The Way Back

by Kylie Ladd

  So he locked the door and went and got the rope and came back and put it around her and led her inside, like a pony, like he’d led her horse back ages ago when he first got her. She really did need a shower and it was only polite as his mum would say and now she was talking to him and doing what he said he didn’t want to shut the stable and go back to his house and be all alone again, not when he could be with her and keep talking. And it would make her hair clean and he wanted that because now it didn’t look golden anymore, just brown and matted and a bit smelly too. He’d never thought about girls smelling. It didn’t seem right. None of the girls he’d ever known—his mum and the nurses and the ones at high school back before the accident—ever smelled bad and it made him sad and a bit confused that Charlie did. It took her ages to stand up and then she walked really slowly so he tugged on the rope a bit, just to get her to hurry up, but she fell over and started crying, then looked at him and stopped and they’d made it inside eventually. By then he was feeling hungry so he just sort of pushed her into the bathroom and pulled a chair up against the door so she couldn’t try and run out or anything, then went back to the kitchen to see if there was any more bacon. While he cooked it he heard the toilet flush and then the shower came on and he thought she must be getting under it and washing her hair. He thought about it quite a bit and he didn’t mean to but he put the tongs down and turned off the gas on the stove and walked up the hall to the bathroom door and stopped outside. The water was still running. He eased the chair away. If he just opened the door a crack he could look at Charlie having a shower. She wouldn’t even see him, it would be all foggy and her eyes would be closed but it was wrong, he just wanted a friend, but she wouldn’t even know and he’d like to see her without her clothes on. Blue came and stood beside him while he thought about what to do. His mum was in his head again, only she wasn’t smiling now so he told her to piss off. It would just be a little look. He put his hand on the knob. Blue stretched and wagged his tail.

  Stalled. That’s what they were. Worse than stalled: bogged. Stuck up to their bloody axles and not going anywhere. Terry lifted his Big M to his mouth as he stared at the poster of Charlie taped to the station wall. It was turning yellow; its edges were crinkling. He tipped the carton up and swallowed, but he didn’t taste anything. The clock ticked, the heater sighed as it shifted cycles. One corner of the poster was dog-eared, and he got up from behind his desk and moved across the room to smooth it, but as soon as he resumed his seat it settled back into its fold. Charlie grinned at him, unwavering, but her hair and eyes were dimmer than when he’d first hung it up. Jesus Christ. Terry picked up the empty Big M and crushed it between his hands. How did you keep going? In all his thirty-odd years of policing nothing had prepared him for this. Oh, he’d had plenty of cases that hadn’t been solved, but none—he now realised—that mattered. A car was stolen, or someone was bashed. Unfortunate, yes, but not on this scale. Two months, this had gone on—two months of a young girl simply missing, a family destroyed. He vaguely recalled decades ago, when he’d done his training, a guest lecturer rattling off stats about missing kids: 99 per cent turned up in the first 24 hours, but the chances of those who didn’t dropped with every day that passed. What did that put Charlie’s odds at now? And when—he hated to even frame the question—when did you give up the search? Police resources weren’t infinite. The case would never be closed, but it would have to be downgraded, and he couldn’t bear the idea of Charlie being downgraded, couldn’t stomach the thought of telling Rachael and Matt. Terry threw the Big M at the bin by the door, but it missed and slid down the wall leaving chocolatey smears on the paint.

  He walked over and picked it up. He was too well trained not to. Morale. Another memory of a lecture theatre, but this one from years later, during his officer training. The importance of morale: of building it, maintaining it. Morale is the glue in your team. He’d copied it down from the board, and that was all very well, but morale was the first thing that suffered during something like this. Terry snorted. Suffered didn’t begin to cover it—it had gone to shit. The day guys barely grunted when he asked them something; the night shift didn’t look up from their screens. It wasn’t personal, he had to believe that—it was just that everyone was so despondent, so pissed off. All of their work—the door knocking, the leaflet drops, that Crime Stoppers segment—so far, all of it had been for nothing. Not a decent lead, not a useful tip. And what could he do? How the hell did you raise morale in a situation like this? It wasn’t something that could be solved by a few drinks after work or a paintball session. The only thing that would fix it was Charlie turning up alive.

