The Nowhere Girl (ARC) Read online

‘I suppose she is at the moment. Anyway, what’s up? What do you need?’

  ‘Maybe I just called to say hello to my big sister. I can do that, can’t I?’

  ‘Hmm,’ says Molly.

  ‘Okay, I was wondering if you would be happy to babysit your niece tonight. You know she goes down at seven so you’ll have the rest of the night to lounge on the couch or work or whatever.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Owen has a drinks thing for work because they’ve finished a big project. If I meet him at the bar, we can go out to dinner afterwards and pretend we’re a real married couple instead of just two exhausted parents of an eighteen-month-old child.’

  ‘And you want to show off that new dress you bought.’

  ‘Yes,’ giggles Lexie, ‘and I want to show off the new dress. Please say yes, Moll, it’s been ages since I left the house and I’m worried that Owen’s going to find another woman to talk to because I’m so boring.’

  ‘Please, that could never happen. Firstly, Owen adores you, and secondly, he’s just as tired as you are.’

  ‘Probably, but I don’t think Sophie is ever going to sleep through the night so we may as well get on with our lives.’

  Molly sighs. Lexie could easily have found a babysitter but she knows how much Molly enjoys time alone with Sophie. A night with her adorable niece feels like it would chase away the terrible images that crowd her mind now. ‘Okay, fine, Peter’s working late anyway.’

  ‘I counted on that. He always works late during tax time.’

  ‘You sly thing.’

  ‘More like desperate.’

  ‘What time should I be there?’

  ‘Around five, then you can do bath time and story time, and if she wakes up, she’ll know to expect you.’

  ‘Okay, see you then. You better leave something nice for me to eat.’

  ‘Chicken pie is in the fridge. Love you, see you soon.’

  ‘Love you too.’

  Molly ends the call and goes back to reading. The internet is stuffed full of broken children. On the one hand, she wishes she could write about something different, but she is overwhelmed by the need to tell these stories. She doesn’t want these children to simply be statistics, or a short article in the newspaper that people shake their heads at and forget about. She wants to make their pain real, their experiences visceral and the truth of their damaged little lives something that people cannot forget after reading her words.

  She clicks on a link to a blog and reads about a little girl who was raped by her father, feeling herself shudder. Sick bastard, she thinks.

  She has no idea why this last story in her book is causing her so much trouble. It’s already written – and according to her editor, ‘just fine’ – but it doesn’t feel good enough. The stories on the internet aren’t helping, but sometimes she falls down the rabbit hole. She reads a comment on the website saying, ‘We frighten children with stories of monsters like vampires and werewolves but sometimes the real monsters live in your house.’ It contains a link to another blog, My Secret, which Molly clicks on. She begins reading at the home page under the heading ‘Welcome.’

  Welcome

  This is a blog for those of us who’ve been abused and hurt. This is a place to come and share our stories anonymously. I am not a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I am just a woman who survived a brutal, awful childhood. I have had therapy and help and tried to move on with my life, but I still feel the need to tell my story, to have it read by others. I believe that those of us who were hurt as children need to raise our voices as adults. My dream is for no child to ever have to suffer as I did. I hope that by allowing people to share their stories here, we may inspire those who have suffered and even those who are still suffering and feel powerless to reach out.

  This blog is an open forum for those of us who have had the very worst experiences that no child should ever have to endure. Please understand that people on here are fragile. Be kind and respectful in the comments. If you would like to read my own history, it’s under My Story.

  Thanks for being here. I wish you a peaceful day and the strength to deal with your past, your present and your future.

  Molly sighs. There are lots of contributors to the blog – all, no doubt, hoping that writing down their trauma will be cathartic. ‘All these damaged people,’ she mutters.

  She looks at the time on her computer. It’s already four and she needs to be at Lexie’s by five. She really should shower and get dressed, maybe eat some chocolate to help lift her mood, but she clicks on My Story instead.

  My name is Meredith.

  I grew up in a dark and terrible home. My mother’s partner was physically and sexually abusive. The physical abuse began almost as soon as he moved in when I was six years old, the same year my father passed away.

  When I was sixteen, I ran away. I spent a year living in shelters and sometimes even on the streets until I managed to get myself some help from a wonderful woman who ran a programme called Finally Home. She got me into counselling and she found me a place in a group home until I was old enough for a place of my own. She helped me navigate all the government resources available to me so I could have money to live on. Most importantly, she helped me go back to school so I could finish and go to university.

  I have a good life now. If you saw me at a coffee shop, you would never imagine that I have been through the things I have experienced.

  Things come back to me all the time, flashes of memories when I’m in the middle of doing something simple like loading the dishwasher or making dinner. Sometimes it’s a smell that brings back a memory; sometimes it’s a word someone uses or just a change in the weather.

  I don’t sleep very well at night. The setting sun still sometimes fills me with fear and despair. My mother’s partner used to come into my room at night. I lay in bed every evening, waiting for it to happen, feeling relieved when it was over for that night but terrified of it happening again.

