by Sanjida Kay
When her daughter had stopped crying, she took her satchel and her hand and they walked through the empty playground out of the school.
‘I want to go home,’ said Autumn.
Laura hesitated and then shook her head. ‘Let’s go to gymnastics, sweetheart. It’ll take your mind off what happened. If we go home, we’ll both keep thinking about it.’
It was dark as they turned past Ashley Grove and cut through the side streets to reach the School of Gymnastics, which was in a former church on Gloucester Road.
‘At least we know who Levi’s dad is,’ said Laura shakily, her heart rate beginning to slow.
‘He was in our house,’ said Autumn.
‘How did it go today? Did Levi say anything to you?’
Autumn stared straight ahead and said nothing.
‘Autumn, love, I asked you a question.’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘There you go. I told you he’d leave you alone from now on,’ she said.
So that was why the police hadn’t called. Aaron didn’t know until today, until just now. But why didn’t his mother tell anyone? she wondered. And what will happen if Aaron does report me to the police?
Laura pushed open the heavy door into the old church and was hit by the smell of chalk dust and stale air. Autumn went to change and Laura sat on a bench at one end of the church hall facing the array of beams, rings, a vaulting horse, a trampoline and mats. She felt like crying when she remembered Aaron’s face, twisted with hatred, the mass of parents backed up behind him with their horrified expressions. Rebecca would never let Autumn go round for a play date again. She could try phoning Aaron later when he had calmed down, she thought; she felt ill as she imagined his response.
She had a lump in her throat as she watched Autumn. Her daughter had been doing gymnastics since she was a tiny child and although she wasn’t particularly agile and she was often clumsy, years of practice and her own determination had lent her grace and strength. She’d been nervous about starting a new class; in London Autumn had gone to the same School of Gymnastics with the same coaches since she was two.
Autumn was waiting for her turn on the beam and a couple of children had already pushed in front of her. It reminded Laura of those early days when she was even more crippled by shyness than she was now. One time the teacher had held out a box of bean bags for each child to take one. Autumn had stood, rooted to the spot, as her classmates ran over and grabbed them. The teacher didn’t notice Autumn waiting and when the others had all returned to their places and started throwing the bean bags around, she’d put the box away. It tore her heart to see her child standing there, unable to ask for assistance for something as simple as a bean bag.
One more child pushed in front of Autumn and then it was finally her turn. She was supposed to take a couple of steps along the narrow beam, toes pointed, and then do a handstand, sideways on, before cartwheeling around and standing upright again.
She’s so pale, thought Laura. Autumn had dark-purple shadows under her eyes. She can’t be getting enough sleep.
Autumn looked down at the beam.
‘Look up, keep looking straight ahead,’ shouted her coach, Tess.
Autumn stumbled and righted herself.
You can do this, Laura silently encouraged her.
She’d been so proud the first time she watched Autumn do a handstand on the beam, a feat unimaginable to her. Autumn took a step. It didn’t look right, thought Laura – Autumn had gone too far along the beam. She was moving jerkily, stiffly.
Laura stood up, her heart starting to flutter.
Autumn bent and twisted, placing both hands on the beam, her legs rising. There wasn’t enough space left for Autumn to land on the beam.
Laura started to walk towards her.
It felt as if it were happening in slow motion. Autumn’s hand slipped and now Laura was sprinting across the hall as Autumn’s elbow gave way. Tess held out her arms to catch her but she was too far away, her reactions too slow. From the corner of her eye, Laura saw the other instructor running across the hall towards Autumn as the child spun in the air.
Laura leapt onto the crash mat.
Autumn’s foot missed the beam and she started to fall.
Instinctively, Laura held out her arms.
Autumn fell, cracking one arm against the beam, her leg catching Laura’s shoulder. She tumbled backwards, clinging to her daughter. The air was knocked out of her lungs as she landed with a loud thwack on the mat. For a moment there was silence. She lay motionless, Autumn a heavy, hot weight on top of her. She was aware of her daughter’s heart-beat, sparrow-like, her own breath ragged in her throat, Autumn’s hair tickling her neck, the feel of her daughter’s ribs beneath her hands, the smooth sheen of her leotard against her skin.
