day. And even if she did remember, she might have worked herself up into too much of a state to do anything but to sit and stare into space.
She answered the phone and told me she’d been planting lettuce seedlings out in the garden. I breathed out relief. That meant it was one of her better days. We only had the tiniest courtyard, but I’d paid for a wall garden to be installed a couple of months back. Cost me a packet. It had a mix of flowers, herbs, and vegetables. Phoebe seemed to like it. She watered it and fiddled about, planting things. Before the garden, I’d bought her a puppy—one of those poodle-mix fluff balls that the breeder told me you need to keep inside. I thought it could be company for her. Phoebe promptly gave it back. I can’t take care of anything, she’d told me.
“Phoebe,” I said, “I’ll be home at six thirty, and we’ll head out to the restaurant at seven, okay?”
Silence for a few moments. “Isn’t this the night we have Thai?”
“Yeah. But tonight we were going out for dinner. Remember?”
“Oh. That’s right. I haven’t got much of an appetite. Is it okay if I skip it?”
“No, babe, it’s not okay. These dinners are not about dinner. It’s networking. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know . . .”
“So, you’ll go?”
“I’m really kind of tired.”
“Feeb, it’s really important to me. You’re my wife. I’d like you by my side sometimes.”
“It’s business, Luke. Not a social occasion.”
“But it’s all couples who’ll be there. It’s that kind of thing. And you have to eat anyway, even if you’re not that hungry. You need to eat. The doctor said so.”
I heard her softly sigh.
“All right, I’ll go,” she told me.
“You will?”
“Yes.”
It could have easily gone the other way. She almost always refused to leave the house.
I drove home at exactly 6:15. Any earlier, and Phoebe might say I was rushing her. Any later, and she might say she thought that the plan had been changed and that dinner was off.
She was wearing all pale grey—a thin wrap top and wrap skirt that both tied at the back. Her long hair was in a sleek knot, and she had a bit of colour in her face for a change. She looked incredible. Bemused by the expression I must have had plastered on my face, she asked me to fix the ties of her outfit.
Somehow, the outfit was exactly Phoebe. Like her, it looked fragile.
She didn’t say much on the drive to the restaurant. But she was with me and making an effort, and I hadn’t been able to ask for more than that for months.
The restaurant was new and expensive. It had a no-children policy, and I’d chosen it deliberately for that alone. I hated to watch Phoebe staring forlornly at the toddler of some other couple. Also, it made the parents uncomfortable when she stared. Sometimes, it was me staring at lookalike Tommys. If people didn’t like Phoebe staring at their kid, they even less liked some strange guy staring.
My business partner Rob and his wife Ellie were already there with the two couples who were among our best clients: Cindy and Grant Clofield and Mirima and Orlando Suez. The clients were in their midthirties, with a multitude of properties in Sydney, Queensland, and the US. I aspired to be like them. As did Rob and Ellie.
It was important to surround yourself with those at a higher level than yourself. The Clofields and the Suezes had a lifestyle I wanted. They afforded Rob and me lucrative sales commissions, and they also supplied our agency with contacts we couldn’t have accessed on our own. By the time I was thirty-five, which was a little over five years away, I planned to be at the top of my game. And then Phoebe and I could combine months of overseas travel with business acquisitions and networking, just like the Clofields and Suezes did.
I didn’t know where any futur
e children fitted into the dream. The Clofields had no kids. The Suezes had two young ones that they took with them on the overseas trips, paying for nannies and tutors along the way. Whether Phoebe would ever want to have another kid was uncertain. She hadn’t brought the subject up. She’d loved Tommy to bits, but she’d struggled with motherhood. Motherhood had been a foreign land to her.
The party of six sitting at our table waved as we stepped over. I had my hand lightly on the small of Phoebe’s back, steering her in. I knew she’d prefer to run back to the car and drive home. I could feel her apprehension through her skin. But she somehow switched modes when everyone greeted her. She became the old Phoebe who easily charmed people. She took a sip of the white wine that Mirima poured for her and told her it was wonderful.
