Bone by Bone

by Sanjida Kay

  Thanks again for your help…

  With best wishes,

  Laura

  She pressed Send and waited for a moment. She wondered if he was there, at his laptop too, and if he would reply straight away. She hoped he might suggest meeting up. He could show her Jupiter, or…

  She jumped when her laptop started ringing. It was Matt on Skype.

  She pressed Connect and felt the strangeness of seeing his grainy image in a brightly lit Internet café, a poster in Sanskrit and a faded photo of Everest on the wall behind him. He was looking well, healthy, lightly tanned. She wondered whether Autumn would tell him what she’d done to Levi.

  ‘Hi!’ she said. ‘You’re early. How’s it going?’

  ‘Brilliantly so far,’ Matt said. ‘The athletes have met their Buddhist families and there’s tension already. It’s not exactly luxurious – one of them is staying in what’s basically a cow shed. She’s not happy!’

  Laura nodded. At least she didn’t have to listen to his endless tales about filming any more. ‘I’ll call Autumn…’ She turned and saw she was already standing in the doorway.

  ‘Is it Daddy?’ She sounded excited.

  Laura moved so Autumn could sit in her chair, and she perched on the edge of the stairs to give her daughter the illusion of privacy.

  ‘I went to Tilly’s house today. She’s thinking about being my best friend. We had cupcakes. Tilly and her sister made them.’

  She could hear Matt’s voice, echoey with distance. ‘I’m glad you’re making friends. How’s school?’

  ‘Can I go to a new school? Granny says there’s a really good private one just up the road.’

  Laura sighed. This was not what she wanted Autumn to bring up with Matt.

  ‘Why would you want to do that? You’re at a great school, Autumn. It takes a little while to settle in, that’s all.’

  ‘But I really, really hate it. I don’t want to go there any more.’

  ‘Give it a chance, Autumn. Besides, I can’t afford to send you to a private school. They’re expensive, you know.’

  He didn’t even mention her, Laura thought – as if it was blindingly obvious that she wouldn’t be able to afford the school fees.

  ‘Granny could. Why don’t you ask her to pay?’

  Matt laughed.

  ‘Okay, Daddy needs to go soon. Can you say goodbye and then go downstairs and help Granny with the dinner? I’ll be down in a few minutes,’ said Laura.

  Reluctantly, Autumn pushed herself upright and slouched away.

  ‘She’s being bullied,’ said Laura as she sat back down in front of the laptop.

  An email flashed up in the corner of the screen. The heading read, Jupiter. It could only be from Aaron.

  ‘I spoke to Mrs Sibson yesterday – her class teacher. She said she’d speak to the boy’s teacher and let me know what he said. But I didn’t feel she was taking it as seriously as I’d have liked. And then we had a bit of scare in the evening. Autumn didn’t turn up so I went to find her – she was in that nature reserve with Levi and a gang of boys. They’d ripped up all her pictures…’

  She hesitated, not knowing how much to tell Matt. She felt the prickling sensation of a blush beginning to spread across her cheeks and throat. After all, it wasn’t his problem to deal with Autumn on a day-to-day basis – and if she told him what she’d done he’d be shocked and think she couldn’t look after Autumn properly. Oh God, she thought, she’d been so focused on thinking about Levi’s parents, she hadn’t considered the alternative. Any rational person would call the police, wouldn’t they?

  Matt was looking behind him and nodding at someone. He turned back to her. ‘Damn kids. I’m sure it’ll blow over. She needs to learn to stand up for herself. Look, I don’t want Autumn to walk through that bloody nature reserve you like so much – not now that it’s getting dark in the evenings.’

  ‘No, no, of course not, I don’t think she should either. Not on her own—’

  Matt interrupted. ‘I’ve got to go. The rest of the crew are here waiting for me.’ His image broke up into pixels. ‘… down the mountain in a week for supplies so I can talk to Autumn over Skype again then,’ he was saying when the flesh-coloured squares reassembled themselves as his face. ‘I’ll be back in a fortnight from now and then I want Autumn to come and stay for the weekend. Okay?’