The two instructors bent over her and then Jack, the older teacher who’d once been a professional gymnast and was now thick-set and solid, was lifting Autumn up and smiling and saying, ‘Mrs Wild, you should be an athlete. I’ve never seen anyone run as fast in this gym.’
Laura sat up, propping herself into sitting position with her arms behind her. Autumn looked dazed and then burst into tears.
‘Come on, duck, let’s have another go,’ said Tess.
‘I don’t think she’s ready,’ said Laura, looking at her aghast.
‘My arm hurts,’ said Autumn, rubbing it.
‘Let’s have a little look,’ said Jack. He held her arm between both of his hands and turned it between his meaty palms, bent it at the elbow and then gave her a little pat on the shoulder. ‘Just bruised.’
‘The best thing is to get back on as soon as possible. Otherwise she’ll be too nervous the next time,’ said Tess, smiling at her.
Laura looked at her furiously. You didn’t catch my child. And you were right there.
Autumn shook her head. Laura stood up. She could feel a tremor in her limbs. She put out her hand and took Autumn’s. There was silence as they walked across the hall. In the changing room, Autumn started crying again.
‘I’m no good at anything,’ she wailed. ‘I’m so clumsy.’
‘Oh, love, you’re not clumsy. You’re brilliant – you’re a wonderful gymnast. You’re just upset about what happened today with Aaron.’
Snot and tears were running down Autumn’s face. She shook her head. ‘It’s all my fault.’
‘What’s your fault?’ asked Laura, wiping her cheeks.
‘It’s my fault that man shouted at you.’
‘Of course it wasn’t your fault. I was the one who pushed his son. Listen, we’ll get it all straightened out tomorrow,’ said Laura, trying to sound upbeat. ‘I’ll speak to Aaron and apologize and hopefully Levi will say sorry to you too.’
She’d brought a warm tracksuit with her and now she crouched at Autumn’s feet and helped her put it on over the top of her tights and leotard. She stuffed Autumn’s school uniform into the bag and took out a cereal bar and a carton of apple juice, thinking Autumn would need a sugar boost to give her enough energy to make it home.
She pierced the carton with the straw and handed the juice to her daughter. She cupped her face in her hands before Autumn could take a sip and said, ‘Just remember, I caught you. I will always be there for you. No matter what.’
Autumn shrugged out of her grip and stuck the straw in her mouth without looking at her mother.
Tuesday 30 October
AUTUMN
She could imagine it. Down below the nature reserve where the ranks of red-brick houses were, there used to be watercress beds and a stream meandering through the middle. Women in long dresses, tucked into their petticoats, bent to pick the cress to sell at the market on Corn Street, or even as far away as Covent Garden.
Mrs Sibson spoilt it. People always did. It was History and they were doing ‘Where We Live’, which was all about Bris
tol. Autumn didn’t know much about Bristol and, at first, she thought it would be dull. They’d done The Great Fire of London two years ago at her old school and The Great Plague last year. She didn’t think there would be anything Great that had happened in Bristol.
‘Please, Mrs Sibson, can we talk about the black men that were sold on Blackboy Hill? That’s why it’s called Blackboy Hill,’ said Jason loudly to the class.
Mrs Sibson frowned. ‘That’s not why it’s called Blackboy Hill. We will be learning about slavery but not until spring term.’
Autumn felt confused. Why were black children sold on a hill? She didn’t really know what slavery meant either, only that it was something old and shameful. Mrs Sibson unrolled a large map and asked for volunteers to help her stick it on to the wall. It was like an ancient drawing done in sepia-coloured ink. Autumn was so focused on the key – the pictures down the side that stood for real things on the map – the way the artist had drawn a sprig of watercress, like a miniature cabbage balanced on a wiggling root, that she didn’t hear the start of the next bit.
