by Sanjida Kay
‘I think you’ll look really cool when we’re finished,’ he said quietly. He glanced at Laura and added, ‘I’ll just tidy up these ends and shape it a little, shall I?’
Laura nodded. Sam sprayed Autumn’s hair so that it was damp and then bent his lanky form over her daughter. For the next twenty minutes, he worked with the utmost concentration, before spraying her hair again and blow-drying it.
When he’d finished, he handed Autumn a hand mirror and twirled her around so that she could see the back of her head. Laura, watching Autumn looking at herself, felt tears well up. All that lovely, long, thick hair. Autumn had an elfin cut now. It accentuated her sharp chin and wide cheekbones, highlighted the fragility of her neck, the bones standing out, the hollow at the nape. She looked like a changeling-child, immortal, ageless. It made Laura feel uncomfortable, as if her daughter’s innocence had been stolen.
Autumn nodded and smiled up at Sam. At least it was better than it had been before.
‘If you want to grow it again, leave it for a couple of months and then come back for a trim,’ Sam said to her.
Laura winced when Sam told her how much it was going to cost. She’d thought about asking if he could trim her hair too, but at these prices she could barely afford Autumn’s haircut. She swallowed. They’d have to economize somehow. She handed him her credit card. She’d phoned the bank about her debit card and the woman she’d spoken to had said the password had been altered and she’d need to come to a branch with some ID to reset it, but Laura hadn’t had time so far. She dug her fingernails into her palms as Sam put through the extortionate amount and then they both waited.
‘It’s been rejected,’ he said.
In the mirror Laura saw Autumn’s face fall. Sam seemed almost as nervous as she was. He wiped his hands on his trousers and said from under his curly ruff of hair, ‘I’ve got dyslexia, I’m no good at this kind of thing. Hang on and I’ll get someone else instead.’
A couple of minutes later, he returned with a bored-looking girl whose platinum-blonde hair was interspersed with pink streaks. She popped gum loudly as she put Laura’s card in the machine again. Laura wondered what she could do – she might have to go home and find her cheque book. A cheque would take a few days to clear and give her time to unlock her current account.
There was a whirring sound and the girl tore off the receipt and handed it to her.
Thank God, she thought, smiling brightly, as if nothing had been wrong.
They were late returning home after the hairdresser’s and the van with the security company logo was already waiting outside for them. Laura had called the company yesterday after the police had spoken to her. She had to face up to what was happening. It wasn’t simply that Autumn was being bullied in a particularly brutal way, it was everything: the destruction of her bike, the vandalism of Ruth’s garden, the corruption of her emails and Skype, her bank account, which had been hacked into, her passwords for Netflix, Amazon and the Internet all reset, her laptop destroyed. There was no question about it, she felt increasingly unsafe.
A man, seeing them approach, opened the van door and climbed out.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Autumn.
‘He’s going to fit a burglar alarm,’ said Laura.
She hadn’t told Autumn in case she felt worried about them needing a security system, but when she glanced back at her daughter, who was unclipping her seat belt, she didn’t seem concerned.
Steve, from Cannongate Security, worked quietly and efficiently as Laura cooked dinner for herself and Autumn, fitting the alarm and also a panic button. When he’d finished, he called downstairs to her.
He showed her how to set the code for the alarm. The high-pitched beeping, signalling the alarm was about to go off, made her pulse elevate.
‘If someone breaks in then we and the police will automatically be notified,’ he said calmly as she put in the code, her fingers trembling. The beeping silenced immediately. ‘We’ll call you and if you don’t answer, the police will be sent round. To set the alarm, you punch the code in when you’re leaving the house and you’ll have forty seconds to get out and shut the door behind you. When you re-enter the house, you’ll have forty seconds to put the code in before the alarm goes off. You also have another option,’ he said, turning to her. She noticed how patient he was, taking care to make sure she had understood. ‘At night, before you go to bed, use this code.’ He showed her on the key pad and then wrote it down on the Cannongate contract. ‘Now you can go to your bedrooms and the bathroom – basically anywhere from the bottom of these stairs to the attic – but if someone breaks into either the sitting room or the kitchen, the alarm will be triggered. It means that you’ll need to cancel the code when you get up in the morning – or if you want to go downstairs during the night.’
Laura nodded. ‘Thank you.’
‘If that’s everything, I’ll need to take payment from you now and set up a monthly direct debit for the alarm,’ said Steve.
Laura sat on the stairs to fill in the forms. Autumn, who had been hovering behind her, disappeared back to the kitchen. She hesitated once the form was completed and only required her signature to validate the contract. She wasn’t sure she could afford the extra expense. Still, since she no longer had access to her bank account, thanks to Aaron, she’d have to pay for it using her credit card. She’d worry about it later. She signed the form, pressing harder into the paper than she normally would.
After Steve left, she found Autumn sitting silently at the kitchen table, staring at the wall. It was as if some vital spark had been extinguished; her silent rage against her mother had turned to limp apathy. There was a blankness behind her eyes. She hung her head over her dinner. To Laura, this abject resignation – in spite of the new haircut, which Laura had thought would cheer her up – was more frightening than the anger Autumn had previously directed towards her. As soon as they’d finished eating, Autumn walked away from her, leadenly climbing the steep stairs towards her bedroom.
