Bone by Bone (3 page)

Fortunately, Bronze Beech, the landscaping company Laura was working for, was currently redesigning a garden in Montpelier, on the other side of the nature reserve, so Laura could walk to it after dropping Autumn off without being too late for work. Her boss, Barney McLoughlin, was a rugged, burly man with wind-burnt cheeks and an Oxbridge accent. He wore a singular combination of tweed jackets with elbow patches and combat trousers for work.

As well as Laura, Barney employed Ted, who had dreadlocks so bleached they were white – he even bleached his eyebrows. Throughout the early weeks of autumn Ted had taken his T-shirt off most days, exposing badly drawn Maori tattoos from an old trip to New Zealand, and beer-blurred muscles. Laura thought he was a particularly toxic combination of misogyny and sycophancy. Her agreed hours were 9.30 a.m. to 3 p.m. but Barney and, more often, Ted, frequently made comments about her arriving late and leaving early; today Barney would be furious because she actually was going to be late. She sighed. She was going to have to put Autumn in an after-school club so she could work for longer.

AUTUMN

I
t was why she hadn't told her mum about Levi before. She didn't want her mum to feel worried or upset. Because then she'd try to help and she wouldn't be able to.

She squeezed her eyes shut and felt again the excruciating embarrassment as her mother had blurted out,
Levi is bullying Autumn
.

It had sounded… belligerent. She'd learnt it in Literacy. Her mum wasn't normally belligerent, but she did get upset easily. It was her reaction – like a frightened mouse might bite because it doesn't know what else to do. Or else she became quieter and quieter. Autumn knew the feeling – sometimes when Mr Wu, her old teacher, had called her out in front of the whole class, she literally couldn't say a word, couldn't even open her mouth or make a sound. As if she'd never known how to speak.

The name-calling had begun just after she'd started at the new school. Of course she'd noticed Levi before – who hadn't? He was good-looking and all the boys in her class thought he was cool. Some of the girls said they fancied him – whatever that meant. She'd noticed him watching her a couple of times when her mum picked her up from school. And then it happened.

‘Autumn?' he'd said, and she'd said, ‘Yes?' in a tiny voice.

She couldn't believe he was talking to her. But he wasn't. He was talking
about
her.

‘Autumn. What kind of dumb name is that? Who'd call their kid that? It's like saying, “Hey, November, come in for your tea.'''

He'd turned his voice into a high-pitched falsetto and the group of boys that always hung around with him burst out laughing.

‘Oh, darling February, time to go to bed now.'

As he continued, calling her more random and ridiculous names, the boys in her own class started to laugh too, and some of the girls put their hands over their mouths and smirked.

Later on that day, Tilly tossed her long, blonde hair over her shoulder and said, ‘Come to think of it, it is a weird name. Why are you called that? I mean, it's not like you're some kind of celebrity or anything.'

A couple of the girls nearby sniggered and shouted out the names of stars' children: Blue Ivy, Princess, Brooklyn, Harper Seven.

‘Hey, isn't there some film star called, like, January?' one of the girls said.

Molly put her hand on Autumn's. Molly, like Tilly, was
thinking
about being her best friend. Her real best friend, Cleo, was in London.

Molly whispered, ‘I like your name.'

It had continued. Some days Levi didn't seem to notice her, at other times he'd taunt her, whistling through his teeth at her, calling her bizarre things: Toilet Cleaner, Andrex, Equinox.

Recently he'd moved on to the gap in her front teeth and how ugly it made her. That was the first time she'd cried, by herself in the toilets. Because he was right. She
was
ugly. Her teeth stuck out, with a wider gap at the bottom than the top and she was missing two more teeth, where the baby ones had fallen out but the big ones hadn't come through. If she didn't smile, perhaps no one would notice. She started to keep her top lip over her teeth when she opened her mouth so other people couldn't see them. Levi saw, though.

‘Look,' he shouted, ‘that psycho kid, Canada, or whatever her name is, she's doing a fish impersonation. She thinks we can't tell she's got wonky teeth.'

He started imitating and exaggerating her attempt at smiling and his friends held their stomachs, almost crying with laughter.

At break-times her hands would grow clammy and her mouth dry, her breathing became shallow. She wanted to stay indoors and it was only with the greatest reluctance that she followed the others outside. She wished she could hold Molly's hand, as if Molly could protect her. She tried to make herself take deep breaths.

It's going to be okay. I won't always be the new girl.

She kept wondering what Levi would do when the name-calling was not enough. And then she found out.

Yesterday afternoon they had Art and Design, her favourite part of the week. There was still the sleepover with Tilly and some of the other girls to look forward to the following week. She was feeling upbeat, hopeful, safe: all the things she hadn't felt for what seemed like a long time. She wasn't prepared for it.

