The Lost Boy

by S. A. McEwen

  And here she is now—God, she’s everywhere: Hannah sees Olivia’s pale, striking face on her muted television. She has a moment of indignation and thinks to turn it off, but she’s too curious. She turns up the volume.

  Olivia looks uncomfortable behind the podium. She’s surprised they have her standing; she looks awkward and ill at ease. She looks, in fact, kind of sickly. Nick is beside her, trying too hard to look warm and loving. One arm is stiffly around Olivia’s waist. The presenter is asking them about their marriage: “So there’s no rift, no talk with lawyers about divorce?”

  “No,” Olivia says, but she’s so faint she’s barely audible. She clears her throat. “No,” she says, more firmly. “Nick is a wonderful father and husband. He’s been such a rock through this time. He’s kept us positive—” Here Olivia chokes up a little, clutching for Nick’s hand. She allows herself to look down, be overcome by her emotions, and Hannah guesses—correctly—that she’s been told to show her feelings more. “I’m drowning in my fears and he is keeping us all afloat,” she gasps, starting to sob.

  Nick looks down at his wife. Even with stubble and dark circles under his eyes, he’s a strikingly attractive man. Now, his eyes are soft and loving, genuinely. He looks touched by Olivia’s words, and Hannah throws her keys at the television, cursing.

  God, he’s an idiot, she thinks. Is he really falling for that?

  She hasn’t noticed, and would stridently deny all the tricks and ruses she’s used to manipulate and captivate him, like asking him to move in with her while he’s distracted by her writhing hips, so she sighs in frustration, snatching her keys back up from the floor. She briefly searches the screen for damage, and turns it off, just as she sees Olivia collapse into Nick’s arms, and him wave further questions away, leading his wife tenderly from the podium.

  After the press conference, Nick and Olivia lie together on the couch. It feels to Nick like the most genuine intimacy they’ve shared in months. Olivia is lying along the length of him, resting lightly against his body, her head on his shoulder. They’re quiet. They don’t have a lot of words to say.

  “That went well,” Rolands had said, nodding encouragingly, after Nick helped Olivia from the stage. Olivia was quiet then, too—she had seemed exhausted beyond any capacity to converse further. She had let Nick speak for her, and take her home.

  Journalists had followed them. They lurked around their driveway, where they’d been ever since the story on Olivia visiting Paul’s offices, trying to get quotes or snap pictures, getting in the way. Olivia pretended she didn’t see them: gave them no air time at all. Nick smiled apologetically, tried to be friendly, tried not to get anyone offside.

  They had both warned Charlie, categorically, not to speak to any of them.

  Now, he comes in the door, whistling. He startles when he sees them both, lying quietly, two pairs of eyes falling on him, a silent heaviness permeating the room.

  Even Nick, it seems, has run out of words to say.

  “Hi,” says Charlie, awkward. He tries to tuck a newspaper inconspicuously further under his arm.

  “Why are you buying that rubbish?”

  Nick’s voice seems far, far away to Olivia. But she’s glad someone is asking Charlie that question.

  “I’m just trying to keep up to date,” he falters. “About Wolfie. I miss him, too, you know.”

  Nick shifts next to Olivia, sits up, puts his head in his hands. He rubs at his temples. “Of course, kiddo. I know it’s a really hard time to be here. You’ve been so helpful. It’s just…the articles are upsetting. And that’s not a reputable news source. So do you mind keeping them out of the house, please?”

  Charlie’s face is expressionless, but he nods, and tosses the paper in the bin on his way out of the room.

  Olivia watches his retreating back. She tries to remember the camping trip, again. Her mind is playing tricks on her: she can’t quite remember what is fact and what is fiction. She’s too hungry to think clearly, but the thought of food makes her stomach turn.

  She remembers watching Charlie more closely on that last night.

  Damper. They were eating damper. It was a tradition that Nick relished, but the dough always tasted too heavy, too cloying for Olivia. The thought now makes saliva rush to her mouth, as though she might be sick.

