Forgotten

Nicole Trope

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781760296773
• eBook ISBN: 9781760638832
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A moment of distraction, an unlocked car and a missing baby. How on earth could this happen? All Malia needed was a single litre of milk and now she's surrounded by police and Zach has disappeared. Detective Ali Greenberg knows that this is not the best case for her, not with her history - but she of all people knows what Malia is going through and what is at stake. And then there is someone else. Someone whose heart is broken. Someone who feels she has been unfairly punished for her mistakes. Someone who wants what she can't have. What follows is a heart-stopping game of cat-and-mouse and a race against the clock. As the hours pass and the day heats up, all hope begins to fade. A gripping, haunting family drama shot through with emotion and suspense.

Chapter One

8.00 am

The bowl spins across the floor, ricochets off the cabinet and shatters into pieces, showering Coco Pops over every square foot of the kitchen. Malia watches as her five-year-old son, Aaron, stamps his feet, crushing the cereal into dust.

‘I want Coco Pops with milk! I want Coco Pops with milk. Now, now, now.’

Small fists clenched and a face coloured with rage, he vents his fury at the world, at his dry cereal and, mostly, at his mother.

‘Mind your feet!’ yells Malia, matching his decibels, drowning out the television where puppet animals are singing about a day on the farm. ‘Now, look at this mess. Just look at this mess. I told you Aaron, there is no milk.’

Malia grabs her son by the shoulders and lifts him onto a chair, grunting at how heavy he is, while he attempts to kick her in the stomach.

‘I want milk! I want milk!’ He stands up, poised to jump.

‘Sit down while I clean up this mess!’

As Malia steps towards the cupboard under the sink for the dustpan and brush she feels the sharp sting of a piece of the splintered cereal bowl pierce her foot.

‘Shit!’ she cries.

‘You sweared!’ shouts Aaron. ‘Bad mum.’ Tears stain his face.

‘Just sit there and be quiet,’ snaps Malia, sweeping up the Coco Pops and the shattered bowl, staining the kitchen floor with blood as she moves.

‘Too much noise, too much noise,’ sings Rhiannon, who had been sitting with her back to the kitchen, glued to the morning television show. She picks up the remote and turns up the volume.

‘It’s a happy, happy day, when you get to work and play,’ sing the animals.

‘Turn it down!’ yells Malia.

She throws away the last of the mess and sits down on the floor to examine her foot. The splinter has gone deep, but a small piece protrudes, allowing her to pull it out. Aaron watches, momentarily silenced by the sight of blood.

Malia holds a piece of tissue against the wound and takes a deep breath. This is not how she likes to handle the mornings with her children. She closes her eyes and resolves to take back control of the situation. Aaron sniffs dramatically, alerting her to his tears.

‘You need to stop crying now, Aaron, and eat something or we’re going to be late,’ she says.

‘But Mum …’

‘We don’t have time to argue anymore. You know that Mrs Epstein doesn’t like you to be late.’

She makes sure her tone is light but firm—just the way the last book she read about raising children advised her to do. Creating Calm from Chaos is the latest in a long line of parenting books that Malia has downloaded. In the absence of her parents and extended family, who live in Melbourne, Malia has turned to the experts for help—all of whom have different ideas, although this has never stopped Malia trying to find the one expert who will help her be the perfect mother.

‘Don’t they all say the same thing,’ Ian had laughed when she tried reading him a passage on dealing with tantrums in children.

‘No, they don’t,’ Malia had replied.

‘Yes, they do babe. Every book you read tells you that the best way to get through the day with three kids is to relax and take control. You just need to chill.’

Malia had given her head a shake, dismissing his opinion. Ian was usually at work when the children were at their most demanding.

‘I’m sure Mrs Epstein has something wonderful planned for today,’ says Malia to her son. ‘You may get to do some painting. What do you think you’ll paint a picture of?’

Aaron regards her sceptically; her change in tone has been too quick. He knows he’s being handled.

Distract your child with questions and new ideas and soon the tantrum will be a thing of the past.

‘I can make you some yummy toast for breakfast. What would you like on your toast?’ says Malia, attempting to make toast sound like a treat instead of a poor second choice.

‘I don’t want toast. I waaant milk,’ whines Aaron again, not willing to give up on his specific need for this morning.

‘All you had to do was bring home some milk,’ says Malia to herself, picturing Ian, at work in the car yard, holding a steaming cup of coffee, freshly made by one of the admin staff—all of whom were women and all of whom, she believes, probably have crushes on her blond-haired, blue-eyed husband. ‘I don’t see anyone but you, babe,’ Ian always assures her.

