Bone by Bone

by Sanjida Kay

  A feeble orange light was flickering in the allotments, low down near the ground. Laura looked hopefully towards it. It was a huge pumpkin, its flesh brick-red, its mouth cut into a crude gash, candle-flame dancing through slits for eyes. There was no sign of Autumn. Laura slipped on the wet stones as she entered the wood. She had a horrid sense of déjà vu. She stopped running, as she was out of breath, and walked as fast as she could up the steep path. It was ridiculous of her to think she’d be fitter after only one session of British Military Fitness.

  A white dog, like a wolf, but with startling blue eyes, made her jump. It blocked her path and stared at her, like a creature from a fairy tale who might help or hinder her passage. Its owner appeared, a sullen-faced woman dressed all in black, jangling keys from a carabiner, and dragged the animal out of her way.

  Laura paused at the edge of the wood and looked across the meadow. The image she had of Autumn, running home in her red coat, her satchel swinging, couldn’t possibly be right. It was almost half past four. Even if Autumn had waited a few minutes for her and then set off by herself and had walked slowly, she would have reached the house long ago. Above her the clouds were dark grey and seagulls circled endlessly on the thermals.

  Like vultures, she thought.

  A crow cawed loudly overhead and flapped languidly across the path, alighting on the grass in front of her.

  Laura’s mobile rang, startling her. She answered it, walking swiftly along the path now.

  ‘It’s Ellen. Ellen Sibson. Have you found her?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve just reached the nature reserve.’

  ‘I’ve called the parents of all the girls she’s friends with in her class and no one took her back home. Molly said that she saw her waiting for you in the playground.’

  Laura broke into a jog again.

  ‘I’m going to wait here for the police. They’ll call you on your mobile. Please phone me as soon as you see her, won’t you?’

  ‘I suggest you ring Aaron and find out where Levi is,’ snapped Laura. ‘None of you took his bullying seriously. If anything has happened to Autumn, I’ll hold the school responsible.’

  She hung up and slipped the phone back in her pocket.

  She rounded the bend in the path and reached the bridge over the railway. There was no one there. The clouds and the growing darkness had created a strange pattern of blackness on the concrete as what little light was left filtered through the metal bars overhead. Her footsteps echoed hollowly. In the middle she stopped. Suspended over the railway tracks, the wind sang through the wire cage, humming and keening. Laura forced herself to stand on tiptoes, pressing her forehead against the cold metal bars, peering down between them. It was hard to make anything out apart from the tar-black sleepers and the pewter gleam of the tracks. As far as she could tell it didn’t look as if anyone was lying down there. She checked the other side and then walked to the end of Briar Lane.

  The untarmacked road was pitted with potholes and jagged with exposed grit and stone. It was lit by the sodium glare of the street lamps. After the nature reserve, the lights and the noise from the road were almost overwhelming. A man and his dog were walking towards the school. There was no one else around. Laura turned and ran back towards Narroways, her feet drumming against the concrete, the shadows and the vertical bars making her eyes strobe.

  Her phone rang again.

  ‘Any sign?’ asked Mrs Sibson without introducing herself.

  Laura shook her head without speaking. She started to walk through the damp, tussocky grass towards the hill, the highest peak in the reserve, stumbling in the dark. One star had risen in the east.

  Not a star, she thought bitterly – Jupiter. She only knew it was a planet because of Aaron.

  As if she’d spoken, Mrs Sibson said, ‘Mr George called Aaron. Levi’s with him. He went to his dad’s flat in Filton, straight from school, and was there by a quarter to four. I don’t think Levi could have had anything to do with this. With whatever has happened to Autumn.’

  Laura hung up on her again. Why hadn’t she brought a torch? In her haste to leave the house she hadn’t thought about it. Her phone glowed weakly in her hand and she held it out in front of her, using the light from the screen to see where she was going. Her mobile gave out a ghostly light but it didn’t reveal much of the meadow. She pressed the home button again, to keep the phone bright, and it gave a bleat. She looked fleetingly at the screen in case it was a text, in case by some miracle it was one of the parents saying Autumn was safely with them. There was an image of a battery, a sliver of red at one end, and a message, warning her that only ten per cent of charge was remaining.

