The Dark Lake

by Sarah Bailey

  I burst into the main entrance. An older woman I don’t recognise is doing paperwork at the desk and looks up at me, surprised.

  She calmly takes her glasses off but is wary. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi. Sorry I’m late. I’m here to pick up Ben. Ben Harper.’

  There is a slight furrow in her brow. ‘Um, okay. Just wait here, please. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  The centre is absolutely silent. It feels exactly like our house does when Ben isn’t there. Hollow. Gentle panic stirs in my gut. Maybe Ben is outside.

  Madeleine Phillips, the centre director, walks into the room with a warm but worried smile.

  ‘Hi, Gemma. Haven’t seen you for ages. How are you?’

  ‘Where’s Ben?’ I say, my voice wavering.

  ‘Here, why don’t you take a seat.’

  I let her guide me to a chair and I sit, but my muscles are on alert and my eyes bore into hers. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Now, Gemma, I’m sure everything is fine, but I just checked the logbook and it seems that Ben’s grandma picked him up today. Maybe you had crossed wires about who was doing what?’

  ‘Ben’s grandma?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what the sheet says. Now, I’ve called Grace who was on shift when he left. She’s new so maybe she … well, anyway, she was here when Ben was picked up. I’m sure she’ll call me back in a minute.’

  ‘But Ben doesn’t have a grandma.’ The words linger in the room and I know that Madeleine and the other woman are looking at each other, trying to work out what to do. No one knows what to do when something like this happens. I have a strange urge to call the police and then think, That’s me. I just want to talk to Felix. No, no, Scott—I have to tell Scott. Dad. I need Dad. My thoughts race around my head.

  ‘Well. That does seem strange. I’ll try Grace again. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation.’ Madeleine shuffles some papers, finding safety in doing something with her hands.

  ‘Maybe it says “grandfather”?’ I blurt out hopefully. Maybe Dad came to pick up Ben. Maybe I had been mixed up after all. I’ve been so tired, and Scott and I had spoken about it late last night. Maybe I’d dreamed it.

  ‘Well, that does make sense, I’ll just try Grace again …’ She is about to get up when the phone rings and we all jump. My skin is prickling and I feel feverish.

  ‘Grace, sweetheart, thank goodness.’ The way Madeleine speaks makes me realise how worried she is too and I surf another wave of panic as I try to breathe.

  ‘Yes, Ben Harper. You wrote “grandma” in the logbook today. Who collected him?’

  The second hand on the cheap-looking clock on the far wall seems to move at an otherworldly pace. There is a hissing sound in my ears and I look blankly at Madeleine’s lips as they move. The phone is now in her limp hand. Suddenly Rosalind’s pale dead body flashes across the scene and it takes me a second to focus on what Madeleine is saying.

  ‘A woman who said she was Ben’s grandma came to pick him up at about four-thirty. Said it was all arranged. Knew all about you.’

  Madeleine’s eyes are huge. ‘She told Grace she was visiting for Christmas. Grace said Ben seemed pleased to see her. He was fine to go with her. Obviously we’re supposed to have something like this in writing from you, but with Grace being new and the woman being so certain …’

  I jump to my feet and then stand there, my eyes darting every which way, my chest heaving as I try to think what to do. ‘Four-thirty was almost two hours ago!’ The thought of all those minutes, all that time with Ben god knows where, is not registering, despite it causing worse pain than I thought was possible. I think I will disintegrate into nothing.

  Madeleine starts to cry, her hand cupped over her mouth. ‘Oh my god. Who is she? And why would she take Ben?’

  I don’t answer but instead run outside and jump into my car. There is only one thought in my head and it slams across my brain over and over.

  I need to find my son.

  I shove my phone onto the hands-free and stab at the screen until I can hear the ringtone through the speakers. My hands are steady on the wheel as I turn out of Cloud Hill’s driveway, but the minute I hear Felix’s voice my throat cracks and I can’t talk.

  ‘Gem? Gemma?’

