Man Hunt

Epilogue - Our Happy Ever After

Two weeks later...

I lie across my couch with my mobile phone in one hand and the television remote in the other when there is a knock on the front door. I stay where I am as my father moves from the kitchen and through the hall towards the door. I have a feeling I know who it is before he answers and the voice I hear greeting my father confirms my hunch – Martin.

‘’Good afternoon,’’ he says chirpily, as energetic as ever.

‘’Howya Martin, come on in,’’ responds my father, ‘’Alice is just in the front room.’’

As my father returns to the kitchen, Martin pops his head into the sitting room and says hello. I smile at him and after a few moments of chatting, he joins my father in the kitchen. I hear my father put the kettle on for tea and then I return my attention to the television in front of me.

I flick from channel to channel, nothing interests me. I catch short snippets of programmes as I switch between channels; a nature programme with two orang-utans getting rather feisty with each other in a tree, a football match between two teams I don’t recognise and a programme in which celebrities are taken to a jungle on the opposite side of the world and basically humiliated in the name of charity and publicity.

I leave this on momentarily, watching the group of washed-up celebrities sitting around a dying fire in the middle of the Australian jungle. They sit on logs and are fantasising about what foods they will eat first when they reach the five star hotels that await them once they’re finished.

A tall and slender young blonde haired woman whom I recognise from an English soap opera – whose name I struggle to recall – explains how she will head straight to the bath and feast on chocolate coated strawberries as she soaks in the bubbling soapy hot water of a Jacuzzi. 

A member of an old Irish boy band scolds her playfully, and explains that the first thing he will do when he gets back to normality is spend the day with his wife and young son. I smile at this thought. It is nice to think that not all celebrities are like the media portrays them. A lot of them are quite normal in fact, genuine.

Nevertheless, despite how I used to be rather fond of this programme, it stirs unwanted memories in my mind, ones that I want so desperately to forget. The think they have it tough, they couldn’t begin to imagine the difficulties they could be facing. They have it easy. I switch it over to another channel, the news is on. A woman is speaking about how a recent flood did damage to the playschool her daughter attends and the town council are refusing to help fund the repairs. I listen to the woman’s angry rants for a while, but find myself zoning out quite quickly.

It has been just over two weeks since we flew in from France and since then, my life has been pretty hectic. Martin has helped my father, Aaron and me through it greatly, which we owe him big time for.

He explained to my father what happened to us, and has been working alongside him constantly since we returned to expose the leaders behind this project – even if it means imprisonment for himself in the end.  They have been gathering as much information as they can and plan on bringing the people behind this down as soon as they go public with their apparent cure.

Meanwhile I have been bombarded with texts, phone-calls and Facebook notifications from my peers questioning me about where I have been this whole time and that they are happy I have returned home safely. I am unsure exactly how they all know, but I guess word spreads fast. As instructed by Aaron, Martin and my father, I ignore their questions for now. Instead of explaining what happened, I thank them for their concern and explain that I have no time to talk and quickly kill the conversations.

Aaron has been over a lot despite how he lives over two and a half hours away from me and despite how he has a family of his own to catch up with. He gets the train to my house most mornings and stays with me for the whole day. My father seems to like him – probably due to Martin’s words of praise for him – however he is still reluctant to allow him to stay here overnight, even in a separate bedroom as both of us have suggested on numerous occasions.