Bone by Bone (7 page)

Saturday 27 October

LAURA

‘Y
ou could try British Military Fitness,' said Jacob.

Laura made a face.

‘I'm not kidding,' said Jacob. ‘It would get you fit extremely quickly. You could go into the blue group, the easiest one.'

‘I'd hate it.'

Laura was barely listening. The first thing she'd thought of when she'd woken that morning had been Levi. The child's face when she'd pushed him. His eyes opening wide with shock, his head rolling back. Thank God she wasn't at home this morning. Would his parents be able to find her address? How could she explain why she'd done something so terrible?

‘Don't know until you try,' Jacob continued. ‘You never know, big hulking soldiers yelling at you might turn out to be your thing.' He smiled at her expression. ‘I'm kidding. We only yell a bit.'

Jacob was small and wiry with tattoos covering both arms; he'd been discharged from the marines two years ago. He and Laura had met just after she'd moved from London in the summer. UWE had held a study day in August for the students on the horticulture course she'd transferred to. Laura had been nervous: she was moving onto a degree that had been running part-time for a couple of years already. The others were friendly but, as Laura had expected, they'd already established friendships. Jacob, like her, was an outsider. He'd also swapped from another college, joining last year when he'd moved to Bristol. Like her, he also seemed a little adrift.

He'd told her about the garden-design business he was starting up and, as he'd described it, she saw immediately how they could be partners, instead of setting up a rival company of her own. With her BBC training and background, she would be better than him at designing publicity material and marketing the company. She also had several years of practical experience from growing plants in her allotment – experience that Jacob was lacking. Over lunch that day, she discovered that he'd spent a few years in Africa as a child too: his father had been a lieutenant in the army in Rhodesia, as Jacob called it, correcting himself quickly, and giving her a lopsided grin, as if in acknowledgement of their expat pasts.

He'd liked the idea of working with her. Neither of them had any money or much time though – Laura had Autumn to take care of and her job at Bronze Beech, and Jacob ran British Military Fitness classes. Today she and Jacob were creating a new garden for their first client, Ruth Jones. Like all the planning for their fledgling business, working on Ruth's garden had to be done sporadically and usually at the weekends.

It was a perfect autumnal morning: it had finally stopped raining and the sky was a brilliant blue. The sun was warm, although the early morning air was still chilly. Vanessa had taken Autumn shopping, to her delight. Laura was pleased: it meant Vanessa and Autumn would be out of the house if Levi's parents came round.

Ruth lived in a beautiful flat in Clifton, the wealthiest part of Bristol, but, as it was their first job, Laura and Jacob were charging less than she knew Barney would if his company redesigned the garden. Laura's ideas seemed to chime with Jacob and Ruth. She couldn't quite call it a design, it was more of a concept: a wind garden inspired by Namibia. She hadn't been able to explain it properly, she recalled with embarrassment, but Jacob and Ruth had grasped what she meant instinctively; Ruth had lived in South Africa as a child too. In any case, Laura thought as she dug in forkfuls of sand, it had to work: this garden would be a showpiece to attract new customers. And it was only through running her own business that she'd have the flexibility – and, eventually, the money – she needed to look after Autumn as a single mother.

They were shaping the part of the garden that Laura thought of as the wind section: a large curved bed they were going to fill with grasses that differed subtly in height and colour. As they grew they would rustle and whisper in the slightest breeze, their leaves stirring like a current passing through the savannah or sand shape-shifting in the desert.

The sand was to leaven the clay soil that trapped water and would kill their grasses, which all stood in little hessian wraps in a pile at one end of the garden, ready for planting. Laura disliked sand: it was beautiful at a distance, but she couldn't abide the gritty feeling of it against her fingers and the memories it conjured, of sand in her eyes, her shoes, every fold of her skin; her utter loneliness as her mother disappeared again, like a mirage into the desert.

Jacob turned over great clods of soil and dug in spadefuls of the stuff as easily as if they weighed next to nothing while she puffed and sweated and managed child-sized forkfuls. It had been easy to tell Jacob that she was unfit without him suspecting an ulterior motive; without having to explain about Autumn and Levi and how weak she'd felt when she'd confronted him, how determined she was to be strong enough to protect her daughter.

