The Bone Dragon (28 page)

‘I . . .’

Amy leans over then and puts her soft, warm hands on my cheeks. ‘What on earth would we do without you to sort us out, Evie?’ She kisses my forehead and my heart suddenly lifts and the air goes light again, like I’m coming up out of water. ‘I’m really proud of you. That you’ve been . . . visiting Adam’s photos. I should never have put them away like that, where they’d be . . . lonely.’ She stutters over the word but I hear it clearly, despite the catch in her voice, because there’s beautiful, blissful, ringing silence in my head and only whiteness at the corners of my vision.

‘Now,’ she says, sniffing, though her eyes are dry. ‘Why don’t you put the kettle on while I see whether we’ve got something extra-specially nice in the biscuit department.’

When Paul comes back in, Amy turns from the fridge with a smile. ‘Can you get the photos down while we finish in here?’

He stops to kiss her as he passes. I can tell he means to kiss her hair, but she turns her face up to his and presses their lips together. They both smile.

In the end, it takes all three of us two trips up and down from the cupboard on the upstairs landing. We start with the photo albums, but then Amy takes a deep breath and says that we should bring everything down.

Soon the living room is strewn with albums and loose prints and drawings and school exercise books and certificates and scout badges . . . Hours later, we’re still sitting there on the floor in the middle of the chaos. We’ve got our backs to the sofa and I’m in between Amy and Paul. I’ve got one of the albums open on my lap and Paul is telling me about Adam’s first sports day. I look at the little boy with the curly brown hair bunny-hopping furiously across the grass, yards ahead of all the rest.

In the next photo, Adam, Paul and Uncle Ben have been caught in the act of arguing over how to carve the most enormous pumpkin I’ve ever seen. Adam has bits of pumpkin string all down his front. Uncle Ben is gesturing emphatically and Paul is laughing.

In the photo below, Uncle Ben is sitting on the floor with Adam between his legs, using his knees as an armrest, both dark heads close together as they pore over a board game. A pretty auburn-haired woman sits in front of them, at the feet of the person taking the photo: she looks as if she has just twisted around to smile for the camera. So this is Aunt Minnie.

On the next page, I see Adam’s fifth birthday party. He’s grinning, gap-toothed, from behind a huge chocolate cake. When Paul goes to turn the page, I stop him, still staring into the photo.

‘Why a girl?’ I ask, looking up at Amy.

She frowns, so I turn to Paul.

‘Why didn’t you adopt a boy?’

‘We never really thought about it,’ Paul says, leaning his head back against the sofa and reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. ‘We hadn’t even decided whether we wanted to adopt a baby or a slightly older child, or even try to have another child ourselves. We’d just come in to talk to Social Services about the process. But then we met you there in the corridor and that was it. Minds made up. We hadn’t even got back to the car park before we’d agreed that we wanted to adopt you. Of course we loved you even more once we got to know you, but somehow we loved you right from when we first talked to you. You were coming down the corridor, all covered in blue paint, with this look of absolute determination of your face. Do you remember? You asked me what the problem with painting the path was anyway since the rain would wash it all off sooner or later and at least it would be pretty in the meantime . . . Though what you were doing there that day, painting the pavement, I have no idea ’

I frown down at the birthday-party photo.

‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Paul asks, elbowing me gently.

‘It’s just . . . I know my birthday’s only two days after Adam’s, but there must have been some boys the same age who had similar birthdays. Maybe four or five days’ difference instead of two, but . . .’

Horror washes over Amy’s face. ‘Evie darling, you’re not a
replacement
,’ she whispers. ‘We
never
thought of you as a replacement. We hadn’t figured
any
of it out when we met you. But then we did and you seemed to like us too . . . Everyone commented on how you seemed to take to us that first day. I remember your social worker saying how impressed they all were with the fact that you’d bonded with us or they
never
would have
considered
pursuing an adoption match based on a chance meeting. I mean, we hadn’t even registered to adopt, let alone been approved at that point . . . But it all just fell into place. So you see, we knew we loved you even before we had any
idea
when your birthday was or even how old you were. It just seemed so perfect when we found out. Like a sign that it really was meant to be. As if we were always meant to watch Adam grow to a certain age and then watch you grow from that point on. That’s what it meant to us, Evie, your birthday being so close to Adam’s: that we got to be parents through a whole lifetime, even if that life was divided across two children. But we never thought that made you a replacement . . .’

I stroke my fingers over the smiling faces in the photo.

‘You don’t really think that’s how we see you – how we ever saw you – do you, Evie?’

I tuck one hand into hers and the other into Paul’s.

‘Do you think they would have liked me too?’ I ask, turning my gaze to the photo on the page opposite: Amy’s parents and Aunt Minnie and Adam smiling, smiling, smiling at the camera.

I have all their most precious things: Amy and Paul and Uncle Ben . . . And now I’m sharing their stories too I know all the things going back in time, just as Amy makes sure that they know all the things going forwards. I hope they don’t mind too much. And I can’t help hoping that they miss knowing me even half as much as I miss knowing them, even though Amy and Paul never would have needed to love me if they were still here. But I still hope that they miss knowing me, even if it’s just a little, little bit.

