by Nicole Trope
‘Okay,’ Tom replies. ‘I apologise. I’m sorry if I came across wrong. I was just saying that you need to see it from your son’s point of view. He loved his dad and now he’s gone, and as far as he can see you’ve created a whole new life without him. That may be why things are difficult.’
‘Look, I think it’s best if we don’t speak for a while, with everything that’s going on. I’m sorry but perhaps this is too much for both of us. I wish you all the best and I truly hope that your little girl comes home soon. Maybe we can speak one day in the future.’
Megan browses the net for another twenty minutes, waiting for Tom to reply; she can see he’s online, but she doesn’t hear from him again.
She allows a thought to form that she has never considered before about Tom. Could it be possible that his ex-wife took his daughter and disappeared for a very good reason? There are women who have to run from their husbands, who have no choice but to hide so that they can keep themselves and their children safe. What if Tom’s wife was only trying to keep her daughter safe? The things he has told Megan are only from his perspective, only one side of the story.
As she thinks about her new theory, she realises that Tom’s love for his wife borders on the obsessive, even after she supposedly took his daughter and disappeared. She feels guilty for thinking this, but she cannot help but remember how her heart used to pound when the doorbell would ring and she knew it was Greg picking up Daniel for an access visit.
‘I’ll do anything to get you back, Megan, anything,’ Greg had said on the last Saturday before he’d taken Daniel and disappeared.
‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Megan had replied. ‘Our marriage is over and we both need to move on. I really hope that we can just find a way to be friends so that we can raise Daniel together without any drama.’
‘You’re the one choosing the drama, Megan,’ Greg had said. ‘Remember that. This was all your choice. Yours and not mine.’
She has replayed those words in her head over and over again, knowing afterwards that Greg had been warning her of what was to come, berating herself for not having listened more closely.
She goes to Tom’s page, where she studies his profile picture of Jemima, his beautiful daughter frozen forever at four years old. Her cursor hovers over the ‘Friends’ button for a moment. It’s better this way. She clicks, unfriends him, and Tom is out of her life after six years.
Twenty-Two
After dropping Evie off at her mother’s, Megan parks in a side road and then strides into school, just as the final bell tolls. She walks to the classroom and waits outside. The door bursts open and the boys and girls file out. Megan pastes a smile on her face, trying to cover the gut-churning anxiety she has been dealing with all day, and waits for Daniel. ‘Where is he? Where is he? Where is he?’ she thinks, even as she knows that he is safely in his classroom being watched by his teacher, but she cannot calm down. That hideous day, six years ago, comes back to her and her heart races just as it did then.
When she sees him, she opens her mouth to greet him but he glances quickly at her and she sees him clench a fist. He grabs his bag from its place against the wall and walks off without her.
Megan stands in stunned silence as the other students give her curious glances, and then she turns and follows Daniel out of the school gates. Only when they are a few feet away from everyone does he stop walking and allow her to catch up.
Megan had looked around her as she exited the school and realised her error. She was the only mother inside the school. Even the youngest children walked out alone to greet their parents.
Daniel is too old to have her stand outside his classroom, yet she assumed that he would be feeling a little lost and would welcome her presence. Another mistake I’ve made, she thinks guiltily.
‘I keep getting it wrong with him, Mum. I don’t know how to treat him at all,’ she had told her mother.
‘You have to get used to having a twelve-year-old, Megan. You haven’t had the six years of learning in between. It will come, just relax.’
‘My car is the other way,’ she says quietly to Daniel when she catches up with him. She turns around and begins walking to her car while he follows her, far enough behind her so that no one can be certain they are together.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says when they are both in the car and she has pulled out into traffic. ‘I shouldn’t have come to the classroom.’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ he says, and then he bursts into noisy tears that are so surprising Megan has to turn down a side street and pull over so she can comfort him.
Once she has stopped driving, she tentatively holds out her arms, expecting him to shy away, but to her sheer relief he falls into her embrace and cries hot tears for at least five minutes. Though her son is crying and that kills her, she can’t help but revel in the feeling of being able to hold him, of being needed by him, and at this normal display of intense emotion. When he’s done, she hands him a tissue from her bag. ‘Was it that bad?’ she asks.
‘No, it was fine. It wasn’t… wasn’t like, like I expected it to be. They were nice. They were all so nice and some boys asked me to play basketball at lunch, and when I missed, they didn’t yell or anything, they were just cool about it.’
‘I don’t understand, it sounds like a great first day. Why are you so upset?’
‘I’m not upset, I’m just… You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
‘He said that school was filled with arseholes and that’s why I had to learn at home. He said they would all give me shit because my mum didn’t want me and that no one would understand why I had to keep where I lived a secret because everyone would ask questions and then tease me because even my mother couldn’t love me. He said that everyone would keep at me until I told them the truth and then the teachers would call the social workers and I would get sent away to foster care. And that’s what happened the last time I went. I told them something and the principal called and… we had to run away. I was so scared that would happen again. But today it wasn’t like that at all.’
