Stolen (34 page)

Later, Mum came back in by herself. Her eyes were red and tired-looking. She’d changed her shirt to a peach-colored one, freshly ironed and sweet-smelling.

“We shouldn’t have all come together,” she said. “It must have been difficult for you … after having no one for so long, no one except for …”

She couldn’t say your name; her face curled up in pain as soon as she even thought of you. I nodded, motioning that I understood, and she continued.

“The doctors have told me how hard it is sometimes for people to adapt back to one’s real life. I know I can’t expect you to …” Her face wrestled with an emotion I couldn’t read. I frowned. “I don’t even know what he’s done to you,” she whispered. “You seem different somehow.” She had to look away, biting her lip. She breathed deeply until she regained her composure. “And we were so very worried, Gemma,” she added, “thinking we’d never … that you’d never …”

Tears were on her face again, making her mascara run. In a previous life she would have hated that. I watched the black lines streak down her cheeks. She reached across to my hand, and I let her take it. Her fingers were cold and thin, her nails long. She felt the ring that you had given me. I stiffened, watching her twist it around my finger, seeing the colors glint.

“Did you have this before?” she asked.

I nodded. “Got it on Portobello Road,” I lied. “It’s fake.”

“I don’t remember it.”

Silence settled between us. Mum bit the edge of her lip. Eventually she leaned back, twisting her fingers in her lap. I put my hand under the sheets. I brought my other hand across and pulled the ring off my finger. Mum looked at me carefully, concern frowning her face.

“The nurse said you were asking about him,” she said.

“I was wondering …”

“I know, it’s understandable.” She leaned across and stroked the side of my face. “But you don’t have to wonder anymore, love, you don’t even need to think about him.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have him, Gemma,” she whispered. “He turned himself in at the hospital. The police will need a statement from you soon.”

“And if I don’t want to …?”

“You have to. It’s the best thing.” She tucked the sheets around me tighter. “Once you’ve given your statement, the police can charge him. We’ll be one step closer to getting that monster locked up. And that is what you want, isn’t it?” Her voice was hesitant.

I shook my head. “He’s not a monster,” I said quietly.

Mum’s hands went stiff around the sheets as she looked sharply at me. “That man is evil,” she hissed. “Why else would he have taken you from us?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered. “But he’s … not that.” I couldn’t find the right words.

Mum’s face went pale as she studied me, her lips pinched and tight. “What did he do to you?” she asked. “What did he do to you to make you think like this?”

The next day two police officers came: a thin man and a youngish lady. Both carried their hats in their hands. They were baseball caps, so much more casual-looking than the police hats in the UK. My parents stood at the back of the room. A doctor was there, too. Everyone was watching me, assessing me. I felt like I was in a play, with everyone waiting for me to say my lines. The thin policeman took out a notebook and leaned close enough for me to see the pimple on his chin.

“We realize this is difficult for you, Ms. Toombs,” he began. His voice was nasal and high-pitched, and I disliked him immediately. “Captives often go through a stage of silence and denial. Your parents say you’ve not been speaking much, to anyone, about your ordeal? I don’t wish to push you, but …”

I stayed silent. He paused to glance up at Mum. She nodded at him, urging him on.

“It’s just, Ms. Toombs, Gemma …,” he continued, “we are holding a man in custody. We have reason to believe that he is your kidnapper. We need you to give a statement to confirm this.”

“Who is he?” I said. I started shaking my head.

The thin man checked his notes. “The accused is Tyler MacFarlane, he’s six foot two inches in height, blond hair, blue eyes, small scar on the edge …”

My stomach turned over. Literally. I had to reach for the bedpan to be sick.

The police kept pushing. Every day they were back with their questions, each time phrased in a slightly different way.

“Tell me about the man you met in the airport.”

“Did he take you against your will?”

“Did he use force?”

“Drugs?”

There was only so long I could hold out. I had to speak in the end. Mum was always there beside me, urging me on. After a while, they showed me photographs. Some of you. Some of other men.

“Is this one him?” they asked over and over, flicking the photographs. They wouldn’t let up.

You were so easy to spot; the only man with any fire behind his eyes. The only man I could really look at. It was as if you were looking into the camera lens just for me; as if you knew I would be studying those photographs later, looking for you. You were proud in that shot. As proud as you can be in front of a smeared police wall. There was a cut under your eye that hadn’t been there before. I wanted to keep that photograph. But of course the detective slipped it back into the brown paper envelope with the others.

It all dragged on. A couple more days, at least. But I gave them their testimony eventually. I had to.

