The Boy Under the Table (7 page)

She had committed the sin of pride.

Her mother had almost said as much. Alison had no idea what Sarah’s cake decorating meant to her, and what it meant to go to the Show. Her mother thought a trip to the Show should only be about the children.

‘You mind those little ones, Sarah,’ her mother had cautioned.

‘Of course, Mum—but don’t you want to meet us and spend the day with us? The children would love it.’

‘Will Douglas be accompanying you?’

‘Of course, Mum, you know he will.’

‘I have my bridge game, dear. I can’t miss the game. How will they get a fourth?’

Sarah had called her mother to tell of her failure to protect Lockie and even on the phone she could sense Alison thinning her lips.

‘Well I have to say, Sarah, I never took my eyes off you or your sister when we went to the Show. Mothers have to have eyes in the back of their heads. Do you want me to come?’

‘No, Mum, I’ll keep you posted, I’ll . . .’ And Sarah had put down the phone. She would not have been able to stand her mother’s presence. Sarah had considered calling her sister but she had no idea what to say. Caitlyn was living in Dubai while her husband worked a five-year contract with one of the big oil companies. The sisters were worlds away from each other. When Caitlyn called Sarah refused to speak to her. She didn’t want to talk and she didn’t want anyone else in her house. She felt a desperate desire to be alone with her thoughts of her son.

As it was her skin crawled when Sammy climbed on her or Doug asked her what she wanted to eat.

She felt like she needed to sit very still until Lockie came back. She could not eat or drink or move until he came back.

Sarah had not expected comfort or reassurance from her mother. The time for that sort of mother–daughter relationship was long past. She had in fact called for confirmation that Lockie going missing was her fault. She had known it was, and once her mother had spoken Sarah had unleashed the full fury of her guilt upon herself.

It was her fault Lockie was lost.

It was her fault someone had taken Lockie.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

Sarah spoke to her mother less with each passing week. Her mother had not been overly attached to the children. She had only met Lockie a few times. She had found him too boisterous, too tanned by the country sun and too casual in his manners. Her mother had dreamed of a daughter who married a professional man and occasionally dropped by for tea with perfectly groomed children who could discuss the weather. She had worked hard to turn Sarah into that kind of child and she had almost succeeded.

The night she had met Doug, Sarah had been contemplating a proposal from Edward, an accountant whose parents were close friends of the family.

Sarah had been pleased with the match, pleased with how pleased her mother would be. She had seen herself fitting right into the four-wheel-drive school zone at the little school she herself had attended. And then she had met Doug. Beautiful Doug with his blue eyes and blond hair and shoulders that could hold the world.

For the first few years she had known him Sarah had assumed that beneath the quiet exterior lay a deep river churning with emotions, an idea gleaned from the romance novels of her youth. But there was only the surface with Doug.

There was a simplicity to him that Sarah found a relief. After so many years of being tutored in the importance of hiding the horrors of a real self from the world, she sighed and took a deep joyful breath at being with someone who hid nothing. If he was angry he said so and if he wanted to be alone he told her so. She never had to wonder about him and even now, in the depths of this terrible nightmare, she could read everything he was feeling. He knew that she blamed him and he was right. But the blame she threw his way was nothing compared to her own culpability.

It didn’t seem possible at first.

Doug kept saying that he had only looked away for sixty seconds.

The head of security kept telling them that they’d never lost a kid at the Show.

The room had felt so full of love when they had been applauding her triumph. Everyone was smiling. They were happy for her. Who among those people could have taken her child? Who could have taken him and what had they done to him?

If only she’d been tougher on him when he’d wandered away in the beginning. He had kept racing ahead of them but he was always easy to spot with his golden curls covered in a red Bulldogs cap. She should have yelled and threatened but it was such a special day for all of them. She wanted it to be a memory that the children held on to forever.

So she had smiled and warned him lightly, had mentioned possible danger, but Lockie hadn’t really listened.