  Oh God, she thought. She’d need to preserve the battery so that she could speak to the police. She switched her mobile off and put it back in her pocket. She started to run up the hill. She fell and braced herself with her hands, her palms damp with mud and clover leaves.

  At the top, she hauled air into her lungs and turned in a slow circle, surveying the nature reserve spread below her. The place was deserted. The moon was starting to rise; it was on the cusp of being full, but low in the sky and behind the dense barrage of clouds, its stone-cold glow barely illuminated the meadow. She couldn’t bear to think of what might have happened to Autumn. If she’d simply fallen, would she even see her in the growing darkness? Would a small body lying in the leaves or the shrubs, the tangle of briar at the edge of the wood, or here, in the open grass, be visible in the twilight?

  She switched on her phone. The ominous red line within the waning battery had grown thinner. There was a message – it was from a police officer who was with Mrs Sibson, asking her to ring him back urgently. She started to key the number into her phone. There was the sound of metal warping, an electric hum and then a loud shriek. It was a train, roaring down the track, heading into the city centre. She could hardly breathe. What if Autumn was down there and she hadn’t seen her? The train was brightly lit and almost empty. There were two people in one carriage, facing forward, their expressions vacant. Perhaps they were heading home after working out of town or maybe they were on their way from the suburbs into the city to begin a night shift: a nurse, a cleaner, a refuse collector; the unseen, unsung people who toiled to keep the city operating.

  Laura looked down at the cliff, its raw, wet jagged clay and sandstone skin like something flayed. The light from the train fractured against its surface. She couldn’t see a small child lying broken on its slope. The brake lamps at the back and the afterglow of its empty carriages made the train seem like an old-fashioned Roman candle, blazing into the night through the narrow chasm gouged into the rock.

  In the tail end of those lights, Laura saw something, a half-familiar shape.

  It was on the flat part of the meadow, by the edge of the wood. In the dying of the light, she’d seen a flare of red, too bright to be natural. She ran down the slope, leaping over the uneven grass. In the darkness, the cold air against her face, it felt less as if she were running and more like falling, falling towards some terrible, nameless deed.

  She turned on her phone and held it out in front of her as she reached the bottom of the hill. A small, dark object lay by a stunted hawthorn – Autumn’s satchel. In the eerie light from her mobile, below a dogwood, the thorny stems laden with clusters of hips, she could see what looked like a child in a red coat lying on the ground. But the red had leaked and spread across the grass in an enchanted circle. Every blade was coated with it. Autumn’s hair was slicked back and damp with maroon darkness; a frighteningly vivid patch of skin shone white against the brilliant red that covered her face.

  The phone in her hand chirped and died. Laura was left standing in the pitch dark in front of the body of her child.

  She knelt down in the wet, blood-soaked grass and turned Autumn’s face towards her. The child was cold. She felt for a pulse in her neck but there was no tell-tale flutter beneath her
fingertips. She bent close to her daughter’s mouth. Her breath came faint against her cheek.

  Thank God. She’s alive!

  She ran her hands over the small face, wiping away the red stuff. Laura felt the child’s lashes tremble against her palms. Autumn suddenly opened her eyes. They gleamed, black and blank.

  ‘Oh, my darling. What happened? Where are you hurt?’

  Autumn’s lips moved. She struggled to speak. She tried to sit up. Laura helped her, wondering if she was doing the right thing. Should she put her in the recovery position? What if she’d broken any bones? Now that the sun had set, and overshadowed as they were by the wood, she couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from. Autumn was lying just a few metres from the path through the trees. She’d missed her, Laura realized, in her haste, because as she’d come out of the wood, she’d hurried straight on, glancing around, but not directly behind her.

