The Boy in the Photo

by Nicole Trope

  The phone rings again.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ she answers, and before her mother can ask, she says, ‘I’m doing okay.’

  Seventeen

  Daniel – eight years old

  This is a shitty flat. That’s what Dad calls it: ‘shitty’.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s such a shitty flat, Daniel, but I don’t have the money for a better one. We have to keep moving so that the police don’t find us and try to send you to a terrible foster home, where bad things will happen to you.’

  ‘Maybe the police will take me back to Mum,’ Daniel had said, but Dad didn’t think that would happen.

  ‘I’m sure she’s told them she doesn’t want you. She probably moved away by now so she can get on with her life without us. She doesn’t know how to love, Daniel; she doesn’t love me and she doesn’t love you.’

  ‘Maybe I could stay with Nana and Pop?’

  ‘I don’t think your mother would let them take care of you – she’s a really selfish woman, trust me, I know. Even if they really wanted you, she wouldn’t let them have you.’

  ‘Maybe I could go to Uncle Connor and Uncle James, then?’ he had asked his dad, and he had been embarrassed because his nose was running and his cheeks got wet with his tears but he couldn’t help it.

  ‘They have Lucy, they wouldn’t want another kid.’

  He hates being in the flat alone all day but Dad is looking for work where people will pay him cash. They need cash so they can eat. He hasn’t had any breakfast, and if Dad doesn’t come back soon, he won’t have any lunch.

  Dad had told him to drink water, but he’s tired of water.

  The flat smells funny because the person who used to live in it was very old and they’ve left all their stuff here and it all smells like wet dog even though there wasn’t a dog who lived here.

  They’ve been in this flat for one month now, ever since they came back to Australia. Dad won’t tell him the name of the town they’re in but he says it’s for his protection. There is a phone in the flat but when Daniel had lifted it up to see if it was working, Dad had ripped it away from him and pulled the cord out. ‘Don’t you understand what will happen if the police find us?’ he had shouted.

  ‘I just wanted to see if it worked,’ Daniel had told him but then he had to bite his lip because that wasn’t really true. He was going to call Mum. Mum taught him his phone number when he was five. They used to sing it in the car on the way to school. He was going to call Mum from the phone and ask her if he could come back and live with her. Maybe if she heard his voice, she would love him again.

  ‘If the police find us, they will throw me in jail, Daniel,’ Dad had said. ‘Do you want me to go to jail? Do you want to be left all alone with no one to love you?’

  Dad says the same things all the time. Daniel is tired of hearing it. He is tired of only being with Dad, of not going to school, of not having friends or being allowed to play games on the computer. It’s not fun with Dad anymore but he has to accept it because no one else will take care of him. He wishes he was big and strong so he could take care of himself and then he would find Mum and shout at her for not loving him. He would shout and shout. He never used to want to shout so much but now it feels like there’s a volcano inside him, bubbling away, just waiting to erupt.

  Dad was mad at him this morning because he cried in his sleep but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t know he was crying. He was dreaming about being home. He misses Mum and Billy Blanket and Nana and Pop. He misses his bed and his room even though sometimes it’s hard to remember what everything looked like. Sometimes when Dad tells him that Mum doesn’t love him, he wonders if that’s really the truth. She used to kiss him and cuddle him and call him her ‘beautiful boy’. So why did she stop loving him?

  The door opens and Dad comes in carrying food. Daniel feels a jumping happiness inside him because he can smell a burger and chips and he loves chips more than anything in the world. Dad knows that because Dad loves him and he will never stop loving him. He’s promised that he will never be like Mum. He will never stop loving him and taking care of him.

  Eighteen

  Ten days since Daniel’s return

  Megan is not sure what wakes her but suddenly she is wide awake, her heart racing. She strains to hear the sound that has driven her from sleep. She looks over at the baby monitor but on the screen, Evie is peacefully sprawled across her cot. She knows that her daughter will be up soon enough and that she should just turn over and go back to sleep, but a sense of unease prickles at her and she finds herself sliding out of bed and tiptoeing down the hallway. She walks past Evie’s room, silent but for the little snuffling sounds Evie makes in her sleep, and continues down the hallway to Daniel’s room, where she can hear a faint murmuring.

  Talking in his sleep, she thinks, meaning to go in, stroke his head and rearrange his covers as she had always done when he was little and found himself whimpering in the middle of a dream. She knows that now Daniel will never let her touch him like this when he is awake, but she thinks she may be able to get away with it if he is dreaming, a thought that forces her to swallow quickly, chasing away her despair.

  When she gets to his door she stops for a moment and listens, hoping that he may say something that will give her some insight into her child.

  His first session with Eliza, the therapist, has left her no closer to understanding her son. While he was with the therapist, Megan sat in the waiting room, alternately paging restlessly through old magazines and checking Facebook on her phone. Every now and again Eliza’s pretty young receptionist would offer her a cup of tea, but Megan wasn’t able to stomach the idea. When the hour was up Daniel had slouched out of the office and thrown himself down into the chair next to hers. ‘Can we go now?’ he’d demanded.