  Laura nodded. ‘Of course. But you need to pick her up. She can’t travel on the train by herself. And I’m not bringing her.’

  He nodded curtly. They’d had this argument several times before. Matt wanted Laura to drive Autumn to London so she could stay with him at the weekend and she’d refused.

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ He was already speaking to someone else as he pressed a button on his keyboard and severed the connection.

  That evening Vanessa poured them both a large glass of wine. It was a Sancerre, Vanessa’s favourite white; she’d gone to the nearest off-licence to buy a couple of bottles that afternoon. Autumn was finally in bed. She’d made Vanessa read her an entire chapter of The Amber Spyglass before letting her leave.

  Laura swept out the minuscule fireplace in the sitting room and started methodically laying a fire.

  The first one in the new house, she thought as she carefully created a wigwam of kindling over tightly rolled balls of newspaper. Should she tell her mother what had happened about Levi? If she was going to say anything, this would be the perfect opportunity – Autumn was in bed, they were drinking a bottle of wine, she would soon have a fire going. After all, she might not have another chance. Vanessa was leaving tomorrow afternoon, and the following morning she was flying to Namibia to spend several weeks with the Himba. Laura wouldn’t even be able to phone her.

  Vanessa took a sip of her wine and said, ‘Do you remember learning how to do that in Namibia?’

  ‘Lighting a fire? No,’ said Laura.

  ‘You were always so self-sufficient as a child.’

  Laura looked at her mother in astonishment. It wasn’t how she thought of herself at all. When she and Matt lived together he’d gradually taken over doing everything practical: from pumping up their bike tyres, putting up shelves, hanging pictures to organizing their household finances. He’d never disguised his annoyance at her practical ineptitude or her disorganization. It was true, though, she realized. Once she had been self-sufficient, and she could be – she had to be – like that again.

  ‘Nkemabin taught you to light fires when you were only four,’ said Vanessa, chuckling. ‘I was horrified. But you were both so careful.’

  Laura had a sudden image of herself as a child crouching on her haunches in the blazing heat of the afternoon, training a piece of wind-worn glass – the thick, round bottom from a Coke bottle – onto a scrap of dried welwitschia, the fibres glowing with bright sparks.

  Nkemabin had clapped and laughed and shouted, ‘Quick, quick!’

  He’d wanted her to feed the sparks with scraps of paperbark, shaved from the trunks of the trees, but she’d been too slow and the fibre curled into dark twists of ash and the fire died. Nkemabin, who smelt of woodsmoke because he didn’t live in the farmhouse with her parents, but in a mud hut nearby.

  ‘He looked after you since you were a tiny baby,’ said Vanessa.

  Laura struck a match and lit the newspaper. She waited for the kindling to catch light. Nkemabin had always been there, every time she’d returned to Namibia, but she hadn’t realized that her mother had entrusted her to him at such a young age.

  ‘You were about nine months old,’ said Vanessa, taking another sip of wine. ‘It was our first field trip since you’d been born and I thought I wouldn’t actually be able to collect any data at all. Damian was only two and a half and very boisterous and just into everything. I had visions of him picking up scorpions or trying to play with a puff adder. But I simply couldn’t imagine leaving you at a
ll. You were so pale, I thought you’d burn without me there to smother you in sun cream every half an hour and make sure you stayed in the shade. I don’t think I’d left you for more than an hour up until that point and even then, only with your father.’

  Laura looked at her mother in astonishment. She hadn’t thought Vanessa would have any felt any kind of guilt or longing to be with her as a baby because she’d always seemed so ambitious and focused on her career. She remembered how sharply her mother had spoken to her yesterday when she’d told her about Autumn being bullied, how disappointed she’d seemed that Laura hadn’t already found out who Levi’s parents were and gone to speak to them. She closed her eyes, imagining how much worse it would be once Vanessa knew what she’d done to the boy. She could picture her anger and disapproval when she realized exactly how badly Laura had handled the situation.

