The Bones of You

by Debbie Howells

  Reaching for the buzzer, she’s still glaring. Then the room fills with nurses, and a female doctor jostling round Jo, trying to elicit another response from her. But failing.

  I stand out of the way, praying for Jo to open her eyes again as I listen to medical terminology I don’t understand, only at the end catching up to the doctor as she leaves.

  “Excuse me, but can you tell me what’s happening?”

  The doctor hesitates. “You are?”

  “Kate McKay. Her closest friend. I’ve been with her through the most awful time. Yesterday . . . she seemed all right. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left her.”

  I can’t believe it was just yesterday that I left for Bristol.

  “Your friend took an overdose. She should be all right, but we’re concerned about what else is going on. After everything that’s happened, it’s possible she’s suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. As you know, she’s lost her daughter. We won’t know how she’s dealing with that until we can talk to her.”

  “She has been quite surprising,” I say. “She’s been up and down—obviously—but has somehow found a way to carry on. She took a course not so long ago. And she was working for her husband before—” I stop, wondering how much this doctor knows.

  She nods. “Her sister-in-law gave me some of the background. But where in all this has she taken any time to grieve? It’s a massive loss she’s suffered. And now, whatever the circumstances are, her husband is another huge loss she has to face. . . .”

  Hearing it put like that, I realize how accustomed I’ve become to Jo’s incredibly difficult life. And how foolish I’ve been, too, even imagining she could get through this without some kind of meltdown. Something of the magnitude of losing a child can hardly be assimilated, accepted, moved on from in just a few months—if at all.

  I’ve done it again. Been too close, seeing only her lion’s courage and brave face, not what’s underneath. Jo hasn’t been coping; she’s been burying her head in grief’s insidious quicksand. And it occurs to me that in her shoes, it would be so much easier to let it suck you down and slowly close over your head, rather than face what lies ahead. Alone.

  I call Laura when I get home, just to fill her in.

  “I went round to see Joanna. Yesterday. I was going to talk to her about the notes.” Laura sounds shocked. “It was just to ask if she had any idea where they might have come from. I asked Delphine, too.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Joanna looked quite shaken when I told her. Do you think there’s any possibility that she sent them? She’s under such strain. A kind of cry for help, perhaps?” It’s not something I’d considered, but maybe she’s right. “I don’t know. Possibly. She hates admitting she needs help. . . .”

  “Delphine just looked blank,” Laura says. “That child worries me. She gives nothing away.”

  “So what now?”

  Laura sighs. “See if you get another. A similar thing happened during another case I was following. It turned out that some batty old dear thought the victim had deserved what she got. Kind of posthumous hate mail, you could call it.”

  I’m astonished. “People do that?”

  Laura laughs. “Kate! People aren’t all nice! They can be devious and evil, you know. Look at Neal.”

  “That’s the thing,” I tell her. “If Jo hadn’t found the laptop, he’s the last person in the world I would have suspected.”

  Laura sigh is audible. “Welcome to my highly confusing world.”

  ROSIE

  Love is devious, deceptive, misleading. In Joanna’s black-and-white world, love is that new dress or those pretty shoes, if you half close your eyes and don’t look closely. It’s about control.

  Thirteen-year-old Joanna stares at herself in the mirror. At the awkward girl with the chubby face and the velvet child’s dress, a bow stitched at the collar. The child’s shoes, black patent, which she’s wanted ever since she was ten.

  Just behind, her mother looks, too, pleased, not seeing that the dress is for a child’s body, that her daughter is no longer a child. That the shoes no longer thrill.

  “You’re such a big girl,” she says. “You’ll be bigger than me soon.” Straightens the lace collar. Adjusts the matching Alice band round her daughter’s head. “There. How nice you look.”

  She looks at the faces in the mirror. The two strangers. The child who wants to be small and the round-eyed mother controller with toxic thoughts, who offers sweets dusted with cyanide and nitric acid lemonade.