Jacob told her about the British Military Fitness classes he led around Bristol: it was physical fitness for civilians, he said, taught by ex-soldiers.

‘Push-ups, sit-ups, sprints, that kind of thing,' he added, when she asked him to explain. ‘It's not pretty but it is effective. I've got a class timetable in the car. Remind me and I'll give it to you when we leave.'

I will hate it and I'll look stupid
, she thought as she hauled over another bag of sand, her back aching with the effort. Laura reminded herself she would be doing it for Autumn's sake. Besides, she hated gyms and at least BMF was outside in the park.

‘No one cares what you look like,' said Jacob, as if reading her mind. ‘Everyone ends up covered in mud. Besides, the clocks change on Sunday – it'll be dark. You'll hardly be able to see anyone else anyway.'

She wiped her gloved hand across her forehead.

‘First one's free,' said Jacob.

‘I'll give it a go,' she said reluctantly.

She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket and took one glove off to retrieve it. It was a text from Matt saying that they were setting off on their trek into the Himalayas tomorrow. He would go to an Internet café tonight so he could Skype Autumn.

Would Autumn tell him what she'd done? she wondered. What would he say?

And then she thought of Aaron: the long muscle running down his thigh, his strong fingers balanced delicately on the keyboard, how his eyes had lit up when he'd talked about the planets. She wondered if she would see Aaron again, if he'd contact her to check her laptop was working.

The double doors from the flat opened and Ruth came out, picking her way past the piles of driftwood that Laura and Jacob had salvaged on a walk along Burnham Beach. She was small, in her fifties, with dyed-black hair and tasteful clothes. Today she was wearing a jade jumper and navy trousers with a thin, silk lime-green scarf. Laura had never seen her wear jeans.

‘What a beautiful day,' she called out as she approached them.

They both stopped working and Jacob hurried to take the tray she was carrying. She'd brought them mugs of coffee and a fruit loaf, cut into thick slices, glacé cherries glistening like cut gems. They sat on wooden chairs, surrounded by the plastic bags of sand, and let the weak sunshine warm them.

Ruth reminded her a little of Vanessa, Laura thought; she had that same grace and timeless elegance and something indefinable that people who've spent many years in Africa have. Entitlement – the kind of superiority that those from developed nations display in poorer countries. But she was being uncharitable. It was more than an expat mentality, she thought; it was as if they'd witnessed something raw and elemental, and everything in life would be measured against that knowledge and fall short. It created a calm grittiness in a person, Laura concluded. Jacob had it too. Calm was the last thing she felt.

Jacob was tapping her foot with his boot.

‘Nice cake,' she mumbled, putting her piece down. She knew she'd end up eating Jacob's too, because he would only take a bite to look polite.

‘Ruth was asking us what stage we're at with the garden,' said Jacob, smiling at her.

Laura swallowed and tried to concentrate. She turned to Ruth. In the bright sunlight, the silver threads in her hair sparkled. Laura explained that today they'd finish digging in the sand and they'd plant the grasses tomorrow. There was another bed that had to be created, and the patio area – it was going to have large terracotta pots on it containing giant cacti.

‘I've found an acacia that'll survive the frost,' she said, thinking of the ones in Namibia, with their cruel thorns that grew alongside dry river beds. Elephants would travel for miles to feast on their giant orange seed pods.

It wasn't the order that everything should be done in, this piecemeal approach, but it depended on when they had time and money and what they'd learnt and managed to source. Everything was new to both of them.

Laura heard a loud rushing noise, a whoosh of air. She looked up. A red balloon was drifting past through the cloudless blue sky, just above their heads. A jet of flame soared upwards and the balloon glowed like a Chinese lantern.

