Little Bones

by N V Peacock

  ‘Ms Forrester!’ I yell at the door.

  He’s right about one thing: I’ve hardly slept, and been mostly awake since Thursday night – the last time Robin was safely under this roof. That’s over seventy hours awake. I slump down on the couch. Seventy hours is nothing; the interns in Grey’s Anatomy were up for much longer, and someone gave them sharp instruments to cut people open. I understand it’s a TV show, but they had medical consultants on set. Most of the episodes were based on truth.

  My eyelids are sticky. After I rest, I’ll go after Oscar Greer again. Wait, I frightened him. What if he wants to get rid of the evidence and kills Robin before I get there? He could end my flesh and blood just as easily as he extracted his tie from me, with a sharp flash of metal.

  Itchy feet make me walk into the kitchen to put on the kettle. As I reach for the milk, I see the picture on the fridge, the one Robin made before the fair featuring him and Nostrom. Two smiling faces with the ominous Ferris wheel in the distance like some grim prediction made of crayon.

  My mobile rings. I can’t look at it. What if it was Greer who called before, and he now wants to tell me what he’s done to Robin, or where I can find my baby’s body? It rings out and then there’s a beep for a text message. I fish it out of my pocket and look down to see the missed call was from Leo; after, he sent a text. It reads, I’m and an alien face. He’s sent me yet another emoji my phone is too old to read. He could be anything: sorry, hurt, dead, a pile of poo, the list is endless and I, to be honest, don’t give a shit what he is right now. My fair-weather boyfriend ran off to his mummy, leaving me alone to deal with our son’s abduction. No doubt, they’ve spent their time lamenting on how I’m no good for him. How I lost our only child at a bloody fair. He’s fully aware that I can’t read most of the emoji he sends me, so why send them at all?

  I ignore the text and put my phone on to charge. Dragging myself around the kitchen, I grab some food. Crackers with gherkins and instant mash with baked beans. I sit back down on the couch, stuff a cracker into my mouth and chew. In time, with my stomach reeling from the bizarre meal, I close my eyes.

  That night, I get about two hours’ sleep, in which there are no dreams, and the moment my eyes open, I realise Robin is still missing. Sitting up, I brush stray pieces of cracker from my jumper. There’s a godawful smell; it’s me. I go upstairs, strip off and get into the shower. I wash my hair, and as the steam fills up the bathroom, I notice Robin’s Matey Bubble Bath. The little plastic peg-leg pirate stares at me, judging me with his one good eye. I bend down and twist him around, so he faces the bathroom tiles. As I do, I see letters forming on the mirror by the bath. I squint at them. It reads: Nostrom. No doubt written by Robin the last time he was in here.

  As I step out of the shower, an unusual blast of cold air smacks my skin, bringing goose bumps in its wake. The front door is open. Someone is downstairs.

  Chapter 25

  Wrapping a towel around myself, I quietly pad to the landing. There are whispers. I crouch down by the stairs, my hair dripping over my shoulders, and try to make out who has come into my house uninvited. I can’t hear words, yet there’s movement. A rustle here, a footstep there.

  ‘Cherrie!’

  I sigh. It’s Leo, but who is with him? Please, God, don’t let it be his mum.

  ‘I’m upstairs,’ I yell, feeling my heart fall back into its familiar rhythm.

  I hear him coming up the stairs. As he appears around the landing, I can see he looks just as exhausted as me. Shadows lurk beneath his blue eyes and he has more stubble on his chin than usual.

  ‘You opened the extension?’

  No, hello, no, how are you doing? Definitely no, sorry to abandon you at such a horrific time of need.

  ‘I had to open it,’ I say walking back into our bedroom. I throw off the towel and am about to pull out clean underwear when I hear him follow me into the room. He sits on the bed.

  ‘Why would you open it, and how? I took the key.’

  I can’t tell him the real reason. ‘There was a weird noise in there.’ I step into a no-frills pair of knickers and pull them up. I thread my arms through a mismatched bra, then snake my hand around to hook it up.

  ‘There was?’

  ‘Yeah, you left a window ajar. The wind was catching on a stepladder.’