  They were sitting around the campfire, the sun setting past the trees.

  In the distance, she could hear birds warbling, the creek running lightly over rocks.

  Or was it rain on the canopy roof she was hearing?

  She can see them around the campfire; but she can also see them huddled under the shade sail, hiding from the rain.

  Olivia shakes her head, trying to clear it. Sunset and campfire, not rain. She’s almost sure of it.

  Nick was explaining something about fishing to his son. Olivia wasn’t listening to the details; she’s not interested in fishing. She was interested in Charlie’s expressions of emotion. Or lack thereof.

  Charlie was watching Nick, with that blank expression Olivia saw so often, nodding and making noises of assent. Olivia got the sense that he was humouring Nick—that Charlie was not very interested in fishing either.

  It’s nice that he’s trying to be involved in Nick’s interests, Olivia had thought to herself, in direct opposition with the more vocal, less charitable thoughts that were pressing in. But when Nick paused and glanced up at Charlie’s face, Olivia watched Charlie fumble for the right line. “It’s really special getting this time with you and the family,” Charlie said. “I’ve really missed you while I’ve been away.”

  Nick had glowed, and patted Charlie’s knee. He made some touched response that Olivia tuned out. She was watching Charlie carefully.

  She remembers his blank face, the light from the flames dancing on it eerily. She had searched his face for the emotion beneath this statement, but it looked rote, rehearsed, a learnt response that was not coming from anywhere inside Charlie. At Nick’s response, he looked satisfied, like he just received a good grade, or at least a pass, rather than that he just shared a moment of intimacy or connection with his father.

  Olivia watched and doubted herself.

  Why was she obsessing over the emotional world of a thirteen-year-old? Weren’t they all stumbling their way through, learning to regulate and understand their emotions?

  What is wrong with her?

  Her thoughts reflect the firelight: flickering, transient. Burning a little bit. She remembers a very strong desire to pack Wolfie up and take him away from this child.

  He’s a child, she caught herself, though. Isn’t it up to me to teach him, to guide him, if I see things that Nick doesn’t see?

  But even without having the words to articulate it, she knew that if Nick saw it differently, her ability to influence the situation was limited. He’d made it very clear that it was “his child; his decisions.” On some level, Olivia even knew that Nick probably equated this with love: he loved Charlie more, so he would make the best decisions for him.

  Olivia saw that differently: that that in itself influenced her capacity to love her stepson. That night, by the campfire, it seemed like an intricate and delicate web that even with all the thought and attention she paid to it, Olivia herself couldn’t figure out. Some days, step-parenting felt so impossible that it broke her mind: all she was left with was jagged, empty space. She couldn’t compute that anyone had done it successfully. It seemed as incredible as space travel, as living on Mars.

  Her desire to flee was primal: she sensed danger for her child, and then shame at her own response to her stepchild. Nevertheless, she just wanted to snatch Wolfie up and take him far, far away. Forever.

  At the same time, she couldn’t find any words to express what was troubling her. Once, she tried to talk to Jodie about it, and stumbled over her words, her worries sounding lame and trite.

  I don’t think he feels anything.

  He says what he thinks he’s supposed to say, not anything authentic.


  There’s something…cold about him.

  Jodie had tried to understand, to explore further, but Olivia had had nothing further to add. She could see the confusion in Jodie’s face, her desire to support and understand her friend, but also her failure to understand. To see the problem that Olivia saw.

  She hadn’t tried to explain it further. She knew it sounded ridiculous. A child who hides his emotions is hardly the most unusual thing in the world.

  A thirteen-year-old not playing well with a toddler sounded perfectly reasonable when she said it out loud. How much experience do teens have to practice such a thing? Why on earth did she expect it to be better?

  Still, a whole week in each other’s space like that. From nothing, to everything, in a one-room tent.

  What did Nick really expect to happen?

