The Way Back

by Kylie Ladd

  Matt tried to stand up, but he felt dizzy, seasick, as if his legs had been filleted. ‘Us? Who’s us?’

  ‘Me and Hannah. I told you, Hannah found her. She said she was at a funeral with you and Rachael, and you were upset and left and she was worried about you, so she called her mum and asked her to pick her up and bring her out to the club, because she thought you’d be at the park, searching, and she wanted to help. And then she just took a horse, she shouldn’t have but she did, she went out and found Charlie and then she wanted to call, but she didn’t know your number, so she rang me instead. I raced here straight away,’ she finished triumphantly, ‘and as soon as I saw it really was Charlie I called you.’

  Matt couldn’t take it all in, but it didn’t matter. Without responding to Gia he struggled upright and started for his car, unsteady as a drunk, the blood still sounding in his ears, but pealing now, pealing and chiming, ringing out across the national park.

  ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty? Can I get you a drink?’

  Charlie was sitting on an old bench next to the stables. Gia hovered over her, anxious—Gia who never worried about how anybody was feeling, who would tell them Toughen up, Buttercup if they complained they were cold or their arms were sore or a horse had just stood on their foot. It was kind of funny to see her standing there like that, almost wringing her hands. Charlie smiled, then immediately winced. Gia was straight onto it.

  ‘Are you hurt? Where? Should I get you something? There’s some Panadol in the office.’

  Charlie shook her head. Her jaw still ached, as did her nose; her throat felt burned and her legs stung from the running, but none of it mattered, somehow. It was as if she could step away from the pain, could parcel it up and shove it in a drawer. ‘No thank you,’ she said politely, squinting as she looked up. Everything was so bright! Bright and green. She had never seen so many greens: olive and khaki and emerald and jade. Dark green, light green, avocado, lime. She drank them all in greedily, peering around her with one hand raised to shield her eyes even though it was almost the end of the day. That stable had stolen so much from her. Her freedom, her family, but other things too—sunshine and colour. Chlorophyll, she thought suddenly, the word popping into her head from a science lesson not long before she’d been kidnapped. The pigment that made plants green. It pleased her that she still remembered. School—that was something else the man had stolen from her, school and her friends, but he hadn’t won. She had.

  ‘She’s hardly said anything since you brought her here. Did she talk to you when you found her? Did you ask her what happened, where’s she been?’ Gia had moved from the bench and was muttering to Hannah only metres away, as if Charlie had lost her hearing as well as her speech.

  ‘We didn’t really talk. I was just too shocked. And she was clearly running from something or someone, so I didn’t want to hang around chatting. I just shoved her up onto Duke and kicked him as hard I could.’

  Charlie? That was what Hannah had said. Charlie remembered it as clear as day, the first time someone had called her by her name in weeks. Months. How long had it been?

  ‘Hannah?’ she called. Her voice croaked like a rusty gate. Hannah was beside her immediately, holding a blue blanket.

  ‘Sorry, I was just getting you this,’ she said, handing it to Charlie. ‘To keep you warm, since you took off your jumper.’

  ‘It wasn’t my jumper,’ Charlie replied. She grasped the blanket and brought it up to her face. It smelled of hay and sweat and saddle soap, and she breathed it in deeply.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Hannah cried. ‘It’s one of Duke’s saddle rugs. We didn’t have anything else. It’s filthy.’

  ‘So am I.’ She put the blanket on her knees and left it there. She wasn’t cold, just like she wasn’t hungry or thirsty, even though she should have been all three. Instead, she was buzzing. Everything felt magnified, electrified, shiny and new. ‘Hannah, what’s the date?’

  Hannah glanced over at Gia. ‘July. July twelfth, I think.’

  Charlie counted in her head. ‘Three months,’ she said finally, turning to look at Hannah. ‘I was gone three and a half months?’ She knew it had been a while, but the figure surprised her, somehow. ‘Were people still looking for me?’

  ‘Oh, Charlie,’ Hannah said. Her eyes were wet. ‘They never stopped. That’s what I was doing when I found you—when you found me, actually.’ She tried to smile, but her lips wavered, unconvinced. ‘And your dad too, at the same time. Dan, the police, everyone. We never gave up. We would have kept searching for three years.’