AUTUMN

T
he hot chocolate had tiny marshmallows floating in it. Autumn could feel it sliding smooth and sweet down her throat, the froth bursting like milky bath foam against her lips. Granny had bought it for her as well as a biscuit topped with a scary pumpkin in frightening orange. She couldn't quite believe her luck. Granny, of course, was sipping a pale-pink herbal tea and had frowned when she saw the array of cakes encrusted with witches and ghosts in icing as thick as gouache.

She closed her eyes, inhaling the scent of the chocolate. She would remember this moment, this day. Granny had taken her to John Lewis and whisked her around the girls' department, seizing clothes and ordering two assistants about. Now they were in the café with a bulging bag of new outfits tucked under the table. And there was more to come! This afternoon she was going to Tilly's house!

On Friday, when Rebecca had come to pick her up, Tilly had casually swung her glacially blonde hair over one shoulder and said, ‘See you on Saturday. Mum says we're going to make cupcakes for you.' The thought that right now, as she sat in John Lewis, Tilly was whipping butter and icing sugar together – for her! – was almost more than she could bear. She imagined Tilly tucking her hair behind her ears, piping the buttercream in fat swirls over the cupcakes, her lips in the little kiss shape she made when she was concentrating, a haze of sweet dust powdering her forearms. Imagining Tilly making cupcakes was exactly what she needed to do to stop thinking about Levi and her mum shoving him and what was going to happen to Mum now.

She opened her eyes. ‘Granny?'

‘Yes, darling.'

‘We have to do a project for Humanities. You have to ask your grandparents some questions.'

‘What kind of questions?' Vanessa sipped her tea and then carefully set the thick mug on the table, as if disappointed that she was not drinking out of a cup and saucer with a teapot and extra hot water standing by.

Autumn knew that it wasn't the right time to ask these questions. She was going to ruin her day. She also realized that there never would be a good time. Granny was going to leave soon. She was flying to Africa. Autumn took the notebook and pen that her granny had bought her that morning out of the plastic bag and ran her fingertips over the cover. It showed a princess with long hair that floated in and out of vines and through a jungle of trees sprouting fuschia-pink flowers.

‘You know. For History.'

‘History? Do you mean because you think I'm old?'

Vanessa's brow wrinkled. She was wearing an odd brooch: a sheet of silver rolled into a scroll, which was thin and sharp at the ends. The princess on Autumn's new notebook might use it as a weapon.

Autumn smoothed down the first page in her pad. ‘Where did you grow up?'

‘Well, I'm half French – my mother was from Versailles – and so although we lived in London, every summer I'd travel to Paris for a few days with her and visit the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, and then we'd spend the rest of the time at my granmère and grandpère's farm in the countryside. Picking cherries for tarts and pressing wild flowers. Swimming in the river and helping to bring in the hay—'

Autumn interrupted. ‘And what did you used to do?'

‘What did I used to do?'

‘When you were working?'

‘I'm still working,' said Vanessa indignantly. She sighed as she retrieved the tea bag, looking annoyed because she hadn't been given anything to discard it in; she plopped it on a pile of napkins that slowly grew sodden and turned a dull mauve. ‘I'm a social anthropologist. I study animals and people in Namibia.'

As Vanessa described the Himba ladies with red mud in their hair and the baboons, the males with canines as big as a lion's, and the babies, who rode like jockeys on their backs, clinging on with tiny pink fingers, Autumn bent her head lower and lower over her new notebook. She could already feel the dryness in her throat, the catch in her voice, when she'd have to stand up in class and tell everyone what her grandparents did. After the other kids read out their work on grannies who baked them squidgy chocolate chip cookies and grandads who took them to Disney matinées and bought them too much popcorn and Coke in those giant buckets, she could imagine how the others would look at her when she talked about Grandmother Vanessa who strode through the desert with her binoculars, counting kudu.

She turned over the page and wrote:
My Granny makes me hot chocolate from real chocolate. She melts it first and mixes it with hot milk. She learnt how to do it when she lived in France when she was a little girl and drank hot chocolate and ate croissants for breakfast every day.

‘Look, Mum! Look what Granny bought me!' Autumn rushed downstairs to the kitchen with her bags and tipped her new clothes and colouring pencils out onto the table.

