The Lost Boy

by S. A. McEwen

He just wants to feel part of things.

  But by the end of the week, Olivia had had enough.

  She’d tried to raise it with Nick, in a hushed voice in bed once she was sure the kids were both asleep. But he’d been dismissive, saying to her the exact same things she’d been saying to herself all week. When she’d pushed it, saying, “I’m actually quite worried about it. It doesn’t fit with how other thirteen-year-olds behave. It’s making me quite stressed,” Nick had become irritated. “Stop making problems where there aren’t any,” he’d snapped. “He’s a great kid, trying to entertain a toddler and help us out. Why can’t you just be generous for a change?”

  Olivia had instinctively curled inward, away from Nick in the dark, her stomach tensing almost to the point of cramping. She was grateful the pitch black afforded by their campsite: even with the stars, she could not make out Nick’s silhouette, and so knew he could not make out hers, either. She opened her mouth, struggling to control her tears in the dark, desperate, for some reason, that Nick should not know how deeply he had wounded her. He didn’t seem to care about her distress in relation to the kids; it felt too vulnerable to have him know how deeply his words cut her more generally.

  Was she not generous?

  Olivia tried to find a place for this assessment in her own perceptions about herself. On the surface, she felt she could list a whole host of actions she had taken in relation to Charlie that seemed to her to be above and beyond “generous.” She had devoted hours to the practical tasks of co-parenting when she and Nick had shared care of Charlie. She had thought about parenting; she had read books. She’d reached out to other parents to ask how to best instigate a bedtime routine when there was none, and how to cope with the fallout. She suffered cups of tea with Patricia, who was smug and superior and, Olivia suspected, deeply insecure: one of those people who have to list their achievements to you at your first meeting, without you asking anything even vaguely related to that topic.

  Charlie had taken up swathes of her time, her money, and her emotional energy.

  And yet…

  She knew that deep inside, she was less generous. She had wished Charlie would just vanish, on many occasions. One day, when he was seven, she was lying in bed with Nick, a rare morning that Charlie hadn’t woken them before six. Waking up naturally, stretching and snuggling, a thought had crossed her mind so dark and so terrible she’d sat up in alarm.

  Maybe he died.

  Nick had startled, propping himself up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes. “What is it?” he’d asked, and Olivia had struggled to mask the confusion and shock she had felt at her own thinking. “It’s 7.30,” she’d replied. “Charlie isn’t up. I just had a moment of worry that something was wrong. He never sleeps this late.”

  She’d lain back down slowly, staring at the ceiling, that unbidden thought staying with her all day.

  Somewhere, in her subconscious, a thought occurred, for the first but not the last time: was she a monster?

  Later, another question gets added to it.

  Was she a monster?

  Or was he?

  26

  Olivia and Bing huddle behind their closed door.

  They share a room, still.

  Olivia is eight, and she doesn’t mind at all. Bing is ten, and she wants her own room.

  From behind the closed door, they can hear things breaking.

  They are not afraid. In fact, it is usually one or the other of them who can reach Abby, through the noise and confusion. Olivia, in particular, is finely attuned to him. She can see when he is starting to not cope. She can even predict it, if anyone cared to listen to her.

  But her parents are overwhelmed and they are not listening.

  Today, they had been watching the television—a rare treat in daylight hours. Olivia could feel Abby shifting restlessly beside her. She knows if they turn the volume down and all sit quietly, he will be fine. But her father is grumbling in the background—he prefers children outdoors, not underfoot, on a Saturday afternoon. Her mother is washing dishes, banging pots and pans. Cutlery scrapes and clanks in the bottom of the sink.

  The neighbour’s dog is barking incessantly.

  Olivia starts to shift in her seat, too.

  Then her father is upon them—he has just seen the state of their rooms. Olivia feels guilty, because it is really her and Bing’s room that is the problem. Abby’s room is always neater.

