Stolen: the prize-winning psychological thriller

by Lucy Christopher

They’re pretty powerful, you know, those eyes, pretty beautiful too.

It’s funny, but I always thought I could trust blue eyes. I thought they were safe somehow. All the good guys have baby blues.

The dark eyes are for the villains . . . the Grim Reaper, the Joker, zombies. All dark.

You’d been with me since London. I’d seen you in the check-in line with your small carry-on bag. I’d seen you on the plane. And now, here you were, in Bangkok airport, sitting in the coffee shop where I was about to order coffee. I ordered my coffee and waited for it to be made. I fumbled with my money. I didn’t look back, but I knew you were still watching. It probably sounds weird, but

I could just feel it. The tiny hairs on my neck bristled every time you blinked.

‘Let me buy it,’ you said. Your voice was low and soft, like it was meant only for me, and your accent was strange. The short-sleeved shirt you were wearing smelt like eucalyptus, and there was a small scar on the edge of your cheek. Your eyes were too intense to stare into for long.

I looked up at your face; with the smile creases around your mouth. The deep blue of your eyes had secrets. I wanted them.

But it was weird, you know, it felt like I could tell you anything. I probably would have too, if my throat hadn’t been so tense. Often I wish it had ended just then, with your smile and my nerves bundled up tight.

I nodded as if I understood. I wanted to ask what you were doing here, with me . . . if I’d seen you before. I wanted to know why you were interested. I wasn’t an idiot, it was easy to see how much younger I was than you. But I didn’t ask. I was nervous I guess, not wanting you to be dodgy in any way. And I suppose it made me feel grown-up, sitting there with the most handsome man in the cafe, drinking a coffee he had just bought for me.

I knew papers dropped stories when there wasn’t anything new to report. And what could be new about my story, when the only thing that ever changed was the way the wind blew?

I’d been in your house for more than a month. Was anyone still searching for me? Just how dedicated were my parents, anyway? They’ve always been shrewd. ‘Good business sense’ are the three most popular words in Dad’s vocabulary. And, perhaps he was asking the question – was looking for me good business sense anymore? Was I a good investment? Right then, I don’t think I would have put any money into my search.

You’d gone to your room before me that night. You’d been so quiet, disillusioned by me I think. This whole adventure of yours hadn’t turned out like you’d expected. Were you beginning to regret it? Were you thinking that you’d picked the wrong girl? Perhaps you’d only just realised for the first time that I was ordinary, no one special, just as much of a disappointment to you as I was to everyone else. I turned over and thumped the pillow, frustrated by still being awake, and by all those thoughts.

‘If we were back in London,’ I began, ‘before any of this, knowing me as you do now . . . would you still steal me?’

You were silent a long time, your body stiff around me. ‘Yes,’ you whispered. You brushed my hair behind my ears. ‘I can never let you go.’

‘Rain,’ you said. ‘The sky’s crying for you.’

‘Do you know what Stockholm Syndrome is?’

‘It’s where a victim emotionally bonds with their 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 . . .’

‘They’ll discharge you soon,’ she said. ‘But doctors will keep quizzing you until you understand, until you realise 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.

I read bits of the stories. Gemma Toombs, the 16-year-old abducted from Bangkok Airport, has been admitted to a remote West Australian hospital, apparently taken there by her captor . . . Anxious parents of Gemma Toombs charter a plane from London to be by their daughter’s side . . .

Gemma: found! Gemma Toombs released from desert drifter! Is this the face of a monster?

And I did, right then. I hated you for everything; for making me feel so helpless everywhere I went, for making me lose control. I hated you for all the emotions in my head, for the confusion . . . for the way I was suddenly doubting everything. I hated you for turning my life upside down and then smashing it into shards. I hated you for making me stand with a whirring fan in my hand, screaming at my mum.

