The missing, p.1
The Missing, page 1
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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9781460766903
Dedication
To those who are precious and my true north
Contents
Note to Readers
Dedication
Prologue
Two Weeks Before . . .
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Two Weeks Before . . .
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
One Week Before . . .
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
A Week Before . . .
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Three Days Before . . .
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Day After . . .
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Four Days After . . .
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Four Days After . . .
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Now . . .
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Fleur McDonald
Copyright
PROLOGUE
‘Scull, scull, scull!’
The teenagers thumped out the word in rhythm as Max tried his best to swallow the bitter liquid. The beer was warm. What the fuck? He hoped there wasn’t a cold pie at the end of it.
Tango was the one who had insisted he scull the longneck – the prick was probably trying to make him throw up and embarrass himself. Then the rest of the group, Hendo, Kate, Benny, Gemma, Pete and Jazzy, had all taken up the chant.
‘Scull, scull, scull!’
Max hadn’t had a choice.
The beer overflowed from his mouth and dribbled down either side of his chin. His throat almost closed up, choking him, his eyes watering.
‘Scull, scull, scull!’
He remembered his mother’s tone last night, when his father had gone to the fridge for another beer. Drunkenness is sinful.
That might be so, but what else was there for teenagers to do in Kalgoorlie on a Saturday night? Too young for the pub and too old for youth groups. And seriously, who went to youth groups these days anyway? And booze was better than drugs. There were plenty of people around who were all fucked up, on all sorts of drugs.
A fire in the middle of the outback two-up ring with a group of kids getting pissed. A typical weekend in Kal, but hopefully his last.
Max coughed, still with the edge of the bottle at his lips. Refusing to give in.
A loud cheer went up then intensified. ‘Scull, scull, scull . . .’
Max tried not to gag, but his throat wasn’t working. He couldn’t breathe and now snot was dribbling out of his nose as fast as the beer was trickling from the edge of his mouth.
He couldn’t give up . . . He would show everyone he was as cool as they were.
Suddenly he didn’t have a choice. Max let the bottle go with a huge intake of breath before heaving what was left in his mouth – and the contents of his stomach – onto the cement floor of the two-up ring. Danny, the fella who ran the two-up games on Sunday afternoon, was gonna be pissed. And rightly so.
Max groaned as his guts contracted and threatened to lurch upwards again, while derision raged through the group.
‘Weak as piss,’ Benny yelled.
‘You’re a participation trophy,’ Hendo called out.
Laughter rose through the open-roofed shed and into the night sky and Max wished the earth would swallow him.
‘Got your ambitions and capabilities mixed up!’ Tango grinned meanly and put his mouth to Max’s ear, close enough for Max to smell the booze on his breath. ‘You fuckhead,’ he whispered, loud enough for only Max to hear. He slapped Max’s back and walked to the other side of the ring where the rest of the group were still jeering.
Max, still doubled over, wiped his mouth and dragged in more air, one hand on his bent knee. When he looked up, the group had moved back to the fire, disappointed they weren’t going to see more. Only Bree remained next to him.
‘You okay?’ she asked.
Max saw her look over to Tango, who was throwing another log on the fire. The rest were looking for more to drink, or laughing at something he knew nothing about.
Then he felt Bree’s hand on his back, her touch gentle.
Not having caught his breath properly, he only nodded, liking her hand where it was. Even with the chill in the air, he could feel her warmth through his shirt. Bree’s friendship had come as a surprise to Max. He wasn’t the type to have a pretty, popular girl as a mate. Pity she was tangled up with that loser Tango, but no one was perfect.
He had thought about asking her out if she and Tango ever split. But probably not: they had different dreams that would take them in opposite directions – even if they were conspiring together to make a run for it out of this godforsaken town.
They agreed there was nothing good about Kalgoorlie; the place was riddled with drugs, booze and all sorts of antisocial behaviour. On the Kalgoorlie Facebook news page, he’d read about a bloke who’d cut his father’s arm off with a chainsaw and how another bloke had tried to strangle a kitten because his girlfriend wouldn’t give him sex. Appalled, Max had sent the reports through to Bree.
At first, he and Bree had spoken of their dreams only late at night on Snapchat. Night-time made things seem more possible. Though for a while, in the harsh light of day, Max had felt the hopelessness of his situation weighing him down. He suspected Bree had felt the same. Especially since she made no move to cut Tango loose.
Then their luck had changed. They now had money in their pockets and a plan. The countdown was on until they left town for a better life.
Max wondered what Tango would think about his girlfriend running away without telling him. Might be a bit of a blow to his ego. Max started to snigger but more beer caught in his nose and he coughed again.
