Page 42 of The Vanishing Place

Effie screamed at the sky, the threat of rain hanging in the air, and she kicked the ground. “Arghhh.”

She paced across the grass outside the police station and swore. Then she threw a look at Lewis. “My dad is out there, I know he is.”

Lewis stood with his hands in his pockets, the salt breeze flapping his jacket.

“Tia is out there!” she shouted.

“Effie—”

“You don’t really believe what they’re saying, do you?” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Suicide?”

He took a step toward her.

“Murder?” The word burned her throat. “She’s eight, Lewis. Eight! There’s no way.” Effie pressed her palms against her temples. “They’ve missed something. I know they have. I know.”

“Effie.”

“No.” She held a hand out, stopping him. “Don’t. Don’t tell me that—”

“That what?” There was a hardness to his voice.

“That I’m mad. That I’m overreacting. That I should let them do their job.”

“They searched the hut from top to bottom, Effie. A whole team.”

“You heard Morrow. They knew what they wanted to find. They went in there—”

Lewis reached out and took her hand, their bodies just a foot apart. Breathing the same air.

“There was no evidence of your sister living there,” he said. “Or your dad.”

“I saw him,” she insisted.

“You think you saw someone.” His tone was firm. “But CIB had the dogs out, and the drones.”

Effie threw her arm out, pointing in the direction of the bush. “Drones and dogs aren’t going to find shit out there in two days. It’s the bush, Lewis. It’s the same world that hid me for fifteen years. Fifteen years. The bush swallows you up. It holds tight and doesn’t let go.”

“That was different. No one was…”

Effie stilled, her body heavy, and she stared at him. “Are you saying you didn’t look for me?”

“Effie, that was—”

“Did you look for me?”

Lewis was close enough that she could feel the shake in him.

“Effie—”

“ Did you look for me? ” she shouted.

“Yes!” His voice tore through the air. “Yes,” he said again, softer. “Of course I looked for you. I searched for you every school break for two years.”

He leaned in and placed his hands on either side of her face. His thumb grazed her cheek, the sensation pulsing in every inch of Effie’s body. It was like slipping into a memory, into the broken heart of a fifteen-year-old girl.

“That day,” he said, “when you turned up on June’s doorstep after two years…it was the best and worst day of my life.”

His eyes burrowed into her, and Effie could almost taste him, he was that close.

“I found you and lost you all at once,” he said.

He moved his thumb along her jaw, stopping at the corner of her mouth.

“I’ve missed you, Effie.”

The silence thickened as they stared at each other, broken only by their panted breaths and the whistling of the salt breeze. Effie leaned in and moved her mouth toward his. Like slipping into a memory.

But then Lewis dipped his head, and Effie’s fifteen-year-old heart remembered; it felt every crack.

Their foreheads touched, and Lewis let out a breath.

“I can’t,” he murmured. “Not like this.”

His words—the hot, familiar sting of them—made Effie step back, like fingers pulled from a flame.

“You’re upset,” he said. “And angry. Everything with the girl, and your family.” He tried to find her eyes. “I don’t want to take advantage.”

“No,” she stammered, shaking her head. “No. This is about you, not me. It’s always been you who…”

Who said no. Who married someone else .

She clenched her jaw and turned away. The first drops of rain fell from the sky as she started to walk back to the station. But she’d only made it three steps when his hand gripped her arm.

“Effie—”

“What?”

He just stood there, his fingers digging into her skin, as the drizzle grew heavier and water dripped from his brow and cheeks.

“You can’t stop me from going back there,” she said eventually, her voice raised over the rain. “They’re my family. My responsibility.”

“No.” Lewis released her arm. “I can’t. But I’m hoping you’ll realize that there’s something much more important waiting for you right here.”

Effie stood silent.

“The girl needs you,” he said.

The girl. Not him . Never Lewis.

Effie turned and walked away without looking back. She’d looked back before, and it had nearly broken her.

—

Effie stirred in her bed, the room flooded by the darkness of the small hours, and pulled at the covers. But something stopped her.

A weight. A child.

Anya was there. In Effie’s bed.

Effie stiffened, afraid to move. Afraid to wake the tiny sleeping creature that had burrowed in next to her. Effie lay on her back, soundless and still, as a warmth spread through her body and she waited for sleep to take her. For morning, and the choices that came with it.

When she opened her eyes again, the room was bright, doused in natural light, and the duvet was tucked in around her.

But Anya was gone.

Effie threw the covers off, fully awake, and rushed past the rucksack she’d packed and left at the door—a maybe plan. She made it to the kitchen, her entire body pounding, before the hammering in her heart slowed.