  29

  Monday, Week Two

  Charlie sits in his room, surveying his handiwork.

  The articles are cut out neatly and are arranged in chronological order on the pinboard that he asked Nick to buy for him.

  They’re all from the trashy papers that his father has asked him not to bring into the house, but Charlie reasons they are out of sight—they can’t upset Olivia in his bedroom.

  A couple of photos are circled in pink highlighter: these are the photos that he has supplied. He knows he’s not supposed to talk to the journalists, but he likes being involved. He likes feeling he is contributing something.

  Also, the reporter had been so interested, so grateful. He’d also slipped Charlie a couple of hundred-dollar notes, which was thrilling somehow.

  Now, though, there is a soft rap on the door, and Charlie has not considered this possibility—that Nick or Olivia might come into his room to speak to him.

  He stands up hastily, and goes to the door, opening it just enough to converse with his father, who looks grey, and smaller than Charlie remembers.

  He himself has grown a lot, but Nick has shrunk somewhat too. Not in reality, but in his stance, the defeated air around him. The jovial, chatty man Charlie arrived to just three short months ago has vanished.

  “Just checking in,” Nick says now. His eyes rest on Charlie. He’s trying to be a good dad, trying to remember all the things he has to do, but there’s a blankness behind his eyes Charlie has never seen before.

  Charlie puts a hand awkwardly on Nick’s shoulder. “How are you, Dad?” he asks.

  “Things are pretty hard, huh?” he goes on, when Nick doesn’t answer.

  Nick, for his part, feels a pang of regret, or shame, even. Charlie has lost his mother—his whole life in London. He’s living in a new place, with no friends, no supports. Except Nick, who is barely holding things together. And Olivia, who does her best, but well. She’s not really been a great stepmother, has she? She certainly wasn’t upset when Charlie moved to London, and didn’t really keep in touch with him at all.

  And then there was all that rage that came out on the camping trip.

  Something whirs away in the back of Nick’s mind.

  All those years that Olivia and Hannah weren’t talking. He hadn’t really paid that much attention. Hannah hadn’t seemed like his type of person, then. She was loud. Brash, even. They’d never spent that much time together, even before Olivia had told him she wanted to limit how much time they spent with Hannah. But now he remembers something about Hannah criticising Olivia’s step-parenting. How gutted Olivia had been.

  The memory unsettles him. Somehow, it makes his infidelity worse. That he’s cheating on Olivia with someone who had hurt her so badly; and also that his thinking just aligned with Hannah’s, like it was two against one. Until that moment, Nick would have resolutely maintained that he was on Olivia’s team.

  Feeling suddenly sick, Nick sees for the first time how delusional this is.

  Hannah and Olivia were reconciled by the time he slept with Hannah; it was Olivia, in fact, who’d pushed him into helping her. Now, that memory nags at him uncomfortably too. His irritation with Olivia. She and Bing had only just started talking again. Olivia had been evasive about the details. Hannah was out of their lives, for years. Then suddenly she was back in them, and she was everywhere, and Nick was supposed to give up his evenings to help her?

  He’d resented the renovation project. He thought Hannah was just as demanding and entitled as ever.

  He honestly couldn’t say that he’d seen anything in Hannah that would make Olivia trust her again. Nick knows that her trust is hard won.

  Why had Olivia decided to let Hannah back in to their lives?

  But then there’d been the long evenings, chatting renovation plans over cold wine. Hannah had been so much more interested in his ideas than Olivia had been, when he’d tried to share them. Hannah had been more interested in everything that came out of his mouth, to be honest. Olivia had been cold, and distant, even though Nick was doing her a favour.

  The differences between the two sisters had been so stark: Olivia, cold and harsh and dismissive and uninterested. Hannah, so warm and teasing and interested and…available.

  There was that word, again.