‘When were you in school? I thought you hadn’t been to school in six years?’
‘I was for a few weeks when I was like, ten.’
‘And you had to leave?’
‘I broke the rules. I had to follow the rules so he would take care of me and want me. You didn’t want me.’
‘I always wanted you, Daniel,’ Megan whispers, hatred for all of Greg’s lies simmering inside her. ‘I showed you the newspaper articles and the blog and the posts on Facebook, didn’t I?’
‘You can’t believe everything you see on the internet,’ he states, staring out of the car window. He sits up and moves as far away from her as he can.
Megan wants to howl with frustration. Every time she thinks she’s taken a step forward with her son, he pushes her two steps backwards. ‘That stuff I showed you was true, Daniel. It was true and I lived it every day and I never stopped looking for you or loving you.’
‘You could have made all of that up when you knew I was coming home. He said you would.’
Megan rubs her head where a tight band has begun to form. ‘But I didn’t make it up, darling. How can you think that? I missed you, I looked for you, I love you so, so much. Maybe you need to start thinking about some of the things Dad told you. He said school was filled with arseholes and it wasn’t, was it?’
‘No.’
‘He said they would ask you lots of questions about where you lived, but did that happen?’
‘No.’
‘So, do you think it’s possible that some of the other stuff he told you may not have been the truth?’
‘I… I don’t know. I don’t know,’ he says, staring out of the window at an old man walking his dog.
‘I did want you, Daniel, I did, and I never stopped hoping you would come home.’
‘And then you got married again and had another kid.’
Once Daniel’s tears have ceased and h
is rare show of emotion is over, he is back to speaking in his flat, unemotional tone. She thinks about how Tom had been right about how Daniel feels. I need to do better. Her heart aches as she feels the distance grow between her and her son, right there in the car.
‘That’s not… that’s not how it happened.’
‘That’s exactly how it happened. You forgot about me. When I was gone you went and made yourself a whole new life.’
Megan wonders what she could say to convince her son, trying to find the right words to counter his argument. But she knows that it will take a long time for Daniel to understand that the things Greg told him were his own twisted version of events. It will take her a long time to undo Greg’s damage.
Eliza had said, ‘The foundation for Greg taking Daniel was most probably laid in the months before he took him, when he had his access visits. I am sure that your ex-husband began his campaign then to separate your son from you using tactics that come under the heading of parental alienation. It’s a systematic breaking down of a child’s relationship with one parent by the other parent.’
Megan had sighed on hearing this. It was what Greg had been doing since the day she’d asked him for a divorce.
‘Why did you steal all Daddy’s money?’ five-year-old Daniel had asked her after returning from spending his first Saturday night with his father.
‘Why would you ask me that, Daniel? How could I have stolen Dad’s money?’
‘You stole it all and now he has to live in a yukky room and I have to sleep on the couch.’ Megan had been shocked at the words. She had looked at her son, whose eyes were blazing with anger as he stood with folded arms: a mini Greg with his defiant, square chin.
‘Daniel, I didn’t steal Daddy’s money,’ she’d finally said. ‘Daddy gives me money so I can take care of you.’
‘Why have you stopped loving Daddy?’
‘I explained this, darling. Sometimes people who are married just don’t get on anymore. It had nothing to do with you. Daddy and I were fighting too much and now that we aren’t living together it’s much better for everyone.’
That day, those words had been enough of an explanation for Daniel, but every week he had come back angry at her, defensive of his ‘sad’ father, and full of questions about how much she really loved him and if she would eventually stop loving him like she had stopped loving his daddy. She should have seen the signs, of course she should have seen the signs, but what difference would it have made? She is pretty sure that if she’d called her lawyer and said, ‘Greg is telling Daniel that I stopped loving him,’ the answer would have been, ‘Isn’t that exactly what happened?’
‘Mothers can’t stop loving their children, Daniel,’ she’d said once.
‘Wives can stop loving their husbands?’ he’d enquired, cocking his head to the side, genuinely trying to work it out.
‘Yes.’
‘Will Nana stop loving Pop?’
‘No.’
‘Why? Why can you stop loving Daddy and Nana not stop loving Pop?’
‘It’s… because… Do you want to go out for ice cream?’ she’d asked brightly, too tired to find the right way to explain things to her five-year-old.
‘Ooh, mint chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip.’ He had clapped and jumped and Megan hadn’t had to find a way to explain things that day.
‘I know how difficult this is for you, Daniel,’ she says to him now. ‘I understand how hard it must be to come home and find that you have a new baby sister and I have a new husband,’ she says as she pulls away from the kerb. She doesn’t look at him. She concentrates on the traffic as she speaks, hoping that if she is not looking directly at him, he will feel more comfortable about continuing to talk to her.
‘Whatever,’ he says and then he slumps down in his seat and closes his eyes.