  Her father yells at them to turn the television off until their rooms are clean. Her mother pops her head around the corner, soap suds dripping from her hands.

  “Leave them alone, Daniel. They’re just having a rest.” She glares at her husband: she, too, has at least some sense of when Abby will be pushed out of silence and into something different.

  But Daniel is a father of the times—he has spoken, so action must follow. The nuances of his son’s ability to cope with particular situations are lost on him. Olivia tries, tentatively, to redirect him: “Please, Daddy. Abby needs some quiet.”

  Abby is starting to rock ever so slightly backward and forward on his chair. Olivia feels desperate. It is so subtle, but it is almost too late.

  “Please,” she whispers again, hoping her tone and volume will be contagious, that her father will catch on. “Abby’s room is tidy. Leave him, and Bing and I will go do ours.”

  But Daniel sees an opportunity different to the one that Olivia sees: “Fine. He can do the mowing. He’s been shirking helping out for years and he’s certainly big enough and old enough to do some more chores.”

  Daniel isn’t a bad father. He loves his children in the way fathers in the eighties loved their children—in small doses, with restrained affection, and little involvement in their day-to-day lives.

  His son, however, perplexes him. Abby is effeminate, at odds with his oversize frame. He’s more childlike than expected, playing happily with Olivia and her dolls quietly for hours. He is physically awkward, his large limbs getting in each other’s way. He still can’t catch a ball, if he was even inclined to try.

  And then—inexplicably, when Daniel tries to tie all these things together and form a coherent picture of who his son is—there are the rages.

  Today, Daniel is in a bad mood. He wants to watch the cricket, and resents Amelia’s decision to let the kids watch television. He wants them to go play outside, and leave him in peace. And like many others before and after him, when he doesn’t understand something, he simply rejects it.

  Abby starts to shake his head: no, no, no, no, no.

  “Excuse me?” Daniel says, his eyebrows shooting up in disbelief at this outright defiance. His irritation grows. “I’ve shown you how to do it a hundred times. I’ll start it for you. Come on!”

  Olivia starts to panic. How does her father not see what is going to happen? It is as obvious to her as the sun rising in the morning.

  “It’s too loud for him, Daddy!” she squeaks, pulling at his sleeve, desperate to have him look at her, sure she can convey to him the severity of the situation with her eyes alone. She can’t believe this is happening.

  Again.

  “Rubbish!” Daniel says crossly, pulling his arm out of Olivia’s meagre grip. “He needs to toughen up, that’s all.” Here, he reaches over to grab Abby’s arm. Abby has started to softly tap his forehead with the palm of his hand. The sound is rhythmical.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Daniel grabs the tapping arm, and pulls Abby to his feet.

  “Mum!” Olivia yells, wincing at her contribution to the noise and the confusion, but needing someone to stop her father. And then Amelia is there, yelling too, and Abby frees himself from Daniel’s grip and crouches down next to the table, his hands over his ears, rocking more wildly. His head starts banging into the leg of the table.

  Crack. Crack. Crack.

  The thumps hurt Olivia, too.

  Then there is shouting, grabbing, pushing, pulling.

  And Olivia knows what is coming, and she grabs Bing’s hand, and they run to t
heir room.

  27

  Sunday

  Olivia startles. Was she dreaming?

  She’s lying in bed, clutching her phone.

  Memories swirl and float around her, just out of reach.

  Bing.

  They had been a team once, Olivia thinks. But it’s hard to remember. Flashes of her childhood come to her at random moments, leaving her breathless, her heart pounding. Something bad lurks there, but it takes her a while to remember what it is.

  Now, Olivia thinks about her relationship with Bing. When they stopped talking completely, Wolfie was about to turn one, and Olivia was happy.

  Sometimes, when she’s half awake, the familiar dark feeling she associates with being a child pushes down on her relentlessly. Something bad was here. She can never quite place her finger on what it is. She thinks she remembers—she and Bing are estranged. Of course it feels bad. But there’s always an unsettling feeling underneath. Of that not being quite it, either.