Tango resembled a staffy dog – short, muscled, with no neck – and Max treated him with the respect he would have given one of those said dogs: usually by giving him a bloody wide berth. He wasn’t the sort of guy that Max wanted to be friends with, but Tango must have had some redeeming qualities, because Bree seemed to be goggle-eyed over him, and she was smart. None of the other kids here tonight were as clever as she was, and not just academically: Bree had street smarts too, which was helpful because Max often felt so naive about the real world. His world consisted of computers, faceless humans on the internet who he played online games with and other kids who also didn’t fit in with the mainstream.
Max had wanted to curl up and die when the principal of the school called him up onstage at an awards assembly to announce he was the top of the computing science class, because he knew that Tango and the rest of them would give him shit afterwards. He’d been right – they all had. Except for Bree.
A whoop went up and Bree gave a soft laugh. ‘Jazzy can’t dance for shit. You okay?’ she repeated.
Max wiped his mouth and stood upright.
‘I’m good,’ he muttered. The ever-present awkwardness swept over him in a tidal wave. Every time he tried to be cool, he made some monumental stuff-up. Should he have been able to scull that beer? He bet Tango could have, not that he’d ever seen him have a go. Somehow the slimy little sucker always slid through these types of ‘fun’ challenges without having to have a turn.
Humiliation surged through Max as he stuck his hand in his pocket and realised there was a hole in it. Shit, his phone! He patted his other pocket and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t like he had the new iPhone – unlike almost everyone else in this group. But there’d still be a world of hurt waiting if he turned up at home having lost his mum’s old hand-me-down.
The others always seemed to get whatever they wanted, when they wanted it. They just asked their parents. That new motorbike Benny had arrived on, that was sweet-as, and probably worth more than Max’s family car. And Kate, well, she was sporting a new leather jacket.
Max had a push bike, second-hand clothes and his hand-me-down phone. His mum would have made sure he had everything new – she was like that. Keeping up with the Joneses was important to her, but his dad controlled the money and recently that meant everything Max had was old.
‘I had nothing when I was a boy and being poor made me hungry to earn money and be succes sful,’ his dad had said to his mum one day, after Max had asked for a new T-shirt with a popular brand name on it for his birthday. ‘Max will be the same if you don’t spoil him.’
Or I’ll just resent the fuck out of you, Max thought, focusing on the warm spot where Bree had rested her hand. He swore he could still feel it.
Bree dug in her pocket and handed him a tissue. ‘Here.’
‘Thanks.’ After wiping his mouth and face, he almost handed the tissue back to her but stopped himself just in time. Manners, Max! he could hear his mother reminding him.
Giving him the sort of smile that turned dark to light, Bree cocked her head and looked at him. ‘Why do you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Pretend you can do stuff you can’t. Or try to. You’re not a drinker.’
‘I can. I did,’ he blustered, trying to ignore the nausea rising again in his stomach.
‘Max, you’re who you are. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not.’
‘Easy for you to say. You’re “in”.’ He shoved his hands in his jeans and stared miserably into the dark.
Above them, there was a blinking red light among the sparking stars. He pointed towards it.
‘I’m gonna do it soon,’ he told Bree.
She looked up. ‘Do what?’
‘Fly. And we’ll never come back to this shithole.’
‘We can fly right now, if you want,’ she said. Her face was mischievous as she dug in her pocket again and brought out a matchbox. ‘Wanna try? Go on, let’s have an early celebration. We’re only here for another forty-eight hours.’
Flicking the tray open, Bree waved him to look inside.
Max leaned forward. Nothing inside but small strips of paper with love hearts printed on them. He must’ve looked confused because Bree said: ‘LSD.’
‘What the hell, man?’ He felt a twinge of shock and quickly tried to hide it.
Fuck, I thought she was better than that.
But instead of saying that aloud, he said, ‘Cool, where’d you get it from?’ hoping he sounded like he saw LSD every day. He knew nothing about the drug, except it was bad for you, and that was understating it.
‘Pinched ’em from Leah.’
Did he detect a sadness in her tone? Or just bitterness?
‘Your aunt?’
Bree shrugged. ‘She won’t miss them until her boyfriend comes around and they want to get high together. You and I will be outta here by then.’
Max saw her clench her jaw in the dim light from the fire.
‘You stole drugs from your foster carer?’
Bree shrugged. ‘She gets an allowance that she’s supposed to spend on me, but I’m not a foster child in the technical sense of the word. Because she’s my aunt there’s not a lot of checks and balances. Family and all that shit.’ She looked at the box in her hand as if deciding something, then looked up at Max from under her eyelashes. ‘Soooo, want one?’
Electric shock ricocheted through him. ‘Me?’
‘Yeah, you.’ Bree flicked the drawer closed with her finger, then pushed it open again. ‘Have you ever taken drugs?’