The time was a blur of injections and interrogations. I had become public property. Anyone could ask me anything they wanted, it seemed. Nothing was off-limits. The lady detective asked me whether we’d ever had sex.

“Did he make you touch him?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Never.”

“Are you sure?”

I talked to psychologists, therapists, counselors, doctors for this and doctors for that. A nurse took blood every day. A doctor checked my heart for tremors and palpitations. They treated me for shock. None of them left me alone. Especially not the psychologists.

One afternoon a lady with a short bob and a dark blue suit sat at the side of my bed. It was toward the end of the day, and I’d been waiting for the rattle of the dinner cart.

“I’m Dr. Donovan,” she said, “clinical psychiatrist.”

“I don’t want another shrink.”

“Fair enough.” She didn’t leave, though. She just leaned across to the clipboard at the end of my bed and started flicking through it. “Do you know what Stockholm syndrome is?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. She glanced back at me, before writing some notes of her own on the clipboard.

“It’s when a victim emotionally bonds with his or her abuser,” she explained, still writing. “It may be as a survival mechanism, so that you feel safer with your captor when you are getting along, for instance, or it may happen if you start to feel sorry for your abuser … perhaps he’s been wronged at some point in his life and you want to make it up to him … you start to understand him. There are other reasons, too: Perhaps you are isolated with him; you have to get on, or you suffer tremendous boredom … or perhaps he makes you feel special, loved—”

“I don’t know what you are getting at,” I interrupted. “But that’s not how I feel.”

“I didn’t say it was. I was just wondering if you knew about it.” She looked at me carefully, raising an eyebrow. I waited for her to keep going, mildly curious. “Whatever he did,” she continued softly, “whatever Mr. MacFarlane did or said to you, you know he hasn’t done the right thing, don’t you, Gemma?”

“You sound like my mum,” I said.

“Is that so bad?”

When I didn’t answer that, she sighed deeply and took a thin book from her briefcase.

“They’ll discharge you soon,” she said. “But doctors will keep quizzing you until you understand, until you realize that what Mr. MacFarlane did—”

“I know Ty did the wrong thing,” I interrupted quietly. And I did know that, didn’t I? But it was almost as if a part of me didn’t want to believe her. A part of me understood why you’d done it, too. And it’s hard to hate someone once you understand them. I felt so mixed up.

Dr. Donovan paused, looking at me, not unkindly. “Perhaps you need some help working through your thoughts?”

I was silent, looking straight ahead at the pale gray wall. She put the book on my bedside table. It said something about Stockholm syndrome on the cover. I didn’t look at it any more closely.

“You’ll have to talk to someone at some point, Gemma,” Dr. Donovan urged. “You’re going to have to figure out your real feelings soon … what’s true.”

She dropped her business card on the table. I took it and put it inside the drawer, next to where I’d placed your ring. Then, when she left, I stared at the ceiling. I wrapped the blankets around me, suddenly cold. I felt naked … as if I’d shed my skin in the desert like the snakes do. As if I’d left a part of me behind somewhere.

I wondered if you were being interrogated, too. I shivered as I pulled the blankets over my head entirely, enjoying the darkness they gave.

Mum and Dad handled the reporters. They made the appearances on the news and spoke to the papers. I was grateful for that. Right then the thought of a camera in my face was enough to start me hyperventilating.

When they were both at a press conference, I got out of bed. I paced around the room that I’d been trapped in until slowly I made my limbs work again. The leg that had been bitten was still stiff and sore. It felt good to move it.

I tried walking down the corridor, testing how far my leg would carry me before the pain got too bad. Could I walk right out of the hospital? Two elderly patients stared hard at me as I passed. They knew who I was. Their looks almost sent me running straight back into my room. It was almost as if I were famous. I swallowed and forced my legs to keep walking.

I continued to the foyer, to the flapping plastic doors where I had last seen you. I touched their hard edges, and stepped through them. There was a pregnant lady waiting at the reception desk. She looked up, too, as I passed, but I ignored her. I walked to the sliding doors leading out of the hospital. I stood in front of them, and the doors slid open with a purr. It was hotter outside, and sunny. I blinked at the brightness. There were cars and lampposts and people, and birds twittering in the leafy trees. The blacktop of the parking lot rolled out before me. And beyond that, flat, red dust.

I took one small step. But almost immediately, there was a nurse at my side, placing her hands on my arms and not letting me go.

“You haven’t been discharged,” she whispered.

She turned me around and walked me back to that room. To that tiny, tiny room … so much like a cell, with its gray walls and lack of light. She tucked me back under those sheets, and pulled them close around me.