  Terry forced himself to pick up his pen. This was achieving nothing, and he had paperwork to catch up on—paperwork that he’d have to take home if he didn’t get a wriggle on. He winced at the thought. That wouldn’t go down well. Shell hadn’t said it out loud, but she was sick of it, he knew she was—the extra hours, his preoccupation, the weekends that he’d casually pocketed the car keys and gone out all day to search by himself, just in case, just once more, when he should have been at home with her. You’re getting obsessed, she’d told him a few days ago, and he couldn’t disagree, but how could he stop? Just say it was their daughter, Katy.

  The bell over the station door tinkled and he looked up. A girl in her teens: dark hair, pale skin, the drab grey and green uniform of the local high school. He felt like he recognised her, but couldn’t think of her name.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, approaching the desk. ‘You’re Sergeant Blackwell, aren’t you? The one in charge of looking for Charlie?’ She gestured towards the poster.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said, ‘and you’re?’

  ‘Hannah. Hannah James.’ She held out her hand. He felt calluses when they shook. ‘I’m from the pony club. I do some teaching there, just on weekends. I teach Charlie. I was on some of the searches with you.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d seen you, but there’s been so many people—’

  ‘It’s OK. Listen, it’s probably nothing but I thought I should tell you. I was out the other day, riding with Charlie’s brother in the national park. We were looking for her. We go most weekends. And we saw this man, who said he lived around there.’

  She peered down at her hands as she spoke. There were four small silver studs in her left earlobe, Terry noticed, gradually ascending the flesh like notes on a scale. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘He was a bit … strange, I guess. Dirty. He seemed scared of us. And there was something about the way he spoke, as if he had to think really hard to get the words out in the right order.’ She glanced up. ‘I just wanted to tell you, in case it was any use.’

  ‘Had he seen Charlie?’

  Hannah shook her head. ‘No. He said he hadn’t, anyway.’

  ‘And you didn’t believe him?’

  She shrugged, staring down again. ‘I don’t know. He was flustered. And he didn’t speak properly, anyway, like I said.’

  Terry pulled out the logbook for the case. ‘I’ll make a note of it, but maybe he just wasn’t used to speaking to people. There’s a few around these parts like him. Hermits. They come out here to get away from people, to escape. You probably scared him.’

  Hannah fiddled with her watchband. ‘He scared me. There was something about his eyes. He wouldn’t look at us properly. I think you should try and find him, see if there’s something he isn’t telling us. We could show you where we saw him.’

  ‘No guarantee he’d be there again, though. That sort are drifters—he could be floating around anywhere in the park or beyond, and we don’t have the manpower to look for him. Not now.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Hannah. Her shoulders slumped.

  ‘Look,’ Terry said, making a show of uncapping his pen, ‘Give me your number and we’ll call you if we hear anything. Or you call us if you run into him again, maybe ask him to come in.’

  Hannah’s chin came up. She held his gaze. ‘Sure, no worries. We’ll do all your work f
or you. You just take it easy back here.’ She pulled her school bag onto her shoulder and started towards the door, but then turned to him, eyes alight. ‘I know they’ve scaled down the search. I know it’s been nine weeks. I know you must be run off your feet with all your other work.’ She indicated the empty station with one sarcastic hand. ‘But you should be looking for this guy. You just should. Do you have any other leads?’

  No, Terry had to concede to himself. No, they didn’t.

  ‘Tea? Coffee?’

  Rachael hesitated. She hadn’t expected the psychic to offer her anything, didn’t want to imagine her faffing around in her kitchen with an electric kettle and the milk. It didn’t seem right. This wasn’t a social occasion. If she really was psychic she wouldn’t have to ask you what you wanted. The thought ran through her mind unbidden, and she pushed it away. Of course she didn’t believe in psychics. They were nothing more than frauds and charlatans, preying on the hopes and fears of vulnerable people, lining their own pockets out of the misery or naïveté of others. So thought the old Rachael, anyway, the one who had plotted out her life and her days, methodically ticking each goal off as soon as it was achieved, confident she was in complete control of her destiny. But the new Rachael, the Rachael whose daughter went out for a trail ride one sunny Saturday and didn’t come back—she wasn’t so sure. When her friend Greta had rung to recommend this woman, Rachael had barely hesitated. She had leapt at the idea, she had called immediately and scheduled an appointment. She hadn’t told Matt, because Matt might have scoffed, just as she would have scoffed before Charlie went missing. But that was then and this was now. She was running out of ways to keep going; she was down to the bone.