Lockie had always thrust himself head first into life. As a toddler he was covered in bumps and bruises because he could not understand that he needed to get walking right before he ran. He climbed and jumped and laughed his way through endless scrapes and cuts. He had exhausted her.

Sometimes she caught Sammy looking at her when she was involved in a task. Not looking—staring. She was letting Sammy down now as she had let Lockie down at the Show.

‘Rubbish,’ Margie said on the days when she came over to watch Sammy. ‘You’re a wonderful mother, Sarah. You didn’t let anyone down. Someone took our boy and you know we’ll not rest until we get him back. But someone took him. Lockie let go of the stroller and someone took him. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Doug shouldn’t have looked away. I shouldn’t have looked away.’

‘It happened, Sarah. God willing we will get him back, but you have to try and get out of bed, luv. Sammy needs you and Doug barely says a word to anyone these days. My heart breaks for you, it breaks for all of you, but Lockie wouldn’t have wanted you to do this to yourself.’

Sarah had to bite back the retort that Margie was not a mother. Only another mother could understand.

She had gone into town to buy winter pyjamas and, even though she had seen all the other mothers looking, had heard the whispers wafting through the air like bad smells, she had still bought a pair for Lockie. She had chosen the Ben 10 flannel pyjamas in a size ten because Lockie liked his pyjamas loose and he was a big kid.

She had taken two pairs and placed them defiantly on the counter in front of all the other mothers who had not lost their children, who had not fucked up so horribly.

The whole town would have coffee over this, she knew they would. They would lay their pity on the table, each more distressed than the other. They were good people and they were hurting for her, Sarah knew that, but as time wore on she could not see them as anything other than tragedy vultures circling over the ruins of her life.

She took the pyjamas home and put them in Lockie’s cupboard and when his birthday came she spent money they didn’t have filling the cupboard with gifts. Doug had held his tongue. He had kept the words to himself and she was grateful for that.

Dr Samuels suggested talking to someone. He suggested it everytime he saw her but Sarah couldn’t see the point. What would a psychologist say?

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘You have to forgive yourself.’

‘You have to think of Samantha and the rest of the family.’

Sarah repeated the same things to herself over and over but she couldn’t make herself believe them.

Some days she made up her mind to let go. She would start putting her life back together, she would bake and cook and clean and take care of Sammy and the farm. But it never happened.

Every morning she pulled open the curtains in his room and she couldn’t go on from there.

She had watched the news reports in horror two years ago when that little girl was taken from her hotel room. She had never been found despite the whole world looking. Despite the whole world looking for her, she had never been found.

Never been found.

Sarah had seen the mother on television. She looked completely broken, like her soul was damaged.

How do you recover from that?
she had thought, and she had been determined that she would never make such a silly mistake. She would never go out with friends to laugh and drink and leave her children unprotected in a hotel room, even if you could see the room.

Evil was everywhere. It was the most astonishing thing to realise but it was true. Most people could not really conceive of someone truly wicked. It was on television and in books, but how could such a person actually exist?

They didn’t exist in Cootamundra. The whole town was filled with people just getting through the day, getting through the drought, getting through the work. She had never let Lockie and Sammy roam around town but other parents did and their kids were fine. It wasn’t fair. Not fair. Not fucking fair. She knew how the woman on the television felt now. You never got over such a thing. You never got on with your life, you never recovered, you never . . . you never anything.

In her darker moments she thought that it would be easier if Lockie had died. At least then they would know where he was. They would know that he would never return. And they would have to try and pick up the pieces of their lives.

You couldn’t pick up the pieces when your child was lost. You had to leave them on the ground, waiting for the missing piece. Her puzzle was shattered.

There was Sammy to worry about. Sammy, who had completed the family. Sammy, the golden girl to go with Lockie, the golden boy. Sammy, who had been left behind. Her big eyes watched her parents and she waited for every thing to be all right again. Sammy, who had been let down by her parents when they lost her brother and was now being let down every day by her mother.

