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that he loved so much in return.
Those are the motives we attribute to her, the timeline we fabricate to explain things. And we
continue to try to fill in more gaps.
We speculate that Joanna May underestimated the tech savvy of a young boy. Why else would she
have let him have access to a laptop? Was she tired of trying to entertain him down there, had she
exhausted all other ideas? Did she think it was safe because it would be impossible for him to log on?
How enraged was she when Ben found a WiFi signal down in that basement that didn’t need a
password?
Enraged enough to put his life in danger, and I think that was because it made her feel that she’d
lost control, that she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Her solution? To take him back to the
woods and abandon him there, then to come home and organise her exit.
Is it because she really did love him that she didn’t take that final step and murder him at that point,
to silence him for ever? I think so, although the thought makes me recoil.
To confirm our various hypotheses, we’ve all tried to coax more information out of Ben: therapists,
doctors, psychiatrists, us. But for the most part he’s chosen silence, perhaps as a way of feeling in
control. And we must accept his silence. We must content ourselves with our guesswork.
I wish now that I’d valued more the words that tumbled freely out of him before he was taken. I
wish I’d collected them up and kept them safely in packages that I wrapped up carefully, secured with
a ribbon, and stored in a safe place for the future. I wish I hadn’t been too distracted to listen to every
word he said. I wish I hadn’t let him run ahead of me. There is so much that I wish, and all of it is
pointless now. Beyond pointless.
Ben is not the child he used to be. Trust is difficult for him, because he doesn’t understand why
John and I didn’t find him earlier, or why the teacher he adored turned out to be somebody bad.
He has pretty good attendance at school, considering, though it’s not uncommon for John or me to
get a phone call to say that he’s unable to cope, again, that he’s gripped by a migraine so severe that
he can’t open his eyes, again, and then we come to get him.
Emotionally, his daily existence is volatile and unpredictable. He can be fine for days at a time,
and then something sets him off balance. Then he can be desperately clingy, or angry, depending on
the form his sadness takes. His emotions are powerful and visceral. Very, very occasionally he fights
us, kicking and hitting. More often, he cannot last the night without waking and screaming in terror.
When that happens, I run to him and lift him from his bed, and I bring him into bed with me, where
we lie, eyes wide, bodies together, and I hold him to me and wait for his teeth to stop chattering, and
watch carefully for the sheen of sweat on his brow that signals the fever that sometimes rises after
these nightmares.
I bring Skittle to sleep on the bed with us too, because the dog is the object of Ben’s most
uncomplicated affections. I get pleasure from watching them play together, Ben’s gentleness with
Skittle, and the dog’s adoration of him. When Ben goes to John’s house now, the dog goes with him.
Her claws have made scratches all over the parquet floor, but nobody minds.
And even when Ben and I lie together during those long nights, even though our hearts pump fast
and in unison, I wonder if sometimes we remain a hundred miles apart, because his mind still
crouches in the woods on his own, cold to the core, or perhaps in that basement, flinching as a laptop
shatters against a wall, pieces falling around him, sensing the advance of a person who wants to drag
him away, even though he’s covered his face with his hands, even though he cowers.
These are my imaginings, for, as I said, Ben won’t speak of it.
His silence torments me, because I want to make him better, but it’s her silence that I truly loathe,