Eloise Worledge- a childhood memory
As a child, I had an overactive imagination and an ability to make up all sorts of stories. Growing up in an Australian suburb in the seventies as part of my large immigrant family from England was not exciting enough for me. I made up stories about my life, sometimes just for myself and sometimes I told these stories to others.
The earliest tales I remember telling were to the family of a girl I played with, Kathy Hill, that the actress Natalie Wood was my aunt and that Humphrey Bear — an Australian children’s character — was my uncle. I was around 6–7 years old at the time and I remember Kathy’s mother looking at me in a strange way when I told her. It didn’t occur to me that she didn’t believe me because I think I had actually convinced myself it was true, but now I realise that she was on to me.
I was the second oldest of 5 children and we were dirt poor. All of our clothes came from charity shops and we were always hungry and scraping around for something to eat. We were very different to other families in our area who seemed relatively affluent compared to us- though now I realise they weren’t. We lived in a chaotic and messy, but loving home. My Mum had grown up in care and didn’t know how to look after a house and make it nice so I grew up aware of how different we were to others for that reason. I spent hours playing by myself in our back garden pretending I was someone else or somewhere else, in a different life.
When aged 6 or 7 years old I remember a news story in the local newspaper about children being coaxed into a car by a man. Walking home from school by myself one day, I suddenly became gripped with fear about being taken by this man. I ran all the way home, faster than I had ever run. I arrived home panting and terrified and told my Mum that a man had tried to take me. She immediately took me down to the police station and I was taken in to a room with two policeman asking questions. I remember feeling that I should tell them that I made it up but I was more afraid of the trouble I might get in to for telling lies.
I dutifully told the police everything that I had imagined happened when a child was coaxed in to a car. They asked me to choose what the car looked like from images they showed me and I pointed to the one that looked closest to the picture I’d seen in the newspaper. They asked me to describe the man and I described a man dressed in a suit and hat, clothing more suited to a city stockbroker in sixties London than the hot Australian suburbs in the seventies. I’d probably seen it in a book or newspaper somewhere. I’m pretty sure they were all on to me as after that I never heard from them again after that interview and my Mum never spoke about it to me either.
Around that time there was also a high profile story of a girl called Eloise Worledge who had been kidnapped from her bedroom in a Melbourne suburb not too far from us. She was just a few months younger than me and had the same long blonde hair with a fringe. I still remember how I felt at her kidnapping; terrified that something so terrible could happen to someone my age, somewhere so close to home. I remember the extensive news coverage and how I felt when I saw pictures of Eloise’s beautiful bedroom filled with toys and books. Her perfectly tidy home filled with beautiful furniture. Photographs of her in pristine new clothes. Her landscaped garden with a swing and her perfect life living close to the beach. I can’t remember exactly when and how, but somehow, in my own mind, I became Eloise. This time I kept it all to myself.
Eloise went missing in the summer holidays. They were long and hot in the seventies and felt like they went on forever. Every day I went out in to the back garden and pretended that I was Eloise and had been kidnapped by another family. I waved frantically at helicopters overhead, hoping they would see me and recognise me. Desperately hoping they would come and save me from this family who had taken me from my perfect life in my beautiful home. I spent hours fantasising about what it felt like to live there. The fridge full of food and cold drinks that I could help myself to whenever I wanted. Wearing clean, crisp clothes that had been ironed and hung up in my wardrobe. Going to the beach every day of the holidays and eating an ice-cream. Having a bedroom all to myself with frilly, pink bedding and wallpaper with flowers. Cool, fresh sheets to sleep in.
Eloise was never found. I went back to my real life and pretty much forgot about her. A few years ago she came in to my mind and I did a google search. It turned out that Eloise’s dad had just died so there were bits and pieces in the news about her and I found a Wikipedia page about her kidnapping. The day Eloise was kidnapped, it transpired that her parents were going to separate and her Dad planned to leave their family home. Her brother tragically died in his early 20s in a road traffic accident. Eloise was never found.
As an adult looking back, of course I can now appreciate that my life wasn’t so bad.
