The Bones of You

by Debbie Howells

  I follow her inside, awkward, because I don’t know her well enough to be here, dimly recalling how tea and grief are as synonymous as fish and chips. Then, as we pass from the hallway into her sitting room, I stop to gaze in astonishment. There are flowers and cards covering every surface, so many and so beautiful, it’s almost wrong.

  She doesn’t pause, just walks down the steps into the huge live-in kitchen. I can’t help thinking that if we were closer, I’d gently bully her into sitting down while I made the tea, perhaps sneak a drop of medicinal brandy into it. But we’re not close. And Jo’s private—if not about the shops she buys her designer clothes from, or the gala balls and charity events she and Neal go to, then about the real stuff. The nuts and bolts, the nitty-gritty of cherished hopes and dreams, and how her family, like anyone’s, is everything to her.

  Today even the kettle looks too heavy for Jo. She’s so thin, so brittle, ethereal in her grief, with huge eyes and pale skin. I notice her hair, the same shade as Rosie’s, only fractionally shorter, so that from behind, you could almost—but not quite—mistake them.

  “Is Neal here?”

  “He’s with the police. . . .” The mug in her hand shakes. “I should have gone.... Couldn’t face it.... They’re tracing calls to her phone. . . .” Her voice wobbles.

  “Can I do anything? Anything at all?” I ask quietly.

  She shakes her head, then gathers herself and pours boiling water into the mugs, while I look around at the spotless white and steel units, the massive range-style oven. Immaculately clean and tidy. And expensive, I can’t help thinking, hating that I even notice.

  She brings the mugs over and pulls out a chair opposite me.

  “It’s nice of you to come, Kate. I appreciate it. People send things.... They don’t come here. It’s like it’s contagious.”

  Her voice is flat, her eyes bright with unshed tears, as incredibly, she maintains her composure. I shiver inwardly at the thought that you can catch death like a virus.

  “They probably don’t want to disturb you,” I say gently. “That’s all, Jo.”

  “So many cards,” she says, sounding blank. “I can’t believe how many. Even from people we don’t know.”

  Does it help? Is it in any small way a comfort to know you’re in the thoughts of so many people? It prompts me to pull Grace’s card from my pocket and place it on the table.

  “Grace asked me to give you this.”

  She reaches out slowly and takes it. I wonder if she’s thinking the unthinkable as she thinks of Grace, knowing I would be if it were my most precious, most loved person whom someone had taken from me.

  Why my daughter? Why not someone else’s?

  “Can you tell her . . . thank you?”

  I sip my tea, but Jo’s remains untouched. Then a quiet sound from behind makes me turn round.

  Perhaps because Jo rarely mentions her, I always forget Delphine. I know from the way Rosie talked, the way her face would light up when she mentioned her sister’s name, they were close. As she stands there, I take in the same pale hair, the familiar look of uncertainty. So like Rosie—until I notice her eyes. In place of Rosie’s quiet friendliness, her watchful look unnerves me.

  “Hello. I’m Kate, Grace’s mum,” I tell her, remembering too late that because they’re school years apart, she may not even know Grace.

  “Hello.” Her voice is quiet, but like her sister, she is well spoken. “Mummy, please may I have lunch?”

  “In a minute, Delphine. When Kate has gone. Why don’t you go and watch the television?”

  Delphine goes without a murmur, but I take it as my cue. Swallowing the last of my tea, I get up. “Really, I should be getting back.”

  Jo doesn’t protest, just puts her undrunk mug down and leads the way to the door. Then, as she opens it, raising pain-filled eyes to meet mine, she says quietly, “They found her in the woods.”

  Suddenly, I can’t move, my mind struggling for words of comfort that don’t exist, but Jo goes on.

  “She was buried . . . under leaves and moss. Someone saw her hair. . . .”

  Her voice is suddenly high-pitched, jogging my mind back to the present; then, as she says “hair,” it cracks, and she crumples, sobbing in my arms.

  Two hours later, hours in which I do my best to console her, knowing that nothing I do can ease her loss, I make lunch for her and Delphine, lunch that Jo doesn’t touch and Delphine only picks at.