  Charlie nodded. It was hard to take it all in. Ever since she had careened into Duke’s legs her brain had both sped up and slowed down. One minute she had been sprinting, frantic, and the next Hannah had leapt off her horse in front of her and fallen to her knees, crying and shouting her name. Then she had boosted her up onto Duke’s rump, remounted and told her to hang on before they set off at a gallop. Charlie had shut her eyes and not opened them again until they were back at pony club. All that had stayed with her of the journey was the scent of Hannah’s shampoo.

  ‘Your dad should be here any minute,’ Gia interjected. ‘Also a policeman. Sergeant, uh, Blackwell. Terry. He’s the one who’s been running your case. I called him as soon as I’d spoken to your father. We still can’t get onto your mum, but I’m sure your dad will be able to fix that.’

  Charlie fiddled with the trim on the edge of the blanket. It was satin, the colour of the night sky, and sprinkled with horse hair. Her head shot up. ‘Tic Tac! Can I see Tic Tac? Is he here?’ Another glance between Hannah and Gia.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetie,’ Gia said. She never called anyone sweetie. ‘I had to sell him. The club’s been through a rough trot since you, um, went missing. A lot of the other kids left. I had to cut costs, and no one wanted to ride Ticcy. They said he was your horse. He went to a nice family, though.’

  Charlie was no longer listening. Tic Tac sold. Everyone searching. The police involved. Pony club struggling. She hadn’t thought of any of this, hadn’t imagined what her disappearance could do. Whenever she’d dreamed of being rescued, whenever she had lain in the musky straw and allowed herself to visualise an after, it had always been exactly the same as the before. A shiver went through her, but before she could think any more about it there was the squeal of tyres, the slam of a car door. Footsteps flew across the gravel towards her and she was up, on her own feet, the blanket tossed to the ground, racing across the mounting yard and into the arms of her father.

  After that it was all a bit of a blur. Her dad clutching her to his chest and crying and pulling her away to look at her and then crushing her to him again, his scent in her nostrils. She had forgotten that, the exact way he smelt, and for the rest of the day, until they got to the hospital, she kept leaning into him to sniff him again. It made him laugh and then weep, then laugh as he brushed the tears away. She had never seen him cry before. He said her name over and over; he couldn’t stop touching her. Then another man arrived and he was crying too. He threw his arms around her, then apologised and took out a hanky and dabbed at his face before stepping back and holding out his hand. ‘I’m Terry,’ he’d said. ‘You have no idea how happy I am to see you.’ That set both him and her dad off again, and Gia was watching them, but instead of thinking they were mad she was crying as well. Then they were in a police car and Dad was writing something down for Gia and asking her to go and get Rachael, her mum, and Terry told Gia to bring her to the Royal Children’s Hospital, and Hannah called out that she was going too, she couldn’t wait to see Dan’s face. And that was strange because Hannah didn’t even know Dan but then Terry turned the siren on, and they were off, dust billowing behind them, flying through the countryside, Terry in the front driving with a grin from ear to ear, and she and her dad in the back seat, his arm still wrapped around her.

  Despite the siren she must have dozed off. When she woke up she had her head in her dad’s lap and it was almost dark outside. They were stopped a
t a traffic light, the red glow reflecting off the windscreen into a crimson smudge on the roof of the car above her.

  ‘Are we home?’ she rasped. Her throat hurt so much.

  Terry turned around. ‘Not yet, sweetheart. We have to go to the hospital first and get you checked over.’ He paused, his eyes flicking briefly to her father. ‘And I’ll need to ask you some questions about what happened. Hannah told me that when she found you you said something about a man. We’re going to find him, OK? But we’ll need your help.’

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ her dad asked abruptly, one hand in her hair. ‘Did he do anything to you?’

  The lights changed, the now-green smear above her sliding down the back windscreen as the car picked up speed. Charlie closed her eyes, anxiety stirring in her gut. She didn’t want to remember it. She couldn’t tell her dad about that. Where was her mum? She wanted her mum.

