The Nowhere Child: The bestselling debut psychological thriller you need to read in 2019. Christian White
in the forest with Shelley as the last true day of her childhood.
Emma unzipped her backpack and found a black marker inside.
As she walked slowly down the stairs she focused on the dirty floorboards beneath her feet, the crunch of broken glass, the wet slap of a puddle, the slippery page of an old porno magazine, the rattle of a discarded can of green spray paint.
Then she was on the ground floor and scribbling a name on the interior wall of the mill.
(‘—Emma, did you hear me? Did you—’)
She stood back to admire her work.
(‘—hear what I said? You need to—’)
Among the dozens, or maybe hundreds of names, Emma had written Sammy Went in neat block letters.
I’m sorry, she thought. Nothing personal. It’s just for the therapy of it.
(‘—Christ’s sake, snap outta—’)
Shelley’s meaty hands clapped onto Emma’s shoulders and spun her around.
‘Did you hear me, Em? Did you hear what I said?’
Emma reached out and tapped the left lens of Shelley’s glasses. ‘You’re beautiful. You know that, right, Shell? Also, can I try on your glasses?’
‘Ah, shit. Are you tripping right now? Ah, that’s perfect. Just perfect.’
As Emma’s focus shifted from the glasses to the face behind them, she saw that Shelley had turned pale. Her mouth was locked in a worried frown, and her eyes were wide and rattled. She didn’t look like Shelley.
‘Listen, Em. You gotta get it together.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘There’s someone else here.’
‘What? Who?’
‘I don’t know,’ Shelley said gravely. ‘I heard footsteps out by the visitor centre.’
Emma smiled. ‘You’re tripping.’
‘No, I swear.’
‘You imagined it,’ Emma said. ‘It’s the mushrooms. They really are—’
She froze as a shadow moved over the window on the far wall. The glass was cracked, dirty and vine-strangled, but for a brief, startling moment she could make out the shape of a person. Whoever it was slunk away before Shelley had time to turn around and look.
‘What is it?’ Shelley said.
‘I think I saw someone.’
The gristmill door dragged in the dirt as they half-ran, half-stumbled outside. Emma quickly looked back to scan the area where she’d seen the shadow. Nobody was there.
It might have been the mushrooms, but Emma felt quietly terrified.
‘I think I want to go home now,’ Shelley said.
‘Yeah. Me too.’
Step by step, the crunchy leaves underfoot turned to dry soil, to thick grass, to a flat grey sidewalk and finally to the potholed bitumen of Cromdale Street.
Emma knew right away that something was wrong. Too many of the neighbours were out on their lawns and porches, watching her pass. Roy Filly stared out from his open garage door smoking one of his stinky cigars. Loraine Voorhees rocked back and forth in a rocking chair on her porch, a cup of tea in one hand, a mini fox terrier in the other. Pam Grady, resident neighbourhood conspiracy theorist and long-rumoured lesbian, stood on the curb, hands on hips, face knotted with … was it curiosity? No, it was concern.
Did they know she was high?
The strange energy of the street grew stronger the closer she got to home. As she came over the crest that looked down over her house, she saw her father’s convertible parked halfway in the driveway, halfway across the lawn. The driver’s side door was wide open.
She walked faster. Something was wrong. Something bad had happened.
Shelley said something, but Emma didn’t hear it. She was already running. Her backpack was slowing her down, so she threw it off her back and left it on the sidewalk.
Something bad happened.
As she neared the house, the memory of what she’d written on the gristmill wall swept from her mind as fast and as steady as a receding tide.
I’ve always been drawn to water during turbulent periods of my life. When my dog Shadow died I rode my bike over to Orel Lake and sat on the bank for three whole hours. I didn’t come home until I was all cried out and shivering from the cold. When my mother died I sat alone in my car and stared into Bass Strait all afternoon.
Amy had been furious at me when I finally returned to the hospital, but Dean had understood. He knew as well as I that bodies of water have strange powers, and the larger the problem in your life, the larger the body of water needs to be.
The end of a three-month relationship, for example, could be eased by the amount of water that would fit in your bathtub. A simple shower could cure creative block. But the real stuff, the big stuff, the mother-dying stuff and the maybe-your-whole-life-is-a-lie stuff needed someplace expansive, stirring with energy. So I headed to Dights Falls, a noisy weir built across the Yarra River.
I parked the car and followed a narrow dirt track into the bush. Pine needles crunched underfoot. Although I couldn’t yet see the river through the trees, the bush was alive with the sound of churning rapids, and the air was wet with spray.
The trees arched and parted the closer I got to the river, finally peeling back to reveal a wide landscape, stunning and simmering. I stood looking over the rapids for longer than I intended, wondering what doors I would open by meeting with James Finn again. He had agreed to have lunch with me, and I wasn’t the least bit prepared. I felt mentally off-balance; one nudge from the odd American accountant could send me toppling. Yet what choice did I have but to hear him out?
A lone fisherman was sitting on an outcrop of rocks on the opposite bank. He stood up suddenly, started reeling in his rod excitedly. When he saw his line was empty he deflated, tossed it back into the water and sat back down to wait.
James was waiting at a table near the back of the cafe, nursing a cup of tea and reading from a Kindle. He looked every bit as cold and wooden as when we first met.
‘I’m glad you came,’ he said when he saw me.
‘That’s what she said,’ Dean would have answered, unable to resist the opportunity. It hurt to think of my stepdad, to wonder what he might think about me investigating his dearly departed wife for kidnapping.
I ordered a coffee and we looked awkwardly at menus, even though the last thing in the world I felt like doing was eating.
‘Claire won’t let me drink coffee,’ James said. ‘That’s my wife. She knows how wired it makes me. Hence the tea.’
‘She’s not out here with you?’
‘She’s keeping the home fires burning.’
I opened the menu, pretended to read it, then closed it again. ‘I feel like I should tell you up front that just because I’m here, doesn’t mean I believe you.’
‘Understood.’
‘What I’m saying is my mother’s name is on my birth certificate. And I think I would have noticed if she spoke in an American accent.’
‘Yet