by Sanjida Kay
‘I thought you should know – I heard a couple of the parents talking about it and it seems that all the statements so far back up your version of events.’
‘My version?’
Another spot of rain landed on her cheek and Laura squinted up at the grey sky. Amy gave a little shrug and jiggled Tom up and down. The child was starting to grow impatient. She glanced at Laura out of the corner of her eye. ‘Everyone has their own version, their own memories.’
Laura tried to stop herself from becoming annoyed by Amy’s prim tone.
‘True,’ she sighed. ‘But in this case, there can be no doubt. I did push him. And he did fall and cut his face. All those kids, including my own daughter, saw me do it.’
It was a relief to finally say it out loud to another adult. Amy’s response was not what she was expecting though.
‘Yes. And that’s what the boys are saying so far. I always thought that Aaron’s version was unlikely.’
‘Aaron’s version?’
It started to rain properly, a light patter of large drops. Tom’s face crumpled. Amy pulled a dummy out of her handbag and popped it in his mouth before continuing.
‘I mean, I can imagine losing my temper. Especially if I thought my children were threatened. Levi is a big kid and the boys that were with him are intimidating – they’re all from the local secondary school. I feel threatened by them. But I couldn’t picture you beating Levi like that.’ Amy turned to face her properly. ‘Apparently Aaron told the police you hit Levi several times, on his back and across his chest too. With a stick.’ She fished her car keys out and held them in a tight fist.
Laura frowned. Why would Aaron lie? She was going to get into enough trouble as it was without him making it sound worse.
‘Thank you,’ said Laura. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
She opened the boot and started to put the groceries in. Amy ran, her head bowed, towards her car. A couple of minutes later, she gave Laura a tiny, stiff wave as she drove past, the baby waving his fat fists and howling in the back.
On the way home, Laura thought of the upmarket bar of chocolate. It felt like a long time since she’d treated herself, or even eaten decently.
On her front doorstep, she took a deep breath before unlocking the door. This was only the second time she’d had to switch the alarm off. The beeping, signalling that the alarm was about to trigger, frightened her. But it would be okay, she told herself, she’d done it before and she knew the code. She opened the door and rushed inside to turn the alarm off. Nothing happened. There was no sound. She looked at the security box, newly mounted on the wall by the front door. There were no lights on. The system was dead.
Her first thought was of Autumn. Could she have switched off the alarm? No, that would be impossible, she hadn’t taught her the code. And even if she had somehow managed to silence the alarm, the system would still be active.
‘Autumn?’ she called up the stairs. Her voice echoed in the stillness. She shouted her name again, louder.
There was no reply. Could Aaron have somehow hacked into the system and overridden it? What if he was inside the house now? Leaving the shopping bags where she’d set them down on the step, the door open, the car boot gaping wide, she raced up the stairs. She ran up two flights and burst into Autumn’s room, her heart pounding. The bedroom was empty. She ran out and across the landing to the spare room. She wasn’t there either.
She hadn’t checked the bathroom, she thought. She ran back down the narrow stairs. She slipped and had to grab the banisters to stop herself from falling. The bathroom door was ajar. Autumn was not inside. She hurriedly searched the spare room. It was also empty. Standing outside her own office, still in the hall, she had a glimpse of the end of the garden. She couldn’t have gone outside, Laura thought – she’d have triggered the alarm by even entering the hall, let alone the kitchen.
And then she realized that, of course, the alarm wasn’t working. Autumn could be anywhere. But the child didn’t know the alarm had been switched off, so Autumn wouldn’t have tried to go outside or even down to the sitting room. Unless… Her mind was whirling in frantic circles… Unless someone had cancelled the alarm and broken into the house while Laura was out and forced her…
‘Autumn!’ she screamed at the top of her voice.
There was no reply.
She ran back to the hall and grabbed her phone out of her handbag. She’d call the police. But first, she had to double-check that Autumn really was not in the house. She’d start at the top, she thought, and be methodical about it. As she was running up the stairs, she felt as if she was wasting time. If Autumn had already been taken…
When she reached the attic, she flung open the door of her bedroom. Autumn looked up at her in surprise. She was lying on the bed, listening to music on Laura’s iPod. She pulled off her pink headphones.
‘Did you get any biscuits, Mum? I’m starving.’ She sounded grouchy and tired.
Laura thought she was going to burst into tears. She rushed over and hugged her.
‘Mum, you’ve only been gone an hour,’ said Autumn, wriggling out of her embrace. She slowly eased herself off the bed, casually tossing Laura’s iPod behind her.