  “You’ve been ages,” Grace says when at last I get home. “Did you see them?”

  “Yes. It was awful, Gracie. Just so, so sad. For all of them. I saw Delphine, too. And the press was hanging around.” I’m exhausted. The weight of grief—even someone else’s—is exacting, draining.

  From the look on Grace’s face, I know she feels it, too, that she’s trying on Delphine’s shoes for size, as I have Jo’s.

  “Some of us want to go to the woods later. To take flowers . . .” Grace looks at me, half seeking my approval, though if she’s made up her mind, she’ll do it, anyway.

  “You may not be able to, sweetie. The police are probably all over the place, searching for any clues as to what happened.”

  She looks aghast. “It’s a public place, isn’t it? They can’t really stop us.”

  “They probably can. Until they know how Rosie died.” I pause. “Gracie? Why not leave it—just for now? Wait till the police have finished up there. Why don’t you ask Sophie round instead?”

  “I’m not staying in, Mum. We’re all meeting up. It’s already organized. Anyway, nothing else is going to happen, is it?”

  Her question hangs there, daring me to tell her otherwise, as we look at each other, as I stifle my inner voice, which is shouting silently, We don’t know that. We can’t be sure about anything.

  “Is it, Mum? Not with the police everywhere.” Repeating the question, eyes bright with tears, asking me to tell her nothing will happen to her, to make it all right. And I can’t, because with Rosie dead, I don’t know how to.

  “Of course not.” There’s nothing else I can say. “But I really think you should put off going—just until the police have finished, that’s all.”

  “I was in those woods,” I tell Angus, as we lie in bed later that night.

  His presence is reassuringly normal. It’s late—he had a dinner that dragged on—but he’s taken tomorrow off. That he didn’t know Rosie means he’s more detached than I am.

  “When I had that fall, I didn’t tell you, but the weirdest thing happened.”

  Now I think about it, and in the light of everything I’ve found out since, it isn’t just weird, it’s creepy.

  “I’m not mad, Angus, but it was like I could feel that something terrible had happened there. I’ve never known anything like it. Zappa felt it, too, I’m sure. It’s why he bolted.”

  He glances at me over the top of his glasses.

  “Sorry. I don’t know what I mean.”

  I hedge then, because Angus likes his world scientifically verifiable, and much as I adore my husband, his total inflexibility and pigheadedness, which can be strengths elsewhere, have caused many a heated row between us. So much so I wonder why I’ve even mentioned this.

  But for once, wisely, he doesn’t push me.

  “How was Jo?” he asks instead.

  I shrug. “Fragile. Devastated. I didn’t see Neal. He was with the police.”

  Angus shakes his head. “God. You read about these things happening to someone else, somewhere else. Not to someone you know on your own doorstep.”

  “I know.”

  “I suppose they’ll do a postmortem.”

  “I suppose they’ll have to.” I sit up. “She could have been murdered, Angus.”

  “Unlikely,” he says. “It was probably just an accident. I’m sure the police will get to the bottom of it.”

  “But it’s not like she fell off a horse, is it? How can a young, healthy person just have an accident that kills them?” I persist, unconvinced. “In t
he woods, of all places? And Jo said she was covered with leaves.”

  Dozens of us walk, run, ride our horses through there every day—the worst that ever happens is a bruised knee or sprained ankle.

  Angus puts down his book. “Anything could have happened, Kate. She might have fallen or even had a heart attack. It’s rare but not impossible. It can happen. To anyone, whatever their age.”

  Maybe I’m wrong and he’s right. He carries on reading, but my head fills with unwanted images. Of Rosie, alone in the dark. Rosie in the woods. Rosie with an unseen, unknown person who wishes her harm. In a morgue. Only now it isn’t Rosie anymore; it’s just her gray, empty body, with the pale hair that someone spotted in the leaves. Her ghost still out there, haunting the woods. And what if the police don’t get to the bottom of it? If there’s a murderer loose in our village? What if it happens to someone else?