Malia sees her own hand grab Ian’s cup and upend it on his head. She smiles briefly at the image of her husband with coffee dripping down his beautiful suit, staining the crisp white shirt he was wearing this morning.

‘Miiilk,’ moans Aaron softly. Malia can hear that he’s losing interest in his tantrum and she congratulates herself on sticking to the advice she has read.

Rhiannon turns around to see why her older brother has stopped crying and Aaron seizes the opportunity to include her in his mission.

‘I want milky Coco Pops,’ he says, looking at his sister to encourage her to join the melee.

‘I want milky Coco Pops,’ seconds Rhiannon, jumping up and running to her brother. At three years old she is his willing accomplice against what they both seem to view as Malia’s unacceptable expectations—things like eating vegetables and getting to bed on time.

‘Eee!’ she shrieks.

‘What?’ says Malia.

‘My foot, sore, sore!’ she screeches, already hysterical.

‘Oh God, Rhiannon, stop jumping. Just keep still!’

‘Milky Coco Pops!’ shouts Aaron, ramping himself up again.

Malia takes a wide step towards Rhiannon, hoping to avoid standing on anything else she may have missed, and then picks up her daughter and sits her on top of the kitchen table.

‘I want my dummy,’ cries Rhiannon, pulling her foot away as Malia tries to examine it for a splinter.

‘There’s nothing there, Rhiannon!’

‘Coco Pops, Coco Pops,’ chants Aaron.

‘Coco Pops, Coco Pops,’ says Rhiannon, forgetting her sore foot.

Malia looks at her children and wishes just for a moment that she could join in the wailing as well. The pounding in her head is exacerbated by the feeling that she is moving underwater—from a lack of caffeine, she’s sure. She wants milk for her coffee as well. She wants milk and coffee, she wants milk and coffee. She can’t seem to think straight. The noise gets louder as Aaron and Rhiannon attempt to outdo each other.

‘We get up with the sun, we always have such fun,’ warble the animals on the television.

‘Right, fine!’ shouts Malia. ‘We’ll go and get milk. Put on your shoes and get into the car now.’

She snatches the remote control from Rhiannon’s hand and turns off the television, silencing the animals.

‘But …’ says Aaron, momentarily stunned to have won the argument.

‘Right now, or there’ll be no milk and no breakfast at all.’ Malia looks at her watch. It’s already seven forty-five and the traffic is going to make a five-minute trip to the 7-Eleven take at least twice that.

‘Do I have to put on my shoes?’ says Aaron.

‘Yes.’

‘I losted my shoes,’ says Rhiannon.

Malia stifles the urge to scream. She closes her eyes and reimagines the morning with a full bottle of milk in the fridge and then she sighs as she catches the scent of a giant cup of coffee. ‘Just get on with it, Malia,’ she mutters to herself.

It takes another five minutes to get both children into the car and only as she pulls out of the driveway does Aaron say, ‘What about baby Zach?’

Malia pulls back into the driveway and drops her head onto the steering wheel. ‘Idiot,’ she whispers. She’s going to be late for work at the bakery. The kids are going to be late for school and day care. She hasn’t even had a shower yet because at six o clock this morning Ian, the same Ian who forgot the milk, had pushed up against her in bed and instead of telling him to leave her alone she had given in, despite the fact that he still smelled like beer after stumbling into the house somewhere around two that morning.

‘I need you,’ he had said and she knew that meant a lot of money had gone into the pokies at the pub and very little had come back out. If he won he crowed about it, explaining his strategies and laughing at his luck, but if he lost he needed to conquer something else. Pushing Malia into sex was as close as he could get. ‘Not pushing,’ she admits to herself now, ‘more like gentle coercion.’ Even after three children and nearly ten years together, eight of them as husband and wife, Ian still manages to make Malia’s stomach lurch just a little every time he touches her.

After she’d given in, Zach’s cries had filled the house. ‘Leave him, he’ll be fine,’ Ian had said. Malia had bitten down on her lip and endured her son’s anguish and her husband’s pleasure. Ian wasn’t bothered by Zach crying; he never was.

She hadn’t asked much of him, just a litre of milk bought on the way home from the pub. The empty bottle was still in the fridge, left there because it still contained a few drops and only discovered after all three children had been sound asleep. The idea of a hot cup of tea, drunk in front of some mindless television show had carried Malia through dinner and bath time and story time and ‘I want a glass of water’ and ‘I’m still hungry’ and ‘I’m not sleepy’ time.

She’d had half a glass of acidic red wine instead.