  ‘Oh, so you saw my surprise, eh?’ Leo doesn’t look at me when he speaks; his focus is on a dust bunny that has gathered on our bedroom floor.

  ‘Fancy getting the hoover out while you’re here?’ I say and kick the dust clump for emphasis, breaking his concentration.

  ‘Please, don’t start. Hey, did you get my text?’ he asks.

  ‘You mean the one you knew I wouldn’t be able to read?’

  ‘You could update that bloody phone at any time.’

  ‘And I told you, I don’t want to. I’ve bigger things to worry about right now.’

  ‘Cherrie, this is your fault. Nothing about this is on me,’ he says, watching me dress.

  I pull on a jumper and sit down next to him to wriggle into a pair of jeggings.

  ‘It could easily have happened to you, Leo. I swear I was paying attention. Robin was on that fucking wheel. There was nowhere for him to go but around and around.’ I motion a circle with my arms.

  Quicker than I thought he could move, Leo grabs my wrist mid-spin and pulls me to him. ‘He didn’t get on that ride though, did he; some bastard in a skeleton costume grabbed him. Dumped his jacket for Luke Gordon to find, and you watched little Luke go around and around while ignoring the abduction of our son.’

  I snatch my arm back. ‘Oh, now you believe me, eh?’

  Leo thrusts his fingers through his hair. ‘Yes, I believe you. Doesn’t really help us, though, does it. There’s not even one viable suspect.’

  ‘I’m working on it, Leo!’

  ‘Oh, you’re working on it are you? I see, well let’s allow the police to get on with another case, just as long as you have this whole thing in hand.’ He gets up, walks to the edge of the door, and yells, ‘It’s all right, Patricia, you can go now. Cherrie is drawing up a suspect list and has everything under control!’

  Most people can’t yell and sound sarcastic at the same time, but Leo nails it.

  ‘What was that, Mr Duffill?’ Patricia calls up the stairs.

  ‘Fuck you! I feel the ache of not having Robin in my arms. I can’t sleep without thinking about what could be happening to him. I feel it so deep I can barely breathe,’ I admit.

  ‘Maybe that was what the parents of those boys your dad killed felt like? How many did he kill again? You can’t believe a skeleton taking Robin is a coincidence. This is all on you. You didn’t just drop the ball, you kicked it out into the cold and closed the door behind it.’

  ‘Get whatever you came here for, and then fuck off back to Mummy. I don’t need you, and I won’t need the nursery you made downstairs. Oh, and building a nursery downstairs? What the hell were you thinking?’

  ‘You don’t want another child?’ Leo’s voice raises several octaves, as if I had broken a promise to him.

  ‘Of course I do, but we would have needed the room next to ours. You can’t have a kid downstairs on their own, you moron. How would we get up in the night to feed and change them?’

  Leo bursts out laughing. ‘Shit, I didn’t think that through.’ He covers his mouth, laughing through his fingers.

  I can’t help it: as much as I want to punch him in the face, a laugh escapes me.

  ‘Two fucking years, I built that nursery. You’re right; it should have been upstairs. I should have built it over the garage.’

  ‘Did you just admit I’m right about something?’ I ask him.

  ‘Don’t rub it in.’ He shuffles his feet like a child.

  It feels wrong to laugh without our son, but Leo and I are still a family, even with a big Robin-shaped hole punched through both of us.

  A question, which seemed so pointless before, slips from my lips. ‘How did you
find out about Mr Bones?’

  ‘It’s stupid.’ Leo purses his lips. ‘Doesn’t really matter now.’

  ‘It matters to me.’

  Leo huffs and says, ‘One of the guys at work. His wife was talking about a podcast on Facebook. He listened to it and heard your name. Told me about it the day Robin disappeared. It took me hours to build up the courage to text you.’

  ‘That fucking podcast. Have you listened to it?’

  ‘No, I just googled Mr Bones. There was plenty of information online.’

  It took three degrees of separation for my secret to find Leo. Just three.

  ‘Cherrie …’

  ‘Why are you here?’ I ask him.

  ‘I live here, remember?’