  I’m awake for hours that night, eventually dozing off in Angus’s arms, but not before I’ve made a pact with God, or whoever’s out there, that I’ll do anything, absolutely anything, to keep my family safe. I don’t care what happens to me.

  Then, when my eyes finally close, I’m back in the woods. At the same clearing where I fell off Zappa, hearing the leaves and the wind. This time, there is no rain, just birds singing and a sun that’s unnaturally bright, and as I look down, I see Rosie lying beside me, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.

  Her hair, longer than I remember, is spread around her, a rippling carpet of pale silk. She reminds me of a beautiful painting, her body covered by an intricately woven blanket of green moss and golden leaves.

  I try again and again to stir her. Rosie. Rosie. Wake up. You must wake up. . . .

  But she doesn’t move. Then the trees fall silent, and the woods darken. The fear is back. I have to run.

  I pull at Rosie’s arm. I can’t leave her here, but she won’t move. I pull harder, hear myself scream at her.

  Wake up, Rosie. You have to run. . . .

  Her eyes open, and for a moment, she looks at me. Then I’m losing her. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes from it.

  The scream is mine.

  I open my eyes, aware of my face wet with tears. I’m shaking and shaken to the core. The image of Rosie is still sharp, down to the sweep of her lashes against her cheeks and those pale eyes, riveted to mine, telling me something, I’m certain of it.

  Beside me, Angus mutters something unintelligible as I slip out of bed, glancing at the illuminated hands of my small alarm clock, far too agitated to sleep. After fumbling on the back of the door for my dressing gown, I creep downstairs.

  When I have a large design project, the night’s the best time to work, when the house is at its stillest, when the odd creak is comforting, the tick of the clock its heartbeat. But tonight is different. I’m on edge, seeing movements in every shadow, imprints of menacing faces outside pressed against the glass, silently watching me. Aware there’s a murderer who could be anywhere.

  I fill the kettle to make tea, then draw the curtains, shutting out my demons, before sitting down at the table, the mug cradled in my hands.

  The last time Rosie came over to see my horses, I think she’d been here a while, hiding, watching out for me, then appearing to just turn up, as if by chance. I hadn’t heard her open the gate; I’d just come out of the tack room, and there she was.

  “Rosie! You made me jump!”

  I watched uncertainty flicker over her face. She was like that. Never quite sure how to read me, just as she herself was unreadable.

  “Sorry.” She hesitated, twisting a lock of her hair round one of her fingers. “It was just . . . I wondered if you needed any help today. Is it okay?”

  “Of course it is! Catch Reba if you like. She needs grooming.” Semiretirement can sometimes be too quiet for her, and Reba enjoys being fussed over. I threw Rosie a head collar and watched the quiet way she moved among the horses, the gentle way they nuzzled her.

  She always asked, always apologized. My answer was always the same. Yes. Like me, I guess she needed what only horses were able to give her.

  One thing surprised me, though. Where Grace’s friends would bypass stable chores in their impatience to get on and ride, Rosie never once asked to. On the one occasion I got her up on Reba, from her smile you’d think she’d conquered Everest. She was a natural rider, with the kind of light hands you can’t teach and an innate feel for what the horse was thinking.

  I wanted to teach her, but we never progressed further. When I offered to talk to Jo about giving her riding lessons, she looked worried.

  “It would be better if you didn’t tell her. I just like coming here to help,” she said quite anxiously, repeating herself in that apologetic way she had. “Like now—if it’s okay?”

  It remained an unspoken, slightly awkward secret between us. One I never mentioned to Jo, though I considered it once or twice, but there was never any reason why I should.

  Rosie kept herself to herself, not mentioning friends to me, but she was a sweet, pretty girl, and I often wondered if there was a boy in her life. The last time I saw her, I commented on the jewel-colored necklace.

  “That’s so pretty, Rosie.”

  I watched the tinge of faint pink in her cheeks as her hand went to her neck, touching it.

  “Thanks,” she said shyly. “It was a present.”

  I wondered then, but as always, she didn’t say and I didn’t ask, “Who from?” Not understanding her secrecy. Was she hiding something?