Ian had not made it home for dinner. ‘Work meeting, babe,’ he had said on the phone, and she knew that was code, and not even very good code, for the pub and his favourite pastime. The pub was close enough to the house that if he did drink a little more than he should he could always walk home and pick up his car the next day. Something that Malia saw as a mixed blessing. He was already up to three nights this week. She had a speech ready to deliver when and if he made it home for dinner one night. It was the same speech she had delivered time and time again and so far it hadn’t had much impact, but she still hoped to get through to her husband.

Please bring home milk, she had texted him.

Sure thing, he had replied. Home soon.

But Malia had rolled over in bed at 1 am to find his side cold.

‘Maybe it was only fifty dollars or so,’ she had tried to convince herself as Ian grunted and kissed her neck, before leaping out of bed to shower and dress.

It had only taken him fifteen minutes to get himself out the door to work, where someone else was responsible for buying the milk and a selection of breakfast pastries for the salespeople to indulge in.

‘How much?’ she had asked as he whirled around the bedroom finding clothes, and he’d at least had the good grace to hang his head and tell the truth.

‘Just a hundred, but I was up by about two hundred at the beginning. Gotta go.’ She had wanted to grab his arm and stop him walking out of the front door, had wanted to force him to speak to her, but Ian was focused on the day ahead and she knew that he wouldn’t want to be late for work and his morning sales meeting.

Only when she had heard Aaron shrieking about the milk had she realised that Ian had not done the one thing she’d asked him to do. She had wasted futile minutes arguing with her son about choosing a different breakfast while she fed Zach.

In the car she lifts her head and takes a deep breath, ‘Okay guys, stay here and don’t move. I’m going to get Zach.’ Aaron and Rhiannon nod and remain silent. They can sense her breaking point. Malia gets out of the car and goes back into the house, thinking that on any other day the sight of her two little blond-haired carbon copies nodding together would have made her smile, but today she can’t even dredge up a grimace. Even as babies Aaron and Rhiannon had looked so alike that paging through photo albums is confusing. ‘Is that me?’ Aaron will ask. ‘Is that me or Ri Ri?’ Sometimes it will even take Malia a moment to work out exactly which baby she is looking at. If they were the same height Malia is sure they would be mistaken for twins. She is always amazed at the genetic mix that has gone into her producing three children who look exactly like their father but seem almost unrelated to her, with her black hair and dark brown eyes.

Malia unlocks the front door, wondering briefly about the wisdom of leaving her children in the car in the driveway. Anyone at all could walk by. She pictures the double garage with internal access that they would add to their home when they finally did the big renovation she and Ian have been discussing for years. ‘Any day now babe, I promise,’ Ian said month after month and year after year. The three-bedroom, single-level brick and fibro home in a suburb filled with families and only twenty minutes from the city had seemed perfect when she was pregnant with Aaron, but now it feels as though the family is almost bursting out of the small house, using every inch of space for children and toys and the other detritus of family life. Malia longs for a large ensuite bathroom with a big bath and soft towels and no children knocking on the door.

‘Not this year,’ she sighs as she makes her way down the passage to Zach’s tiny bedroom.

Last night she had pored over the bills once again, hoping that she had somehow missed a loophole that would give her a little more time. But there was nothing to find except final demands and threats to cut off the electricity. She would need to ask Sean, her boss and the owner of the bakery, to pay her early, humiliating herself again, bearing his kind ‘not a problem’ once more.

Ian was having a bad month at work with one sale after another falling through. He had only managed two sales so far and it was close to the end of the month. His commission from those sales was not enough to take care of all the bills. There were always bad months and they mostly seemed to be ill timed with the quarterly bills and the breakdown of major appliances. Malia can’t quite remember when they went from being financially okay to struggling but lately it seems worse than ever. Even with her part-time job she never seems to pay anything off on time. ‘A few good months,’ she whispers to herself, ‘just a few good months.’

Part of the reason she had agreed to sex this morning was because she’d hoped that it would put Ian in a mood to discuss what to do, but as she opened her mouth to say something he had turned on the shower. ‘Sorry, babe, running late for a staff meeting and we don’t need me to lose my job, do we?’ So there had been no conversation and no time for her prepared speech on gambling, and all she had been left with was the knowledge that she had even less money to cover the bills than she thought she had.

It wasn’t that Ian didn’t understand th...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• OTHER BOOKS BY NICOLE TROPE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• CHAPTER SEVEN
• CHAPTER EIGHT
• CHAPTER NINE
• CHAPTER TEN
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
• CHAPTER TWELVE
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
• CHAPTER TWENTY
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
• 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
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS