The Nowhere Child: The bestselling debut psychological thriller you need to read in 2019

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There was a space in Dean’s driveway behind his Jeep and Amy’s Jazz, but I parked in the street in case I’d need a speedy getaway. He still lived in the same roomy three-bedroom house he had shared with my mother. It was painted in heavy browns and reds, but today a misty rain shrouded everything in grey.

My plan for our regular Sunday-night dinner – and the only way I could see to move forward – was to get everything out on the table. Chances were Dean had no idea about Sammy Went, and the news might shatter the way he remembered my mother. But on the drive over I’d decided that wasn’t my problem; this was happening to me, not because of me.

Dean greeted me at the front door with a big hug. As usual, he held the hug for three seconds too long. ‘God, Kimmy. You’re so skinny. Are you eating enough? Come in out of the cold.’

He was tall and lean and dressed like a sitcom dad from the nineties: white short-sleeved shirt tucked into blue jeans, white sneakers and a brown blazer. The blazer even had patches on the elbows. He ushered me through the front door and into the house. Scout, Dean’s thirteen-year-old cat and closest companion, skulked out to greet me. Or to judge me; it was hard to tell.

Amy, her fiancé, Wayne, and my niece, Lisa, were lounging in the living room around a crackling fire. Amy nearly jumped off the sofa when she saw me. She came over with a sad smile and grabbed both my shoulders. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said.

‘No news on the thing?’

I flinched. ‘No.’

‘What’s the thing?’ Dean asked, arriving with two glasses of red wine and handing one to me.

‘Nothing.’ I drank half the glass with one gulp. ‘Hi, Wayne.’

‘Hello, Kimberly.’ Amy’s fiancé was the only person in the world who called me by my full name. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy – he might even have been handsome if he had any sort of personality. But he talked so rarely and so softly that it was easy to think he was just part of the house, an ornament found at the Sunday market that Dean hadn’t yet found a place for.

Dean sat down on the sofa, sipped his wine, smoothed the legs of his jeans and stood up again to tend the fire. He never stayed in one place too long.

‘Do you eat walnuts, Kimmy?’ he asked. ‘They have molecules that block the growth of cancer cells. I want you eating a kilo of walnuts a day. I’m not even kidding.’

‘A kilo?’

He disappeared again, returning moments later with an enormous sack of walnuts. He handed them to me, winked and said, ‘Farmers’ market.’

Everyone is afraid of cancer, but Dean’s fear bordered on irrational. Ever since it took his wife he’d been convinced it was waiting to take us all. He wasn’t so scared of getting it himself – he drank a little too much, and while he’d never admit it, his clothes occasionally smelled of cigarettes – but he was terrified it might come back to take another of his girls.

He pulled the grate aside from the fireplace and jabbed a burning log with an iron poker. Half the log collapsed into glowing red ash. ‘Hey, Wayne, would you mind fetching another log for the fire? They’re in the little crate thing on the back deck.’

Wayne stood up, gave a formal nod and left the room.

‘So, Kimmy, how’s life?’ Dean asked.

‘Same old,’ I lied.

Amy threw me a glance bursting with worry. Luckily, Dean was too engrossed in the fire to notice. ‘You know, I was at the shopping centre yesterday and someone was doing pet portraits, and I thought of you. She was making a killing. I was going to bring Scout in until I saw her price list. Forty dollars for three prints, and they’re not even framed. Can you believe that?’

‘She’s not going to take photos of pets,’ Amy said. ‘She’s got way too much talent for that.’

‘I’m not saying she should just take photos of pets. It would be a good way to make some extra cash with her photography, that’s all. She’s got that five-thousand-dollar camera just sitting on a shelf gathering dust. You know, sweetheart, I really wish you wouldn’t let Lisa drink so much cola. Do you have any idea what aspartame does to a developing body?’

Lisa was standing by the coffee table dunking her hands into Wayne’s Diet Coke and licking her fingers. She looked over at the adults with wide eyes.

Wayne came back into the living room cradling a long chunk of wood in his arms. ‘Where do you want this, Dean?’

‘Take a wild guess, Wayne.’

Dean had prepared a tuna pasta bake that smelled and tasted of nostalgia. He poured more wine, and I had to resist the urge to guzzle it. Lisa sat in the living room watching TV because she refused to eat at the table with the grown-ups. Amy and Wayne sat across from me, the former mournfully staring at me while the latter checked cricket scores on his smartphone.

‘Would you rather be stuck on a deserted island alone, or with your worst enemy?’ Dean asked. That was his thing. He asked thought-provoking questions at mealtimes to ‘stimulate interesting conversation, bring philosophy to the dinner table and to rise above the mundane’.