  Then my mind wanders back to that afternoon in the woods. Was I spooked by the storm, or had something else been there with me? Is it possible? Do I really believe that? Then, as I sit there in the silence of the night, I feel a hand on my shoulder and my heart stops.

  I jump up, spinning round, my tea going everywhere. “Jesus! Angus! Don’t creep up on me like that.”

  My husband’s bleary with sleep. “Who else would it have been?”

  I shake my head at him. “I didn’t hear you. You frightened the life out of me.”

  “I just wondered where you were. Come back to bed.” His hair is pointing all ways; his pajamas are hanging off his lanky frame. He yawns.

  “Okay. I’ll be up in a minute.”

  I clear up my spilt tea but suddenly don’t want to be alone. After turning out the light, I follow him.

  7

  Over disorientating days that merge seamlessly, we learn more. First disbelief, then shock ripples through our village. It wasn’t an accident. Rosie was murdered.

  Murder. Until now unspoken, a word that out loud triggers an aftershock.

  As it reaches Grace, she gasps; her hand goes to her mouth. “Rosie was murdered? Oh, Mum, it’s so horrible.” She’s in tears, her eighteen-year-old world tumbled sideways into an ugly parallel universe that’s sprung out of nowhere overnight.

  A visceral, wrenching loss fills me then, not for what’s happened to Rosie, but for Grace and the safe, nurturing, loving world that she’s grown up in, so full of promise, holding her dreams and the stars, and that’s suddenly gone.

  I put my arms around her and hold her close, hating what this is doing to us.

  As facts slowly filter out, the first strands of a spiderweb of something sinister appear. It was as Jo told me: her body was discovered in the woods. There was evidence of a struggle, during which she suffered several blows to her head, before she was stabbed viciously a number of times. And then follows the part that I struggle with, because they found her in the same clearing where I fell off Zappa.

  And I didn’t see her.

  On Facebook, a public outpouring of grief is unleashed, unchecked and uncensored, spreading like wildfire, as buried amid the many tributes to Rosie are more sinister posts hinting at the reasons behind her murder.

  Grace is horrified. “It’s sick, Mum. Most of them don’t even know her.” All traces of teenage bravado gone, using “sick” in the old-fashioned sense.

  “I’m sure they’ll be remov
ed, Gracie. And anyone who knew Rosie will ignore them.”

  As if that’s not enough, the lowest echelons of the press show their true colors, too, with a front-page article on “acclaimed news reporter Neal Anderson and his wife” visiting the site where their daughter’s body was found and featuring an intrusive, devastating photo of the family taken several years ago. It’s followed by speculation about an unknown, unnamed boyfriend and hints at a secret life Rosie led, with another, more recent photo of her, those pale eyes seeming to look out of the pages into mine.

  “They shouldn’t be allowed to do this.” Grace slams the paper on the table with the full force of her anger. “They’re evil. It’s so wrong, Mum, making up lies and printing her photo like that. She was just a normal girl. Her poor family . . .”

  “I know, Gracie. It’s horrible. I feel the same.”

  “Why do they have to put her picture on the front?” Grace stands there, all formidable five feet four inches of her bristling. “Isn’t just writing about it big enough for them? Isn’t it bad enough that she’s dead?”

  “The trouble is, it’s always the most scandalous news that sells papers,” I say sadly. “And this is a big story.”

  She shakes her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. “If it were the last job on earth, I wouldn’t work for them,” she says. “They’re lowlifes, the lot of them. Someone should sue them.”

  I agree with her but leave it to rest uneasily in the background along with everything else, unresolved, as the search for the murderer begins.

  And I call round to see Jo.

  Ten of the worst days have passed since I last saw her. Jo was always thin, but now she’s skeletal, her chin a bony protrusion, her cheekbones defined far beyond the point of beauty. She’s wearing a soft cream tunic that swamps her tiny frame and a voluminous scarf round her neck.

  “I was driving past,” I say, even though I wasn’t, and I’ve come round just so she knows I’m thinking about her. To reassure myself they’re somehow clinging on, inside their own private hell.