Anya was there, sat at the table.

“Porridge?” Anya asked, pushing a bowl toward her.

“Yes.” Effie swallowed, the thrum not quite gone from her skin, and took the seat next to her. “Yes. That would be great.”

“I suggested to Anya,” said June, stirring a pot on the stove, “that you might take her to the beach today. Then perhaps we could do some painting.”

—

For the next four nights, Effie went to bed by herself, and every morning she woke up alone.

But at some point between dusk and dawn, Anya crept in with her.

Effie would stir and pull an extra blanket over the two of them, cocooning them together, before drifting back to sleep.

Then, when the morning light roused Effie’s eyes, Anya would be gone.

Each day after breakfast, they did something outside—the park, or the beach, or trips to the café.

Effie had decided against bushwalks. Anya was talking more—nothing about the past, but she was talking, and she was adapting to her new surroundings.

TV was still a hard no, as were certain books, and Anya refused to speak to anyone except June and Effie.

Blair got the odd wave on WhatsApp. But phones were a tricky subject, like tiny TVs, Anya said.

“You’re her new safe place,” Blair said. “And right now, she’s trying to work out what that means.”

The locals were whispering less too. Blair had convinced Effie to give them something. “Just a morsel, to satisfy their cavernous appetites.”

“It doesn’t have to be entirely accurate.” She’d winked. “Loose facts. Let them do the rest.”

So June had spread the word—a ten-minute task in a small town—and it was now accepted that Effie had left the bush as an older teenager, wanting to see more of the world, and she’d gone to live with a family friend in Scotland.

Effie had lost contact with her family when she left.

And Anya—the mirror image of a young Effie—was her niece.

In the afternoons, Effie and June set up a school in June’s living room—writing and maths and art projects. Anya was ahead of her age in reading and writing, and she’d clearly had basic instruction in maths.

Their routine continued for the next week, just the beach and books and small steps.

There were no mentions of the hut or Four or Tia.

And Anya started to settle, the internal itch in her seeming to ease.

The locals continued to speculate, imagining wild stories about the voiceless redheaded girl.

But quickly their whispers turned to smiles, and smiles turned to hellos, and suddenly, it felt like the town was healing them, protecting their two lost bush children.

Lewis was kept busy fielding calls from reporters and conspiracy theorists.

There was nothing new from Morrow, he said, not that Effie was really speaking to him, just the essentials about the girl.

The prints on the knife were confirmed as Anya’s, and the official cause of death was signed off as poisoning by tutu shoots.

Morrow was still waiting on DNA, but she wasn’t expecting anything.

Open and shut .

Effie lay in bed, trying not to think about Lewis. About the boy who’d saved her. And the man who flinched at the touch of her. She turned to the curtains, the thin material failing to mask the approaching morning, and she thrust her legs out, needing to stretch.

“Shit.” Effie pulled her legs back.

The child sat up, startled. Kicked .

“I’m sorry,” Anya muttered, her eyes wide and green and apologetic. “I’m sorry.” Then she scurried to the foot of the mattress.

“No.” Effie placed a hand on the bed next to the girl. “It was my fault. Please. Don’t leave. You just gave me a fright.”

Anya hesitated, the duvet pulled around her like a wall, and she flicked her gaze from Effie to the door.

“I like that you’re here.” Effie smiled. “I like that you stayed.”

There was a moment of silence before the girl spoke.

“You talk in your sleep,” she said.

“No, I don’t,” Effie retorted. Too forceful.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Anya lowered her eyes and pulled at the duvet.

“Is that why you never stay…Why you always leave before I wake up?”

“Is Dinah your friend?” Anya asked after a while.

“Sorry?” Effie stiffened, betrayed by her own fogged mind. “Who?”

“You were shouting for her.”

Blood pounded in Effie’s stomach. “I don’t know.”

The name scraped at the back of her head, grazing a memory. It tingled at the nape of her neck—scratch, scratch—carving a word into wood.

Dinah .

“I don’t know,” Effie said again.

“What’s this?” asked Anya, holding up a football.

“A ball.”

The child frowned. “It’s not round.”

Effie contained a smile. “It’s a rugby ball.”

“Rugby.”

“I could show you if you like? On my phone.”

The girl shook her head. “Is it yours?” she asked.

“No. It’s…” Effie looked at it then, really looked at it. Her throat narrowed. “It used to belong to Lewis. He gave it to Aiden. June must have kept it.”

“Aiden?”