Mrs Sibson said that today's project was going to be to draw some natural objects with an autumnal feel. She walked around the class putting conkers and scarlet maple leaves and hazelnuts on each table. She handed out large pieces of sugar paper and trays of pastels and coloured pencils. Autumn liked drawing the outlines first in black ink and then shading the picture in. She'd brought her special pen to school, the one her mum had given her, and she'd put it straight in her drawer at the start of the day. She'd checked it was there before and after break and again before she went for lunch.

She almost skipped over to her drawer and pulled it open. She recoiled and gave a little shriek, then clapped her hands over her mouth.

‘What is it, Autumn?' asked Mrs Sibson, frowning at her.

The pupils fell silent as the teacher strode over to her. Autumn couldn't move. She could feel the blush spreading across her cheeks and blazing up to her hairline. The odour seemed to creep like something living into her clothes, crawling across her skin. A few children came to see what she and Mrs Sibson were staring at, and within minutes, the class was in an uproar, children screaming and shouting, some of the girls pretending to gag, a few boys laughing.

The drawer was full of slugs. At least a hundred of the creatures writhed and twisted over each other; some were fat, others thin; there were tiny black ones, thick beige ones, a few the colour of stewed tea and two enormous beasts, pale and covered in jagged spots. This pair were in the process of devouring one of the smaller slugs; its entrails, pale as putty, oozed across Autumn's Literacy notebook. The rest were voraciously consuming the bed of rotten apple that had been packed into the drawer, which stank of mould and sour cider. Released from their dark confinement, several of the slugs, eye stalks stretched to their limits and quivering, started to pour over the edge of the drawer and drop in a pulsating mass to the floor.

Mrs Sibson rested her hand on Autumn's shoulder for a moment. Autumn realized she was trying to comfort her, but Mrs Sibson's hand felt heavy, like a weight pressing down on her collar bone.

The art lesson was abandoned. When the mess was finally cleaned up and order restored to the classroom, Mrs Sibson declared Autumn's books
quite ruined
. They were stained with decomposing apple and covered with slime. Autumn watched as the teacher dumped them all in the bin. Since no one owned up, Mrs Sibson said there would be no cupcakes for anyone on Halloween. There was a collective groan. Autumn was sent to the stationary cupboard with the school receptionist and given an entirely new set of exercise books. She was nearly crying as she returned to her silent, resentful class.

LAURA

T
here were ten of them stuck to the wall with Blu-tack. Each one a vibrant miniature, the outlines in fine black pen, coloured in with vivid inks. She'd used such a fine brush, thought Laura, remembering Autumn painting the first one. They were childish but charming – and Autumn was so proud of them. Laura particularly loved the one of a thin, spiky woman with a big smile, carrying a giant harebell that bobbed above her head like a lantern.

Laura suddenly had a vision of Autumn as a tiny child – about eighteen months old – sitting at a child-sized table with a set of felt tips. She neatly took the top off one, drew great arcs of pink across the paper, before replacing the lid, then chose another colour – red this time – and repeated the procedure. Orange was the last one she'd picked. She would always follow this pattern – three colours in the same tonal range, creating these stylish mini rainbows, putting the tops neatly back on the pens after she'd used each one. Autumn still loved drawing and painting and always had some form of self-generated project on the go. She was such a quiet, shy child; it was as if art was her way of communicating.
No, that's not right
, thought Laura, Autumn was nothing if not articulate – it was her way of expressing how she felt.

Laura had spent the day wondering if Autumn was okay. She left Autumn's room and went downstairs into her mother's. That was how powerful her mother's influence was, she thought; it was no longer the spare room, even though Vanessa had only slept in it for a night. She'd left Laura's dad working in London and arrived the day before to give her daughter a bit of
moral support
, as she put it. The bed was neatly made and Vanessa's clothes were folded and had been placed in a pile at the end, her shoes lined up beneath them. She'd gone out running.

Since they'd moved to Bristol, Autumn had started walking home by herself. Laura worried about it – particularly as the clocks would change on Sunday and it would be dark when she was on her way back. But it did give Laura an extra fifteen minutes to return home from wherever she was working with Bronze Beech. Laura checked her watch once more. It was three minutes to four. School finished at 3.30 and it only took twenty minutes to walk home through the nature reserve – fifteen if you were quick. Even allowing for Autumn leaving her classroom late and dawdling… Laura couldn't bear it any more. She ran downstairs to the hall and pulled on her coat, wound a scarf around her neck and crammed a hat on her head. She grabbed her trainers and sat on the bottom step leading into the kitchen to put them on. Now that she'd decided to do something – go and meet Autumn on her way home – she was filled with urgency. Vanessa had taken a key so she could let herself in. She thought about leaving a note for her and then decided against it. She wouldn't be long.

