Bone by Bone (12 page)

‘More like suspended,' said Laura uncertainly.

‘So will he be suspended, Mum?'

Laura sighed. ‘No, love. I'm afraid he won't be.'

Autumn looked crestfallen and then, to Laura's consternation, resigned, as if she had known all along that Laura would not be able to protect her.

‘Because you pushed him,' she said. ‘That's all anyone will think about.'

They walked the rest of the way home in silence. Laura was wondering what to do now. Mrs Sibson clearly didn't believe them, particularly since Autumn's pen had not actually been stolen. Levi must be angry: presumably his class teacher would have given him a grilling about the cut on his face. Dileep George believed Aaron's account – that Levi was innocent of any wrongdoing – and Laura hadn't managed to explain herself convincingly.

Had she tried hard enough, she wondered? She'd left his office so abruptly and no doubt he considered her Ofsted threat vacuous. She should have stayed and argued. But what else could she have said? What she'd done was so wrong, so shocking, it would have made no difference to Mr George's reaction.

What if Aaron did go to the police? She wondered what the charge would be. There was no one to turn to, no one who could stop what was happening to her and Autumn. Rebecca wasn't talking to her. She should call Rebecca when they reached the house and try and explain herself. There must be something she could say to convince her – but the thought of trying to persuade Rebecca not to hate her made her wilt inside.

Rani was about to invoice her for destroying the hard drive on her computer. The other parents at the school appeared equally angry and would continue to be enraged if they received the virus from her. At least she only had Rebecca, Amy, Rani and Lily's email addresses, she thought with relief. And then she remembered with a jolt that Rebecca ran the Parents and Teachers' Association at Ashley Grove and had created an email group for it. She'd recently put Laura on the mailing list. Which meant, thought Laura, that the virus could have been sent to everyone on the PTA, including all the teachers, the reception staff and the governors of the school.

She was so lost in thought that at first she didn't notice Autumn had stopped. They'd reached Wolferton Place and were almost opposite their house. She turned and held out her hand to Autumn to cross the road with her. Autumn was staring silently at the house. Laura swung around to see what she was looking at. Everything appeared normal: there was their chipped blue front door, the bins on the pavement, which she should have pulled back to the house wall, a large terracotta pot she'd planted with a fig tree and lavender around the base of the trunk. No one had broken in or smashed a window, no one was waiting on the doorstep for them.

And then she saw it.

AUTUMN

S
he didn't understand it at first. It was almost like a sculpture, not a recognizable object. It was a child's bicycle, leaning up against the bins outside their house. No other children lived on their street and so the bike looked even more out of place than it might have on another road. Why was it there? There was something wrong with it, it was crooked, like a maimed creature. And then she understood. It was her bike.

She'd got it for her eighth birthday. Autumn loved her bike: it was metallic pink with a fat white seat and had a shopping basket hung between the handlebars decorated with red and orange artificial flowers.

She'd gone for a cycle ride on Sunday and her Mum had said the bike was too muddy to bring in. She'd left it in the garden and her mum had said she'd hose it down and put it in the dining room, but she must have forgotten. How had it got here, to their front door on Wolferton Place?

Someone had slashed the chunky tyres. The bubblegum-pink frame had been spray-painted scarlet red. The basket was bent, a broken tangle of wire like a smashed lobster pot. The final touch was the flowers: the garish fabric petals were scattered across the pavement like the ones at her great-gran's funeral.

‘Oh no, your bike!' Her mum spotted it and ran over towards the mangled frame. ‘It's been vandalized. Someone must have got into our back garden.'

She remembered the summer before last, the summer she turned eight and they were all in the park – all the mothers and their children. Once a month they met up, the mums who'd been pregnant at the same time; usually someone was missing but that day everyone was there. It was Maya's birthday and they were having a picnic. She and Cleo had cycled there. Her happiness had fizzed along her limbs like sherbet; she'd dropped her new bike in the grass and started to turn cartwheels, the sun and the sky and the trees all spinning, green and blue and gold. And when she'd stopped and stood still, out of breath and dizzy, all the mums had clapped and looked at her like they loved her every bit as much as her own mum did.

She felt the hot trickle of tears on her cheeks.

‘Oh, love, I'm so sorry. I should have brought it in. I thought… I was sure no one could break into our garden.'