I knew exactly what Phoebe was doing. She’d slipped into a role. She was playing the part of my wife, a supporting role. And she could play a part better than anyone I knew. When she used to perform in theatre, she took the limelight whenever she walked on stage. Not deliberately, but there was something about her that just captured people. A fragility that had an undercurrent of strength. It was the thing about Phoebe that had terrified me the most in those days. That some director would swoop on her and carry her away and make her a star and then she’d become inaccessible to me. When she agreed to marry me, she was already pregnant with Tommy. At the back of my mind, I always wondered if she would have said yes to me if her belly hadn’t been swelling by the day.
Everyone clinked glasses. It was a good start.
“So what’s new with you both?” Phoebe asked Mirima. “It’s been a while since I last saw you.”
“Lots of little things,” answered Mirima in her faintly Chilean accent. “I’m taking Asian cooking classes. And Ollie got the idea that he can play drums, and so he bought a drum kit. I think I need to buy ear plugs.”
It was typical Mirima. She downplayed their wealth and acquisitions, and she chatted about the everyday stuff. She hadn’t talked about her kids in front of Phoebe ever since Tommy vanished, except in passing. I was grateful for that.
“Hey,” Orlando protested. “I’m no Dave Lombardo, but I can bash out a bit of a set.”
“Bash being the operative word,” said Mirima dryly.
Phoebe laughed. I rarely heard her laugh anymore.
“And what’s new with you, Phoebe?” Cindy Clofield turned her sleek blonde head and bright-blue eyes towards Phoebe. I was nervous as I noticed Phoebe hesitating to answer. Cindy was smart as a whip when it came to business dealings, but I knew she had little understanding of Phoebe’s situation. She was the kind of woman who was always on the go and didn’t let anything hold her back. She lost her father in a car accident last year, and she picked herself up the week after and negotiated the purchase of a two-million-dollar apartment.
If I had to choose a wife from the table, other than Phoebe, it would be Mirima. Cindy was too much like me. And Ellie was too much like Rob—pushy and over-critical. Mirima had a warmth that even Phoebe lacked.
It seemed to me that all couples ran on different types of fuel. The Clofields were fuelled by the cold closing of the deal—life for them was all about the relentless churn of wealth for its own sake. Rob and Ellie Lynch were fuelled by nothing ever being good enough, and so they needed the next big thing that was going to make them happy. The Suezes were fuelled by the poor background they grew up in—they were constantly outrunning it, trying to ramp up their wealth so that things couldn’t ever come crashing down on them. The Suezes kept telling me it was all for the kids, and I knew they believed that, but their kids already had far more than they could ever want or need. But I guessed there was always that next level. No matter how rich you were, there was always someone on a higher level than you.
What was it that Phoebe and I were fuelled by? There was a time I would have said that we were fuelled by the same thing. We were both adrenalin junkies. We liked doing things that terrified the living daylights out of us, like deep sea diving in a remote part of the world where we didn’t even know the language. Phoebe once backpacked China on her own. Building up my real estate business from scratch seemed like a natural extension of that. Anyone looking at Phoebe now would say she was fuelled by the search for Tommy. Anyone looking at me now would say I was fuelled by my business. But I wasn’t. I was fuelled by Phoebe. Everything I did was for her.
Everyone was still waiting for Phoebe to answer Cindy’s question. Phoebe eyed Cindy in that direct gaze of hers that took no prisoners.
“What’s new?” Phoebe finally said, repeating Cindy’s question. “Not enough.”
It caused a stall in the conversation. I knew exactly what Phoebe meant. There was nothing new and of note in the search for Tommy. I didn’t blame her for answering in the way she did. Socialising was hard for her these days.
Everyone was too uncomfortable to jump in and say anything. It was up to me.
“Hey, people,” I said. “Phoebe and I were wondering if you’d all like to head out on the yacht after dinner. Sail around the harbour for a bit. For winter, it’s a nice night.”
Phoebe nodded, and everyone visibly relaxed.