She flung open the kitchen door. Directly below her, crawling through the long, damp grass next to the path, was a large slug, five inches in length. Laura tried to push it away from the house with her toe but the slug only writhed a little, exposing its pale underbelly beneath an ominous orange-lined mantel. She shoved it again and this time it wound across her trainer, depositing a thick trail of slime. Laura shuddered as she finally knocked it off her foot and back into the grass.

It was still cold enough for her breath to freeze in clouds, and with a fine drizzle, the kind that falls so gently you barely notice but, in the end, chills you to the core.

Vanessa had sent her two texts complaining about the Internet today. The second one had said

Given up. Gone to a café with Wi-Fi.

Laura had immediately seen her mother's comments as a criticism – she was failing to keep the house together and she lacked the right kind of mind to sort it out. She knew it was irrational and that her mother was probably only annoyed at the delay to her work. But her mother did have a point: she'd need to make sure the Internet was working properly so that Matt could speak to Autumn via Skype on Saturday – plus it was crucial for those nights she worked late, setting up her garden-design company and studying for her degree. Barney didn't believe in taking long breaks and he also hated her making calls during work hours. She'd ignored his frown as she'd dug out Aaron Jablonski's card and texted him. He'd replied almost immediately to say he was free this evening. She'd felt a slim tremor of excitement as she'd slipped her phone back in her pocket and resumed digging in a row of espaliered apple trees.

Now she locked the garden gate behind her using the key code and then walked down the lane towards the allotments. Autumn was a dreamer, an ambler, just like Laura. She could easily have stopped to pick a bunch of the last wild flowers of the season, or to examine an interesting seed pod. But still. Laura had a horrible feeling of foreboding. Her stomach felt as if small lead weights were being slowly dropped into it.

Laura loved the allotments: the quirkiness and individuality of each one, how some were wild, brambles and ragwort and Michaelmas daisies threatening to overrun them, and others were neat and orderly, the grass shaved, vegetables in raised beds – rows of leeks and onions were all that were still growing, their blue-green leaves glistening in the rain. The last allotment before the path turned sharply into the wood was like an extension of someone's garden: a line of pink dahlias, their dying flowers decaying ball gowns, a slate-grey shed, an iron bench trailing tea-roses, several gnomes standing guard over the vegetables, and an iron stand with bird feeders dangling from it. There were no birds today. Laura normally felt wistful as she walked through the allotments, thinking of the productive plot she'd left behind and how long the waiting list in Bristol was. But today she hardly noticed them. She almost jogged into the wood. It was a steep hill and she panted as she walked quickly up it, sliding in the mud. It reminded her, yet again, of how unfit she was, and she thought of her mother, twenty-six years older than her, running effortlessly, gazelle-like, around the streets of Bristol.

She stopped briefly at the top, screened by the branches of a tree, trying to work out which way to go. If Autumn had reached the meadow with its mini peak in the nature reserve she could have returned home along either path.

I should have seen her by now.

Laura decided to take the lower path that skirted the hill and keep looking upwards in case Autumn had decided to go over the top.

A magpie alighted on the grass in front of her, bouncing on both feet, head cocked on one side to regard her.

One for sorrow…

She tried to remember what Autumn had been wearing today. She had a vision of her in white knee socks, already falling down – so she must have put a skirt on – and her black winter coat, which wasn't waterproof. Plus the coat was last year's, cheap and growing threadbare and too short for her. No hat, Laura remembered now, but there was a hood on the coat. She should have insisted Autumn change into trousers or wear tights. She felt guilty again.

She set off, walking briskly, taking in lungfuls of chill air to steady her breathing. What if, she thought, she walked as far as the end of the nature reserve and she still hadn't found Autumn? There was only Briar Lane left, stretching steeply upwards, before it bent sharply behind the houses lining the road opposite the school. Suppose she reached the end of the lane?

Her heart was banging painfully in her chest. Could something have happened to Autumn?

I couldn't bear it
, she thought wildly.

Autumn was her life. There was nothing more important to her, or that she loved more dearly, than her daughter. She'd given up everything for her – though she'd never seen it as giving up. When Autumn was little, learning to walk and then to run, and she fell, Laura would gasp and call out as if she had been wounded as well and would rush to comfort her child, her baby, and kiss her hurt knee, her grazed elbow.

Over-protective
, her mother said.

Laura tripped over a tussock of grass and almost landed in a mud-filled hollow, black with ashes left from some fire, surrounded by cans of cider. She stood up straight. She'd pulled a muscle in her calf and it twinged when she tried to walk. Laura wiped the rain from her face and looked anxiously up towards the hill. Nothing. Only dense, grey rain clouds blocking out the sun, heralding dusk. She took a couple of experimental steps. It hurt but she could walk. She would have to, she thought grimly. She did a quick calf stretch and winced.