  It’s a drinks party rather than a tea party, full of her parents’ friends and neighbors, in twinsets and lounge suits, drinking sherry. With laughs that tinkle and roaming, lecherous eyes. Joanna slips among them as it starts again.

  “Haven’t you grown?”

  “What a big girl you are!”

  How big, big, big . . . inflating, until it explodes in her ears and deafens her, when all she wants to do is disappear.

  Once she starts, it’s easy. “I’m not that hungry.” “I had a big”—that word again—“lunch at school.” “I have a tummy ache.” While her poor hollow stomach rumbles and her sandwiches get thrown in the bin. But none of that matters when she sees how flat her stomach is, how her clothes hang. How without its baby fat, her face has a haunted kind of beauty.

  Then, when she’s forced to eat what’s on her plate, even though she doesn’t want it, because it’s too much and will sit heavily in her stomach, she’s learned, too, how to quickly stimulate her gag reflex. Only she can control this, no one else. And as well as the jutting bones and the childish shape, which she’s so proud of, the benefits come flooding in.

  “She’s so slim!”

  “You look lovely, dear.”

  “She has a lovely figure. . . .”

  “That dress looks so pretty on you.”

  To be admired, to hear good things said about her for looking pretty, for exhibiting such admirable self-control, for making herself the best she can be, for all but starving herself, gives her a warm feeling inside. It’s closest to love.

  25

  As there’s little I can do for Jo, and Delphine is with a good friend, I go as planned to visit Angus. During the long drive up, with what feels like the wings of a dozen butterflies fluttering inside me, I’m not sure how this will go. But rather than taking me into the apartment he shares with Nick and Ally, after meeting me at the door, Angus surprises me with a luxury hotel suite.

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I tell him, looking around at the lavishly furnished living space and the king-size bed and the en suite. The orchids on the elegant furniture and the champagne in a silver ice bucket. I walk over to the window. The views are spectacular—and I realize this must come at quite a price. “The apartment would have been fine, Angus.”

  Feeling his presence behind me, I turn round. He pulls me close and looks into my eyes.

  “You’re worth it,” he says softly. “Anyway, I wanted you to myself. I don’t like being away from you.”

  His brown eyes are serious, and suddenly his words are all I can think of, because somewhere along the way, over twenty or so years of being married, of being easy in each other’s company and taking each other for granted, we’ve lost sight of how much we mean to each other. How much our marriage means. And it’s taken being apart for me to realize this. As I look at him just for a moment, at the face I know like my own, at the tears in my husband’s eyes, I wonder, Like I did with Neal, has he, too, come close?

  He opens his mouth to speak, looking at once worried, loving, apologetic. “Kate, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Shh.” I place a finger on his lips. “Enough talk. I’ve a better idea.”

  And then I take my husband’s hand and lead him to the bedroom.

  It’s an episode of our marriage that threatens everything we’ve built together, but for those few days we forget, pushing it into the background, instead filling lazy days wandering the city an
d long nights where we forget about being husband and wife, parents, with jobs and responsibilities, and instead strip back time and are just lovers.

  I’ve always believed in honesty, even if it hurts. But I learn there is strength in silence—wisdom, too. We talk, but the unspoken part stays just that. Unspoken, so that I leave there with my suspicions unvoiced, still not sure what, if anything, he didn’t tell me.

  But as I drive, my doubts linger, unresolved. And I’m uneasy, because it’s the first time Angus and I have kept secrets from each other. Are some things really better left unsaid, or have we slipped over one of those invisible lines that crisscross life, waiting to trip us up?

  And can we ever go back to how we were?

  When I get home, I find Jo’s been transferred to a small, exclusive private hospital tucked away in the Surrey countryside, a tranquil location enclosed by beech hedges and ancient cedars, a sweeping gravel drive leading to the entrance. I can’t help but wonder how she can afford this.