Autumn wiped her tears away quickly. She didn't want her mum to make a fuss and start dabbing at her face with a tissue in the middle of the street. She thought about riding the bike on Hampstead Heath, that same summer, on her actual birthday, the wind in her hair, sticking her feet out and screaming with laughter. She hadn't considered happiness then, or thought about the fizz in her fingertips. She'd just been happy.

‘I'm sure we can fix it, Autumn,' said her mum, opening the front door. She dragged the damaged bike over the threshold.

They both looked at it, a crimson riot of mangled metal and broken spokes.

No one could fix that
, thought Autumn. She stepped over the bike and went straight upstairs to her room without even taking her coat off. It was her mum's fault. If she hadn't gone to see Mr George, Levi wouldn't have gotten into their garden and trashed her bike – and then left it on the front door step like some kind of signal. It was a message. Autumn understood that. Her mum wanted to help but she just made everything worse.

She couldn't face her homework. Instead, she decided to write a letter to her real best friend, Cleo. She couldn't remember writing a letter before. Usually she made thank-you cards and wrote inside them or sent an email. She chose yellow paper because that was Cleo's favourite colour and she drew squirrels in the margins because they were Cleo's favourite animal. She kept having to start again. She wasn't very good at drawing squirrels. And the letter kept going wrong, as if the words on the page deliberately turned into different words than the ones she meant.

It was an invitation to Cleo to come and stay and it was supposed to be full of descriptions of nice things, of her new school and her new house to make Cleo want to visit. But every time she started telling Cleo something that had happened, she'd remember the other bit, the bit that wasn't so nice.

When her mum told her it was time for dinner, she threw all the butter-coloured sheets of messed-up squirrels in the bin. Later that evening, after her mother kissed her goodnight, Autumn retrieved her toys and tucked them in with her. They were much too far away at the other end of the bed; she couldn't even reach them with her toes. She pressed her hand against her forehead. She'd had a headache since the night before.

She tried not to think about her bike. Instead, she remembered going to gymnastics. She hated it there. Her old gym class in London had been in a brand-new sports centre. It was a proper gymnasium with a sprung floor and beautiful shiny hoops and a vaulting horse made of soft suede and gleaming wood. This one was in an old church. There were statues – white marble saints boxed into Perspex coffins that stared at you, or rolled their eyes towards heaven, palms pressed piously in prayer, and grotesque stone gargoyles leered down where the joints in the roof arced into a pointed dome.

She remembered the horrid feeling of falling, the dread that had engulfed her. It was going to hurt, she felt sure of it. And then, as she was twisting and spinning, she'd seen her mum, running towards her, arms outstretched. Her mum hadn't
caught
her exactly, she'd broken her fall, and they'd both landed on the mat, winded. As they lay there, a jumble of limbs and beating hearts, all she'd noticed had been the stone arches high overhead making a pattern like a pointed lily, the dull glitter of one of the stained-glass windows, a stone saint's ghostly white face. That was when the throbbing in her arm started and she realized she'd banged it on the beam. Jack had appeared and he'd smiled and helped her up and she'd felt mortified. All the other girls would be thinking how clumsy she was.

If her granny had been there she'd have agreed with Tess and made her climb back on the beam. Her mum had been more sympathetic but now Autumn knew that she never would be able to
get back on the horse
; she'd never walk along that narrow thread with pointed toes and lift and spin effortlessly in the air again.

LAURA

A
s soon as Autumn was in bed, she called the number for the local police to report the vandalism of Autumn's bike. She'd checked the garden, but there were no signs of a break-in, and she'd taken pictures. The call-taker she spoke to didn't seem to be that interested.

‘Bikes go missing or get vandalized all the time, love,' he said. ‘We don't have the resource to go chasing after the culprits. And if you leave one right outside your house, it's asking for trouble. Let me take some details though, and I'll make a note of it on our system.'

She hung up, angry he wasn't going to send a police officer round, and turned to her laptop. She'd try Damian first, she thought. Her older brother by two years, he'd always been benignly protective of her.

Laura opened Skype but there was something odd about her account. Instead of showing pictures of Vanessa, Julian, Damian, and Matt in the Contacts section, her address list was empty. She opened up the ‘Find Contact' box and typed in Damian's name and pressed enter. An error message appeared. Laura frowned. She was useless with computers, with any kind of technology. She tried a few more times with the same result. She put in Damian's name but the familiar error message appeared. She turned off the laptop and then switched it back on again, intending to try again. This time, when her laptop started, she couldn't find Skype on her computer at all. Normally it was on the desktop but now it wasn't even under the list of programs.