  ‘Tea,’ she said, swallowing the catch in her throat. ‘Milk and one, thanks.’

  The room that the woman—Barbara—showed her to was bright and airy, all high ceilings and generous windows. That, like the tea too, surprised Rachael. What had she been expecting? A darkened parlour, a spiritualist clad in robes and a turban hunched over a crystal ball? But this was better, she told herself, this was modern and credible; this she might even believe. Barbara led her to a large cream sofa, the sort of thing you might see in a home-decorating magazine, then sat down opposite her in a matching armchair. She must be about sixty, Rachael thought, maybe late fifties, with a warm smile and well-maintained skin and hair. Her clothes were the same sort of corporate chic that Rachael favoured back when she had gone to work: tailored pants, a silk shirt, good but understated jewellery. Rachael put her tea down on the coffee table and slowly exhaled. Barbara was a professional, just like herself. Barbara would know what she was doing.

  ‘So, Rachael,’ Barbara began, looking into her eyes. ‘People usually come to see me for a reason. Do you want to tell me yours?’

  Rachael shook her head. That was the pact she’d made with herself when she booked the appointment, torn between scepticism and hope: don’t reveal anything, don’t give the psychic any easy leads. Let her demonstrate what she can do unaided.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Barbara said mildly. ‘I understand. Can you hold my hand?’

  She held it out and Rachael took it, the contact jolting her. How long had it been since she had touched someone? Since she had reached for Matt, embraced Dan, pushed Charlie’s hair back from her forehead? Weeks, months, a lifetime. Dan was suffering. Matt was too—she knew that, yet she couldn’t seem to reach out to them. They were like cargo jettisoned from a sinking ship, already behind her. Barbara closed her eyes, her jaw set in concentration. Rachael watched her, her heartbeat drumming in her veins, dimly wondering if all psychics were female or if men could do this too. Did they even want to? It was about nurturing, Rachael realised, it was about listening and intuition and offering comfort, it required the very same skill set as mothering.

  ‘You’ve lost something,’ Barbara murmured. ‘Something very dear to you, something that can’t be replaced.’

  The tears welled, pooled, slipped down Rachael’s face. One fell onto Barbara’s hand, but she kept her eyes closed and maintained her grip. ‘Quite recently, I think,’ she continued. ‘You’re very upset about it. You’re in a lot of pain. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rachael sobbed. She couldn’t stop herself; she couldn’t sit there like a statue while this woman mapped her grief. ‘My daughter. She went missing—fourteen weeks ago now. The police think she was abducted.’

  Barbara brought her other hand up to enclose Rachael’s. ‘She was on a horse, wasn’t she? She was out riding.’

  ‘Yes!’ Rachael yelped gratefully, then realised that Barbara might have read about it in the papers. She continued on nonetheless, unable to stop. ‘She was with a friend, Ivy, and Ivy came back, but Charlie didn’t. We’ve searched and searched, the police have searched, they’ve used dogs and helicopters and a special tracker brought in from interstate, but nothing. It’s as if she just vanished.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Barbara said. ‘I’m getting something. I think it’s from her.’ She sat very still. Rachael held her breath, similarly frozen, fearful of moving and interrupting her focus. Little puffs of steam escaped from her tea on the coffee table between them. Barbara frowned. ‘I’m getting something,’ she said again, ‘but it’s hard to read. It’s all muffled, mixed up. Do you have anything of your daughter’s with you?’