  Nick would hate to think that he could be led astray by someone merely being warm and available. When he thought about it, back then, at the start, he added other layers: how attentive Hannah was; how she remembered things that were important to him, that Olivia forgot. How curious she was about how Charlie was doing; how Nick felt about his absence. He had contorted some common niceties into something more, so he could tell himself how he clicked with Hannah, how connected they were. And he glossed over the fact that he would never have looked twice at her had she not whispered something erotic in his ear one night, and turned him on.

  Now, though, he sees that for what it is: entitled, self-serving.

  If he loves Olivia so much, why would he do that to her? To them?

  And as this internal cacophony crashes into his consciousness, all the things that he’s refused to think about since Wolfie’s birth are suddenly, starkly, apparent.

  Olivia’s obsession with parenting.

  How, once Wolfie was born, Nick wasn’t her number one anymore.

  How that tapped into what Patricia had done, making him doubt his value, his worthiness.

  And how instead of trying to work it out, talk about it, deal with it, he’d shoved it deep, deep down and let it control his choices, his motivation, such that Hannah stroking his ego a little bit had seemed like the answer, instead of the worst thing he could possibly do to feel better.

  30

  Ray learns how to survive in dark places.

  Sleep. Wake. Beg. Forage.

  Hide.

  Johnny keeps pretty quiet on the whole, but gives him tips on where to sleep and how to survive in the new world in which he finds himself. He learns which cafes are lucrative when begging for food scraps, and which bins local grocery stores dump waste in at the end of each day.

  He learns tricks for keeping warm, and what to say to police officers who come through to move them on from time to time.

  He doesn’t think to tell the police what he’d seen his father do to his mother, or that his father had grabbed him afterwards, dragging him, screaming and crying, taking him who knows where, to do who knows what. He doesn’t think to ask what has happened to his father. He has vague memories of his mother calling the police, once? Twice? And them not helping her. Not helping her at all.

  It does not occur to him for even one moment that the police could help him.

  The only person who has ever helped him through this mess is Johnny.

  Life falls into a comforting pattern. Sleep. Wake. Beg. Forage. Occasionally older boys and men try to make trouble, but Ray has become proficient in finding places to hide.

  He sticks close to Johnny. The older man doesn’t seem to mind. He’s not inclined to make small talk, but he’ll talk about the things that matter. He’ll look out for him, and share food when Ray has failed to find any. Once, he asked Ray—gently, carefully—w
here his family was, and images rushed into his mind: screaming, shoving. His mother’s eyes the last time that she looked at him. He was just a boy, but he could see that her terror was only partly for herself—the rest of it was for him, her boy, about to be alone on the balcony with that man.

  That man.

  He had crumpled then, the tears hot and violent, bursting out of him for the first time since that day. Being dragged downstairs, thrown in the car, everything getting darker and smaller and more painful by the minute. And after that, blackness. Till Johnny.

  Warm hands reach for him in the gloom. It’s the only time Johnny has touched him, and being held makes everything worse, not better, because he remembers everything that he once had, and now has lost.

  31

  Tuesday, Week Two

  The police want to talk to Olivia again, and she is nervous.

  How can a child disappear without a trace? the media ponder, forgetting history; forgetting how often this has actually happened.

  In the space between a good story and reality, Nick and Olivia exist, suspended.

  Olivia is gaunt, hounded. She has given up all pretence of coping, and stays in bed. She doesn’t even cry anymore. She just seems to be sinking. Nick imagines he might go in there one day and she will have vanished into the bedsprings completely. But he’s not managing much better. Charlie speaks to him, and he does not even hear: his eyes are vacant, his shoulders slumped in palpable, painful defeat.

  Neither expected this ordeal to last for a week. Both have completely exhausted any means they have to cope. They move through the house like spirits, the presence of the other a gentle puff of air, gently dislodging one another, so weightless they have become.

  Theories abound: paedophile rings; maternal filicide. An elaborate kidnapping plot to frame Nick and punish him for misdeeds the public do not believe he could possibly have committed.

  But Olivia was there.