  Her mother continued with her story. ‘But Nkemabin persuaded me to leave both of you. I didn’t know whether to trust him or not. He’d been so good with Damian the year before, but then Damian had been older than you were and he was also a robust little boy. I was so desperate to get back out and see the baboons and track the other wildlife, and I also thought that your father wouldn’t get any decent interviews with the Himba women – and I really didn’t want to spend the entire field trip looking after both of you while your father got to spend all day in the desert – so, in the end, I agreed.’

  This was more like her mother, Laura thought. The kindling had caught alight and she put a couple of logs on the fire. If she told her mother now, Vanessa would talk about it for the rest of the evening, turning over Laura’s actions and debating the consequences. The dissection would last until she caught the train home tomorrow afternoon. Her mother would say that the police were sure to be here on Sunday, since they hadn’t been round today. Perhaps, thought Laura, the boy’s father might track her down and pay her a visit himself. That would be so much worse. Maybe she should ring the police and get it over with? She looked across at her mother. Should she risk it? Vanessa was the only person whose advice she could ask right now. And she had promised Autumn that she would tell her grandmother.

  ‘But after only an hour I was so wracked with guilt and convinced that something dreadful would happen to you, that I doubled back towards the farm house.’ Vanessa slipped off her shoes and tucked her feet beneath her on the sofa. ‘When I reached the dry riverbed, I hid behind one of the acacia trees and trained my binoculars on the house. At first, I couldn’t see anything and I thought, well, either you were inside with Nkemabin, or… well, you can imagine the kind of scenarios that ran through my mind.’

  Laura moved over to the armchair and picked up her glass. She took a sip. It was a heady blend of peach and elderflowers. No wonder her mother loved it. It was such a treat to drink expensive wine: since she’d moved to Bristol she’d taken to buying whatever was on offer from Lidl, and only opening a bottle at the weekend. She rested the cool glass against her forehead, trying to make up her mind what she should do.

  ‘Just as I was about to run as fast as I could towards the farmhouse,’ Vanessa continued, ‘I saw you. Nkemabin had made a play area for you in the courtyard. It was shaded by a bougainvillea and Nkemabin had also strung up sheets to create a little den. Damian was crouched at his feet, completely absorbed in building a sandcastle and decorating it with sticks and pebbles. You were sitting on Nkemabin’s lap and you were both staring at each other in mutual adoration. And then you started to laugh, that gorgeous, chuckling belly laugh that babies make. And I knew you would be all right.’

  It had been years since she’d thought of Nkemabin. She wondered how he’d felt: a poor Namibian caring for two white children while their parents wandered around the desert looking at animals. What had happened to him after they’d grown up? She felt ashamed she’d never asked. She took a long draught of wine and her eyes filled with tears. She hadn’t realized that she had mattered to her mother so much. Maybe her mother wouldn’t judge her as harshly as she expected.

  ‘I can’t describe how relieved I felt,’ said Vanessa with a half laugh. ‘But I guess you may not be able to imagine my feelings.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Laura, putting her wine glass down.

  ‘I mean, you looked after Autumn yourself. You didn’t put your career first. You never left your child in a potentially dangerous situation because you couldn’t bear not to work.’

  Laura rose and stacked another log on the fire, turning her back on her mother so that she could collect herself. In that moment, her tearfulness turned to anger. How little her mother knew her, how little she seemed to understand her. She was trying to work! Couldn’t she see that she was juggling a job, looking after Autumn, retraining and launching a business all at the same time? Worse, how could she possibly tell Vanessa that she had placed her child in a dangerous situation – one that was entirely her own fault? How could she admit that, in front of Autumn, she had pushed a boy so hard he’d fallen and cut his cheek open?

  Sunday 28 October

  LAURA

  Laura rose earlier than usual to attend her free British Military Fitness session. It was the last thing she wanted to do – she was reluctant to leave Vanessa and Autumn on their own in case the police turned up. She could imagine Autumn’s face, how frightened she would be, thinking the officers were about to take her away; how Vanessa would bluster at them since she was not normally in a position of knowing less than anyone she confronted. Plus it was cold, dark and wet. But she had to go. She had to get fit, just in case. What if the boy’s father came round? What if Levi attacked Autumn? She was sure he wouldn’t be so bold – but if he had a few kids on his side, who knew how he’d behave.