  Greta had told her that this might happen. Rachael reached into her handbag for Crush, Charlie’s stuffed turtle, her fingers lingering on its familiar velvety pelt before she handed it over. Barbara opened her eyes and took Crush reverently, as if she was receiving communion, then placed it in her lap and laid both hands on it. For a split second Rachael fought the desire to laugh. It was just a toy, for God’s sake, made in China and purchased from Kmart, but then an image of Charlie, asleep, clutching it to her cheek, flashed across her mind and she had to bite her lip to stop herself from whimpering. There was no miracle crueller than children. Your body stirred, your clock ticked, and you yearned for them, strove for them, took all the vitamins and gave up the wine. After two years of trying she had finally learned she was pregnant with Dan on Christmas Eve. Rather than telling Matt straight away she had dried the test, then wrapped it in paper festooned with holly and bells, and placed it under their tree. The look on his face when he opened it the next morning was something she would always carry with her no matter how old she grew, even, she was certain, if her mind crumbled like her mother’s. Children were a gift, pure and simple, an absolute everyday miracle. Dan was, Charlie was. She had thought herself exultant once she’d had them, fulfilled, complete, but nobody had warned her that her joy came at a price. The first time she had had an inkling of it was when Dan was excluded from a preschool party. He was only four and couldn’t have cared, but she did, deeply. How dare they leave out her precious boy? How could he possibly have been found wanting? Yet that was only the start of it—the teams he wasn’t picked for, the girls who had whispered and pointed at Charlie when she had needed to wear an eye patch for a term in Year Three, the myriad little rejections and disappointments of childhood—each of them hurt her, each sullied her miracle. Then adolescence, and Dan’s slow withdrawal from the family. If she had known how much that was going to pain her she might never have had children. If she had known Charlie would disappear, she definitely wouldn’t.

  Rachael felt her nails digging into the flesh of her palms and made a conscious effort to relax. Dan actually seemed a bit better lately, she told herself. Brighter, taller, bigger even, as if he had somehow appropriated some of the space left by Charlie. Maybe he was putting it on, though, maybe he was just acting brave for her and Matt’s sakes. She winced. It wasn’t as if she’d actually talked to him to find out.

  ‘I’ve got something,’ Barbara announced. Rachael’s heart leapt. ‘It’s Charlie. She’s alive, but she misses you. She says she loves you.’

  Rachael began to sob. ‘Can you see her? Is she OK?’

  Barbara shook her head. ‘I can’t see her, no. It’s just vibes
I pick up. Feelings.’ She paused and cocked one ear as if listening for something a long way away. ‘Voices, sometimes. I can hear her. She says she’s somewhere dark, somewhere near water.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Rachael pleaded. ‘Who has her? Is she hurt?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Her signal’s strong.’ Barbara sighed and pressed down on Crush so tightly its glass eyes bulged.

  Rachael leaned forward in her seat, her face only inches from the psychic’s. ‘You said she was near water—it is the ocean? A river? A lake?’

  Barbara held up one hand. ‘Ssssh … I’m getting something.’ She closed her eyes and sat motionless for two minutes, three, but just as Rachael was about to burst with the agony of waiting, Barbara opened them again. ‘It’s no good. I lost her,’ she said.

  ‘You lost her?’ Rachael cried. ‘You lost her?’

  ‘It happens,’ Barbara said, shrugging sadly. ‘It’s hard to maintain the connection. It takes a lot of mental energy.’

  ‘Could you try again? Please?’

  Barbara stroked Crush’s shell, then handed the toy to Rachael. ‘Not today, I’m sorry. It’s too soon. Perhaps if you came back for another session in a week or two.’

  A week or two? Rachael couldn’t wait that long. In another week Charlie might be dead, or she would. Barbara took her hand, gazing sympathetically into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, and it seemed to Rachael that she meant it. ‘It’s not easy work—but at least you know she’s alive, that she’s out there, that she’s thinking of you. Once I had a family in looking for their son, only he was much older, mid-twenties. He’d set out with a friend on a trip around Australia, but they got separated somewhere near Perth and he hadn’t called his parents for over a month. They asked for my help, but when I tried to contact him there was nothing. Nothing, just nothing, just a vast, lonely emptiness.’ She tightened her grip on Rachael’s hand, squeezing her fingers. ‘I felt Charlie, though. I heard her. She’s still with us.’