  He would walk in and shut the door behind him. ‘Put her in the cupboard,’ he would say, and I knew that I had to drag my little sister out of her bed and lock her in the cupboard. I would try to make her comfortable in there with her little stuffed green frog and her blanket, and I would pray the whole time that he was there, doing things to me, that she would keep quiet. Once or twice she cried and he opened the cupboard door and slapped her until she went silent. For such a little thing, she learned quickly enough.

  I will never be able to forgive him for the things he did, and believe me, I have tried.

  I have worked very hard to change my life but the past will always have a hold over me.

  I hope that you will leave your own story, and maybe if you have found a way to forgive your abuser, you can help me to forgive mine. X

  Molly cannot move. She feels her neck begin to cramp and she wants to take a deep breath but all she can manage are shallow little gasps. She puts her hands down flat on the smooth timber of her desk as her heart races. Next to her computer sits a ratty, worn stuffed frog. He has black beady eyes and a red stitched mouth. His name is Foggy because she couldn’t pronounce her Rs when she was little. She has had him all her life. It’s just a stuffed toy. It was probably sold in the thousands. But Molly remembers.

  She remembers the cupboard. She remembers the sting of the slaps. She remembers the churning fear she felt. She doesn’t understand how.

  But she remembers.

  Three

  5 January 1987

  Margaret

  * * *

  Margaret can feel the child watching her even with her eyes closed. Her daughter does that often. She’ll tiptoe into the bedroom and just stand there and stare at her, all large, accusing eyes and sharp, angled bones.

  Margaret hates her sometimes. But never more than she hates herself. Oh, how she hates herself. It’s the only thing she has energy for these days. Even dragging herself to the bathroom exhausts her beyond comprehension.

  She keeps her eyes closed
, knowing that eventually the little thing will tiptoe out again, taking her accusations with her. Margaret waits until she hears the door close and then slides her body off the bed and gropes around underneath for the vodka bottle. When she grabs it, it is reassuringly heavy. Still full enough for oblivion. She levers her body up, drinks, chokes and coughs quietly.

  She can see it’s the middle of the day. The burning sun’s glare pierces the threadbare curtains. They used to be a deep blue but have faded with the years, disintegrated in some parts, leaving small holes that she has never even tried to repair. She was so proud of them when she first hung them up in a different house, a different home – so entranced by the rich colour and the soft sheen they had. She had never thought she would own something so beautiful. She spent hours choosing them, poring over the fabric swatches, overwhelmed by the choice, still not believing that she was the one who got to decide. But that was a different life.

  Margaret stares at the faded blue as she drinks again. They are beyond repair and too short for the windows they now hang against. Only good for the bin.

  ‘Like me,’ she whispers.

  The sound of the television drifts through from the living room. The ridiculous music that usually accompanies cartoons irritates her. The child should be at school and the baby should be… Where is the baby? Sweat slides down her body. She would love to be outside. Maybe there would be a cool breeze to stand in, some kind of relief, but outside is impossibly far away.

  You need to get up, she tells herself silently. You can do it if you want to enough. It’s mind over matter. All you have to do is swing your legs to the side of the bed and stand up. Shower and get dressed. Leave this room and go and find the two of them and give them breakfast or lunch or something. It’s not that hard. People do it every day. She shoves the bottle back under the bed and stares up at the ceiling. The ceiling fan spins in a slow, dusty circle, moving the heat around the room.

  ‘Lazy cow, lazy cow, lazy cow,’ she mutters fiercely, imitating his bitter disdain perfectly. They used to say she could be an actress, but she can’t quite remember who ‘they’ were now. Or she can but doesn’t want to.

  She closes her eyes and sees herself leaping off the mattress with its sour-smelling sheets, ready to take on the world. But she cannot move. Instead she pulls the bottle out again and drinks. The clear liquid seeps through her veins and soon she can no longer hear the ridiculous cartoon music. One more sip and the voices inside her are silenced as well.

  ‘I’ll just take a nap,’ she promises herself, making sure to replace the cap tightly so not even a single precious drop is spilled, ‘and then I’ll get up.’

  When she falls asleep, she dreams of a time before. She sees herself, vibrant with youth and possibility, smiling up at him and then gazing adoringly at the newborn in her arms. ‘You’re going to be the best mother in the world,’ he said. How in love they had been, how certain of their future.

  It seems impossible to believe now that she was once that woman. Even in her dreams she laughs at herself. ‘Stupid, stupid girl.’

  She wakes, dry-mouthed and sick with his name on her lips. ‘Adam, Adam,’ she calls as she struggles out of the dreamscape. The room is dark with only a fraction of light seeping in from the setting sun. A whole day is gone and she didn’t even make it out of bed. What did the children do while she slept?

  ‘Stop saying his fucking name, you whore,’ he spits. He is on the bed next to her, reeking of cigarettes and sweat and beer; and then as casually as he might scratch an itch, he swings his hand and sends her back into darkness.

  Four

  Now

  Alice

  * * *

  I give the boys dinner and clean up after them. I repeat, ‘It’s shower time,’ five times before the twins wash one after the other. Then I empty lunch boxes and pack them for tomorrow. Isaac and I have a long discussion about his idea for a history project based on Roman architecture and I help him find a couple of sites to look at. When he starts rolling his eyes at every suggestion I make, it’s time to give up for the day. ‘Right, you can sort this out yourself,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he agrees.

