‘Yes, that’s what the sheet says. Now, I’ve called Grace who was on shift when he left. She’s new so maybe she … well, anyway, she was here when Ben was picked up. I’m sure she’ll call me back in a minute.’
‘But Ben doesn’t have a grandma.’ The words linger in the room and I know that Madeleine and the other woman are looking at each other, trying to work out what to do. No one knows what to do when something like this happens. I have a strange urge to call the police and then think, That’s me. I just want to talk to Felix. No, no, Scott—I have to tell Scott. Dad. I need Dad. My thoughts race around my head.
‘Well. That does seem strange. I’ll try Grace again. I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation.’ Madeleine shuffles some papers, finding safety in doing something with her hands.
‘Maybe it says “grandfather”?’ I blurt out hopefully. Maybe Dad came to pick up Ben. Maybe I had been mixed up after all. I’ve been so tired, and Scott and I had spoken about it late last night. Maybe I’d dreamed it.
‘Well, that does make sense, I’ll just try Grace again …’ She is about to get up when the phone rings and we all jump. My skin is prickling and I feel feverish.
‘Grace, sweetheart, thank goodness.’ The way Madeleine speaks makes me realise how worried she is too and I surf another wave of panic as I try to breathe.
‘Yes, Ben Harper. You wrote “grandma” in the logbook today. Who collected him?’
The second hand on the cheap-looking clock on the far wall seems to move at an otherworldly pace. There is a hissing sound in my ears and I look blankly at Madeleine’s lips as they move. The phone is now in her limp hand. Suddenly Rosalind’s pale dead body flashes across the scene and it takes me a second to focus on what Madeleine is saying.
‘A woman who said she was Ben’s grandma came to pick him up at about four-thirty. Said it was all arranged. Knew all about you.’
Madeleine’s eyes are huge. ‘She told Grace she was visiting for Christmas. Grace said Ben seemed pleased to see her. He was fine to go with her. Obviously we’re supposed to have something like this in writing from you, but with Grace being new and the woman being so certain …’
I jump to my feet and then stand there, my eyes darting every which way, my chest heaving as I try to think what to do. ‘Four-thirty was almost two hours ago!’ The thought of all those minutes, all that time with Ben god knows where, is not registering, despite it causing worse pain than I thought was possible. I think I will disintegrate into nothing.
Madeleine starts to cry, her hand cupped over her mouth. ‘Oh my god. Who is she? And why would she take Ben?’
I don’t answer but instead run outside and jump into my car. There is only one thought in my head and it slams across my brain over and over.
I need to find my son.
I shove my phone onto the hands-free and stab at the screen until I can hear the ringtone through the speakers. My hands are steady on the wheel as I turn out of Cloud Hill’s driveway, but the minute I hear Felix’s voice my throat cracks and I can’t talk.
‘Gem? Gemma?’
I nod, trying to breathe, but the air catches in my mouth and I’m stuttering nothing into the phone. Trees and sky whip past; I need to slow down.
‘Gemma! Hello? Are you alright?’
‘It’s Ben,’ I manage to whisper.
‘Ben? What about Ben? What’s happened?’
I turn sharply into Neil Road and brush tears from my eyes. ‘Someone’s taken him.’
‘Shit. What? Where from? Where are you?’
My throat is raw as if I’ve been screaming. I clutch my neck, trying to keep my eyes on the road. Ben, I think, my baby boy. My arms begin to shudder uncontrollably.
‘Gemma! Where are you?’
‘In the car. Near home. Someone took him from day care. Some woman. I don’t know who she is. She said she was Ben’s grandma.’
‘Okay, just—I don’t know. Fuck. I’ll send out an alert now.’
I gasp. A shuddering sob rattles through the car. White noise pierces my ears. Ben’s face is everywhere as I grip the wheel and turn into my street.
‘We’ll find him, Gem. I’m coming, okay? I’ll come to you. I love you.’
Mum dropped dead in the middle of the fruit and vegetable section of the local Woolworths when she was thirty-eight years old. A brain aneurism. Nothing that anyone could have seen coming. I remember one of the many doctors that Dad made me see afterwards saying that she was basically a human time bomb. At her funeral, the man who had been next to her at the supermarket when she collapsed, a nice-looking man in his late twenties who had been fondling avocados, sought me out. He told me that as he held my mother, him squashed against the wooden base of the avocado display with people screaming for help around them, he was certain she looked at him in a way that meant she wanted him to tell me that she loved me. That was unlikely, I knew even then, but I could tell it was important to him, so I squeezed his arm and thanked him for passing on the message. Told him that I was glad that she had someone like him with her when she died. He started sobbing and I patted his arm awkwardly as they loaded Mum into the hearse.
It is a very strange thing not having a mother. It’s rudderless. My mother was neither overly affectionate nor particularly maternal, but she was mine and I had her all to myself for thirteen years. I would never know love like that again, of being a daughter to a mother, and therefore her everything, and that fact alone was a crushing physical blow. Her death left a great, miserable hole in my world and, try as he did, Dad just could not fill it. We existed in the house for the months after she was gone. Two lost souls rolling in and out of the rooms, polite and considerate of each other’s grief, but not able to connect meaningfully. Not able to crack through the bleak layer that had crept over our lives the instant she left us. His sadness made me uncomfortable: it was somehow worse than my own. I had lost the person who would love me more than life itself, which was a terrible, impossible thing, but that seemed unimportant, selfish even, when compared with losing the person you had chosen above everyone else in the world to spend your life with. The fact that he could even consider replacing her was complicated. I had no such complexity. My love and grief for Mum was tragically simple.
I thought about all of this the moment I first held Ben. I missed Mum in those first few days, and one thought kept pulsing through my mind, clear above the fog: that at least she had never had to go through the pain of losing me. Holding Ben, I suddenly realised that as bad as it was for me to lose her, it would have been so much worse for her to lose me.
Chapter Forty-one
Monday, 21 December, 6.37 pm
‘What do you mean, Gem? I don’t understand.’ Scott’s voice carries the same tone of frustration that it’s had since Saturday night. I can tell his forehead is creasing between his eyes and that his mouth is set. I know that look so well. Scott doesn’t tend to stay angry, but when he does, his rage simmers quietly for days. I seem to have a particular skill for igniting this in him.