The Big Ask by Shane Maloney

school.’ For once, Wendy was on the defensive.
    â€˜Or thrashed or sodomised.’
    â€˜That’s terribly unfair,’ she snapped, back in familiar form. ‘Brookside isn’t like that at all. We were just doing what we thought was best. I’ve got my hands pretty full, you know, with the new babies and work. And Richard’s job is very demanding. We both have to travel a lot. We felt that Red would benefit from the experience. Anyway, he comes home most weekends.’
    â€˜But not this one? A fact that somehow managed to escape your attention, what with your busy lifestyle and all.’
    That really got the acrimony going. When it abated a little, I managed to learn the little that Wendy knew. It seemed that Red had vanished some time after lights-out on Friday night. His absence was noted on Saturday morning yet, due to some crossing of the procedural wires, it was assumed that he’d simply gone home for the weekend. Wendy spent Saturday and most of Sunday oblivious to this misunderstanding. ‘He left a message at my office on Friday, said he’d be staying at school for the weekend,’ she sniffed.
    â€˜Bonding with the chaps?’ I said.
    Lashing out at Wendy gave cold comfort. There would be time for recriminations later. In the meantime, our thirteenyear-old boy had been missing for forty-eight hours and nobody had the slightest idea where he was. The police had been notified, inquiries made, bulletins posted, potential accomplices interrogated. It looked like he’d done a bunk. Emptied his bank account, packed a bag, gone over the wall.
    â€˜We’re looking everywhere, all the usual places runaways go.’
    Wendy didn’t need to specify what that meant. My bushland visions were replaced by urban images: street-kids, gutter crawlers, used syringes. It was a nightmare so precise, an apprehension so specific, that it even had a name. Kings Cross, sleaze capital of a nation.
    This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been more concerned about Red, I told myself, and less preoccupied with exchanging long-distance artillery salvos with Wendy. ‘How could you let this happen?’ I demanded. ‘I’ll be on the next plane up there.’
    â€˜What earthly good will that do?’
    I had no idea. But I knew for sure that I couldn’t just sit on my backside in Melbourne and await further bulletins. If necessary, I’d turn Sydney upside down. First I had to get there. I rang off and called the airlines, couldn’t get a seat for at least twelve hours. The next available flight was eight the next morning. I booked the ticket and stood beside the phone, flexing and unflexing, my guts churning. What now?
    An accident would have been easier to cope with. An illness. At least Red would be there, visible, tangible. With a jolt of dismay, I remembered the mysterious hang-ups on my answering machine, those pregnant silences. It was him, no doubt about it. He’d reached out, time and time again, and found me wanting.
    I checked the machine in case he’d called again. There was only the rebuking hiss of erased tape. Clutching at straws, I rang Telecom, hoping my phone records might identify the source of incoming calls and provide some clues about Red’s movements. Call back during office hours, I was told. I rang Wendy instead, urged her to use her insider clout, pull whatever strings she could wrap her senior executive hands around. ‘I’ll be up there by eleven tomorrow morning,’ I told her.
    â€˜I really don’t see the point.’
    â€˜I’m coming anyway,’ I insisted, teeth clenched. ‘In the meantime, ring me the moment you hear anything. Anything at all.’
    I felt powerless. There was so much I couldn’t even guess at. I’d never met Red’s Sydney friends, didn’t even know their names. Not to mention this shit with the boarding school. My derelictions reared before me, full of