All the houses had collapsed, Mrs Sibson was saying, waving her hand to show an entire hillside of terraces. Subsidence, Mrs Sibson said, and something about floods. Autumn didn’t know what subsidence was either. It sounded biblical.
‘That is why this area is now devoted to allotments. No one dared build on this hillside again.’
Autumn thought of all those houses. Rows and rows of them. Where the railway workers had lived. Their families. She thought of piles of rubble and rooms, suddenly opened to the sky so that people could look in as if they were giant dolls’ houses and see raggedy wallpaper and broken sofas and baby cots. She thought of the children, children the same age as her, who suddenly had no home. And now, where they used to live, where perhaps they had wandered around with no food in their tummies, rubbing their eyes and looking for their mums, there were sheds and sprouting broccoli and dead dahlias and alien squash.
Mrs Sibson asked her – had to ask her twice, in fact – to go and fetch the card. They were going to make model houses, like all the ones that had tumbled into the earth whose roofs and red bricks had rolled down the hill and buried the watercress. The card was thin and white and in a thick pile in one of the art drawers. The drawers were in a long unit underneath the window and were covered in carved pumpkins and plastic spiders and cotton-wool webs.
Autumn didn’t know whether to try and lift all the card out at once or just a few sheets at a time and, if she did that, she didn’t know where to put the card to gather it all together before she gave it to Mrs Sibson, because she didn’t want to ruin her autumnal display. She started to feel panicky. It was the sick feeling from thinking about the houses collapsing on babies, combined with knowing how clumsy she was. She was sure if she picked up the card in a pile, it would slide, nice and smoothly and quite catastrophically, out of her hands and fan across the floor, and Mrs Sibson would tut and wish she hadn’t trusted her to do a grown-up task and the other children would laugh.
Her hands were growing damp and sticky. She had a few sheets of card in them and she was looking out of the window in a kind of anxious trance. The classroom faced across the playground. A woman burst out of the main entrance and started running across the yard, mud falling off her boots, her fleecy jacket open, her hair tumbling out of her bun. She swallowed. It was her mum.
What was she doing in school this early? Autumn wondered. It wasn’t home time yet. And then she knew. She felt as if something had curdled in her stomach. She glanced, involuntarily, towards Levi’s classroom, although all she could see was the big map of Montpelier on the wall separating her from him. But his class also had windows that looked out onto the playground. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. Maybe no one would notice. She straightened up and looked away.
Tilly stood on tiptoes. ‘Isn’t that your mum, Autumn?’ she said loudly.
Everyone got up to have a look.
‘What’s she doing here?’
‘Sit down, please!’ said Mrs Sibson.
Her mum tore through the gate and it clanged loudly as it slammed shut behind her. Someone sniggered. There were bits of red earth in a line across the playground, like the crumbs scattered by Hansel and Gretel through the wood. The drawer full of card slid from beneath her hands and landed upside down on the floor.
LAURA
Laura worked until the last possible moment before hobbling to the Land Rover to put her tools away. The work was physically hard and her back was stiff and sore. She looked down at herself: she was muddy and wet, not quite how she wished to present herself to the headmaster.
Ted rested on his spade and said, ‘Leaving already?’
‘I’ve got an appointment at my daughter’s school. I told Barney about it yesterday.’ She glanced over at him and saw from his annoyed grimace that he’d forgotten.
‘’S not like you can make up the time, is it?’ said Ted.
She’d thought he was a laid-back hippie when she’d first met him, but Ted was like a chippie cabbie with a mean streak.
‘You know I can’t pay you for this last hour, don’t you?’ said Barney.
Laura, turning away from Barney, picked up her spade, her cheeks burning.
‘Of course,’ she said, shoving the spade in the boot and shutting the door. ‘I’ll put Autumn in an after-school club so I can make up the hours.’ Even as she said it, she could see the impossibility of it: it would be torture for the child if she had to stay at school any longer. And now that the other mothers had found out what she’d done to Levi, they wouldn’t want to help her out.