Her mum was heating soup for lunch, still wearing her muddy work clothes.

‘What a gorgeous colour,' she said as Autumn held up her red coat, but her face had a funny expression.

Was it because she hadn't bought any clothes for her, apart from her school uniform, which, technically, her dad had paid for? Autumn faltered; she hadn't meant to make her mum feel bad.

‘Can I put this skirt on now to go to Tilly's house?'

‘That's so pretty. Yes, of course, but come and have some lunch first.'

‘I hate soup,' said Autumn, snatching up her purchases. ‘You know I hate it,' she shouted as she left the kitchen. Sometimes it was hard feeling sorry for other people.

‘I'm afraid I gave her rather too large a snack before we left John Lewis,' Autumn heard her granny saying as she dashed up the stairs.

She was too excited to eat any lunch, although Granny, who was much stricter than her mum, insisted she sit at the table and
Have half a piece of toast, at least
.

It seemed to take ages for her mum to have a shower and get changed and then, as they were finally in the car and driving, she suddenly pulled over.

‘Wait! This isn't Tilly's house.'

‘I thought I should get something to take. Rebecca said not to, but we can't turn up empty-handed. You can stay in the car if you like.'

Autumn shook her head and followed her mum into the corner shop. Why couldn't she be like other mums, she thought, hopping from one foot to the other as her mum looked at the baked goods, stacked on wooden shelves, all wrapped in plastic packaging. Other mums
made
things to bring to their friends' houses, or else they bought cakes from nice delis or Waitrose. They didn't forget about it until the last minute and then buy some rubbish from Best One. She filled her cheeks with air and blew out. Chloe's mum wouldn't have minded, but somehow Autumn suspected that Rebecca would.

Her mum hovered for ages and then chose a Bakewell tart covered in thick fondant icing and plopped it on Autumn's knee when they got back in the car. She looked down at the cake, the icing already sticking to the wrapping.

‘Mum?'

‘Yes?' Her mum didn't take her eyes off the road.

‘Have you told Granny?'

Her mum seemed to go still even though she was driving.

‘Not yet.'

She didn't say anything else. They reached the edge of Clifton.

‘You haven't told her, have you?' Her mum glanced at her in the mirror.

Autumn didn't know if her Mum really meant,
Don't tell Granny.
She wasn't sure what the right answer was. She
hadn't
told her, but she wanted to ask Granny what would happen now. Would the police come and take her mum away? Her mum had done something wrong. Really wrong. But maybe Granny would be cross with her. And with Autumn for putting her mum into such a tricky situation. She looked out of the window as the car slowed down and turned into a wide, curved street.

Her mum sighed. ‘I will tell her. Later,' she said. ‘Please don't worry about it, Autumn. The main thing is that Levi won't bully you again.'

‘We're here!' shouted Autumn, spotting the house number. She'd memorized Tilly's address. She jumped out of the car and ran up the short garden path, but then, at the front door, she handed her mum the Bakewell tart and slipped behind her.

Rebecca answered the door. She was wearing white wide-legged trousers, silver shoes like a ballet dancer's and a soft grey tunic. Autumn couldn't help noticing that although her Mum had changed out of her army trousers, she was wearing old jeans and a baggy top. She didn't look as – pretty wasn't the right word because Rebecca wasn't really pretty – as
elegant
as Tilly's mum.

‘Come in, come in,' Rebecca called, kissing both of them and ushering them down a hall with lots of tiny framed pictures of elephants and ladies in saris and across a giant rug of a splotchy Union Jack.

The kitchen was ginormous. Autumn walked over to the windows. There was a dizzying drop down to the river. On the opposite wall was a huge picture of nothing but massive polka dots.

‘I know you said not to bring anything…' her mum was saying, holding out the Bakewell tart.

‘Oh thank you, darling. Just put it over there,' said Rebecca, pointing to a kind of bar next to a big fridge and a large silver bin.

The table was already laid for afternoon tea with rose-print crockery and a proper cake stand piled high with cupcakes decorated with fat swirls of vanilla buttercream and rice paper flowers.