  The front door opens into a grand hallway, which at first glance could be mistaken for the reception area in a country-house hotel—until you see the blankness in the faces, the suffering not quite hidden behind their eyes.

  I wait until one of the nurses takes me to the lounge, where Jo’s sitting by the window with her back to us, facing out across the garden. As I walk over, she turns round.

  I hardly recognize her. “Jo?”

  I lean down and hug her. Not once in all the time I’ve known her have I seen Jo without make-up, and only here, within the safety of these walls, is the extent of her sorrow bared for the world to see.

  “Thanks for coming, Kate.” So humbly grateful to see me.

  I pull a chair up close to hers. “So how are you doing?”

  She sighs. “I’ve got myself in a bit of a mess, haven’t I?”

  “I don’t know about that. It all got too much, didn’t it?”

  “I suppose it did.” She sounds perplexed, as though she can’t understand how it’s come to this. “Stupid, though, letting it get this bad . . .”

  It’s a bleak attempt at humor. Her lips stretching into a smile and stopping short.

  Even now, she’s in denial. Or is she doing what she always does? Playing down her pain for my benefit? It’s impossible to tell.

  “How long will you be here, Jo?”

  “A few days,” she says. “Something like that. They don’t tell me.” A tear trickles down her cheek.

  “Oh, Jo . . .” I fish in my pocket for a tissue and gently wipe her face.

  “I keep crying,” she says, her voice wobbling. “I can’t stop it. . . .”

  I don’t know what to say, just lean toward her and hold her hand.

  “It’s okay,” she says slowly, her eyes drifting toward the window again. “They do understand here. They say they can help me. I’ve been hiding, Kate, haven’t I? I can’t do that—hide. Not anymore.”

  From the way she speaks, it’s clear she’s on medication, and I can see, too, that without it the pain would destroy her just as surely as a heart attack or an aneurysm would.

  “Is Delphine with someone?”

  “Carol collected her. She’s Neal’s sister.” The “sister” is slurred. “They live in Devon. Carol’s like you, Kate. She’ll be fine.”

  “Can I call her? Just to say if she needs me to, I can help?”

  Jo nods weakly.

  “Do you have her number?”

  A vacant look crosses her face. “I’m so tired . . . ,” she mutters.

  Then her eyelids start to close, and her head droops.

  ROSIE

  A hospital where uniforms, beds, floors, walls, everything’s white. Joanna in a white dressing gown, across the desk from a doctor.

  Silence while he reads her notes, then takes her blood pressure, then asks her to undress and get on the scales.

  It’s the worst part—the scales. They fill her with dread, as with each day in this hateful place, she watches the fat creep on, loathing that the numbers are going up, picturing the hideous ounces like lumps of lard when there should be just white skin and jutting bones, so small she can slip past people and through doorways, unseen. Hating that she’s so big and solid. Has form and shape, bones and muscles. All she can see is the fat.

  But she has to play his stupid game and bear this. Tolerate just enough pounds of the extra fat, solid, hateful weight to reach a tacit agreement where he’ll sign her off, ask her to come back in a month just for a checkup.

  Even though they both know she won’t, just as they both know the pounds will be starved and purged and exercised until they’re gone again, just as fast as she can make them.

  Joanna’s flat is small—tidy, clean, unadorned—a place of impermanence, the fridge all but empty. Half a dozen books on the single shelf. The TV and a handful of videos. The bathroom, however, is a place that holds endless possibilities. It’s luxurious, her private sanctuary.

  Each day starts here. Each day, which might offer endless possibilities for changing her life, and so she sets her alarm, leaving time for it to go wrong, to start again, until it’s perfect.

  There’s a ritual. Shower, scrubbing until she’s raw. Hair washed, then washed again. Every day. Legs de-fuzzed, nails scrubbed, too.