  I nod, trying to breathe, but the air catches in my mouth and I’m stuttering nothing into the phone. Trees and sky whip past; I need to slow down.

  ‘Gemma! Hello? Are you alright?’

  ‘It’s Ben,’ I manage to whisper.

  ‘Ben? What about Ben? What’s happened?’

  I turn sharply into Neil Road and brush tears from my eyes. ‘Someone’s taken him.’

  ‘Shit. What? Where from? Where are you?’

  My throat is raw as if I’ve been screaming. I clutch my neck, trying to keep my eyes on the road. Ben, I think, my baby boy. My arms begin to shudder uncontrollably.

  ‘Gemma! Where are you?’

  ‘In the car. Near home. Someone took him from day care. Some woman. I don’t know who she is. She said she was Ben’s grandma.’

  ‘Okay, just—I don’t know. Fuck. I’ll send out an alert now.’

  I gasp. A shuddering sob rattles through the car. White noise pierces my ears. Ben’s face is everywhere as I grip the wheel and turn into my street.

  ‘We’ll find him, Gem. I’m coming, okay? I’ll come to you. I love you.’

  Mum dropped dead in the middle of the fruit and vegetable section of the local Woolworths when she was thirty-eight years old. A brain aneurism. Nothing that anyone could have seen coming. I remember one of the many doctors that Dad made me see afterwards saying that she was basically a human time bomb. At her funeral, the man who had been next to her at the supermarket when she collapsed, a nice-looking man in his late twenties who had been fondling avocados, sought me out. He told me that as he held my mother, him squashed against the wooden base of the avocado display with people screaming for help around them, he was certain she looked at him in a way that meant she wanted him to tell me that she loved me. That was unlikely, I knew even then, but I could tell it was important to him, so I squeezed his arm and thanked him for passing on the message. Told him that I was glad that she had someone like him with her when she died. He started sobbing and I patted his arm awkwardly as they loaded Mum into the hearse.

  It is a very strange thing not having a mother. It’s rudderless. My mother was neither overly affectionate nor particularly maternal, but she was mine and I had her all to myself for thirteen years. I would never know love like that again, of being a daughter to a mother, and therefore her everything, and that fact alone was a crushing physical blow. Her death left a great, miserable hole in my world and, try as he did, Dad just could not fill it. We existed in the house for the months after she was gone. Two lost souls rolling in and out of the rooms, polite and considerate of each other’s grief, but not able to connect meaningfully. Not able to crack through the bleak layer that had crept over our lives the instant she left us. His sadness made me uncomfortable: it was somehow worse than my own. I had lost the person who would love me more than life itself, which was a terrible, impossible thing, but that seemed unimportant, selfish even, when compared with losing the person you had chosen above everyone else in the world to spend your life with. The fact that he could even consider replacing her was complicated. I had no such complexity. My love and grief for Mum was tragically simple.

  I thought about all of this the moment I first held Ben. I missed Mum in those first few days, and one thought kept pulsing through my mind, clear above the fog: that at least she had never had to go through the pain of losing me. Holding Ben, I suddenly realised that as bad as it was for me to lose her, it would have been so much worse for her to lose me.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Monday, 21 December, 6.37 pm

  ‘What do you mean, Gem? I don’t understand.’ Scott’s voice carries the same tone of frustration that it’s had since Saturday night. I can tell his forehead is creasing between his
eyes and that his mouth is set. I know that look so well. Scott doesn’t tend to stay angry, but when he does, his rage simmers quietly for days. I seem to have a particular skill for igniting this in him.

  ‘Someone took Ben! From day care.’

  ‘Gem, you were supposed to get him. We spoke about it last night.’ A gentle wave of cheering rolls down the phone line. He’s at the pub.

  I slam my hand on the steering wheel. ‘Scott, fuck! Listen to me, listen to what I’m saying. Someone’s taken Ben. Some woman. I got there just now, to Cloud Hill, and someone had already picked him up. The girl on today is new and she didn’t know … The woman said she was his grandma.’ I start to cry. ‘I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘What? Are you serious?’ He is moving, the sound changes, he must be outside. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m at home. I just came straight here. I don’t know what to do.’

  A strange sound snakes down the phone line.

  ‘Scott, I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I’m coming, Gem. I’m coming. Oh my god.’

  I drop the phone into my lap. Tears feel slimy on my face, mixing with make-up and sweat. The engine hums but the air-con isn’t on and the car is stale and empty. My phone rings, and I jerk sideways. The noise is like a bullet.

  ‘Gemma, Ms Woodstock, we’re so sorry,’ stammers Madeleine from the day-care centre. ‘This is just horrendous. Unbelievable. I’m, well, I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You need to tell us everything. We need to know what the woman looked like. We need to know everything you and the other girl can remember. We need details. CCTV, anything you have. We need to be able to track her down. Find Ben.’

  I feel the familiar kick of routine course through me. I know how to do this. Know how to deal with emergencies. I know how to catch the bad guys and make things okay again. But then Ben’s face looms before me and the panic is back. I don’t know how to do this.

  Madeleine is sobbing into the phone. ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘I’ve called the police. Someone will be there to talk to you soon. Don’t go anywhere. Start writing down everything you can remember.’ I hang up on her. I turn the engine off and get out of the car.

  The house looks different. Everything has frozen in the thick heat except the relentless thrum of cicadas. The sound drives like a drill into my brain. The sky is too blue. The grass is too green. I can hear the heat. Where is Ben? screams my head over the buzzing. I grab at my throat again. It is throbbing so hard I want to rip it out of my neck. I circle my fingers under my eyes, pushing away tears of liquid fear. Just get inside, get inside. Then work out what to do.

  I fumble with the keys. I can’t get them into the lock.

  ‘Fuck. Oh my god.’ I kick the door and then crumple onto the doormat and sob. After a few moments I draw a long shuddery breath and contemplate a life without Ben. Without Ben’s pudgy little fingers. His tiny hands. Without his soft breath on my neck. Without his beautiful eyes, exactly the same pale mint as mine. Another shuddery sob bursts out of my mouth. I think about where Ben could be and what is happening to him and a part of my brain shuts down.

  I finally get inside. Hot air gropes at me and I swat its fingers away. Everything is still and empty. Flat. I scan each room. I am like a wild beast searching for my child. My baby. Fear pulses through every cell. Every breath is a battle and I do deals with the God I don’t believe in. If I find Ben, I will never complain about him again. I will work less. I will be nicer to Scott. Spend more time with Dad. Stop seeing Felix. Please just let me find him.

  His room is neat but for a small pile of clothes from yesterday that I meant to put away this morning. The solemn button eyes of a teddy bear stare down at me from the shelf. Where Is the Green Sheep? has fallen through the bars of his cot and fans open on the floor. Where is my baby? I scream silently at the room. The familiar feeling of dread fills my chest. Just like the moment Dad told me about Mum. Just like when he told me about Jacob. Poor darling Dad, having to shatter my entire world, not once but twice. I can’t imagine telling him that Ben is gone. I wring my hands. I can’t stop moving them: it’s as if they are springs at the end of my arms. I want to punch them through the walls. I want to have a different life. I want Ben back here asleep in his cot.

  I hear the door and my nerves jangle.

  ‘Gemma!’

  I run into his arms. The tears flow out of me like blood from a wound. I can’t talk.

  ‘Shhh, shhh. I can’t believe this. You must be … C’mon, Gem, tell me what happened.’

  Felix half carries me down the hallway and into the lounge. He pulls me onto the couch, his arms around me. His presence here is jarring. I feel ferociously nauseated. Over his shoulder I see our shadowy reflection in the TV screen. It could be Scott and me about to have dinner. I’ve never let Felix come here before. He’s dropped me off a few times, walked me to the door once, and now here he is, sitting in my lounge room, because Ben is missing.

