Bone by Bone

by Sanjida Kay

Epilogue

  Thursday 10 May

  LAURA

  Autumn gave a small, tight smile as Laura walked in. This was what money gave you, thought Laura, looking around. It always took her by surprise, visiting the school and seeing the polished wealth of the place. The floor was sprung wood and the equipment was new and it gleamed. There was no film of chalk, no dust balls or stray pigeons, no martyred saints encased in Perspex or sagging crash mats and soggy trampolines. The long windows set in one wall looked out over a gently undulating expanse of expensively maintained grass. A line of cherry trees flanked a gravel path that led to tennis courts, the blossom a froth of pink.

  Laura had enrolled Autumn at a private school and talked the head into letting Autumn start straight away, instead of waiting until the beginning of the following term. Thursdays was Autumn’s after-school gymnastics class and today the parents were allowed to stay and watch. The coach, a woman with highlighted blonde hair in a high ponytail, wearing a navy tracksuit, waved and jogged over. She shook Laura’s hand firmly. She had freshly whitened, straight teeth and an almost horse-like face.

  ‘I’m Tabitha,’ she said. ‘You’re Autumn Wild’s mum, aren’t you? It’s lovely to meet you. She’s doing so well – you’ll be amazed at her progress.’

  When Autumn started at her new school, Laura had told Tabitha on the phone that Autumn would need to be gently coaxed into gymnastics again after her fall. A couple of weeks later, the coach had called her back and said that Autumn was refusing to participate in the classes.

  ‘She’s not distressed,’ Tabitha had said. ‘I don’t think you need to stop the classes – she says she wants to be here. Her confidence had a real knock. She just needs time, poor love.’

  And then, one day in early January, without saying anything to anyone, Autumn had joined in. Tabitha phoned Laura the same night to tell her, in case Autumn didn’t. This was the first time she’d met Tabitha in person and she immediately warmed to the woman.

  Laura sat on a bench at one end of the hall with the other parents. She knew a few of them and Autumn had already gone on play dates to their houses but, right now, she didn’t feel like chatting to any of them: she wanted to concentrate on her daughter.

  Tabitha clapped her hands and started the class warm-up. Autumn was wearing her school uniform tracksuit, which was a little large for her. Her cheeks glowed as she ran around the room, following the other children, sashaying from side to side and bringing her knees up to her chest. She’d filled out a little and grown a couple of inches since the winter and she looked healthy, robust, lightly tanned.

  Laura tried not to think about what might have happened that night back in November. Even though it was nearly six months ago, she still had strange nightmares, brown and green, clouded with a muddy, underwater light, and in them she was searching for Autumn. She didn’t know where her daughter was or even where she herself was. The two of them were alone, lost in the woods. In her dream, she felt the terror, glacial-cold, that had consumed her in real life, and she would wake, shaking and shivering, drenched in sweat.

  Thank God she’d texted Jacob and he’d come round so fast. He said he’d been about to go home, he’d had it with her and Autumn, messing him around – but then, as he was driving away, he thought how frightened she’d seemed and he remembered what she’d said – that she’d put Autumn in her bed. So why had the light gone out in Autumn’s bedroom as they were talking? He’d gone to the lane at the back of the house to check if there was a light on in Laura’s bedroom. The garden gate and the kitchen door were open. He’d been about to go inside, when he remembered what had happened in Northern Ireland. Procedure. Always follow procedure, he’d said. He’d called the police. And then he’d gone in.

  A couple of days after that terrible night, PC Emery and PC Jones had visited her at home. They’d said that Levi’s back was covered in bruises, he had a hairline fracture in a rib and a slight sprain in one wrist. Aaron had told them that Laura inflicted these injuries too. The boys who’d witnessed the assault all said Laura had ‘only’ pushed Levi and he’d hit his head and cut his face and, after that night, Levi changed his story and said that Laura hadn’t seized his arm or punched him in the ribs. He said his dad had told him to say that.

  As PC Emery was talking, an image of Levi came to her, the very first time she’d seen him, hanging from the yellow and red, paint-peeling climbing frame, and noticed his dangerous beauty, those strange tawny-green eyes with their thick lashes. She’d thought he was appraising her, assessing her vulnerability. And then the day in the nature reserve that had changed everything; she’d been so close to him she’d seen the rain glistening on his skin, smelt the take-away he’d had the night before. She hadn’t seen him as a child. Only as a threat.

  ‘I think it’s safe to say that the charges against you for actual bodily harm against Levi will be dropped but I, or one of the other officers, will need to caution you formally in the station,’ PC Emery said.

  ‘What will happen to him?’ asked Laura.

  ‘He’s been removed from Ashley Grove Junior School and he’s currently in care,’ said PC Emery gently.

  ‘In foster care?’

  ‘Yes – it’s just a temporary measure. Social Services are trying to work out what support his mum needs. She’s got chronic fatigue syndrome.’

  Laura nodded. Emery must have seen her distress because she said soothingly, ‘I’m sure he’ll be back with his mum in no time. It’s not like she’s terminally ill or anything.’

  Laura nodded again. ‘Do you think I could visit him?’

  She thought of those three short words he had spoken to his father: You should go. The bravery of the child made her want to weep.

  PC Emery looked at her in surprise and then smiled. ‘I’ll speak to his case worker. I’m sure it can be arranged.’ She laid her hand on Laura’s arm. ‘As for his father, Mr Jablonski… there will be an inquiry. I shouldn’t really say it at this stage, but given your injuries, and Jacob Davidson’s testimony, it’s likely it’ll be seen as self-defence.’