As Laura retrieved the shopping and locked the house, she realized why the alarm wasn’t working. She hadn’t been able to use her credit card in the supermarket – Aaron, presumably, had done something to it, just as he’d managed to cancel her bank card, the Internet, Skype, Netflix… The list seemed endless. While she was unpacking the shopping, she phoned the security company to check.
‘Mrs Baron-Cohen? I’ve been trying to reach you. I left a couple of messages on the landline,’ said the man on the other end, when she’d introduced herself.
As she suspected, the payment had not gone through so the system had been deactivated.
‘We can have it up in a moment, as soon as the payment is processed,’ he said.
Laura hung up.
‘Let’s have some hot chocolate with our biscuits,’ she said brightly to Autumn.
Autumn shrugged in response and listlessly sat down at the kitchen table.
Tomorrow Laura could visit the bank and reactivate her cards – she had no way of reinstating the burglar alarm otherwise. The money she earned from Bronze Beech all went straight into her current account; the only other cash she could get hold of would have been her payment from Ruth but Laura didn’t have the heart to ask her for it.
First, though, she’d ring Jacob. She went into her office to call him so that Autumn wouldn’t hear her. The grey light, filtering through the sheets of rain, made a watery pattern against the wall. Jacob didn’t sound particularly happy to hear from her but he listened patiently.
‘It’s got to be him. I mean, who else could it possibly have been?’ she said, when she’d explained about the Facebook troll page.
‘What do the school say?’ asked Jacob.
She hesitated. She didn’t want to tell him that the head teacher had said he would speak to Aaron, because she knew Aaron would deny it and Mr George was bound to believe him.
‘I can give you his phone number. You could arrange to meet him on the pretext of having your laptop repaired,’ she said.
‘And then do what?’
‘Just talk to him. He won’t listen to me. Tell him to stop. To leave me alone. To leave us alone.’
There was a long pause. Laura could hear people talking, but their voices didn’t sound hollow as they might if Jacob was in a café.
‘Where are you?’ she asked finally.
‘On The Downs. I’m about to teach a class. Look, Laura, I’m really sorry about what happened. It must have been, well, frightening. But you’re okay. Autumn is safe. You’ve taken her out of school. I’ve got to go, Laura.’
He hung up.
Sometime in the night she woke, suddenly and complet
ely. Her first thought was of Autumn. Perhaps her daughter couldn’t sleep and had risen and that was what had woken her. Laura sat up and listened. She couldn’t hear anything but the house felt different. There was a thin wind that rattled the panes of glass and moaned around the gable wall. Something banged loudly, making her jump. It sounded as if it was coming from outside the back of the house. She climbed out of bed and wrapped her dressing gown around herself.
Before she’d gone to bed, Laura had double-checked that the garden gate, the doors and windows were locked. She tried not to think about the alarm, now simply a dead, white plastic box stuck on the wall in the hall.
There was another crash from outside the house. Laura automatically looked towards the landing window but, in the darkness and from this height, she could see nothing save the stars and a moon-rimmed grey cloud. It sounded like the garden gate, swinging open and beating against the wall. It had been locked though, she was sure of it. Perhaps it was the neighbour’s, she thought. She felt her heart turn to ice.
She crept downstairs and peered in at Autumn. She was asleep. She could hear her breathing; it was fast and slightly nasal. Looking down at her daughter in the dark, she remembered the feel of Autumn’s soft skin just after she’d been born, her baby hair, as downy as a fledgling’s, the gentle dip of her fontanelle where her cranium had not yet fused; how noisy she was, like a hedgehog snuffling in its sleep.
She tiptoed through the rest of the house. She took the last steps down into the kitchen without turning the light on, hands balanced on the wall on either side of her, as if they were closing in on her and she had to push them away. She stood in the entrance to the kitchen and looked out towards the garden. She could see nothing. She waited until her eyes adjusted and the trees and the shrubs and the fence at the back became cut-out silhouettes against the dark of the sky. She decided it was too much of a risk to open the door to the garden but it didn’t look as if there’d been a break-in and she couldn’t hear or see any movement.
She started to shiver and, after a while, she crept slowly back upstairs and climbed into bed.
Friday 9th November
LAURA
She slept fitfully, half listening for any noise. Early, before her alarm went off and Autumn woke, she rose. She went downstairs and opened the kitchen door. A thin, milky-yellow light spilt over the horizon. Venus shone brightly to the east. The first birds were beginning to sing. During the night, thanks to the freakish wind, all the leaves from the ash tree next door had blown down and the entire garden was covered with dead brown drifts, as thick as snow. She walked through the freezing garden, the leaves crunching beneath her feet.