  Then, when she’s dry, hair scraped back under hair band, to start on the face. And this is where her skill shows, because Joanna can paint herself anything. Beautiful, brazen, brave, reckless. Mostly, she settles for simple, understated beautiful. She’s done her homework. Sees how women who have it all—who have the lifestyle, the looks, the man—present themselves. The base coat is smooth; the foundation flawless, the perfect shade mixed herself; eye shadow the latest color; mascara the newest waterproof, glossy tube. Life proof, she always thinks.

  Each day is the same. After the ritual, that flutter of anticipation as she gathers her bag and puts on her coat. Or is it nerves? Down the flight of stairs, wondering what the day will bring. Always what the day will bring, not what Joanna will make of the day, how she’ll embrace it, filling each precious minute. She doesn’t know about such things, just believes if she waits long enough, things will happen to her.

  She takes the first step outside, gasps as she breathes in the cool early morning air and enters the world, which must be how babies feel, she’s thought more than once. Only a baby has a mother’s arms, her warmth, her breasts, her love. Is safe.

  While Joanna is alone.

  26

  Thinking of Delphine, I try to get Carol’s number from the receptionist, but understandably, Jo’s records are confidential, and as she’s now asleep, I have to resign myself to putting it off until I’m next here.

  Instead, I drive home and walk down across the field, feeling the cold air on my skin, in my lungs, sharpening my thoughts. Oz and Reba are pleased to see me, nosing gently in my pockets for tidbits, jostling each other, but Zappa hangs back, taking no notice of us.

  It’s not like him. Usually, Zappa’s at the center of everything, and as I look more closely, I notice his eyes are dull and listless. Then, as I watch, he stamps a hind foot underneath him. It’s at this point that alarm bells start going off, because I know this horse. I know his body language, and something’s wrong.

  When I coax him into his stall, and I have to coax him every step of the way, he’s no more comfortable, just stands with his head lowered, every so often turning to stare at his flank. Across the yard, Oz and Reba shove impatiently at the gate, demanding the same level of attention that he’s getting, but unusually, he completely ignores them.

  At one point, he raises his head and looks at me. For a moment, I can almost see his life visibly draining out of him, while at the back of my mind, a chilling thought occurs to me. Has Zappa been poisoned? Is someone trying to get at me, too?

  The sender of the notes?

  Quietly, I tidy the yard, imagining footsteps that aren’t there, constantly glancing over my shoulder, while keeping a careful eye on him. But a
n hour later, he’s no better, and I call my vet, Helen.

  By the time she gets here, it’s dark. Zappa’s in a sweat, his condition deteriorating rapidly, and I’m wishing I’d called her sooner.

  I have known Helen for years and trust her implicitly, standing at Zappa’s head while she checks him over.

  “He’s quite poorly, isn’t he?” she says, gently stroking him. “Poor old boy. I’m fairly sure it’s colic.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance he’s been poisoned?”

  Helen looks at me sharply. “It’s impossible to tell without a blood test, but if you think he may have been, we’ll do that. Let’s try and get him comfortable for now. I’ll give him a jab for the pain and another to relax him. Hopefully, it will pass, Kate. Can you keep an eye on him tonight? I’m on call, so let me know if he gets worse.”

  I nod, anxiety gnawing at me, at how wretched this vibrant, lovely horse has rapidly become. “I’d better tell his owner.”

  “He’s one of your liveries?”

  I nod again.

  “You probably should.”

  After she’s gone, I call his owner, but she doesn’t pick up, so I leave a message, then let myself back into Zappa’s stall, where I stroke the soft coat and rub him gently behind the ears.

  “It’s okay, boy. You’ll feel better soon.”

  I leave him only briefly, but when I come back, he’s down on the straw bed, and the next minute, despite my efforts to calm him, he starts thrashing around.

  I call Helen. She comes straight over and gives him another sedative, then, when he’s quiet, examines him again thoroughly.

  “It’s not good, Kate. There are no gut sounds. Given the pain he’s in, he’s almost certainly twisted something. His best hope is surgery—this evening, as soon as possible. Can you get him over to the practice?”