  I pour myself another glass of wine and slide the lasagne back into the oven as it inches closer to 8 p.m. when Jack will be home. I keep myself busy, cleaning, tidying, organising and talking to the boys, but the words will not stop repeating themselves in my head.

  I know what you did.

  It must be a joke. That’s the logical explanation. Maybe it relates to some old horror movie or perhaps it’s simply someone’s idea of humour. The trouble is that it doesn’t feel like that. I can’t dismiss it. I should have kept it to show it to Jack but almost the moment I registered the words I deleted it, unable to stare at the accusatory black letters. I poke my tongue into the space where the tooth used to be. I do it so often the gum is worn smooth.

  I’m not sure I would want him to see it anyway. My husband knows a lot. He knows what I suffered. He knows what was done to me. But he doesn’t know what I did. The absolute horror of what I did and the terrible result of that choice.

  There’s no way I could tell him. It took me years to share the truth, or at least part of the truth, with him. I let out small slivers of information, little pieces until he knew most of it. I was always waiting for him to judge me, to look at me and decide that I was too much for him to deal with, but he never did. It’s one of the many reasons I love him.

  I met Jack at a going-away party for a friend of Natalia’s. ‘Okay, so he’s not really a friend,’ Natalia had explained at the time, ‘but my dad and his dad are both surgeons and Mark is going overseas to do a fellowship in oncology and he’s going to have a whole lot of scrumptious newly qualified doctors at the party and I thought it might be nice to drop by.’

  ‘No way,’ I said. ‘They’ll all think I’m an idiot.’

  ‘You’re not an idiot; you’re a highly intelligent, beautiful woman who’s going to be an important features journalist, and I am also incredibly intelligent and beautiful even though I only want to write about fashion. Those doctors would be lucky to get the chance to talk to us.’

  I laughed then because Natalia’s confidence always made me smile. She is the only daughter of two surgeons, and in her home, I could see and feel how much she was cherished. I could see it on the walls, adorned with pictures of her at every age, and I could feel it when she spoke to her parents, and in the way they looked at her, listened to her and continually found reasons to offer a hug or a pat on the back. I cannot remember the kind touch of a parent. I cannot remember it at all.

  I had never imagined that I would be friends with someone like Natalia. I met her on my first day at university. She rushed into the room, bringing with her a blast of heat from outside, where summer was refusing to let go. There were plenty of empty seats in the lecture hall but she sat down next to me, the flowery spice of her perfume strong enough to make me sneeze.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘trying something new, may have to chuck it.’

  I looked at her thick black hair and bright red lips and couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘Did I miss anything?’ she whispered.

  I wasn’t entirely sure she was talking to me but then I looked at her and she lifted her heavy dark brows, waiting for me to reply.

  ‘Just introductions,’ I whispered back.

  ‘Fabulous, I’m Natalia and I owe you a coffee.’ I can still remember how hot my cheeks flushed, how my heart skipped at the idea that I would have someone to have coffee with like any other student on campus.

  ‘I’m Alice,’ I replied.

  I don’t think I heard much of that first lecture, as I spent most of the time cautioning myself to not get my hopes up. It was probably just a throwaway line. She didn’t mean it. Why on earth would she want to have coffee with you?

  I was embarrassed at how desperately I wanted to sit in the café amongst all the other students with a friend of my own. Friends had never b
een a big part of my life. Even when I was at primary school, I knew not to let anyone get too close, not to let anyone see the truth about my life.

  When the lecture was over, I took my time gathering my stuff, not wanting to look Natalia in the eye so she could see how much I needed her. I decided that she was regretting the invitation and I hoped she would leave quickly, leaving me to deal with my disappointment privately.

  But she stood next to me, studying her long purple fingernails, while I pretended it was of utmost importance that I rearrange my pens in their case.

  ‘Come on, Alice,’ she said finally. ‘I’m starving.’

  I felt my smile spread itself from ear to ear. I think my cheeks ached that night. I’ve never told her how much that first coffee meant to me. We’ve been friends forever but I still don’t think she could understand that it felt like someone had reached down into the dark space where I was sitting and pulled me out into the light.

  ‘You seem older than me,’ Natalia observed over lattes and a shared giant chocolate chip cookie.

  ‘I’m nineteen, nearly twenty.’

  ‘Ah, gap year?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. I liked the sound of it. A gap year. I could imagine travelling the world, soaking up other cultures as I figured out what I wanted to do with myself.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘This and that,’ I said. It wasn’t a lie, not really. I had struggled to find accommodation cheap enough so that I could save up money to carry me through my university years with only part-time jobs. I had attended group therapy sessions and private therapy sessions in an attempt to heal myself. I had learned to cook cheap nutritious meals and found the best stores for clothing bargains. I had done this and that.

  Natalia nodded. ‘Cool.’

  As we grew closer, I let out small morsels of the truth, hoping that I wouldn’t shock my new friend into disappearing. But Natalia never has. Instead, at first, she greeted each shocking revelation with, ‘Yeah, I figured.’