  ‘How was it?’ she’d asked and had been answered with him rolling his eyes at her. Megan had tried to suppress a smile at this typical reaction from a pre-teen boy.

  ‘Megan – can I have a minute?’ Eliza had said, and Megan had felt herself flush at Daniel’s rudeness. She hadn’t realised that Eliza was standing in the doorway. ‘Will you be okay?’ she’d asked as she stood up.

  ‘Fine,’ had come the reply through clenched teeth.

  In the therapist’s office, Megan had clasped her hands together in her lap and looked at the older woman, whose hair was grey and styled in a perfect bob. ‘How is he?’

  ‘I know that we’ve had a general chat about everything that has happened to Daniel but I always try to have a chat with the parents of the children I am seeing after every session. I will, at all times, try to respect his privacy because I need to build up a level of trust between the two of us, so I won’t tell you everything he says and I have assured him of that, but I will try to give you a general idea of where I feel he is at after each session. Does that sound fair?’

  ‘Ah, yes, sure,’ Megan had replied, a little cowed by the upright posture of the therapist and her somewhat brittle tone. Michael had heard from colleagues at the station who dealt with child abuse cases that Eliza was one of the best therapists for traumatised adolescents, but sitting in front of the woman, Megan began to question her decision.

  ‘I can tell you that he was very reluctant to speak to me at first. He’s very angry.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘I think he’s a very intelligent young man, exceptional even, although he does seem to be trying to almost hide that as though he doesn’t want anyone to know. That may just be because he is unsure of his place right now and is keeping himself safe. He didn’t really want to discuss his feelings about being home just yet but I am confident that will come with time. The only thing I am really concerned about is the fact that he seems to have little or no emotion when it comes to speaking about his father’s death.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve noticed that as well.’

  ‘My opinion is that he’s subverting his feelings to protect you and himself, and he may feel that discussing your ex-husband with you will no
t be well received.’

  ‘I’ve asked him about Greg. I’ve even tried to encourage him to talk about him and remember him.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re doing the best you can,’ Eliza had said, leaning forward in her chair.

  Megan had read her expression as sincere but she’d still felt judged.

  ‘This is not something that has just happened to Daniel,’ Eliza had carried on. ‘This is something that turned both your lives upside down six years ago and is doing the same thing again now. It’s something you both have to get through together. I know you are doing everything you can think of, and over the next few weeks and months I will give you strategies to try, but for now all I want to encourage you to do is to begin speaking about Greg again, maybe even talk about some happy memories you might have so that he feels he can let himself mourn his father.’

  ‘Okay… okay,’ Megan had muttered.

  After the therapy session, she had called her mother to check on Evie before taking Daniel to a café nearby.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ she’d asked when they sat down.

  ‘Milkshake,’ Daniel had said.

  ‘What flavour?’ she’d asked as the waitress came over to their table. She had gotten it wrong again, but then it’s all she seemed to do with Daniel: get it wrong.

  ‘Chocolate,’ he’d said, staring at a couple sitting at the table behind them. Had ordering coffee the last time just been a test? Was he trying, even on his first day home, to see where the boundary was?

  ‘Please,’ Megan had said, and Daniel had moved his gaze to her face.

  ‘Please,’ he had repeated.

  ‘I’ll get a green tea, thanks,’ Megan had told the waitress.

  She knows that this infuriating behaviour is part of adolescence but she can’t help being furious at Greg because she never got to have her sweet seven-year-old and eight-year-old and all the years after that. She knows there are mothers who have lamented that their lovely children turned into monsters overnight, and she has found herself pissed off at those women because they have no real idea what it means to have a beautiful little boy one day and then nothing but emptiness and hope until a wary, distant adolescent turns up.

  Now, standing outside his bedroom door in the middle of the night, Megan pushes her ear against the wood, trying to make out his words.

  ‘Please, please,’ she hears him say and then there is silence. She touches her hand to her heart and holds her breath – she has no idea who he is begging in his sleep. He sounds so young, so incredibly sad.

  ‘Please, please,’ he says again and then, ‘I want to go home. Let me go home.’

  Megan pushes the door open slowly. He is clearly in the middle of a nightmare and she doesn’t want to startle him, but she cannot leave him adrift in his subconscious when he is so obviously suffering. In his voice she can hear her six-year-old son pleading with his father to let him return to her. She wants to put her arms around him and soothe him with the truth that he is home now and always will be.

  She looks at his bed first, trying to make out his form in the subtle glow of the night light in the hallway, but he is not in his bed. Her eyes quickly sweep the room and she sees him sitting next to his desk on the floor. He has his mobile phone in his hand, his thumb moving over the screen.

  ‘Daniel? Are you okay? What are you doing?’ she asks.

  Daniel turns to look at her.

  ‘Look, it’s Dad,’ he says and then he giggles. Not a sound she has heard from him in the time he has been home. Not a sound she has heard since he was taken six years ago. She feels goosebumps rise along her arms. Who are you and where has my son gone?