  Autumn sat up, and then held out her hand. Laura helped the child to her feet. She picked her up and Autumn clung to her, wrapping her legs around her waist and her arms about her neck. She rested her head in the crook of Laura’s neck and she could feel the wetness, sticky against her own skin, pooling below her collar bone. She carried her child carefully through the wood and into the allotments.

  It was only when she reached the end of the allotments, and had to balance Autumn on one hip and hold her with one aching arm, so she could open the gate, that she realized Autumn smelt strange. It was the metal, cold beneath her palm, that made her think of it. Clinging to the child was the odour of the outdoors – damp mud and decaying leaves – but there was another smell too. It was fresh, almost like plastic. There was no nausea-inducing iron tang. Autumn did not smell of blood.

  She staggered into the house with her daughter and saw them both reflected in the hall mirror. They were like trauma victims, their faces white, the pupils of their eyes dilated, covered in red, some of it wet, other patches dried and flaking, twigs and dead grass sticking to them. She eased Autumn to the floor. Autumn still had not spoken.

  ‘I’m going to call an ambulance,’ Laura said. ‘We need to get you to Accident and Emergency.’

  ‘No,’ whispered Autumn. ‘It’s paint, Mum.’

  ‘Paint?’

  ‘Red paint. I’m okay.’ Her voice was wooden. ‘I want a bath.’

  Tenderly, Laura helped her remove her clothes, which were all soaked. Autumn was shivering as she stepped out of her trousers, and then pulled her vest over her head. Her daughter’s body was smooth, pale, perfect. Laura could not see a single cut or fresh bruise on her – only the large one on her arm from gymnastics, now the dull brown of a rotten apple. She wrapped Autumn in a towel and ran a bath.

  As the child slid under the surface, the water turned scarlet, clouds of it spiralling upwards, a red mist that obscured her body. Laura put her hand over her mouth. Autumn surfaced and wiped her hair out of her eyes. She smeared the remaining red across her face as she did so.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Laura for what felt like the tenth time.

  ‘You weren’t there to pick me up. You’re always late,’ she said, sounding as sullen as a teenager. ‘I walked home. When I got to the bridge going into Narroways—’

  ‘You should have waited! I told you not to walk home by yourself at night through the nature reserve!’

  Autumn gave her a warning look. Laura regretted her anger instantly. She wished that she’d apologized instead, for not being there when she had so wanted to be early. Autumn picked up her sponge and pumped some shower gel onto it.

  ‘A boy followed me. He started pushing me. Then he threw paint over me. He hit me with something. And then I don’t remember anything until you came.’

  ‘Where did he hit you?’

  ‘Here. Maybe it was the paint. It was in a big bottle.’

  Laura felt the back of Autumn’s head. She parted her hair. Her daughter’s scalp was skull-white. There was a slight bump but she couldn’t see a cut and there was no blood.

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘Yes. A big boy. I don’t know him. He’s not from our school.’

  Laura watched as Autumn washed away the paint. She seemed by some miracle to be okay and, apart from the bump on her head, she had no other injuries. And the paint, thank goodness, was water-based.

  ‘We still need to get you to the hospital to check your head. And make a statement to the police.’

  ‘No,’ said Autumn.

  ‘So it definitely wasn’t Levi?’

  Autumn shrugged and didn’t look at Laura. ‘I never saw him before.’

  Could it have been a random attack, Laura wondered?

  Out loud she said, ‘Maybe Levi asked a friend of his to throw the paint at you. I’m going to ring the police,’ she added, getting to her feet.

  ‘No,’ said Autumn again.

  ‘I have to, love. Mrs Sibson called them. They’ll be looking for you.’

  Well, I won’t speak to them. It’s your fault. If you hadn’t pushed Levi over, he wouldn’t be doing this to me.’