  Now, it’s dark. Olivia is aware that she hasn’t gotten out of bed all day. She needs to talk to Nick about the press conference. She needs to eat something, but the thought turns her stomach.

  She thinks she’ll just lie in bed for a little bit longer.

  Her thoughts turn back to Bing. Those bad feelings. She presses around in them, trying to find the bruise, to explain the darkness that flutters just outside her reach.

  She’d been avoiding Bing all year. But she’d made an exception for Wolfie’s birthday.

  To an outsider, it was nothing: the merest of misunderstanding, so innocuous as to render the outcome staggering. It was nothing compared to some of the earlier grievances.

  Like the time that Olivia had shyly confessed to Bing about Dale, the boy she had a crush on at school. Only fifteen, it was her first real experience of infatuation. Dale was tall and sporty and popular and there was no possibility that he would notice Olivia, let alone date her. So when she heard through the grapevine that he’d been making out with Bing at his older brother’s birthday party, she justified the betrayal away: it was not as though she had any chance with Dale. It was not as though Bing was taking something that was hers.

  She never mentioned it to Bing; but she never told her who she had a crush on again, either.

  And then there was the time when she had had a fight with her boyfriend, Ash—long gone and happily forgotten. He’d been controlling and jealous and he drank too much, and one night in the rage only experienced by the powerless, Olivia had thrown all his expensive wineglasses against the wall.

  It was not a moment she was proud of—the thought still makes her cringe, at who she’d let herself become with him. But she understood it. The cycle of drinking, and jealousy, and control. The feeling of being utterly, utterly powerless to change anything or break out of the cycle. And even as she did it, she knew it wouldn’t help anything: it was a child-like solution to a very adult problem. If I break your glasses, you can’t drink and you can’t get crazy and controlling and we just won’t get into this cycle again, will we? And then we can live happily ever after, can’t we? CAN’T WE?

  But knowing it wouldn’t help didn’t stop it feeling really good. One tiny little sliver of power in a world where she had none.

  She and Ash broke up not long after that. She’d shared the story with Bing in tears: her shame, her helplessness. The realisation that she couldn’t change Ash; she could only leave.

  Months later, at a family lunch, Bing had thrown it up as a casual anecdote about Olivia’s temper, laughing about “that time you broke all the wineglasses” in front of their family and friends. Olivia had just started dating Nick—it was his first introduction to her whole family. The occasion was stressful enough, without Bing belittling her in front of everyone.

  It wasn’t so much that that information was now public knowledge: Olivia had worked through that experience in such a way that made sense to her. She would never be proud of it, but she could explain it in a way that allowed her to forgive herself. What hurt was Bing’s motivations. Had she wanted to make Olivia look bad in front of her new boyfriend? In front of their parents?

  And of course Olivia felt foolish: she trusted Bing again and again, and Bing constantly let her down. She felt gutted and lonely.

  But she always forgave her. She always let her back in.

  Always gave her room to wield her knives and slice Olivia.

  Because it might not be good for her, and it might always hurt her, but she remembers a different Bing. She had nearly ten whole years of a kind sister, a loving sister, a sister who looked out for her.

  Even thirty years of a different Bing later, it was hard to cut off the part of her that loved her sister. It was hard not to keep hoping for something better.

  Even when she thinks about the fight.

  She had been up late, getting things ready for Wolfie’s party. It was just a small event: her parents, Bing, Jodie and Maggie, and one other mother and child Olivia had met at Story Time at the library.

  In her usual manner, Bing had expansively declared that she would make the cake. Olivia was cautiously grateful: Bing would make a great cake. But she also might just as easily get caught up in something else and forget about it. Olivia had learnt from experience that Bing was very busy, and very important—although for the life of her, Olivia could not keep up with what her job was from one year to the next. Making commitments and sticking to them was not Bing’s greatest strength. On top of that, she’d been keeping her distance from Bing all year; the offer seemed incongruous with the reality of their relationship. While she hadn’t stated to Bing anything directly, her lack of availability and interest in connecting must have been obvious.