  Megan walks into the room and crouches down next to him. He holds the phone out to her. On it is a picture of him and Greg standing outside Audrey and William’s house in England. He was there, he was there, they lied! Six-year-old Daniel is holding a fluffy dog in his arms and he is laughing at the person taking the picture. Greg looks delighted with himself. Daniel giggles again. Megan wonders if he is in the middle of a dream even though he is sitting on the floor. She knows that sleepwalking is a sign of extreme stress.

  ‘I can see it’s Dad,’ she says softly.

  ‘I want to speak to him.’

  ‘Oh, baby, oh, sweetheart, I know you do. You can speak to him. I’m sure he can hear you.’

  ‘No, no, I want to speak to him,’ he whispers and he begins pushing down on the keypad.

  She gently covers his hand with hers. ‘You can’t call him, Daniel, not really call him, but you can speak to him. It’s okay to speak to someone who’s gone – lots of people do it and it’s okay.’

  ‘He gave me this phone so I could call him. He said…’

  ‘I know, sweetheart, but…’

  He looks directly at her and she can see that he’s not asleep at all. ‘Dad was in the fire. He got burned, all burned. Dad died,’ he says. He rubs his hands up and down his arms and then swipes at his face where tears have appeared.

  ‘You can still speak to him. I’m sure he’s still looking after you, still watching you and taking care of you.’

  ‘He said he would love me no matter where he was, even if he was in heaven, and he said he would always hear me talk to him, always.’

  Megan is momentarily grateful to Greg for giving his son this idea that she knows will be giving him comfort.

  ‘That’s true and it’s okay to talk to him and to talk about him.’

  ‘He loved you, even after everything you did, he still loved you,’ says Daniel with a smile.

  Megan cannot think of what to say or do so she simply nods.

  He gets up off the floor and climbs back into his bed, still clutching the mobile phone.

  ‘Should I tuck you in?’ asks Megan, even as her hands begin to do just that.

  ‘Yes, yes please,’ he replies, and in his voice, Megan hears again the six-year-old child she had known and loved.

  She smooths the blankets over him and gives his shoulder a squeeze. ‘Sleep tight,’ she says.

  ‘Sleep loose,’ he replies and then he giggles again. Once again, the sound is shocking and uncharacteristic of the boy he is now. She wants to reply but can see that he is almost immediately asleep.

  Megan tries not to cry. He has remembered their usual bedtime words.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ she would say after tucking him in and putting his Billy Blanket against his cheek.

  ‘Sleep loose,’ he would reply and then he would laugh, knowing that they would go back and forth with ‘loose’, ‘tight’, ‘loose’, ‘tight’ until finally she would say, ‘You win, sleep loose,’ and the game would be over.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ she says again but there is silence from Daniel.

  Back in bed she breathes in and out slowly, willing her body back to sleep.

  Since their last therapy session, she has been trying to bring up Greg, to speak about him in a more positive manner. Yesterday she had been helping Daniel with a school project on Egypt he’d been given to do at home before he started school. She’d been pleasantly surprised by his eagerness to build a pyramid. She had been sitting with him, the kitchen table covered in popsicle sticks, small pieces of wood and miniature pots of paint, and without even thinking she had said, ‘Your dad would know how to do this. He was always good at this kind of thing.’

  ‘He built lots of stuff for me when we lived together,’ he had replied. ‘He built a bookcase out of old wood and he sanded it until it was smooth and then we painted it together.’ His smile had been wide and his pleasure in the memory evident.

  ‘It’s good for you to talk about your dad. I want you to talk about him, to remember him.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would want that. You hated him so much.’ Daniel’s smile had disappeared and his face had assumed the blank composure she was getting used to.

  ‘I don’t mind you talking about him at all. He was your father. You should be able to talk about him.’

  He had picked up the gl
ue and spread it onto a stick of wood. Megan had searched for something to keep the conversation going, watching her son open and close his mouth a few times.

  ‘Do you still hate him, even though he’s… he’s…’

  ‘Even though he’s dead?’ Megan had finished for him, aware that even though he was not looking at her but at the pieces of wood he was gluing together, he was desperate for an answer to this tentatively asked question. She could feel Eliza in the room warning her to be careful of what she said. ‘Hate is not the right word. I was angry with him for a long time but he was your father and I will always love that he helped me create you.’

  He had sat back in the chair and looked directly at her. ‘Then why didn’t you just stay with him, just stay married to him?’

  ‘It’s complicated, sweetheart. Marriage is complicated and—’

  ‘Whatever,’ he had said, cutting her off, shutting himself down. She’d felt like someone who had inadvertently flicked a light switch, plunging a room into darkness without meaning to.

  Megan turns on her side, listens to Michael’s breathing. She had lied to Daniel about how she feels. Her hate for Greg is constant, a stone lodged inside her, but her son doesn’t need to bear the burden of that. He is struggling enough. She knows that they will be able to have a funeral once the autopsy and the investigation have been completed, and that will hopefully bring Daniel closure. She is once again furious with Greg for putting his child through this. He doesn’t deserve anything from her except her loathing. Even as she thinks this, she feels guilty. Greg burned to death in a fire and she can conceive of no more awful death than that.

  Nineteen