Surely it wasn't a coincidence? The email virus and then Skype malfunctioning in such an odd way? She thought of Aaron and how he had set up a program that would allow him remote access to her computer. She shivered. She felt like smashing her laptop.

She called her best friend, Lucy. She was the perfect combination of optimism and sympathy. Laura imagined her as she listened to the phone ringing: Lucy was petite with long, blonde hair in tight curls. They'd met on Laura's first job in TV, when Lucy was starting out too, as a production assistant. Perpetually on the hunt for the perfect man and childless, Laura had bursts of envy when she heard the latest details about Lucy's life – cocktails in Soho, in London and New York, long, lazy Sunday pub lunches, coffee and the papers in bed on a Saturday morning after a late night out on Friday – but she knew Lucy well enough to know that she was probably jealous of Laura too. It was hard being in your mid-thirties and single, and because she'd recently been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, Lucy might never be able to have a baby.

Lucy's voice was warm and chirpy. It brought tears to Laura's eyes. She was tempted to call her again, just to listen to the message. She resisted the impulse and put the phone down firmly.

Wednesday 31 October

LAURA

T
here'd been a cold snap overnight and each blade of grass was rimed with frost. The orange-red fruit of the strawberry tree shone amid the glossy evergreen leaves, silver-tipped in the wan light. Laura held her mug of tea tightly to her chest. The radiators made choking sounds; they probably needed to be bled.

She looked at the clock. It was growing late. Autumn, silent and pale, had picked at a piece of toast and stirred some Rice Krispies around the bowl without actually eating anything. She'd gone to brush her teeth but she was taking longer than she needed to.

‘Autumn,' she called. ‘We need to leave now.'

Laura struggled to achieve the right tone. She didn't want to sound cross. She walked upstairs to the hall and put her trainers and fleece on. She was about to shout again when Autumn appeared, though not from the bathroom as she'd expected. She came running down the stairs and paused near the bottom.

Laura gaped at her. Autumn looked at her defiantly, then jumped down the last two and grabbed her coat.

Laura swallowed back her instinct to shout,
You can't go out looking like that.

Instead she said softly, ‘Why have you done that?'

Autumn shrugged. ‘All the girls do.'

She bent to put on her boots. She'd taken her hair out of her plaits and was wearing an Alice band. She must also have rummaged about in her room and found Laura's old make-up case. She looked like a drag queen, with large spots of pink on her cheeks and a slash of lipstick and purple eyeshadow smudged over her eyelids. It might have been comic but the effect, with her pallor, the dark circles under her eyes and her perfect child's skin, was horrific.

‘No,' said Laura. It came out much louder and firmer than necessary. ‘They don't. Not to school. Go upstairs and take it off.'

Autumn stood up and looked out of the window for a moment, one boot on, the other lying like something eviscerated on the floor. She burst into tears. Laura hugged her tightly. Her daughter felt scrawny and hard; she was unresponsive to her touch.

‘Everyone says I'm ugly,' she sobbed.

‘You're beautiful,' said Laura. ‘Who says you're ugly?'

‘Levi. And then the other boys and some of the girls say I am too.'

‘Well, they're wrong,' said Laura. ‘You're perfect.' She crouched down. ‘Hard as it is, you have to learn to ignore Levi. He's trying to hurt you. You mustn't let him.'

So the bullying hadn't stopped, she thought grimly.

She took Autumn's hand and led her upstairs to the bathroom, where she found a half-empty bottle of make-up remover and some cotton wool and gently started to sponge the garish colour off her daughter's face. She remembered this had once been a nightly ritual for her too, before Autumn was born, when she'd made herself up to look artfully fresh, as if she were not wearing make-up at all.

‘Your skin is so pretty,' she murmured, as the make-up came off, revealing Autumn's smooth, unblemished cheek. She kissed her and Autumn, almost reluctantly, hugged her back. It was a hug lacking in strength or feeling, thought Laura, dropping the soiled cotton wool in the bin and watching her daughter slowly descend the stairs.

Autumn pulled her boots on and turned to let herself out the back of the house.

‘It's Wednesday.'

‘Oh.' Autumn stopped and waited for her at the front door.

‘Had you forgotten?' said Laura, putting out a hand to stroke her hair. That wasn't like her. Autumn jerked away. Laura always dropped Autumn off at school by car on a Wednesday as that was the day she went to university for her horticulture course.