I hadn’t taken the yacht out for over a month. Most of all, I hoped Phoebe would enjoy it. She didn’t do anything with her days, didn’t find joy in anything. I’d do anything to change that.
6.
PHOEBE
DREAMING
IT WAS A STRANGE MIST, FOR summer.
Sydney in December should be smothered in summer humidity, inescapable and suffocating on the hottest of the days.
But the night was cold. The mist curled around the chipped edges of corner buildings and massed in alleyways. My mind was cloudy and confused. I needed to focus.
I caught a blur of Tommy’s T-shirt as he headed into one of those foggy alleys. I didn’t understand why he was out here in the darkness, but I needed to catch him.
He was too fast for me. Even though Tommy was just two, his little legs were quick. He stalled every now and again and peered back at me, making me think I could catch him. But it was just a ploy.
Stopping yet again, he stared at me solemnly from beneath his messy dark-blond mop, knowing he was out of reach.
I ached to touch him, to encircle him in my arms, have him koala onto my side like he used to. He’d been gone far, far too long. How long? I couldn’t remember. Had it just been a day? A week?
Tommy shook his head. “You’ll never find me, Mummy, if you don’t know where to look for me.”
Tommy couldn’t speak quite that well before he went away. How did he learn to talk like that?
“But I already found you, Tommy. I can see you. I can hear you.”
He just eyed me blankly.
I clenched my fists as old homeless men stirred in their blankets in the alleyway, like bundles of rags come to life. I hadn’t noticed them before. Every one of them looked the same. Long, greyish hair and tangled beards, like wizards.
They knew everything, saw everything, but told nothing.
I was sure of it.
Tommy seemed to have grown bored of the game because he was already running away. I chased him down street after street. All the way to the playground. The playground in which he went missing. He’d never taken me this far before.
Worry wound around and around me like a rope, tightening and suffocating me. There were too many places in which to lose him again. Even when it was the middle of the night and the playground was empty.
Instinctively, I headed for his favourite part of the water park. Where the water streamed through little canals.
He was there, already huddled over a canal, zooming his plastic sailboat backwards and forwards.
Someone shuffled behind me. A bone-chilling mix of crisp, rattling sounds.
When I edged my head around, I saw one of the homeless wizards gazing at me. I hadn’t heard him coming. He must have descended from the night sky itself. He stretched out his hand towards mine, pressing
something into the palm of my hand. At first, I thought it was a coin. As if the old man was a gypsy and he was crossing my palm with a gold coin. For luck. But it wasn’t a coin. I stared down at my palm to find a moth. A fluttering, half-dead moth with ruined wings.
Why would he give me such a thing?
When I turned back to the water canals, Tommy was gone.
Panic squeezed my heart with an iron fist, punching up into my throat.
Tommy wasn’t anywhere. There was just his toy boat lying on its side in the water. But as I ran to it, the boat upended and disappeared completely. Even though the water was only ankle-deep.
I raced back to the wizard man, grabbing his shoulder with my left hand. “Where’s my son? Where is he? Where did he go?” My voice rose to a scream, echoing everywhere.
The man gazed back at me with pale, sagging eyes that were hollow underneath. Moisture appeared in his eyes, the wetness tracking into vertical crevices in his cheeks. I was committing a grave sin, harming one of the wise wizard men. But I couldn’t stop. He needed to tell me what he knew.
I snapped awake.
Fully awake.
My arms dropped to my sides in horror.
I was here. At the playground. Panic buzzed through me.
How did I get all the way to the playground?
Oh God. Oh God. I’d been dreaming.
Sleepwalking.
There was no toy boat.
No moth in my fist.
No Tommy.
It wasn’t summer. It was June. Winter. That was the reason for the fog.
Tommy had been missing for six months. Not a day. Not a week. Six months.
Jumping back, I held up the palms of my hands in an apologetic gesture. “I’m sorry. So sorry. Please believe me. I didn’t mean—”
But I was waving my arms around so much I was frightening him.