Thursday 8 November
LAURA
Autumn did not appear that morning. Eventually Laura tiptoed into her room and saw that she was still sleeping. She looked so peaceful, her pale face smooth and free of her perpetually anxious expression. Laura couldn’t help smiling but then she noticed that her daughter’s hands were twisted into her duvet, her fingers white from gripping so tightly. Laura laid out her school uniform on the end of the bed and, when the child still did not stir, she kissed her on the tip of her nose and whispered her name as she used to do when her daughter was young enough to have naps during the day. Autumn frowned in her sleep and then sat bolt upright, her eyes wide with fright. Laura put her arms around her to soothe her. Autumn remained rigid for a moment before pushing her mother away.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked as she knelt on the floor in front of her child.
Autumn looked at her school uniform with disbelief. ‘I don’t want to go to school.’
Laura thought of the call Dileep George had made to Social Services. She couldn’t risk keeping her at home – and she couldn’t annoy Barney even more than she already had. She silently handed the uniform to Autumn, who snatched it out of her hands and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She refused to eat anything before they left. Laura didn’t push her. There was almost nothing in the house anyway and she thought that at least Autumn would be able to have a decent lunch at Ashley Grove. She wondered if her daughter was eligible for free school meals; she made a mental note to look into it once this was all over.
Autumn neither spoke nor made eye contact with her as they drove in. After she’d dropped her off at the school gates, Laura drove recklessly fast to reach the garden she was working on with Barney and Ted. It was as she was approaching the blind bend on Frenchay Road that she saw the flowers. She slowed down. There were three bunches tied to the wall, still wrapped in cellophane: carnations an
d chrysanthemums, harsh, cheap flowers, garish in the grey light, already frost-bitten and wilting. A few metres further on was a yellow road sign asking for information about the accident.
Sweat pricked her palms. The young girl she’d seen the week before – the one with the blue nail varnish and long, unblemished white legs, lying on the pavement – she must have died after she was hit by the car. Laura was now crawling at ten miles an hour. The car behind her hooted its horn. There was a homemade banner fluttering from a lamp post, the stitching uneven. Ribbon had been sewn on to create words: We love you Joanna.
Laura’s eyes filled with tears. She put the car into second gear and slowly accelerated away.
AUTUMN
Autumn had had many bad days at school since she moved to Bristol, but this one, this one was the worst.
She walked into the classroom and found that she no longer existed. No one looked up. No one spoke to her. She felt as if a chill wind had blown through her and made her all shimmery and invisible. She tried to speak but all the words had been taken away.
‘Maths homework was really tricky. Could you do the partitions?’ she finally managed to say to Molly and Olive.
Her voice was croaky, as if it had not been used before.
Both girls looked at their notebooks. Olive lined her pencils up in a row. Autumn pulled out the empty chair next to Olive but the girl smacked her hand on the table.
‘This seat is taken,’ she said.
Autumn moved to the next chair, but another girl, Katie, pulled it away from her. She tried one more time, moving towards the only spare place left next to the other pupils, but Tilly dropped her bag on the chair, just as she was about to sit down. She was forced to sit at a table on her own.
In Literacy Mrs Sibson put them into groups of three. They were supposed to discuss friendship and write a story together on what the best part of being friends was. Mrs Sibson placed her with Olive and Tilly. Tilly asked if she could move to a new group because everyone knew that Autumn copied people’s work. Mrs Sibson said no, it was a collaborative venture. Autumn felt her cheeks glow. Mrs Sibson had not said, Autumn did not copy you, Tilly.
Tilly made a face and some of the other girls looked sympathetic. She and Olive whispered to each other, glancing back at Autumn, cupping their hands around their mouths so she couldn’t hear what they were saying. They half turned so she couldn’t speak to them or see what they were writing either.
At break-time she went to sit next to Molly. As she sat down, Molly walked over to the other girls. There was no more room on the log they were perched on, but they all budged up and Molly squeezed on the end. They looked at her and tossed their hair and sat forward and whispered.
Autumn was acutely aware of the space that had opened up around her. She was alone. No one spoke to her. It was difficult to breathe. She stared down at her shoes on the cracked Tarmac of the playground, a tree root visible beneath the asphalt.
She hoped no one noticed how alone she was. Levi was leaning against the climbing frame with his friends. He looked up, an egg sandwich, part of it still in its corner shop wrapper, spilling in creamy clots from his mouth. He gave a wolfish grin.
LAURA
At lunchtime, Laura went to sit in her car to eat the leftovers from last night’s meal and shelter from the rain. She turned the engine on and the heat as high as it would go to try and warm herself up. Ted and Barney were in Barney’s Land Rover but there wasn’t enough room for all three of them in the front, even if she had wanted to join them.
As she was eating, she noticed a flash of bright pink. She reached forward to see what it was. Tucked in the pocket in the passenger side of the door was Autumn’s mobile.
She must have forgotten to take it to school, Laura thought.