Out of the mist come the horses. My breath catches in my throat. For a moment, I can’t tell if they’re even real. But there is steam rising from their nostrils, rising to embrace the mist.

I stand still, so very still.

They are all around me now. I watch the grey pony closest of all: the flick of his tail as it mingles with the mist like it is dissolving into it. The wind ebbs and flows, one moment sweeping the mist up into towering waves, cresting so high I have to strain my neck to see, then diving down at me, through me. It boils into angry eddies on the ground, then swirls away into whirlpools so real I wonder if I will be sucked down into the earth if I dare the currents twisting around me.

Thunder rips the mist apart. The horses throw up their heads.

Lightning.

For a minute the world glows blue and green. The horse nearest me neighs fearfully.

Then the rain comes down.

I am soaked in seconds. The horses vanish into the downpour. The ground turns to cloying mud, pulling at my trainers as I follow them.

Lightning. Ahead of me, the black and white world is spiky with the bare trunks and branches of winter trees. As I reach the edge of the coppice a horse bolts away. Blinking rain out of my eyes, I realise that the herd has taken shelter under the trees. Some stand still, pressed disconsolately against each other. Others trot back and forth, running towards the open fields then snorting and jerking away as if whipped back by the rain.

Sometimes it is as important to touch as to stand and observe
, the Dragon tells me.
You must not fear that clutching at your dreams will shatter them so they run through your fingers like sand. That way lies a life spent in yearning. But yearning is only a season of dreaming, for dreams, if nurtured, become strong. Like mist settling and turning to ice. So you must wait before you reach out to clasp your dreams. Wait just long enough, but no longer
.

Slowly, I ease forwards. Slowly, slowly, slowly. One of the horses trots away, but the white one stands and watches me. He huffs a hot, moist breath into my face as I grow near, then seems pleased when I do not start and jump away.

I raise my hand slowly, slowly, slowly. His nose is like velvet, so softly stubbled and textured with fine, fine hair. He pushes his head against my chest then, and whuffles into my neck: a billow of hot, white steam. I laugh in delight, though he snorts and pulls back for a moment before pressing his nose to my coat again. His neck is strong and sleek as metal as I stroke the wet hair.

He can smell food
, the Dragon tells me.

‘You want a mint?’ I ask, reaching into my pocket. The horse lips the sweets from my palm before I’ve even extended my hand to him. I give him more, then more again.

That is quite enough
, the Dragon tells me.

This time, I tuck the mints into my inner pocket. The horse snorts his disapproval, but he lets me stroke his face and his neck and his side. He lets me lean into him. His flank warms me.  

When the rain stops, I watch the steam start to rise from him until suddenly the horses turn as one and canter away into the darkness.

And I run with them. Run and am not breathless. Run and there is no pain. Just lightness and speed. As if I am flying with the Dragon. As if I have the strength of the wind. As if, unseen in the darkness, I am unstoppable.

With every exhalation, the lingering rage and hurt at Paul and Uncle Ben drifts away and dissipates into the night. The thick, cold, clean air of the fens fills me with calm.

I run on, back to the canal path, back towards home. When I reach the trees that mark the bottom of the garden, I pause to stare up at the moon. Then finally,
finally
I turn to the left and continue until, unseen, I pass beyond the boundaries of our town and the fens stretch out endless and empty around me. The weir is silent. The canal a road of tarnished silver, stretching into the distance. And all along is quiet and still. The longboats are gone now, downstream to Cambridge for the winter. The river is mine.

I draw to a stop, take in a deep breath of midnight air and stare down the canal.

This is far enough
, says the Dragon.

I smile and turn towards home.

‘I’ve got two new goals,’ I tell Ms Winters before she’s even had time to sit down.

‘Oh?’ she says, surprised.

‘I want to learn to ride. I want to learn about horses,’ I say.

‘Oh,’ says Ms Winters again, blinking in bewilderment. ‘I never knew you liked horses.’

‘I didn’t. I just realised it the other day.’

‘What made you think of it?’ Ms Winters asks, so startled she hasn’t even settled back into her chair yet but is still perched on the edge.

I find myself wondering if she’ll fall off when I tell her what my second goal is. ‘I saw some horses and . . . and I just realised that I’d really like to learn how to ride,’ I say.

‘Have you asked Amy and Paul about it yet?’

I wrinkle my nose. ‘Amy says we need to check with Dr Barstow about whether it’s OK for my ribs . . . or at least how long we have to wait before I can try. But we looked up stables in the Yellow Pages and everything, so I know exactly where we’re going after Dr Barstow gives me the all-clear. Paul says that the exercise will be good for building up my muscles again and Amy says that maybe I can make some new friends at the stables, but Phee wants to come with me anyway. So now I’ve got something that’s like D of E for Phee and Lynne: something that just two of us are doing together. I mean, I know Phee and I cycle to school together but that’s only because Lynne lives in the opposite direction. It’s just a matter of convenience really, so it doesn’t count. But going riding together . . . That’s a proper choice.’
Something special
, I add to myself, missing what Ms Winters says next as I hug the words close.

‘. . . And you could have lots of little goals about different aspects of riding,’ Ms Winters is saying approvingly when I turn my focus back to her. ‘Excellent. I’m really impressed, Evie. So what’s the other goal?’