But I hated you for something else too. Right then, and at every moment since you’d left me, all I could think about was you. I wanted you in that apartment. I wanted your arms around me, your face close to mine. I wanted your smell. And I knew I couldn’t – shouldn’t – have it. That’s what I hated most. The uncertainty of you. You’d kidnapped me, put my life in danger . . . but I loved you too. Or thought I did. None of it made sense.

And I’m trying to, believe me. I’d love to understand all this. But the only way I can is to write this journal – this letter – to you. After all, you were the only person out there with me . . . the only person who knows what happened. And something did happen, didn’t it? Something powerful and strange. Something I can never forget, no matter how hard I try. Dr Donovan thinks I’ve got Stockholm Syndrome. They all do. I know I scare Mum when I say something good about you; when I say you’re not as bad as people think, or that there’s more to you than what the papers write. And if I say anything like that in front of Dr Donovan, she just makes lots of notes and nods to herself. So I’ve stopped saying these things. Instead, I tell them what they want to hear. I tell them you really are a monster, that you are screwed up. I tell them I don’t have any feelings for you other than hatred. I go along with everything the police say I have to say. And I’ve written the statement they want me to write. I try to believe it all. I wish I had amnesia so I could forget what you look like. I wish I felt good about letting you go down for ten or fifteen years. I wish I could believe everything the papers write. Or that my parents tell me. Or that Dr Donovan says. It’s not as if I don’t understand where they are all coming from. I’ve also wanted you dead. And, let’s face it, you did steal me. But you saved my life too. And somewhere in the middle, you showed me a place so different and beau...

I thought that when I got to this point in this letter, I’d understand something. I’d realise why this has all happened, why you came into my life . . . why you chose me. Sometimes I think you’re still just as messed up as that first day I met you in the park. And sometimes I think about your plan of living out there in the heat and the endlessness and the beauty, and whether it would have worked. Mostly I don’t know what to think.

In the first instance, I’ll tell them exactly what they want to hear. I’ll tell them how you followed me, how you . . . stalked me . . . from such an early age. I’ll tell them how you came to the UK to look for your mother and instead found drink and drugs . . . and then me. I’ll tell them about your inability to fit in, about your deluded thoughts about the desert and me being your only escape. Then the lawyer will ask me about the airport, and I’ll tell him that you drugged me and stole me. I’ll tell them that you shoved me in the boot of your car and held me against my will. I’ll tell them about the long, lonely nights in that small wooden shack and about being locked in the bathroom . . . how I waited for you to kill me. I’ll tell them about your anger bursts and instability, your lies, and I will tell them how you grabbed me so hard sometimes that you made my eyes water and my skin turn red. And I won’t look at you through that testimony. I’ll just say what they expect. ‘He’s a monster,’ I’ll say. ‘Yes, he kidnapped me.’ And the judge will bash the little hammer and hand out a sentence of fifteen years or so, and everything – everything – will finally be over.

What you did to me wasn’t this brilliant thing, like you think it was. You took me away from everything – my parents, my friends, my life. You took me to the sand and the heat, the dirt and isolation. And you expected me to love you. And that’s the hardest bit. Because I did, or at least, I loved something out there. But I hated you too. I can’t forget that. Outside it’s so dark, with the tree branches tapping against the window . . . tapping like fingers. I’m tucking the sheet around me, even though I’m not cold, and I’m staring at the blackness behind the glass. You know, perhaps if we’d met as ordinary people, one day, perhaps . . . perhaps things might have been different. Perhaps I could have loved you. You were so different and wild. When the light made your bare skin glow on those early mornings, you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. To put you in a cell is like crushing a bird with an army tank. But what else can I do, other than to plead with you like this? Other than to write down my story, our story, to show you what you’ve done . . . to make you realise that what you did wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. When I get into court, I’m going to tell the truth. My truth. I will say that you kidnapped me, of course. You did. And I will tell them how you drugged me, and of your mood swings. I won’t shy away from the evil you can be. But I’ll tell them of your other side too. The side I saw sometimes when you spoke softly to the camel, and when you gently touched th...