She wiped her hands on her army trousers and reached over to retrieve it. There was a spiderweb of cracks on the screen. Autumn had dropped or thrown it. Before she could stop herself, Laura turned on the phone. She felt dreadful, as if she was spying on her daughter. Immediately five texts appeared on the home screen. Laura pressed the Message button to look at them properly.
They were all from the same person. The caller’s number was blocked and there was no name, only the messages, each worse than the previous one. She read them over and over again. She couldn’t believe how vicious they were, how foul the language.
She was going to kill the person who had done this to her daughter.
At least now she had proof. She could take the mobile to the police and show them. Surely they could unbar the number? She clicked on the first text to see if there was any more information, any way to trace the call, but it said, Caller ID withheld.
She remembered the article she’d read in The Washington Post about the father who’d hired a teenager to beat up his son’s bully. The journalist had described how bullying had become more Internet-based – cyber-stalking and trolls posting hateful comments on social networking sites.
Surely that’s too advanced for Autumn’s age group?
And then she thought of Levi’s father.
She touched the Facebook icon. The screen opened and slowly loaded. She jabbed at the phone, to scroll through the newsfeed. She stared at it in disbelief. She sat, stunned, the phone in her hand, its blank screen slowly dimming. She threw the mobile on the seat and put the car into gear. She pulled out and slowed next to the Land Rover and wound the window down. Ted started to lower his window but, without waiting for it to fully open, she shouted at the two of them, ‘Got to go. It’s an emergency,’ and drove off before they could respond.
Within a few seconds, her phone started to ring. It was Barney. She dropped her phone on the seat next to Autumn’s and pushed the car into third gear.
AUTUMN
She told Mrs Sibson she wasn’t feeling well and she didn’t want anything to eat. She said maybe she was coming down with flu. She could tell Mrs Sibson didn’t believe her because she had that sceptical expression her dad used to have when he said, Pull the other one. But she must have felt sorry for her because she said she could stay inside during lunchtime.
At first she was relieved. She watched the other children playing outside, as if they were dangerous animals in a giant enclosure and she was safely on the other side of the thick glass walls. She didn’t turn the lights on. She took out a pad and a fine-tipped black pen but she couldn’t think of anything she wanted to draw. She opened The Amber Spyglass, the book that Granny had been reading to her – but Lyra’s dreams of the Land of the Dead made her frightened and she closed it again.
And so, with nothing to occupy her, and her thoughts skittish as the pond skaters in their garden back home, in their real home, she started to think about the Facebook page. She wondered if it was still there. If the children in her class were still posting messages. She’d have a quick look, she thought, just to check. Then she’d know who she could trust. She turned on one of the computers and clicked on Facebook. It opened at the We Hate Autumn page. There were so many new messages. A kind of panic seized her. She couldn’t read them properly. The sentences and names were jumbled up, the words black and rotting, like decaying liquorice allsorts. She backed away.
It was the noise that caught her attention. A strange kind of panting and moaning, like an animal in distress. She turned around slowly. It was a video posted on the Facebook page. Autumn didn’t understand it but she knew straight away that it was shameful and disgusting and she could never tell anyone about it, not even her mum.
The video was of a naked man and woman. He was doing something to her and it looked as if he was hurting her. She was a proper lady, with boobs that wobbled every time he pushed her, although she didn’t get up and run away. But the terrible, terrible thing that she would never be able to tell anyone about ever, was that this grown woman had her face.
LAURA
As she drove back through Frenchay, she noticed
that there were more flowers for the dead girl and, stuck between the railings was a teddy, limp with damp. The rain grew heavier. She slowed down as a cyclist wobbled in front of her. Laura couldn’t risk overtaking her; the streets in Bristol were so narrow and the girl was almost in the middle of the road. She was dressed entirely in black, with a short skirt and lace tights. Her hair had turned into fat, wet ropes. She wasn’t wearing a helmet and with one hand she shielded her face to see through the rain. Laura felt worried and annoyed at the delay; at the same time, she couldn’t help but admire her insouciance, the attitude that allowed a young woman to ride fast and dangerously in inappropriate attire in inclement weather and trust the world to keep her safe.
She overtook the girl as the road widened and drove as fast as she could to the school. She parked illegally at the edge of the road on double yellow lines and ran across the playground, clutching Autumn’s phone. For a moment she thought she glimpsed Autumn in an empty classroom, but it couldn’t have been her because all the children in her year were in the canteen finishing their lunch. Some were beginning to leave the cafeteria, noisily filtering down the corridors and bursting into the playground in a multi-coloured jumble of waterproofs and wellingtons.
Laura raced past the school secretary, who called out to her, and ran down the corridor towards Dileep George’s office. She knocked once on his door and then walked in. He looked up, startled. She strode across the room and threw the pink mobile on his desk.
‘It’s Autumn’s,’ she said, when he made no move to pick it up.
‘We don’t allow children to have…’
‘There were five nasty texts on her phone, from a barred number. And then this.’
She swiped the splintered screen and handed it back to him, open at the Facebook page. ‘I haven’t been able to refresh it. Either there’s no signal or the phone isn’t working properly – it looks like Autumn tried to smash it – but you can see what was written up until yesterday.’