When Sarah couldn’t get out of bed for days or when she had no interest in Sammy’s prattling or when she was too tired to read a story or play a game or smile at a picture from school she was failing her child. She was losing Sammy just like she’d lost Lockie only she was doing it by degrees, and for the life of her she didn’t know how to change it. She did not know how to smile at Sammy when she was so broken.

She had felt the cracks appearing and growing larger day after day as they sat in the motel room in Sydney waiting for news. They hadn’t wanted to watch television. The room that had been such an exciting treat at the beginning of the trip had morphed into a prison by the end of the month. They could not leave in case there was news, in case Lockie somehow found his way back, in case they needed to go to the police station and identify . . . Just in case.

Despite the long empty hours spent in that hated room, they couldn’t switch on the TV until Sammy was asleep. Lockie’s face was all over the news and they hadn’t wanted Sammy to see. As the days passed their story moved further and further back in each news report. The city moved on and the world moved on. Celebrities tore up hotel rooms and politicians cheated on their wives and their taxes.

Now Lockie wasn’t mentioned anymore, not unless some other child went missing, and even then it was just a little note at the end, as if to say, ‘Oh and by the way, in case you were wondering, Lachlan Williams is still missing.’

In case anyone was wondering.

The world moved on and the news left the front page and here they were, her sad little family, still waiting for the missing piece. And her greatest fear was that she would never really be anyone other than that woman whose child was taken from the Show.

That she would now and forever be that poor, poor woman.

Tina

Tina read until her eyes burned. Her cheap watch told her it was four in the morning. In the other room she heard the soft snores of Mark and the other boys. One of them, she wasn’t sure who, cried out in his sleep—an appeal for ‘mum’. She often heard this cry from the other room. The voice was always muffled by sleep so she never knew who was dreaming of his mother, but she never asked about it. You couldn’t escape your past in dreams and Tina was sure that there must have been times when she called for Tim or even her mother. The dream searches for the lost were never discussed. There were too many secrets to reveal. ‘Mum’ came the call again and then ‘Mum please’ and then silence.

Tina saw the boy under the table. She had managed to lose the image as she read about love in another era, but now it came back with such clarity she could have been staring at the child right in front of her. The boy under the table would call for his mother in his sleep. He was only eight, or maybe nine, and Tina knew that he would call for his mother if he managed to stop shivering long enough to dream.

‘There’s nothing I can do about it,’ Tina whispered to the cold air.

You couldn’t have saved him
, her mother had said.

We should have done more. I should have done more.

You’re just a kid, Christina. There was nothing more anyone could do.

Tina sat up in her sleeping bag and then pulled herself out. There was no light at all in the place but she knew her way around in the dark. She put her shoes on, pulled the backpack over her shoulder and tiptoed through to the front door.

‘Where are you going?’ whispered Mark.

Tina bit her lip. Mark would be good if he had just scored but fuck-all help if he was on his way down.

‘Did you get some stuff tonight?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, all good. Where are you going?’

‘Have you still got your knife?’

‘Yeah—what the fuck is going on, Teen? Where are you going?’

‘I’m going to . . . Fuck, I’m going to rescue some sad little kid and you can come with if you want but you can’t stop me.’

Mark got up out of his sleeping bag.

‘Anything for a laugh,’ he said and Tina smiled. Mark was almost a good guy.

Almost.

Once they were back out on the streets of the Cross, Tina explained about the boy under the kitchen table.

‘Tina, you’re fucked in the head if you think you can help this kid. Let’s just go to the police. Tell them where the house is, and they’ll get the kid out.’

‘Remember when we told the police about Ruby?’

They had knocked on Ruby’s door for ages. They had called her phone and they had even tried to break the door down. They knew she needed them so they braved the police station. When they walked into the station they felt like they had targets on their backs. But they had needed help.