“My little brother.” Effie turned the ball in her hands. “He died. A long time ago.”

“How?”

“It was something called tetanus. From a rusted nail that cut into his foot,” she said. “I later learned that my dad never had us vaccinated.” She forced herself to gulp down the pain and the anger. “I never forgave him for that.”

“Vaccinated?” asked Anya.

“It’s something that the doctor gives you, a special medicine to protect you from getting ill.”

“Am I vaccinated?”

“Not yet.”

Distress flashed through the child’s face.

“It’s okay.” Effie touched the girl’s arm. “When you’re ready, we’ll go and see the nurse and he’ll sort everything.”

The child’s shoulders sank, her small body curving inward like a young fern, and she picked at her sleeves.

“Is there a medicine for when it hurts here?”

“Sorry?” Effie frowned.

“Here.” Anya touched her chest. “It’s always sore. Ever since…since leaving Mum and Four, it hurts here. And in my tummy sometimes.” She looked up. “Like there’s a bruise inside my stomach.” Fear stirred behind her eyes. “Am I going to die?”

“No. No.” Effie moved over and pulled the girl into her. “You’re not going to die.” She ran a hand through Anya’s hair and kissed her forehead. “You just miss them. Your mum and Four. And sometimes, missing people can be very painful.”

“I’m not meant to miss them.”

“What do you mean?”

Anya frowned—a wounded expression.

“Mum was a bad person,” she said. “Mum never listened. And…” She looked up, her face younger than before.

“I thought that Four was good. He was kind. Sometimes on rainy days he gave me treats. But the policewoman said that Four wasn’t good.

She said Four was a bad man and that I shouldn’t love him. ”

“Oh, Anya.” Effie squeezed the girl to her chest. “I’m so sorry.”

For a moment, they sat like that, curled and pressed together. Effie held her tight, as though it might absorb some of her pain.

“Do you have any pictures of my mum and Four?” asked Anya.

Effie pulled back, her heart thrumming.

“June said you might show me.”

Effie turned and stared at the writing desk, a weight pushing on her lungs. “Yes,” she said eventually. “I have one. Sort of.”

“Can I see?”

Effie slipped from the bed and stepped over to the old desk, unmoved in twenty years.

June had left it, just in case Effie wanted to go back there.

She tugged the drawer open and lifted out the wad of papers.

Letters from Lewis. Drawings and maps that they’d made.

Old pictures. And at the bottom was Effie’s only family photo, taken just a month before Four was born. A month before Mum died.

Effie touched a shaking finger to each of their faces.

Mum and Dad stood in the middle with the sea behind them.

Four was safe and invisible in Mum’s stomach, his tiny body hidden away from the world, from all of them.

There was no evidence of her little brother.

No bulge in her mum’s top. No swelling to her chest. But he was there, listening and growing and making Mum glow.

Ten fingers and ten toes. A cryptic pregnancy, Blair had named it.

A little surprise .

Tia, Aiden and Effie were sitting on the white sand, their feet and legs bare, with wide smiles and wild hair. Aiden was scooping up a fistful of sand, about to eat it, and Tia’s mouth was open mid-word.

“That’s your mum there,” said Effie, pointing at Tia. “A long time ago.”

“She looks different.” Anya frowned. “Where’s Four?”

“In there.” Effie smiled. She couldn’t not smile. He was her baby brother, the baby she’d fed and loved and rocked to sleep. “Even though there’s no bump, there’s a—”

Then with a jerk, Anya grabbed the photo and ripped it in two.

“Stop!” Effie tried to hold Anya’s hands. “What are you doing?”

“He’s there,” said Anya, her face white.

“Who?” Effie’s hand trembled. “Who’s there?”

Effie held the torn pieces together, her mother’s face sliced in two.

“Four?” Effie managed. “He’s just a fetus. He can’t hurt—”

The girl shook her head. “The bad man’s there.”

“What bad man?”

“In the middle.” Anya pointed to the smiling figure in the center of the picture.

Dad .

“You mustn’t speak to the bad man,” said Anya. “He’ll hurt you.”

Effie stared at the photo, her body tense, then back at the child. “Anya, did that man do something to you?”

She shook her head. “We can’t talk to him.” Her eyes widened. “It’s not allowed.” She shook her head again. “Never ever.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” Effie placed a hand on her shoulder. “We don’t need to talk about him.”

“I want June.” Anya’s eyes were a watery green. “I want June.”

“Of course.”

Effie drew her hand back and the girl sprinted from the room, leaving Effie with the butchered image of her family.