The Lost Boy
Page 1
The Lost Boy
S.A. McEwen
RUINED
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Published by Kaleido Text Media
First published in Australia 2021
Copyright © S.A. McEwen 2021
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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ISBN: 9780648201397 (ebook)
ISBN: 9780645211016 (paperback)
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Editor: Erica Russikoff, Erica Edits
Cover image: iStock
Cover Design: Rough—Draft @rghdrftstudio
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Lewis
A million times exceptional
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Epilogue
Good Girl Bad - Excerpt
Author’s note
About the Author
Acknowledgments
1
Monday
The boy is gone.
His mother tears around the garden—the front yard, the back. Overgrown foliage scratches lightly at her skin as she bolts down the narrow passage along the side of the house, a first time, then a second.
Both gardens are empty.
She spills onto the street, a flash of colour. Her red dress floats and wafts behind her, the material smoothing out the panic in her jerky stride. She looks like she is floating, not panicking.
The street is quiet and amiable, the warm spring sun a caress on her skin. A false promise, hinting at the impending summer: children playing cricket in backyards, parents sipping crisp white wine on decks in the bright Australian sun.
There is no one within sight, no cars to be heard.
A perfect suburban afternoon.
Except.
Her boy is gone.
2
Six Months Earlier
Olivia sighs deeply as she moves through the living room, her fingers lightly running across Nick’s shoulder as she passes where he sits on the couch.
“That took a while,” he comments, glancing at her, a question in his eyes.
She continues to the kitchen, rests her forehead on the fridge door.
Wolfie, their four-year-old, has stopped falling easily to sleep. After a bedtime routine that has been the envy of all their friends for his entire existence, he is suddenly clingy, anxious, teary. They’ve tried nightlights, extended cuddles, extended stories, extended play—trying to wear him out at the park after kinder—and eventually even ignoring him as he cried.
So far, nothing has worked. Exiting his room at ten past seven, with Wolfie already on his way to sleep, is a distant and ludicrously underappreciated memory.
Evenings cooking with Nick with a glass of wine, swaying to some gentle music, and plenty of time to do some work or watch some television afterwards, likewise so.
Olivia glances at the clock above the fridge.
9.01 p.m.
Now, she’s too emotionally wrung out to do anything. Nick has kept a plate of stir-fry aside for her, but even warming it up seems like too much effort. Partly it’s worry—why is Wolfie suddenly so anxious about things? But mainly it’s the result of parenting him without a break for what feels like months.
Months of someone needing her every moment of every day.
It’s not true, of course. Wolfie goes to childcare three days a week. He’s not with her all the time. But when he’s at care, she’s at work. Her days crash relentlessly between work, Wolfie, and the practical tasks of being an adult. Some days, even having a shower seems too hard.
Nick follows her into the kitchen, gently leads her to the couch, sits her down.
He heats up her dinner and pours her a small glass of the chardonnay she likes, then strokes her hair gently while she obediently eats and sips. The papers he was reading are pushed aside, his warm brown eyes focused on his wife.
“It’s probably just a phase,” he soothes her. “Starting kinder, having more time away from you. I’m sure you’ll have your evenings back in no time at all.”
Olivia nods. She pushes her plate aside and curls into her husband. Tucked under his arm, she breathes in the smell of him, resting her head on his shoulder. Finding comfort in his warmth and bulk.
At times like this, she thinks she’s made a mistake. Nick is a good man. He thinks about her needs. He wants to take care of her. Of them. If she asks him, he’ll do anything for her.
Her mind drifts back to the discussion in her lawyer’s office. It seems almost ludicrous, now. Olivia often doubts herself, but this is an even bigger decision than all the other ones that stir her self-doubt. What if she regrets it?
What if she’s lonely?
What if she’s just plain wrong?
But nothing’s happened yet. Well, nothing irreversible. Things have certainly happened. But she can snuggle into Nick’s warm chest and pretend they’re going to have a different future. Another child, perhaps. The wrap-around veranda they’ve always talked about. A bigger backyard. A view, even.
She closes her eyes and feels guilty. Does Nick deserve this?
The thought swings back the other way, though, as it always does.
Does she?
The papers are waiting. She could sign them, or not. She could bring down their house of cards, or not.
She could tear apart their little family, break Nick’s heart, destroy their future.
Or not.
She sinks deeper into Nick.
She doesn’t have to decide yet.
The papers have been ready for weeks.
She doesn’t know why she doesn’t proceed. She just needs to think. She needs to not be so exhausted, so wrung out by life. She needs a clearer picture of the future.
She needs to escape.
Or maybe she needs to fix things. Make them right.
She needs, at the very least, to make the correct decision.
But not now. Not tonight.
Soon, she tells herself. I’ll decide soon.
From Wolfie’s
bedroom, there comes a low wail.
3
The car hurtles north. Fast enough to get places quickly; not so fast it might warrant a second glance from a police car, patrolling the freeway out of Melbourne.
The boy in the back seat cranes his neck yet again, trying to see out the rear window. His long blonde curls are limp and unwashed. His dirty cheeks are streaked with dried tears. As he writhes again in the back seat, they start afresh, his little face crumpling, his breath hiccupping into short, shallow gasps.
Dark eyes flick to him in the rear-view mirror. He’s strapped in too tightly to be able to move much; to see anything out the back window. Even if his little face did appear above his booster seat, a crying kid in a car is not so unusual. Kids cry all the time. The driver isn’t worried.
The boy is worried, though.
He doesn’t understand anything the driver says to him through his shock and tears; even if he did, he wouldn’t be inclined to believe any of it.
He just wants his mummy.
He wants her now.
4
Tuesday
At the press conference, Nick and Olivia look otherworldly. They’ve barely slept, barely eaten. Though Olivia has tried to apply makeup, her skin looks so pale as to be translucent. She wonders if the people on the other side of the screen can see through it into her thoughts, her being. She feels disconnected from herself, as though she’s dreaming, as though this can’t be real.
Later, she won’t remember anything that she or anyone else said or did. The frantic searching of the day before merges and blurs into police questions and directives.
Did she knock on the neighbours’ doors, or did police?
Information comes to her in fragments: Wolfie was not at the park. Not within a couple of blocks.
Did she search, or did someone tell her?
Find Wolfie, find Wolfie, find Wolfie.
It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Food, sleep, basic functioning all seem absurdly trivial. Her husband, usually so steadfast and soothing, is as untethered as a balloon, offering her nothing to ground herself with.
There are questions, public pleas, updates from detectives.
There are people trying to help, dropping food off, participating in searches.
There are cards and well-meaning flower deliveries from the office Nick and Olivia share with dozens of other architects.
But there is no Wolfie.
5
Wednesday
Nick is tying his tie in the mirror when Olivia stumbles out of bed to the bathroom.
She can’t sleep. Her complexion doesn’t cope with this arrangement; there are huge purplish-grey blotches around her eyes.
She stops in the doorway to the bathroom and stares at Nick.
“You’re not going to work?”
The question is unnecessary. It’s clear that that is exactly what Nick is doing. His hair is neatly combed, his shirt ironed. Even for the press conference he didn’t make such an effort. The question is more to convey her disapproval, her disbelief.
Who goes to work when their child is missing?
Nick’s eyes flick to hers momentarily, wary. “I can’t just sit here,” he says, his voice low, bracing himself for her response. But she can’t even summon any energy to speak to him. She turns around, goes back to their bed, and lies facing away from him. Her eyes are open, her thoughts dark. Wolfie needs them. Anything else is a distraction, a betrayal.
A diminishing.
What could be more important than trying to find your child?
When Nick is out of the house, Olivia will rouse herself and walk the streets. Now, though, she lies stiffly in bed.
The police have told her to stay at home, in case Wolfie makes his way back there. They have enough people searching, they tell her. She suspects it is to keep her out of the way. She supposes they are more efficient when they don’t have to attend to her wailing and grief as well as to the search.
But she knows Wolfie won’t make his way home. He’s four; he couldn’t find his way home from a block away, let alone any farther. And a thorough search has established that he’s not within a block.
He’s farther. Farther away.