As she started to round the curve of the hill she heard them. Childish voices. Laughter. Some deeper voices.

Is there an adult with them
, she wondered?

The thought of an adult in the midst of a group of feral children was immediately comforting. A shout. More laughter. It was definitely darker now.
Gloaming
, her father would have said: that moment when it's not quite dusk, when the darkness has not started to fall, but because of the lateness of the hour and the season and the banking clouds ranked across the sky, there was a dimness to the day. The drizzle started to grow heavier. In her hurry, she slipped in the mud again. As she righted herself, she saw them.

Her heart skipped a beat. They were not children, you couldn't call them children – youths perhaps. They were boys, young boys, but tall. Older than primary school children. Secondary school kids. There was something intimidating about running into them here. No one else was around. Not even a dog walker. Their noisiness, boisterousness, lack of control – as if they'd grown too swiftly for their bodies, like over-large toddlers – made her anxious. She dipped her head and hurried on. They fell silent and watched her. How did they view her, she wondered? A woman as old as their mums, uncool in her unfashionable coat and maroon woollen hat? A figure to be derided, who had nothing in common with them?

Something drifted across her path and she stepped over it.

So much litter. All these crisp packets and cardboard boxes left lying around –
it's a nature reserve!
she thought, averting her head from their intense gaze. Just get past them. She felt like running but how ridiculous would that be? You're a grown woman, she told herself. They're children.

She stopped. The litter – it had not been rubbish as she'd first thought. The image was half-formed, almost imprinted in her mind: white paper, a picture. She started to turn and then she saw them drifting all around her, lying in the raw, red, wet earth, strewn across the thick, coarse grass, jewel-like colours, broken butterflies, the ink bleeding in the rain.

Autumn's pictures.

She spun around. And that was when she saw him, casually standing to one side of the group, with his hands in his pockets, a black hat pulled tightly over his skull, his corn rows poking out the bottom. He was smirking at her.

Levi.

She took a step towards them and a couple of the boys moved slightly and stood aside. In the centre of the group was a girl, tiny in comparison to them. Her white knee socks were streaked with mud, her bare legs red from the cold, her hair plastered to her head. Her face was white, her pale-grey eyes bright with unshed tears.

Autumn.

She ran to her daughter and held her tightly. Autumn was shaking. Laura wiped the rain and hair from her face and pulled her hood up.

‘Are you hurt? Have they hurt you?' she asked.

Autumn shook her head.

Laura had rushed out so quickly, she hadn't even brought her phone. They were alone here. There was no possibility of help.

‘My pictures,' whispered Autumn, and started to cry.

The sound tore at Laura's heart. It wasn't like the crying of a child; it was harsh, guttural, dry sobs without tears that wracked her whole body. Laura bent to grab some of the pictures out of the mud but even as she managed to rescue a couple of them, she realized they were beyond saving. The ink had been washed off, they were stained with earth and, worse, they'd been torn into scraps. Autumn snatched them out of her hand and threw them away.

One of the boys laughed. A single bark. Laura's head snapped up. The group were starting to slouch back towards Briar Lane.

‘Did you do this?' she shouted at Levi. To her shame, her voice quavered.

He turned towards her, his mouth twisted in a half smile. ‘Wass it look like?'

Laura swallowed. Levi took a step backwards.

‘Why?' said Laura. ‘Why would you destroy her pictures? Why are you doing this to her?'

‘Because,' he said, still walking backwards, his hands in his pockets, ‘she's a stuck-up bitch, innit.' Behind him, his cadre of mates laughed and he smiled. ‘Thinks she can draw. This is rubbish. Waste of paint.' He jerked his chin towards the fragments of paper.

‘How dare you?' she shouted. ‘How dare you do this to her? She's done nothing to you.'

Levi shrugged and turned away. He started to whistle. Laura was trembling with anger at his callousness, his insouciance. She ran towards the boy and grabbed his jacket, yanking him around to face her.

‘Don't walk away when I'm talking to you,' she said. It sounded more like a plea than a statement or a threat.

She wanted him to acknowledge her, to show some contrition. He shrugged her off easily. She stood in front of him, panting. Part of her registered how tall he was – about five foot four, the same height as her. He was on a slight rise in the hill and he looked down at her steadfastly, his eyes large and lighter than she remembered, tawny, with murky-green streaks.

He still had his hands in his pockets but he leant towards her and said quietly, ‘Don't never touch me.'

He was so close his breath grazed her lips. He smelt of fried oil and tomato crisps. She recoiled, stumbling back. Behind her she was aware of Autumn, shivering, small, vulnerable. Behind Levi stood the six older boys, lined up, watching her.

‘Don't you ever go near my daughter again,' she said. She was shaking.