‘Are you feeling okay?' asked Laura, as she pulled out of Wolferton Place. Autumn looked peaky and was staring glumly out of the window. She didn't reply. It was such a short journey to school by car; even so, Laura felt relieved that it was almost over. She had no idea how to try and cheer Autumn up, or make her feel better about herself; she found her passive-aggressiveness hard to deal with and she was at a loss to know how to stop Levi.

Just as they reached the school, Autumn sat up straight and said, ‘Did you speak to Tilly's mum about the sleepover?'

‘It's not until Friday, Autumn.'

Autumn slumped back against the seat. Laura pulled over and Autumn opened the door while the car was still moving.

‘Autumn!' shouted Laura.

Her daughter grabbed her satchel and jumped out without looking at her.

‘Bye. I love you,' called Laura, but Autumn had already slammed the door.

She watched her for a moment; her daughter was walking along the pavement as if she were about a hundred instead of nine. Laura doubted that Autumn would be welcome in Tilly's house, but she hadn't talked to Rebecca about it. She couldn't bear the thought of Autumn's disappointment. This was the first time she'd been invited to have a sleepover at any of the other girl's houses since she'd joined this new school and she was desperate for Tilly to be her friend.

A car hooted behind her and she held up her hand in apology before easing back into the stream of traffic. She'd have to speak to Rebecca tonight after school and tell her that whatever Rebecca believed she'd done, it was nothing to do with Autumn and her friendship with Tilly.

Her classes started at ten, so there was usually just enough time after parking at the Frenchay campus to grab a coffee. It was disgusting stuff though. She was standing in the corridor, sanitized graffiti on the walls like lobotomized impressions of street-wise students, her rucksack full of text books slung over one shoulder, the coffee burning her fingers through the thin plastic cup, thinking about Autumn wearily trudging the last few metres to school this morning, when Jacob walked in.

‘Hey, how are things? What did you think of Sunday's class?' He gave her a wolfish grin.

‘I'm still stiff,' she said, managing a smile. ‘I could barely walk. Climbing all those stairs in our house is torture.'

Jacob laughed. ‘Are you going to give it another go?'

‘Sure,' said Laura. She didn't know how she'd manage to attend another class without Vanessa or, indeed, anyone else, to look after Autumn, but she was determined to try. ‘I hated it, Jacob, I want you to know that. But I'm going to get fit if it kills me.'

He laughed again and patted her on the shoulder. ‘Well, if you come to another session, I'll buy you a coffee afterwards.'

‘And chocolate cake. It'll be the only thing that'll keep me going,' she said.

‘You ready to go in?' he asked, glancing at her full cup of coffee.

‘I don't know why I bother,' she said, smiling at him, ‘it's the worst coffee I've ever had.'

Laura always had to leave her classes early to reach school on time and usually she left as late as she possibly could but, today, she left even earlier than normal. When she arrived at Ashley Grove, Rebecca was already there, surrounded by a small knot of women. She steeled herself to speak to her. As she walked over, Rani and Lily hugged Rebecca. Poppy had her arm around Tilly's shoulder, as if she was comforting her. Amy, holding a baby in her arms and clutching the hand of a small boy, straining away from her like a dog on a short leash, was standing with her daughter, Molly, to one side of the group. She and Molly looked up at her as Laura approached, their small, heart-shaped faces pale. Rebecca swung around, looking furious.

‘I was prepared to put your behaviour to one side for Autumn's sake, but this is the limit,' she spat out. ‘Autumn is no longer welcome in my house.'

Laura opened her mouth to speak but Mrs Sibson came bustling out. She was frowning, her expression pained.

‘Could you please come inside for a moment?' she said to Laura.

‘What's happened?' asked Laura, walking past the hostile group of women.

‘I kept Autumn behind so I could talk to her. I'm concerned about her. She copied Tilly's work today.'

‘What?' said Laura, raising her voice. ‘That's ridiculous! Autumn would never do that.'

‘It would be easier if we could discuss this inside,' said Mrs Sibson, looking annoyed at Laura's reaction.

Laura felt chastened. She never normally shouted. It was the stress, she thought, as she followed the teacher into the classroom. There were plastic spiders hanging from the ceiling and three pumpkins lined up in the window, tiny candles guttering through the holes cut in their skin, all sharp teeth and ghoulish grins. Autumn was sitting in the far corner, bent over a piece of paper, her hair resting on the desk. When she saw Laura she burst into loud, noisy sobs.