‘Course I have,’ he lied. ‘Only smoked a bit of weed, though. Nothing like this.’
He’d never done that either. His parents were the healthy type. Sport was compulsory, whether you were good at it or not, and they only ate home-cooked meals, never takeaway. All good for the body, and then church on Sundays for a well-nourished soul. From the outside, their lives were Instagram-perfect. Especially on the one Sunday a month his father went to church in a suit. His mother’s camera app got a workout that day.
Only the people who lived inside their house knew the truth.
‘Go on, I dare you,’ Bree said.
‘You just told me not to do things that aren’t me,’ he said with a grin, reaching for a tab.
‘You don’t think taking drugs is you?’
He shrugged. ‘Didn’t think it was you either.’
Bree smiled as he took one, then put one in her mouth and stuck out her tongue to show him. ‘You wanna fly?’ she said. ‘Then these are for you. Slip it under your tongue and hold it there until the paper dissolves.’
Max leaned against a tree, wondering how long it would take for the drug to take effect. He was nervous now, wishing he could spit it out, get it out of his system. Even more self-conscious. His stomach churned, reminding him that the huge amount of beer he’d consumed wasn’t agreeing with him. What would beer and LSD do when combined? He was about to ask when Bree moved away from him.
She raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes, her long blonde hair swaying, almost glowing in the moonlight.
Max watched her – mostly, he told himself, to see if the drug was doing anything to her yet.
Bree’s face was a mixture of peace and exhilaration. Did the drugs make her feel like that? Max decided he’d take LSD every day if they gave him the sort of tranquillity that was Bree’s expression now. He guessed that’s how people got addicted, but he couldn’t afford to get hooked.
He had plans.
A yell from the direction of the fire broke into Max’s thoughts and he tore his eyes away. Gemma had hung a Bluetooth speaker from a piece of tin at one of the entries to the two-up shed, and Benny and Kate were moving to the beat of the music. An icy wind blew through the openings. No one else seemed to notice how cold it was; Pete was sitting cross-legged on the ground, staring into the flames and holding a stubby, while Jazzy had grabbed Gemma and was trying to swing her in a dance.
‘What’s it like living with your aunt?’ Max asked, unable to stay silent. He had to keep Bree there, with him.
She brought her face back down and opened her eyes. The green shone like emeralds and she looked right at him as if she were seeing him for the first time. Her lips glistened in the firelight as she smiled. Then she wiggled her head and body as if loosening up for a game of limbo.
‘Okay, I guess. Better than living with my real olds. I have my own room, and there’s always food in the cupboard.’
‘Where are your parents?’ Max felt like he should already know this after all their Snapchats.
Bree hesitated. ‘Getting clean.’ A long pause. ‘In jail.’
Was the earth spinning, or was that his imagination?
‘Wish I didn’t have to be at home with my parents.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you didn’t live with them.’ There was a wistfulness in her voice. ‘But why?’ She spun to look at him. ‘Why don’t you want to be there?’
‘You already know,’ Max said. ‘We’ve talked about it. Dad’s an arsehole and Mum . . . well, she’s just painful.’
‘Stupid, isn’t it?’ Bree said as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘I like living with Aunty Leah, but I’d much rather live with Mum and Dad.’ She dropped her voice so only he could hear. ‘Won’t matter soon, though, will it?’
Max didn’t answer. He was thinking about the fight his parents had had the previous evening. Disturbed by a sudden noise in the kitchen, he had got up from his computer and peered out through a slit in his bedroom door. His father, red-faced and drunk, was furious with steak for dinner again, and had thrown his plate against the kitchen wall. His mother had quietly taken a step towards his dad and told him if he didn’t like what she served, there was another place he could go. He hadn’t been sure if his mother was sending his father a message or if this was something else. At that point Max had closed his bedroom door, plumped his pillow up under the doona and slipped out his bedroom window for a long walk in the dark.
‘Can’t come soon enough,’ he whispered back.
Bree looked at him for a long moment. ‘Have you heard of the Nullarbor Nymph?’ she asked, changing the subject so quickly his addled brain felt like it had whiplash trying to keep up.
‘Nah, what’s that?’
They were walking slowly around the ring towards the rest of the group now. Raucous laughter briefly drowned out the music.
Doof, doof, doof.
‘They say,’ Bree lowered her voice, ‘that she’s a spirit who follows travellers.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Max said, nodding. ‘I remember now. It was a hoax, wasn’t it? Somewhere out near the border.’
The world was taking on a much nicer glow. Bree looked even prettier than she normally did. Her smile was like a lighthouse beacon. Even Tango, who was walking towards them, seemed to have lost the ferocious expression he usually wore. Max raised a hand to try and wave. His fingers moved then his whole arm fell heavily back to his side.