  As she dressed, shivering, she remembered that the clocks changed today and tomorrow it would be dusk when Autumn came home. Autumn had gymnastics after school so, on Monday at least, Laura could walk her to the class and avoid an argument about whether she was allowed to go home on her own.

  The weather was relentlessly miserable: on the exposed grassy area of The Downs, the drizzle knifed in at a sharp angle. Laura pulled on a blue bib with a number nine on the front. Jacob was taking the more advanced groups, the reds and the greens.

  ‘You’ll be in safe hands with Jeff,’ he said, smiling at her and winking at another man, who, like Jacob, was dressed in army fatigues and boots. Jeff was lean with a bald head, sharp features and a slightly wild look in his eyes.

  ‘Right,’ he barked. ‘Blues. Follow me.’

  They jogged in a line around the edge of The Downs, following Jeff as he ran through the middle of puddles and the centre of slicks of churned earth. It was, as Jacob had said, full of press-ups, sit-ups and sprints, and in the wet grass and rain and mud, it certainly was not pretty. Halfway through the session, Laura thought she was going to throw up. She did more star jumps than she would have believed humanely possible. She was introduced to torturous combinations of exercises, such as burpees, where, from a press-up position, she had to jump her feet to her hands and then leap in the air. Her legs ached and she struggled to breathe. Jeff patrolled round them, shouting by way of encouragement.

  The class was horribly competitive: in pairs or on their own they had to race through their shuttles and sit-ups to finish first. It reminded her of a party Autumn had gone to when she was about three. It had been in a park and the birthday girl’s mother had organized a race from one end of a mini football pitch to the other. The children had obediently lined up and the mum had shouted, Get set, ready, steady, go!

  All the children had pelted to the far end. All, that is, apart from Autumn, who’d looked at Laura with a worried expression and said, But why?

  Why indeed? thought Laura grimly, as she lay on the ground crunching her abdominals and felt water seep through her tracksuit.

  Not pretty but it is effective, Jacob had said.

  She pictured Aaron. Did he think she was at
tractive? She’d inherited her father’s features rather than her mother’s, his broad face, his wide, snub nose and his grey-green eyes. She usually wore her strawberry-blonde hair in a messy bun pinned with a large, flat silver clip that Lucy had given her. When she was in her twenties, she’d worn it down and it had been smooth and fallen in soft waves. She’d used nut oils and plaited it at night as the Himba women had shown her. She’d always worn make-up then too, which had made her already youthful skin glow with a dewy finish – none of the things she had time for now. At least it couldn’t hurt to be stronger.

  She gritted her teeth and finished her sit-ups.

  Laura held Autumn’s hand as they stood in the ticket hall at Bristol Temple Meads station. Vanessa was bobbing from side to side in front of them, scanning the screens to check when her train was leaving. From the entrance she could see a tiny patch of blue sky; the rest was covered by dark-grey clouds. A chill draught whipped around their ankles and pigeons with deformed feet hobbled and flapped between the stone pillars and exploded into the cavernous roof space. The two of them were jostled by passengers attempting to reach the ticket barriers.

  Vanessa turned back to them and said, ‘There’s no point in you two waiting here. You’ll catch a chill. I’ll go on through.’ She snapped open her handbag and took out her ticket.

  Autumn held out her arms to be hugged. She was wearing the pale-pink mittens her great-grandmother had knitted just before she died. Vanessa, as far as Laura knew, had never touched a knitting needle in her life. Autumn looked as if she might cry.

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said.

  Vanessa embraced her tightly. ‘My darling. I don’t want to either. But I’ll see you very soon. Be a big, brave girl.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, Granny.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too.’

  Laura realized she’d miss her mother as well. She’d be lonely without adult company. She wished Vanessa could stay to lend her moral support, to come with her to see Levi’s parents. She’d been too worried about her mother’s reaction to tell her what had really happened, but now she thought Vanessa wouldn’t be angry with her. Autumn was precious to her too; she’d have understood. Perhaps, she thought, she could tell her mother what had happened right now. There might still be time.