  ‘I think she’s gone back to sleep,’ she heard her father say.

  ‘Poor kid,’ Terry replied. ‘She’ll be in shock. God knows what she’s been through.’

  Rachael’s first response when she heard the news was joy; pure, undiluted joy—a sort of bursting giddiness, as if her heart had filled with helium. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before, not even when her children were first handed to her, screaming and basted in vernix and she had looked into their eyes for the first time. She had thought she was happy then, was fulfilled, completed, but those moments were nothing compared with the ecstasy now engulfing her, rolling through her veins. Found. Alive. Safe. As Gia had spoken the words Rachael had turned instinctively to Dan and watched the same emotions blossom across his face. She was not a religious woman, but an image came to her, a picture from a Children’s Bible in a long-ago class: Jesus appearing to his disciples, the empty tomb behind him, and their expressions lit up, transformed with wonder. Rachael knew how they felt. Charlie hadn’t just been found; she had been resurrected.

  She was washed through with joy all the way to the hospital, sitting in the back seat of Gia’s car amid a mess of old halters and lunge ropes simply clutching Dan’s hand, struck dumb with delight. They’d been met by a policeman in uniform who had smiled and shown them to an interview room in the bowels of the building. At one point they’d needed to wait for a lift, but she was so impatient to see Charlie she made them take the stairs instead, three steep flights, the grin on her face so wide that it hurt. And then a door was flung open and she was being propelled towards a figure in a blanket on the other side of the room and suddenly Charlie was in her arms, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, the two of them laughing and crying and then the smell hit her and the room went black.

  She wasn’t out long, Matt told her when she came to. Maybe five minutes, no more than ten. She was lying on an examining table that had probably been meant for her daughter. Rachael had groaned and sat straight up, already calling for Charlie, then nearly passed out again. The girl had materialised next to her, crouching down so they were face to face.

  ‘Mum,’ she had said, ‘Are you OK?’

  The irony of Charlie’s question wasn’t lost on Rachael, but she couldn’t enjoy it. The smell. Oh God, the smell coming off Charlie: sweat, blood, urine and smoke all mixed together, plus something else—the whiff of neglect, of decay, the pungent funk of rotting fruit. And Charlie herself, up close: her skin filthy and pocked with acne, hair dark with blood, skin stretched tight across her bones, as if she’d been shrink-wrapped. A scream rose in her throat. This wasn’t her daughter. What had they done with her daughter?

  Somebody brought her a cup of tea and she gulped at it gratefully. It was too hot and scalded her mouth, but the pain helped centre her, helped her pull herself together. Of course it was Charlie. Thank God it was Charlie. But what the hell had happened to her? Subconsciously, she realised, she’d been expecting the old Charlie back, the one who went out that Saturday with freshly washed hair and a clean pair of jodhpurs; the Charlie of the Missing posters and all those flyers Matt had delivered. The girl hovering next to her looked nothing like that, smelled nothing like that. That girl had clearly been harmed, been damaged. Matt shot her a look and Rachael stifled a sob.

  ‘Hello, Rachael. I know how much you want to take Charlie home, but I’m sure you appreciate that there’s a few formalities we have to get through first.’ Terry was standing before her. He must have been in the room the whole time. Rachael looked around, her head clearing, taking everything in. Matt, helping her off the table and into a seat. Charlie, pale and tiny, shadowing him. Terry smiling at her, willing her to smile back. The policeman who’d shown her in; a woman with a stethoscope draped around her neck, leaning against the wall. Standard hospital furniture; bland watercolour prints designed neither to offend nor be remembered. And Dan too, on the edges of the scene, always the outsider.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Terry. ‘It’s all been such a shock. A wonderful one,’ she added lamely, turning towards Charlie. The girl bolted to her, crowding onto her lap like a toddler, throwing her arms around her. Rachael returned the embrace, dropping her head into Charlie’s hair, her lanky, matted hair, and began to weep. It was Charlie, and she’d been hurt, but she was back now. Back. Nothing else mattered. They’d fix her up. They’d make it as if it had never happened.