  ‘You left.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have gone. I was scared of what I’d say, and what I’d do if I stayed. I can’t stop wondering – would I be going through this if I wasn’t with you, with Little Bones?’ He reaches out to touch my face. His fingers are cold and rough against my cheek.

  ‘I understand; I do. I was her for seventeen years, remember? I’m not ready to talk everything through, and I don’t have the time or energy to keep defending myself. I have things I need to do,’ I try to explain, but my words are coming out strangled.

  ‘Miles to go before you sleep,’ Leo mutters.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I’ll get some stuff and head back to Mum’s house. I’m coming home, though. Whatever you’re doing, you have to tell me about it. I need Robin back too. I miss him. I miss his hugs and his smell.’ Tears gather in my boyfriend’s eyes. I’ve never seen him cry; I don’t want to see it now.

  ‘Well, melancholy is not going to get Robin back. I refuse to mourn our son, until I have no other choice. Are you with me?’

  Leo sniffles but nods. Turning, he grabs a bag from the wardrobe and fills it with clothes. I watch him the whole time. As angry as I am about the blame he is laying on me, I still don’t want him out of my sight until I have to let him go. Even knowing this, I must remember to keep him at arm’s length. Leo isn’t my knight in shining armour; he never has been, or said he would be. I need to slay the dragon alone; because with slaying comes consequences. Robin will need at least one parent out of prison to raise him after I kill Greer. It won’t be difficult; killing is in my genes. All I need to do is peel off the carefully constructed layers of Cherrie to reach Little Bones.

  Finished with his bag, Leo slowly walks downstairs. I’m about to follow him when I hear a noise in Robin’s room. Relief floods my body. Thank God, he’s back home! Safe and unharmed. This nightmare has all been a massive mistake … I fling open his door, but instead of my lost son, find Mrs Duffill clutching clothes she bought for Robin’s last birthday.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I ask.

  Shock widens her eyes, then her usual mask of superiority slips over her face. ‘I came over with Leo and that officer.’

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘What are you doing here, in Robin’s bedroom?’

  ‘I’m picking an outfit.’ She places the pile of clothes on a nearby chair, then lays a sweatshirt, jeans and a pair of socks on top of the bed. It looks as if the boy wearing them vanished leaving a material echo behind. Sighing, she steps back to look down at her selection, almost tripping over her large handbag. That’s when I realise she’s not choosing clothes for Robin’s return, she is deciding his funeral outfit; the last thing he’ll wear; the shroud that will cover my son’s corpse and hold together his little bones.

  ‘Get out.’

  Mrs Duffill looks up at me.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Cherrie, I …’

  ‘Get. Out!’

  Grabbing her bag, she hurries from the room.

  As I stare down at the empty clothes, I imagine Robin on his bed, laughing and reading. As much as this is Mrs Duffill’s handiwork, I can’t bring myself to tidy anything away.

  After shutting the bedroom door behind me, I trudge downstairs to say goodbye to Leo.

  ‘Where is your mother now? Rifling through my knicker drawer?’

  ‘She’s in the car with Patricia.’ Leo kisses my cheek, heaves his bag over his shoulder, and walks to the doorway. He looks back at me. ‘When this is all over, maybe we can all go to see Mum’s new house in Spain.’

  ‘We can give Robin the first stamp in his passport.’ I smile at the thought of the three of us laughing in the sunshine, even if Mrs Duffill is there, then remember Leo’s text. ‘What emoji did you send me earlier?’

  ‘A house. I was telling you I was coming home.’

  ‘I got an alien face. For all I knew you were telling me aliens abducted you.’

  ‘For future reference, I wouldn’t text you if I was taken by a flying saucer. I’d text—’

  ‘Mummy, right?’ I instantly regret it. We’d been doing so well. For a brief moment in time, we were partners; not back to where we have been, but close.

  ‘Actually I was going to say I’d text The Men in Black,’ Leo says, then leaves.

  It’s not until I hear the car door slam I realise I should have made a joke about wanting Will Smith’s telephone number. It would have made Leo laugh, and that would have been better than a parting shot at his mum.