So far that she can’t reach him. Can’t help him.
She closes her eyes until she hears the front door click shut.
Then she springs out of bed.
Paul eyes Olivia from the other side of his expensive desk.
It’s Wednesday afternoon, and Olivia does not have an appointment. Usually, Paul would shoo her away, history or no history between them. He doesn’t like his clients dropping in unexpectedly, but he has never quite made this rule stick with Olivia. He finds it hard to say no to her, with her wide yellow-green eyes and unflinching gaze.
Still, he’s conscious of the minutes ticking by. He might find it hard to say no to her, but he’s still going to bill her in six-minute increments, just like everybody else.
He waits silently. Impatience creeps out only through his hands—he moves some papers around, straightens them, tap-tapping on the sides until they’re neatly lined up.
Golden light falls on the parklands opposite and below his generous office, the shadows already starting to lengthen.
“It’s just not a good time, obviously,” she says, licking her lips.
Paul notices the shadows under her eyes, the hollowed-out, greyhoundish look of her. Nervous energy practically rises off her like steam.
“Of course,” he allows. “Nothing has been sent. The wheels haven’t been set in motion. We can sit on this for as long as you like.”
Olivia nods, one quick sharp nod. Her eyes are already sliding away from him, toward the door.
“You could have called,” he says. “Someone might have seen you.”
She glances back at him sharply, this new worry suddenly clouding her beautiful face. Even blotchy and grey, he can still see the line of her neck, her striking cheekbones. Usually porcelain perfection, today her skin is ashen. It pushes her from graceful and iconic into looking too thin.
“I needed a walk,” she says, and slips out of the room without a goodbye.
The streets feel empty, though this is not in actual fact the case. The usual number of people move about their business. Cars honk, motorcycles rev. Conversations flow around Olivia, but her focus is narrow and in monochrome. Her feet tread one after the other.
She remembers just last week walking along this very footpath with Wolfie, noticing the changes, unable to be different with him.
Unable to be kinder.
Where once he would crouch every few steps to examine a beetle or exclaim over a pretty fallen flower or the shape of a leaf, now he’s turned inward. In the fragment of memory, she thinks she can hear him counting under his breath, his fingers moving rhythmically to a pattern she can’t catch.
When Nick comes home from work on Wednesday night, Olivia’s face is deliberately, carefully blank.
At the work Christmas party where they met, it was his calm nature that drew Olivia to him. He chatted to her without any ego, wry and self-deprecating. The evening flew by, and Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed so much and so easily with someone. Over the following months, he proved smart and kind and thoughtful. He never rushed into anything. He weighed things up, deliberately, sensibly. Reasonably. He seemed safe and reliable.
Tonight, these traits enrage her. His calm rationality in the face of disaster. His need to think first and act later.
He doesn’t know this though. She keeps her face expressionless, observing her husband as though from far, far away. He looks so ordinary. It could be any day. It could be the week they moved in together. Or the day after his father’s funeral.
Or the day after they lost their son.
When Olivia thinks “lost,” she is thinking “misplaced,” rather than “lost forever.” But “misplaced” isn’t right either.
There is something much more active about Wolfie’s dis
appearance. Other words spring to her mind, but she pushes them aside.
Nick loosens his tie, glancing at Olivia as he opens the fridge door. Only she could see the assessment in that look. Thirteen years together, and she can read the nuance in a glance with indifferent accuracy.
Tonight, he’s checking on her. Checking to see if she’s all right, but also checking to see if he’s in trouble for being at work. For staying there all day.
For going at all.
Olivia keeps her face carefully neutral, and Nick hands her a glass of wine before he speaks.
“I’ve sorted out a few things so I can mainly work from home for the time being. So I’m ready to help, whatever comes up.” He tips his glass up, swallows half of it in one gulp, and Olivia wonders about that uncharacteristic gulp. “I spoke to Detective Shelley today as well. Did you speak to him?”
She shakes her head, a tiny movement, putting her wine down, her hands against the bench, leaning in to it, her breathing audible. Deep and slow. The movement makes her look insubstantial, she knows. Feminine and fragile and in need of support.