  He pushes me gently backwards and strokes my face, extracting tear-soaked hair from my eyes. He looks older. Faded. His loose white t-shirt ripples with grey patches that cling to his skin.

  Another sob leaks from my mouth. ‘I don’t know where he is. I went to get him and when I arrived no kids were there. I was running late, but only by five minutes, so I thought they might have him out the back, but then they were so surprised to see me I knew straight away something was wrong.’

  ‘Okay. And you said some woman picked him up?’

  My eyes are stinging. ‘Yes, over two hours ago. Said she was his grandma.’ I start to cry again. ‘But Ben doesn’t have a grandma. Where the fuck is he, Felix?’

  ‘I’ve called Jonesy. He and Matthews are on their way to the centre. Do you want me to drive you back there now too?’

  ‘I want my son back. Now. Felix, I need him.’

  ‘We’ll find him. We will. Fuck, Gem, I just knew the roses you got meant something bad. It’s all linked. Someone is fucking with you.’ He pushes me away slightly and holds out his arms, ducking down to force me to look at him. ‘Do you know something? About the Ryan girl? What do you know?’

  I am stunned. Rage rips through my body, propelling me onto my feet. I turn on him, rabid.

  ‘I don’t know anything! How dare you! You think this is my fault?’

  ‘Okay, okay, shhh. Sorry—I’m sorry. I just don’t get this, Gem. Why you? Why Ben?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ My vision cracks again. ‘I don’t know why this is happening.’ I think about my drunken dancing at Fee’s on Saturday night. Fox’s kiss. All the times I’ve been with Felix. I think about what I did all those years ago. Ben doesn’t deserve this. Doesn’t deserve any of it.

  Felix takes my hand and pulls me down to him again. I am buried in the crook of his elbow. I feel upside down. Inside out. As solid as cotton wool.

  Footsteps sound in the hall. It’s Scott. I lift my head just as he bursts into the room.

  Chapter Forty-two

  March (three years earlier)

  ‘You’re so selfish!’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Seriously, Gemma, I want to help you. To be here for you. I freaking love you, but you do my head in, you really do,’ Scott said.

  The baby was pressing awkwardly on my pelvis. Large and unbalanced, I’d climbed onto the bench to get the wok from the top shelf. As I’d inched it forward, there was a moment where its weight had unexpectedly been more on my hands than the shelf and I’d overcorrected and slipped, pulling my hands down to hold on to the cupboard handles, and the wok had fallen sharply on my forehead before clattering loudly onto the floor. Scott had rushed in from outside and found me crouched and dazed on the bench, sporting a dark red welt.

  ‘I was outside, Gemma. Outside. Not at work, not at the shops, fucking outside. Ask for my help, for god’s sake. What are you trying to prove?’ Scott’s face was boiled red.

  I rolled my eyes again. The bruise on my head smarted
, making me cringe. ‘I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m already doing exactly what you wanted and having your baby.’

  Scott slammed his fist down on the bench. It made a soft thud.

  ‘Don’t do that. Don’t throw that at me. You want this too. I know you do. We agreed that if we weren’t both all-in we wouldn’t do this. Don’t be so unfair.’

  The anger faded from Scott’s face. He shook his head, looking at me with sadness. I’d gone too far.

  I sighed and felt the baby squirm inside of me. My legs ached and my forehead throbbed all the way down to my swollen feet.

  ‘I’m sorry, Scott. I just hate being like this. I feel so useless.’

  My long hair curled heavily down my back. It was thicker than it used to be but the ends were still split. I was stubbornly refusing to cut it. The day before, Matthews had helpfully suggested I start wearing it in pigtails.

  ‘It won’t be much longer, Gem. I know it’s hard, but people do have babies all the time, you know.’

  I focused on a spot on the wall where the light cut into the faded beige paint, making the rest of the surface look dark and dirty. The room was smaller than I’d realised; I could have sworn it was getting smaller. The bench was too close. The walls.

  ‘Yeah, I know they do. But I’ve never done it before.’

  Chapter Forty-three