  Laura closed her eyes. ‘So I won’t have to go to prison?’

  She’d pushed Aaron backwards so hard he’d fallen through the half-open window, onto concrete, the screwdriver she’d rammed into his lung sticking out of his chest, and had hit his head on the pavement. He was still in intensive care.

  ‘Let’s hope not, eh?’ said PC Emery.

  The warm-up had finished. Autumn and the other children in her class discarded their tracksuits. She was wearing a leotard and T-shirt. Her hair, caught in an Alice band, had started to grow out and was in a short bob. She was bouncing on the trampoline, her toes pointed, her hair standing on end. There was a single moment, a fraction of a second, when she was stationary, suspended in mid-air, before she raised her legs into a piked jump, and then twisted to land on her front facing the opposite way. There was something so lovely and so fluid about it, the certainty with which she turned in the air, the long, lean lines of her legs, it brought tears to Laura’s eyes.

  After that Saturday in November, Laura knew that she would never take Autumn back to Ashley Grove Junior School. As soon as Vanessa reached Windhoek for supplies, Laura had phoned her and told her what had happened and asked her to pay for Autumn’s school fees. Vanessa had said she and Julian would be delighted.

  Vanessa was back in Namibia for the whole of the summer. Laura imagined that, right now, she would be in the place she loved the best: crouched by a fire interviewing the Himba women, asking them about their goats and their children, the heat of the day fading fast as the sun started to sink behind hills as dark as dragon’s blood. It was a kind of half-formed thought, a feeling that perhaps she and Vanessa owed it to one another: that she needed to let her mother help them and her mother needed to pay for Autumn’s new school. An atonement of sorts. She wanted her mother to know that she was forgiven. Or to understand th
at maybe there was nothing to forgive. Her mother had done the best she could, exactly as Laura had.

  Autumn could have died that night, she thought. She couldn’t imagine what her life would be like without her child. Sometimes, when she was working in the evening, she could hear laughter and it always took her a moment to realize it was her daughter and her new friends. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the sound of Autumn’s throaty laugh.

  Over the winter she’d drawn up plans for her own business and she’d officially launched her company in February. She was confident she could make it work. Her first client was a wealthy woman with a huge house and garden overlooking Leigh Woods. She’d immediately recommended Laura to another two of her friends. Laura was sure she could pick up more work after she graduated and she no longer had to spend so much time on her dissertation.

  Autumn was standing to one side of the trampoline now, watching one of the other girls. Tabitha stepped in to correct her position and show her pupil how to do the complex move again. The girl had another go – landing on her back, catapulting onto her front, lifting her hips and rising to her feet. Autumn smiled and clapped. She looked so happy – so pleased for this other child’s success.

  Autumn and the small group of children she was with followed Tabitha to the beam. Laura sat up properly and clasped her hands together. To her surprise, Autumn was first in line. Her daughter climbed onto the beam without hesitating and walked with ease along the narrow strip of wood, as Tabitha followed on the mat alongside, smiling up at her. And then, almost before Laura was aware it was happening, Autumn bent at the waist, planted her hands on the beam and lifted up into a cartwheel, effortlessly spinning through the air and rising to her feet at the far end, her face flushed. She looked up and smiled at her mother.

  Acknowledgements

  Every writer I know has a support system around them. In my case, it’s my friends who take me out for prosecco, endless coffees or long hikes; my husband, who is a patient listener; my daughter, who is endlessly entertaining; and the rest of my extended O’Connell family. Sadly, my father, James O’Connell, isn’t here to see Bone by Bone being published, but I know he’d be proud. My mum, Rosemary, and my siblings and their partners, Sheila and Simon, Dee and Ian and Pat and Em, have all been there for me when I’ve needed them, with Dad’s favourite food: pizza and ice cream.

  In terms of the actual nuts and bolts of putting Bone by Bone together, it has only been possible thanks to a grant from the Society of Authors’ and Arts Council England. I’m grateful to Chris Wakling who read the plot synopsis and the first draft. I benefitted from his considerable expertise and belief in me. My sister, Dee, and Ali Griffiths read a later draft and made helpful comments. Ali and Joe Melia have been my constant and enthusiastic supporters, cheering me along what has sometimes seemed like a long road! Verity Otterbeck and her daughter, Halle, reminded me what it was like to be nine years old. Andy Torbet told me about being a Marine and what to do if you think someone is going to attack you (run like hell). Paul Whitehouse helped me with the police procedure (all technical errors are my own).

  I’d like to thank my first editor at Corvus, Maddie West, for her useful insights; Margaret Stead, of Atlantic Books, for her faith in the novel from an early stage; Louise Cullen and Sara O’Keeffe for steering Bone by Bone towards publication; Alison Davies, who ran the publicity campaign; Nicky Lovick for her careful copyediting; and the rest of the team at Atlantic Books and Corvus. Above all, I’d like to thank my agent, Rob Dinsdale, of AM Heath: for championing this book from the start, his painstaking editorial advice and reading more drafts than anyone should ever have to. Thank you.

  Sanjida Kay is a writer and broadcaster. Bone by Bone is her first thriller. She lives in Bristol with her daughter and her husband.

  First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2016 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Sanjida Kay, 2016

  The moral right of Sanjida Kay to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  ‘There is a pain – so utter’ by Emily Dickinson reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © renewed 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copyright © 1914, 1918, 1919, 1924, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935, 1937, 1942, by Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Copyright © 1952, 1957, 1958, 1963, 1965, by Mary L. Hampson.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78239 688 8

  E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 690 1

  Printed in Great Britain

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

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