‘The girls helped me make them,' said Rebecca, seeing Autumn looking at the tower of cakes. Rebecca then went back into the hall and shouted up the stairs, ‘Girls? Tilly, Poppy!'

Her mum helped her take her coat off and told her to take her shoes off too. It was only when her mum had gone to put them in the hall that Autumn remembered she had a hole in her tights. You could see her big toe poking out. She tried to pull her tights down, past her foot, but it didn't really work: they slid up and you could see her toe again.

The two girls appeared silently, both flicking their long, blonde hair over their shoulders, and said mechanically, ‘Hello, Laura, hello, Autumn,' before slipping onto a caramel-coloured bench running down one side of the table.

Autumn hesitated and stood on one foot, tucking the one with the hole in behind her calf.

Rebecca noticed. ‘You go next to the girls, and we'll sit this side,' she said, gently steering Autumn towards them. ‘David's working today,' she added. ‘Filming a shoot at Codsteaks, you know, the studio near the train station?'

Her mum shook her head.

‘They make things for movies, like the pirate ship in the last Aardman film,' said Poppy.

Poppy was eleven, although she seemed a lot older.

Her mum looked over at her as if she was expecting her to say something and when she didn't, she said to Poppy, ‘Autumn's dad is at the foot of the Himalayas. He's setting off into the mountains tomorrow for his film trip.'

‘Really?' said Poppy. ‘Like, Everest?'

‘Well, near, but not that high,' said her mum, sounding as if she didn't really know. ‘He's filming a Buddhist tribe and they probably won't live at that elevation. Autumn's going to chat to him on Skype today before he sets off.'

Autumn took a tiny bite of the cupcake. The icing was so sweet and soft, almost melting in her mouth. The three of them ate silently and drank their pink lemonade as their mothers talked. Autumn observed Tilly through a gap in her hair. She wondered if Tilly really did want her there. Perhaps she was wishing Rebecca hadn't invited them.

‘Your cupcakes are delicious,' she said.

Tilly smiled.

As soon as they had finished eating and had wiped their hands and mouths on the rose-patterned paper napkins, Rebecca told the girls to show Autumn their bedrooms and to
be nice
. The two sisters ran off at once and Autumn followed more slowly, feeling her mother's gaze like a weight on her back. When she reached the corner of the stairs, she ran too, catching up with Tilly and Poppy.

‘She's
my
friend,' announced Tilly, ‘so we need to go in my bedroom.'

Autumn felt relieved. So Tilly
did
want her there. They climbed another set of stairs.

‘My room is that one,' said Poppy airily, indicating one of the white doors.

Tilly's had her name spelt out in letters covered in flowery fabric. Her room was large, with a thick, cream carpet. Her bed was really high and underneath it she had a little desk. The walls were painted a dusky pink and there were proper paintings hanging on them, signed by the artist. All her toys and books were stacked in white cube shelves – so many of them! – but, best of all, she had a giant dolls' house, almost as tall as her, painted pink to match the bedroom walls, with a car parked in front and a set of swings and a slide.

Autumn thought of her own bedroom. It was cold. Air seeped through the cracks in the floorboards. You could hear the wind rattling the panes of glass in their frames. They didn't have triple-glazing like in their old house in London, which, technically, was a new house. You could hear the heating chugging on and sluggishly turning off. Her mum had said they could decorate her room, but there hadn't been time yet. She'd wanted blue paint, so it would feel as if she was surrounded by a cloudless sky, but now she wasn't sure. Her mum didn't know how to hang up pictures but she said she'd figure it out. In the meantime, she'd bought a poster of an Olympic gymnast. Autumn hated it. The girl was poised and beautiful; she was wearing a sparkly leotard. Autumn knew she'd never be like that.

There was even a wooden Wendy house in her bedroom that was supposed to go in the garden, and boxes of her things were still stacked in one corner of her room. Her mum kept saying she'd help her unpack them but she didn't want to. Then it would feel like she'd really moved in, like they were definitely here to stay. But the Wendy house made her feel safe: a house within a house.