My panic intensifying now, I ripped the duvet from the bed, upturned cushions, flung open doors and drawers, wrenched the curtains apart. I felt almost dizzy when I looked out the window—dazzled by the sunshine, confused by the sight of the Opera House sitting calmly across the harbor like nothing had happened.
I stepped back from the view—which ordinarily would have been breathtaking—as though it burned. My bag—which, the last time I checked, had contained my phone, money, wallet, passport, everything—was gone.
Stupidly, I scanned the room for a note—There’s been a misunderstanding, he’s taken my bag by accident, he’s just popped out for breakfast and he’ll come back soon with croissants and coffee like they do in the films—before the dark thump of reality struck. Nate was gone, and so was everything else.
—
I felt so shocked and dazed that I started to wonder if I had somehow acquired a head injury. I chugged a bottle of water, attempted to clean up the bathroom—whose vomit was this?—then headed down to the lobby to check out, vaguely aware that if I just walked out, it might constitute theft of some kind.
I was too embarrassed to say anything at reception. I just took the bill for the early-morning room service and shedload of alcohol I’d apparently ordered, and got out of there.
At first, I thought I’d got so drunk that Nate had checked me in himself then left me there, embarrassed on my behalf. The business card he’d given me was nowhere to be seen, so I couldn’t even call him to apologize.
Things got worse when I returned to the hostel. Whoever hadstolen my bag had used my room key to steal the stuff I had there, too. The only thing they’d left behind was the notebook under my pillow.
Every cell in my body was screaming to leave the country, go home, feel safe. So I called Jools. I must have sounded another level of frightened, because we’d barely exchanged more than a couple of sentences before she insisted on booking me a flight home, talked me through getting emergency travel documentation, and said she’d take care of canceling my cards.
I flinched from the thought of going to the police, the idea of it like pressing bare skin against something hot. Because what, actually, was my story? I had no proof Nate had stolen my things. How could I accuse someone of that, with no memory of it? Maybe I’d just left my bag in the bar. Maybe he’d checked me into that hotel so I’d be safe. I’d clearly been wasted to the point of blacking out. What crime would I even report?
Later, though, I concluded it must have been him. Because my bank account was empty and my credit cards maxed out, and he was the only one who could have discovered my PIN. He must have asked for it while I was hammered—or perhaps he’d watched me use it, at some point during the course of the night.
Anyway, he got lucky, because I used the same number for all three of the cards in my wallet.
—
It was only a week later, once I was back home in Shoreley, my travels cut short by two months, that Jools asked if I thought Nate had drugged me.
I’d told her all I could remember about him. Which honestly wasn’t much. I felt so embarrassed, so naïve, so unsure of what had taken place.
But in an instant, what had been baffling and unsettling me for so many days snapped sharply into focus, like wiping dirt from a lens.
“I mean,” Jools said gently, “you never black out when you drink.”
And she was right. Now that I thought about it, that night with Nate had been the first time I’d ever experienced all my memories cutting off at a certain point. It was so weird, so unlike me.
And right then, in my heart, I knew. Nate had slipped something into my drink.
To this day, I still don’t know if we had sex in that room.
I mustered up the strength to visit a clinic, where I got checked out and took a pregnancy test, but everything came back clear. And I never told them the truth.
But once I’d done that, of course, I realized I had to tell the police, because Nate was most likely a monster on the loose. Although at that point nearly a month had passed, I was out of the country, and the chances of catching him were virtually nonexistent. Still, I contacted the police in Sydney and told them everything I knew. Or thought I knew.
In the weeks that followed, I spent entire days fixating on what had happened, straining to remember until my brain hurt. I knew I was fully dressed when I woke on that awful morning, but had Ifeltanything, physically?
I searched obsessively for him online too, but turned up nothing, of course. Because Nathan Drall, as I well knew by now, wasn’t real.
I was tormented by the whole thing, sleeping only in brief, fevered snatches. And when I did manage to drop off, I would wake a couple of hours later like a bolt had ripped through me, convinced Nate was standing at the foot of my bed.
I didn’t have sex for almost two years afterward, and I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since that day. For a long time, my ability toconcentrate was shot to pieces, as was my sense of humor. I became snappy and irritable, the worst kind of company.
I told my family I’d come back early because I’d run out of money, had been mugged for my camera, was sick of traveling. That for me, jet-setting obviously just wasn’t meant to be. Tash remarked more than once that I’d returned from Australia a completely different person: that I’d forgotten how to have fun, be spontaneous, take pleasure from life. And I could tell from the way that she said it—sadly, so gentle—that, somehow, she knew I’d lost more than my stuff out there.
After I reported Nate, I longed so desperately for a call to say they’d caught him—so I’d know that through my shock and failure to act during those first weeks, I hadn’t unwittingly endangered someone else.
But the call never came.
—