  The words, so full of bitter resentment, sounded unspeakably harsh coming from such a young girl. Laura turned away from her daughter so she wouldn’t see her tears, or her anger, a cocktail of relief, guilt and anxiety. Autumn was suddenly growing up, lashing out as a way of asserting her independence – and yet, lying in the bath, she looked utterly child-like, naked, vulnerable, defenceless. Laura resented every bruise that had ever marked that precious skin. She wished there was some way she could protect Autumn for ever.

  ‘I’ll make you a sandwich to eat on the way to the hospital,’ she said.

  AUTUMN

  At break Levi had strolled over and sat down next to her. Molly and Olive immediately leapt off the bench and ran to the other side of the playground. Autumn started to follow them, but Levi put out one hand and grabbed the back of her jumper, pulling her down. He was so close she could smell the Chinese he’d had the night before, mixed with the chemical-fresh smell of his laundry powder.

  ‘Look at this face,’ he said, gesturing with his other hand, and glancing at his posse of boys, all hanging off the climbing frame opposite her. ‘Not even a mother could love it.’

  The boys sniggered and she felt herself go rigid. He cupped her chin in one hand and shook her head so hard that her cheeks wobbled.

  He laughed. ‘Check it out – she’s a little fatty.’ He leant towards her, his knuckles hard against her spine, and whispered, ‘Never mind. You’ll get used to being ugly.’

  As she waited for her mum at the end of the day, she was terrified Levi would come and taunt her again. Her mum had said she had to wait for her, she wasn’t allowed to walk home after school on her own. And then she hadn’t been there. She was always late. It wasn’t fair. She was supposed to be worried about her. She was supposed to protect her.

  She was so relieved to see Levi run off as soon as the school gates opened – and so cross with her mum for making her stand there on her own, looking stupid, that she decided to walk home on her own. She wanted to make her mother worry about her to teach her not to be so late. She wanted to punish her. But in her relief and her rage, she didn’t realize she was being followed until she was in the nature reserve and she couldn’t turn back.

  He waited until she’d reached the other side of the bridge and the dog walkers and the other school children had vanished. She felt something wet against her hair – like rain but it was too big for a single rain drop. She put her hand to her head and when she looked at her fingers, they were covered in red.

  She screamed and he started laughing and that was when she knew. She ran across the meadow and he caught up with her easily, throwing crimson liquid that splashed across her and the grass; a violent red that blossomed and slashed her tights, her skirt, her new coat. He was a big boy, maybe fourteen, with an adult’s body and a child’s face and a
curiously vacant expression that frightened her almost as much as one of Levi’s smiles. She thought he might be one of the kids who’d torn up her paintings.

  And then he hurled the bottle at her. She saw it arc through the air and she looked up and it poured down over her face, cold, vermillion, cruelly vivid against the deep-grey sky, and she fell forward, blinded, a red film over her eyes, and then the bottle hit her on the back of the head and she dropped to her knees.

  ‘That’s for Levi,’ he shouted.

  In that split second she knew there was no point telling her mum that Levi was really responsible. Her mum would only make everything worse. Like she always did.

  She fell onto all fours, unable to see, tears and snot and paint dripping down her face. She knew it was paint straight away from the smell. There was something oddly comforting about it; it reminded her of the studio where they’d had art classes with Mr Wu at her old school. But she couldn’t stop feeling as if she really had been hurt – it was the colour, bright as blood, the visceral shock of it.

  She wasn’t quite sure how it happened, how it was that she ended up lying under the dogwood, the thorns arching over her, the grass high and wet and slick with the red stuff all about her. She thought of the fairy story her mum used to tell her about a child who fell asleep in the green, green grass under a rowan tree and then the little people came and stole him away. For seven long years. She wasn’t sure what time it was, how long she had lain there, the paint chill and drying on her skin, the dew seeping into her clothes. When they let him go, no one he loved was alive. And after a while, it felt as if she and the changeling-child in the fairy story were one, that an absence had opened up in her heart – for if she returned, after seven long years, no one would know who she was.