  Mustn’t it?

  It was curious to consider that for all Olivia’s inner turmoil about cutting off contact with Bing, that Bing might, in fact, have not even noticed the difference.

  So she’d texted her two days before the party, reminding her that Wolfie was obsessed with trains and trucks, and asking if that train from the Women’s Weekly cake book would be too much work, as she herself would be happy to make it if Bing didn’t have time.

  Bing had never replied.

  So at 11 p.m. the night before, she’d sent—admittedly, a slightly snappy—message saying that as she hadn’t heard back from her, and the party was at 11 a.m. the next day, she would pick something up from the cake shop.

  She was disappointed for Wolfie—he would have loved that damn train—but mostly disappointed in herself. She should know better than to rely on Bing. How many times had she been let down? And how many times did she go back for more?

  She was especially annoyed with herself because it impacted Wolfie. She knew it wasn’t a big deal: Wolfie would love any cake. But she didn’t want him to be affected by her failure to learn that she could not rely on her sister. Not for the little things, and certainly not for anything bigger.

  Still—her text message certainly hadn’t been awful. Occasionally, even now, she scrolls back to it, to check. To reassure herself. I’m not insane. It didn’t say what Bing thought it said.

  Sometimes she shows it to someone else, just to check, too, because she knows that everyone gets things wrong. Everyone perceives things differently. Is it possible to believe this was a violent attack? she will ask them. Jodie, for a start. Her mother. Her therapist, who she saw for a year afterwards, trying to untangle her thoughts and feelings about her sister.

  I’m upset that you haven’t got back to me to let me know, the text reads. Wolfie’s first cake is important to me. I’m going to go to the cake shop in the morning to pick something up.

  She’d gone to bed without giving it another thought. Secretly, to be honest, she was hoping she’d wake to an apologetic text: So sorry! I thought I’d replied! Cake is all done and good to go! See you at 11!

  Instead, she woke to something else.

  Now, Olivia closes her eyes. Her head hurts. Her heart hurts.

  Her mind wanders
.

  Olivia is seven, and her big brother is playing peek-a-boo with her.

  She’s too old for peek-a-boo, but never too old for attention from Abby. He’s like dessert, the chocolate frog in the jelly, the special treat you only get every now and then so you savour it.

  Every. Last. Piece.

  He’s large for his age, and awkward. His face is big and round, like a friendly sun. When Olivia draws pictures on the kitchen table, her suns, in fact, always look a little bit like Abby.

  When Olivia thinks about him now, however, she can’t quite remember what is fact and what is fiction.

  She can’t check with her parents—even after all these years, she knows better than to ask them any questions.

  But she remembers feeling loved, and she chooses to hold on to that.

  28

  Monday

  Hannah feels sorry for Olivia.

  This is unexpected: she would have expected to feel a little gleeful when things don’t turn out quite so perfectly for her perfect little sister.

  But the media have it all wrong. Nick isn’t with her because Olivia is a dud: that narrative doesn’t sit well with Hannah at all. There’s no competition if there’s no competition. She wants to have won this particular race because she is the better lover, not because Olivia couldn’t even get out the gates.

  The news coverage, in fact, is pissing Hannah off. She will be remembered not as the seductive, glorious victor, but as the girl mopping up someone else’s slops. This whole new storyline makes Nick considerably less attractive to her—no longer a prized possession to be fought over and conquered…but her little sister’s discarded husband, perhaps not even valued by Olivia at all.

  Was Olivia seeking a divorce?

  Hannah does not even really care about the truth. She cares about the perception that will taint her relationship with Nick.

  Until Wolfie disappeared, they were working toward Nick leaving Olivia and moving in with her. And now that end goal seems decidedly less shiny.