‘I didn't copy her work. I didn't do it,' she wailed.

Laura rushed over to her, tripping over small desks and chairs.

‘I know you wouldn't do that, love.' She hugged her and sat down on one of the tiny chairs. ‘What happened?'

‘We all had to write a story about autumn, what happens in autumn and what we like best. We did it on the computer and saved them in a folder. Then today when Mrs Sibson printed them all out…' She was having trouble speaking through her tears, gulping and choking on snot and saliva. ‘Mine was the same as Tilly's, but Tilly had written hers earlier – she used the computer before me. So everyone said I'd copied hers.'

She put her head on the desk.

‘What did you say you liked best about autumn?' asked Laura gently.

Autumn didn't look up and spoke very quietly through her hair. ‘I said I liked the smell of bonfires and making gingerbread with raisins and dressing up on Halloween with my best friend, Cleo. Tilly said she liked toffee apples and spiky sweet chestnuts and red leaves. They were different, Mum. I don't like
all
the same things as Tilly.'

Laura put her hand on Autumn's. The child withdrew hers. Laura looked up at Mrs Sibson.

‘I think you've jumped to conclusions far too rapidly. Isn't it obvious she didn't copy Tilly?'

‘Tilly's story was cut and pasted into the document that was labelled as Autumn's work. Autumn had changed a couple of things – she'd added that she liked the smell of bonfire smoke and eating gingerbread. All the rest of it was identical to Tilly's.'

‘Did you copy Tilly's work?' Laura asked Autumn.

‘No!'

‘Someone must have done it deliberately to get Autumn into trouble,' said Laura, standing up and facing Mrs Sibson.

‘No one else has access to this classroom apart from these children and the other teachers,' said Mrs Sibson.

She looked resigned, as if dealing with Autumn and her mother was one more chore she had to endure before she could leave and go home. Laura suspected that this brave new world of tablets and iPads did not interest Mrs Sibson in the slightest; she was the kind of woman who wanted children to copy lines neatly from the blackboard and paint pictures with poster paints, and she was grimly slogging her way through digitized photos and touchscreen drawings for her final few years until retirement.

‘It was probably Levi.'

Mrs Sibson sighed again, as if her evening with a meal for one and a glass of wine on a tray was now utterly ruined. ‘You seem to have a real problem with Levi. And Aaron. By the way, we received a virus from you. Aaron managed to pick it up and contain it before it did too much damage. But that's not what I wanted to discuss,' she went on quickly before Laura could interrupt. ‘I think we should have a proper discussion about Autumn. She's clearly unhappy and displaying some odd behaviour. I know Dileep, Mr George, is planning on speaking to Social Services about your attitude.'

‘My attitude? Social Services? Are you out of your mind?'

‘Mrs Baron-Cohen, our PE teacher says Autumn's arm is severely bruised.'

‘And you think
I
did it? Come on, Autumn. Get your coat. My daughter is not spending another minute here,' said Laura, sweeping up Autumn's satchel and grabbing the child's arm.

Autumn whimpered and flinched.

‘Oh, sorry, love.' She'd seized her sore one.

‘I think you should know,' said Mrs Sibson quietly, as Laura reached the classroom door, feeling even more ashamed than before, ‘Aaron changed his mind and he did file a report with the police…'

‘What?' She spun back towards Mrs Sibson.

‘He told us that today they started interviewing the boys who saw you hit Levi.'

Laura slammed the door behind her, a childish act that made her feel better momentarily and then mortified. The teacher hadn't spoken to her out of anger or malice; she'd actually been attempting to be sympathetic, Laura realized.

‘Tilly's not going to let me go round for a sleepover, is she?' said Autumn as they walked across the deserted playground, their breath freezing in small clouds around them.

Laura inhaled deeply and tried to focus on Autumn's concerns and ignore her skipping heart-beat and jagged adrenaline surge.

She said carefully, ‘If she didn't believe you, she's not worth having as a friend, Autumn. It takes time to build new friendships but, I promise you, by the end of the year, girls will be falling over themselves to invite you to their houses. You've still got all your friends from London and you're making friends here. What about Molly? I bet she didn't think you'd copied Tilly's work.'

She looked down at her daughter to see how she was taking the disappointment and her pep talk. Autumn's face was set in a cold, hurt expression. Laura wanted was to shake Rebecca for breaking her daughter's heart.