That evening Michael doesn’t come home for dinner because he’s working late, and at nearly midnight, Megan is still sitting on the couch in the living room. She has the television volume on low and only a lamp on the side table turned on. She finds it peaceful to sit in the dark, staring at but not connecting with the images on television.
‘What are you doing?’ is said in a harsh whisper, making Megan startle and yelp.
‘Daniel! What are you doing up?’
‘What are you doing up?’ he retorts.
‘I couldn’t… I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Dad couldn’t sleep either,’ he says.
‘Did he always have trouble sleeping?’
‘Not always, only sometimes. When he thought about you, he couldn’t sleep.’
How much did he still think about me? How much anger was he holding onto? What do I say to this? What is the right thing to say? ‘Oh… that’s… did that worry you? When Dad couldn’t sleep?’
‘I told him he should stop thinking about you. I told him and told him but he was really mad that you didn’t love him anymore. Really mad.’
‘You can’t be mad at someone if they don’t love you, Daniel. You can’t force someone to love you.’
‘Sometimes… sometimes you can,’ he says, and in the low light Megan sees a half smile on his face. ‘Do you want to see a picture of me?’ he asks, and Megan sees that he has his phone clutched in his hand.
‘Yes, I’d love to.’ Megan shifts along the sofa, making room for him to join her, but he doesn’t sit down. He looks through the phone and walks over to her, holding it so she can see the picture he’s found. Only when he is right next to her can she make out what she’s looking at. It is Daniel at maybe ten or eleven years old. He is staring at whoever is taking the photo with a look on his face that is both sullen and broken. His hair is down to his shoulders, tangled with curls. He has a black eye and a puffed-up lip.
Megan gasps. ‘Who… who did that to you?’
‘That’s what happens when you break the rules,’ he says and then he smiles at her.
Megan shakes her head. ‘I’m so sorry, baby, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘You let him take me,’ he growls, ‘you wanted him to take me.’
‘No, I didn’t, I didn’t.’ Megan is shaking her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t, I promise I didn’t.’
‘I’m going back to bed now,’ he says calmly as though they have been discussing the weather. Then he leaves her alone, the photo imprinted in her brain, haunting her.
Megan covers her mouth with her hand. She wants to scream but she doesn’t want to wake Evie. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. In the six years he had been apart from her, she had prayed that his father was keeping him safe, but she had also hoped with everything she had that her son would remain docile and sweet, that he would not anger Greg, that he would not – as she had done once, twice, three times or more during her marriage – ‘push Greg’s buttons’.
Emotional manipulation was Greg’s weapon of choice but he didn’t like it if she fought back, if she bested him in an argument. On the rare occasions that she had managed to do so, he had lashed out. She had been shoved against a wall so hard the breath had been knocked out of her, punched on the shoulder, and had a door slammed against her foot. No one had ever seen the bruises and Greg had always apologised, while still stating that it had been an accident, with flowers and long love letters about how much she meant to him, about how he would simply die without her, about all the wonderful things they would do together. Letters that she had destroyed a long time ago.
She will have to tell Eliza about the picture of Daniel on his phone. She needs to tell Michael and Detective Wardell. If Daniel is the one who lit the fire, it will explain why. Maybe it was his only choice, his only way out. Maybe that’s why he was running from his father: he was finally old enough to run.
She needs to say something to him. She needs to find the words to help him, to tell him she understands, to let him know she is there for him. She gets up and goes to his room, her legs shaking with shock. He is lying in bed with his eyes closed but she knows he hasn’t gon
e back to sleep. ‘Daniel, darling, you need to tell Eliza about what happened, about that picture. You need to tell her that Dad… Dad hit you.’
His eyelids spring open and he stares right at her, his eyes round and dark in the dim light. ‘Dad didn’t hit me. Why would he hit me?’ he whispers.
‘You… you just showed me the picture, you told me it’s what happened when you broke the rules. Give me the phone, and I’ll find it.’
He grabs his phone from where it is lying right next to him and shoves it underneath him. ‘Dad never hit me. I don’t know what you’re talking about. He said you liked to lie.’
Megan is speechless. What is going on? What is going on? What on earth is going on? She turns and stumbles out of the room.
Why is he behaving like this? What if he is damaged beyond repair? What if he can never have a normal life? What if he is unable to feel anything except rage and hatred?
What will I do then?
Twenty-Three
Friday 20 May 2016, Three years since Daniel was taken
Megan is awake before dawn, dressed in her running gear, waiting for time to pass so that she can run along with the sunrise.
When she sees the first sliver of light appear, she is out the door and listening to her pounding feet. Today she will run and then she will meet her mother for breakfast and then she’ll go to work. She’ll meet Olivia for lunch and then she will watch a month’s worth of recorded movies and then it will be midnight and three whole years will have gone by since she’s seen her son. He is nine years old by now.
She would like to know if he still likes peanut butter, if he eats his vegetables without complaint, if he even gets vegetables. Does he still sleep on his side, curled up in the foetal position? What size jumper does he wear? Does he like reading? Who is his best friend?