  Terry gave them a few minutes, then tried again.

  ‘Just a few questions,’ he said. ‘Just to get us started. I’ll need to do a formal interview, of course—maybe more than one, but we can leave that until tomorrow, when Charlie’s had some rest. And then a medical examination, with Dr Papoutsis.’ The woman with the stethoscope gave a little wave. She looked too young to Rachael to be a doctor. ‘Again, we’ll keep it as brief as possible, but we need to document what sort of, ah, condition you’re in, Charlie. Is that OK?’

  Charlie squirmed on her lap, but nodded, eyes down.

  ‘Alright, then,’ Terry said. He glanced across at the other policeman, who already had his notebook out, and leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘Charlie,’ he began, ‘the day this all started, when you went out riding with your friend Ivy. Can you tell us what happened?’

  It was excruciating to sit through, Rachael thought, half an hour later—not for the detail, but because of the lack of it, Charlie’s clear reluctance to describe anything of what she had endured. Terry was kind and gentle and patient, he did everything in his power to put her at ease, but he didn’t get far. They’d met a man, Charlie said, not really young but not old either. Funny-looking. Strange. When Terry had prompted her to elaborate on this last description Charlie had burrowed into Rachael’s neck and just shrugged her shoulders. He’d scared her, she said, voice muffled; he’d tried to touch her and she’d fallen and hit her head. Or maybe he’d pushed her or Tic Tac reared; she couldn’t remember. Matt caught Rachael’s eye, fists balled in his lap. Touch. He’d tried to touch her. And she woke up somewhere else, in a stable, Charlie went on. No, she didn’t know how she got there or where it was. No, she couldn’t tell Terry how long it had been. She was unconscious, remember? She had spat out the words, teeth bared, but slumped back against Rachael at the next question: had this man tried to touch her again? No, she’d said. Then added, Not really, before turning to Rachael and asking if they could go home now. Rachael had encouraged her to continue, but it was no use. Charlie lapsed into a sequence of monosyllabic answers, barely grunting her replies, until Terry finally brought things to an end.

  ‘Just one final question, Charlie, I promise,’ he said. ‘The man—did he let you go, or did you escape?’

  ‘I escaped,’ she said softly. ‘I set the stable on fire so that he came to get me, then I ran away when he opened the door.’

  ‘We’ve traced the fire,’ Terry said, looking from Rachael to Matt. ‘We’ve got a crew out there now, but they haven’t found anything.’

  Charlie pulled on Rachael’s arm. ‘Please, Mum.’

  Terry leaned forward again. ‘You’ve been very brave, Charlie,’ he said, pla
cing a hand on her knee. She flinched, and he withdrew it. ‘So brave. Setting the stable on fire. What a great idea, when you must have been so frightened. You can go home soon, but I need you to be brave for just a little bit longer, OK? We have to get the doctor to have a look at you, including under your clothes. Your mum can stay with you. Your dad too, if you like. Can you do that for me, Charlie?’

  ‘Will it hurt?’ she mumbled, head back in Rachael’s neck.

  ‘I don’t think so. It shouldn’t.’ Terry peered over to Dr Papoutsis for confirmation. She immediately crossed the room and bent down next to Charlie.

  ‘Charlie, my name’s Jen, and I’ll be doing the examination,’ she said. ‘It shouldn’t hurt, but there is one part that can be a bit uncomfortable. I’ll talk you through it, though. I won’t do anything without telling you first and making sure you’re ready.’ She angled her face so it was directly under the girl’s. ‘I’ll look after you, Charlie. Do you believe me?’

  Charlie slowly nodded.

  ‘Let’s get it over with, then, so you can go home.’ Dr Papoutsis held out her hand. ‘We’ll use the room next door. I’ve already set it up.’

  Charlie hesitated for a moment before accepting it, then slid off Rachael’s lap. Rachael went to stand up too, but Charlie turned and said ‘No, Mum. You stay here.’

  ‘Really?’ Rachael asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie, already moving towards the door that Dr Papoutsis had indicated.

  Rachael resumed her seat, rejected.

  ‘Shall I come, then?’ called Matt.