As she walked to the school, she rehearsed how she would speak to the head. This time she would sound calm but authoritative. She would state her case politely but firmly. At the very least Levi should be suspended from Ashley Grove. She would say nothing about what she had done to him, she thought. After all, she knew who Levi’s father was now and she had his phone number. No doubt he’d be in touch.
Laura kept her coat on to hide as much of her wet trousers as possible, but although she’d tried to wipe the soil off her boots at the door, she was acutely aware of each muddy print she left as she squeaked down the linoleum-lined corridor towards Mr George’s office. She took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
‘Come,’ said Mr George.
She pushed the door open and walked in.
‘Ah,’ he said, looking up and taking off his glasses, ‘Mrs Baron-Cohen. How are you?’ He stood up and shook her hand and then indicated a chair in front of his desk. Dileep George was originally of Indian origin and had a sallow complexion. He was in his fifties, grey around the temples and balding on top.
Laura sat down and wrapped her coat around her.
‘The school secretary tells me you’re here to talk about Autumn, how she’s settling in.’
‘Yes,’ said Laura. ‘I’ve already spoken to Mrs Sibson.’
He glanced down at some notes on his desk. ‘We’re delighted with how she’s doing. She’s a natural artist and gymnast. She’s a quiet child. Hard-working. She appears to be fitting in with the other children in her class.’ He was parroting Mrs Sibson – he must have asked her for a progress report, she thought. She noticed him looking at her trousers, her boots, coated in red clay. ‘Do you have any particular concerns?’
‘Yes. That’s what I wanted to see you about. A child in the year above has been bullying her. Autumn’s class teacher doesn’t appear to be taking it seriously.’
‘You mean Levi?’
‘Yes,’ she said, surprised. Perhaps Mrs Sibson or Mr Bradley had already spoken to the head – maybe they’d witnessed him bullying Autumn.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, ‘Mrs Sibson is taking the matter extremely seriously, I assure you. She’s spoken to both me and to the boy’s teacher. She has filed a report of the conversation you had with her, as we
ll as Autumn’s, exactly as we are instructed to do by the council when any allegation of bullying is made.’
‘She spoke to Autumn about it too? Without me?’
‘Apparently Autumn made a false accusation about Levi – she said he’d stolen her pen, although the pen was actually in her drawer and had not been moved.’
‘Oh. She didn’t tell me. I can’t imagine Autumn lying about something like that. There must have been some reason why she thought—’
‘In any case, aside from whether your daughter is making up these allegations regarding Levi, the more serious issue is your behaviour.’
‘My behaviour?’
‘Aaron Jablonski came to see me this morning. I thought that perhaps you were here to discuss your attack on his son. I think you’re extremely lucky. Mr Jablonski is a reasonable man. I’ve managed to persuade him not to press charges.’
‘What?’ said Laura. She felt her throat start to constrict. She had a vivid image of Aaron shouting at her in the playground surrounded by other parents. ‘Surely you don’t…’
‘Mr Jablonski does our IT here on a voluntary basis,’ continued Mr George, putting his glasses back on. ‘I’ve always found him to be trustworthy and diligent. If he does go to the police, I think you’ll find yourself facing a serious charge.’
‘Mr George, I’m not here to discuss that… that incident,’ said Laura, her voice trembling. ‘Levi has been bullying my daughter. He should be suspended.’
‘Your daughter made another accusation against Levi – that he put slugs in her drawer. We’ve spoken to both Levi and his teacher. Mr Bradley says it’s not possible for Levi to have done it – the classrooms are locked when the children are not in them with their teacher. Levi denies it too. But moving on to your attack on Levi – I’m afraid we do need to discuss the incident, as you refer to it. Levi told his father that six children say they saw you knock him to the ground, where he hit his head on a stone. Seven if you include Levi himself. I haven’t spoken to Autumn but presumably that would make it eight. Eight witnesses.’