‘If your life was a movie,’ he might ask, ‘what would the title be?’ ‘What law, if any, wouldn’t you break to save a loved one?’ ‘What are the three most interesting things about you and why?’

He rarely repeated a question, and always had his own well-thought-out answer prepared. I happened to like this particular quirk, but Amy, not so much. ‘Come on, Dad,’ she said now. ‘You know I can’t enjoy my food when I have to use my brain.’

A memory came to me: sitting in my mother’s hospice room, with its yellow wallpaper and the faint smell of shit that we all silently agreed to ignore. Amy had brought in sandwiches, and we were eating them around the bed. Dean brought in some instant coffee from the machine in the hall, turned off the TV – nobody was watching it anyway – and asked, ‘If you could send a message to every single person on the planet, what would it be?’

‘It’s every night with him,’ my mother had said. She was breaking her sandwich into pieces instead of eating it. ‘Last night we ordered in a large pepperoni and as he’s opening the box, he asks me, “What would you change about your life if you knew you would never die?” I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?’

Before she got sick, my mother was a strong, compact woman with piercing blue eyes. By that night in the hospice every part of her had shrunk and yellowed, except for her eyes. They were the same blue all the way to the end.

Had she wanted to tell me the truth? I wondered. Did that make her last few months even harder than they needed to be? Maybe holding on to that secret was what killed her. Maybe holding in something like that, a secret so big and bad, manifested into—

‘Well, I’d choose to be marooned with my worst enemy,’ Dean said as the memory swept away. ‘Because bad company is better than no company, and if things got too tense between us, at least I’d have someone to eat.’

Amy looked at me over the table. ‘Remember when we were kids and Dad was the strong silent type? I miss those times.’

‘Speaking of bad company, what’s wrong with you?’ said Dean.

Amy had been in a mood all night. She had hardly said a word, and when she did it was short and abrasive. If it had been me nobody would have noticed, but when Amy turned shy it was a big red flag.

‘Huh? Oh yeah, I’m fine,’ she said.

‘She’s been like this all week,’ Wayne grumbled, still staring at his phone.

Dean leaned forward onto his elbows and studied Amy. ‘What’s going on, sweetheart?’

Amy glanced at me with an expression that seemed to say both tell him and don’t say a thing.

‘Fine,’ Dean said. ‘Forget my wonderfully thought-provoking and intellectual topic of conversation. Let’s talk about the weather, shall we? Or petrol prices, or politics.’

‘Let’s talk about Esmé Durand,’ Amy said.

‘Who’s Esmé Durand?’ Dean asked.

‘Do you remember my high-school friend Fiona Durand?’

Dean took a second to think it over. ‘Was Fiona the one who wet the bed?’

‘That was Michelle. Fiona was the redhead: petite, super cute. She was at Mum’s funeral.’

‘Was she the one who came home late after your deb and ate the last of my Jarlsberg?’

‘That was Natalie. The point is, her mother, Esmé, is single now. Her husband ran off with a woman from his work – he’s in finance or something, and she was his boss and, like, ten years older.’

‘Quite the scandal,’ Dean said, topping up his wine.

‘Yeah, so anyway, she’s single now.’

‘And?’

‘And she’s single, and cute, and I really think you guys would get along.’

‘Oh, well, thanks for the offer, Amy, but I don’t need my daughter to find me dates.’

‘Well, someone has to.’

He quieted then. ‘I’m not really looking for that sort of thing just yet.’

‘It’s been four years, Dad. Do you want to be alone forever?’

Her tone had turned hot and serious. Dean looked like a frightened mouse trying to escape a trap. ‘I’m fine, really. I just need to … It’s not that easy just to …’

‘Mum would have wanted you to find someone.’

‘Take it easy, Amy,’ I said. ‘He said he’s not ready.’

Her eyes turned red and wet.

‘What’s got into you?’ Dean asked, his own tone more serious now – and, if I had to guess, laced with a little anger. ‘Why are you crying?’

‘Nothing’s got into me,’ she snapped back, dabbing her eyes with her napkin. ‘I just don’t want you to be lonely.’

‘I’m not lonely. I have you guys, and Lisa, and Scout.’

Amy cried harder. Wayne sat and watched her with a stunned, terrified look on his face.

‘Darling …’ Dean moved to rise out of his chair, but Amy waved him away.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re the opposite of fine. What is it? Have I done something? Talk to me.’

‘This isn’t about you.’

‘Then what’s it about?’

She took the napkin away from her eyes long enough to glance at me. Then scornfully, bitterly, desperately, she said, ‘It’s about Sammy fucking Went.’