  From the window I watch all three of them drive off together. At least they are out of the way, for now. Looking at the shoes by the door, I see Robin’s pair are gone. Mrs Duffill must have taken them. Busting in on her wardrobe raid, I didn’t give her time to find my son’s dress shoes; the ones he hides under his bed.

  There’s an awful lot of plotting I need to do to sort out Greer. The police have him on their radar; does that mean they’re watching him? Hell, they don’t even have enough money for two family liaison officers, it’s not as if they have budget to mount a massive surveillance operation … and I’m being stupid again. I’m putting all my hopes on one suspect. What if Greer doesn’t have Robin? He said he doesn’t even like boys. Can I believe a word he says? After all, if he is a true Mr Bones copycat, surely little boys have to be his preference.

  I sit down on the couch and fall back against the cushions. I need help, but not the regular kind the girls, or Leo, or even the police could give me. God help me, I do need my dad. I need a killer connection. I need to find out if any weirdos have been writing him fan mail, especially ones called Oscar Greer. Or if anyone has said anything to him about resurrecting his past, or making art from dead kids’ shoes rather than their bones. The image of a bony tree decorated in tied-together trainers flashes through my mind. How many boys would it take to bring that artwork to life? More than the eleven my dad murdered.

  If the police searched Greer’s house and found nothing, maybe he is innocent, although Gemma said she saw him with a bag of toys. Why, if he has no kids, would he have toys? He also had a bag from Dawson’s Food, but it is the nearest supermarket.

  None of this is simple. In books and movies, they make it look easy. Just follow the trail of clues to find your answer. In real life, you don’t get all the clues; you get fragments that don’t fit together. Like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces never matched in the first place.

  As I pull myself off the couch, I hear my stomach growl. I make a smoky-bacon crisp sandwich. It gives off a satisfying crunch as I cut it in two. I sit at the dining room table with my laptop. I can’t help myself; I click on to The Flesh on the Bones, more out of habit now than actual want. Jai has now threaded his Twitter feed through the website. A disturbing hashtag keeps appearing #fakecherrie. Yet more trolls looking to make his or her life more interesting by attacking me. I’ve never used social media. I was always scared in case someone recognised me, which means I have no established profiles to use to retaliate. Just like when I was a little girl, I will have to suck it up and take their half-arsed lies on an already fragile chin.

  ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones,’ I say to myself, but there’s no conviction in my words. Just like there was no conviction in
them when I repeated the same childish rhyme to myself at school. Every day my so-called school friends would dance around me singing their crude song. I still remember it:

  Little Bones lives in a home,

  With eleven thin little boys.

  Each night they moan, for their own headstone,

  As their bones are now her toys.

  Imaginative little bastards.

  I tried to ignore their silly chant, a song that didn’t even rhyme properly, but I couldn’t. As when my foster family and teachers looked at me, I knew they only saw the daughter of a serial killer. Born of murder and drawn to death. I was so careful of the stories I wrote in English class – nothing too dark. And how I acted around everyone – never too sullen. I went mad on the inside. God forbid I showed it on the outside.

  It wasn’t until I hit seventeen, changed my name, dyed my hair, and moved back home to Northamptonshire that I carved out a life for myself. No one looked at Cherrie Forrester as if she was about to pull out a hatchet and go nuts. No one thought Cherrie Forrester was dangerous to have around his or her children. No one crossed the street when they saw Cherrie Forrester. For a few years, I had a life; an identity truly mine, not some bloody hand-me-down from my dad. Now it’s all over. Cherrie Forrester is #fakecherrie and forever linked to Little Bones. Not the biggest problem I have right now, but I still feel it – like a sharp knife slicing curls of tender flesh from my life. Cutting until there’s nothing left but a stark, greasy bone.

  I click off The Flesh on the Bones. I can’t put it off any longer. I find the details of Dad’s prison. Quickly, I discover the process of seeing him isn’t what I imagined. I can’t just pop in and surprise him. Dad has to request a visiting order for me. Fuck. I’ll need to contact him first. I wasn’t ready for this interaction so soon. I was hoping I’d have a train ride and a taxi journey before having to deal with him for the first time in so long. TV makes visiting prisoners look easy, as if you can just rock up to the gates whenever you like. Should I be doing this at all?