The garden gate was shut and locked. She rattled it to make sure. As far as she could tell, it hadn’t been damaged. It must have been next door’s, crashing open and closed in the wind. She felt as if she’d suddenly grown lighter, as if a steel weight had slipped from her shoulders. She turned to go back inside the house and that was when she saw it.
In the feeble dawn, part of the wall of the house was illuminated. She recognized the colour of the paint. It was scarlet-red, exactly the same shade of spray-paint that had been used on Autumn’s bike and to scrawl Bitch, again and again, across Ruth’s garden. On the wall between the kitchen door and the window someone had written:
Bone by Bone
Laura froze. She heard Aaron’s voice, so quiet it was barely more than a whisper It’s the best place to see the stars in the city.
He had wanted to walk home through the nature reserve so that he could watch Jupiter’s raging red-eye from Narroways’ hill. And she had given him the key code to the garden door. And now he had let himself in, painted on her house and left, locking the gate behind him.
The police arrived half an hour later. Laura, who didn’t want to wake Autumn, was waiting for them at the door. A young woman and a middle-aged man got out of the police car and came over to the house. The woman, small and stocky in her tight black trousers, introduced herself as PC Rachel Emery and her companion as PC Sebastien Jones.
She led them downstairs to the kitchen. PC Emery had a heart-shaped face and she inclined her head towards Laura as she listened. When she took her hat off, she looked younger, more vulnerable. She had creamy skin and freckles and brown hair which had recently been highlighted and was now pulled back from her face in a low ponytail. On her left hand was an engagement ring; a single diamond dug into the flesh, as if her fingers were a little swollen. Laura, looking at the woman’s plain face and her soft body, realized that she had no faith in PC Emery’s ability to protect her or her daughter. PC Jones stood a little behind her, as if distancing himself from the proceedings.
‘So, let me see if I’ve understood this correctly,’ said PC Emery. ‘There has been no break-in. You think someone let themselves into the garden from the lane behind the house, using the key code on the garden door, and then left again, locking the gate behind them.’
‘Have you checked if anything is missing?’ asked PC Jones. ‘Bikes, the TV, the DVD player, camera equipment, your laptop – anything valuable?’
He had a doughy face, fleshy bags under his eyes, which were of an indeterminate colour. His grey hair was cropped closely at the sides of his head and stood straight upright from his crown, bristly, like a scrubbing brush.
‘No!’ said Laura. ‘I know who did this. And he didn’t come here to steal anything. It was a computer repair man. He was in our house – to fix my laptop – about ten days ago. I gave him the key code so he could let himself out the back.’
He and PC Emery exchanged a look, as if they were suddenly unsure what or who they were dealing with; as if Laura’s claim that it was a break-in was a lie.
She took them outside.
‘It’s a line from a poem by Emily Dickinson,’ Laura said to the police officers as the three of them stood and looked at the words, each letter in garish red smudged across the white wall.
‘A literate vandal?’ said PC Jones.
She shook her head. ‘I told you. The computer guy. He hacked into my laptop after he’d fixed it. So he knows that I wrote my dissertation on Dickinson.’
They don’t believe me, she thought, her face starting to burn.
PC Jones coughed and looked down at his feet. PC Emery was examining Laura carefully.
Still standing outside, staring at the defaced wall, her feet numb with cold, Laura quoted:
There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance –
So Memory can step
Around – across – upon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye –
Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.
When she stopped, they both stared at her and she felt a surge of embarrassment. It used to be so natural to quote poetry when she was a teenager at university and now, here she was, in her thirties, her feet bare, sounding like a Victorian lunatic. She still couldn’t tell what colour PC Jones’s eyes were.
‘It was the poem on the first page of my essay. It’s about death. And rage. Violence, grief, pain. Pain above all else. Pain beyond measure. A pain that is impossible to endure. The body can’t deal with suffering on that scale so it closes down, goes into a trance… She – Emily Dickinson – had nervous breakdowns.’
She tucked one foot behind her calf, trying to warm her toes.
PC Jones stared up at the scarlet letters. ‘Could be a line from a rap lyric. A graffiti artist’s tag. Or a threat from someone who’s never read a line of poetry in his life.’
‘No! I told you who did it. He’s trying to scare us.’
The dawn light picked out the warm chestnut streaks in PC Emery’s hair. She walked towards Laura and took her arm. ‘Let’s go inside, shall we? You could do with a cup of tea to warm you up.’
>
Later that day, Laura found herself in Autumn’s room. She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing there. She thought she might lie down for a moment, stretch out on Autumn’s bed, inhale her daughter’s scent. She was bone tired.
Autumn had risen late that morning, well after the police had left. Laura didn’t tell her about the break-in. She’d been lethargic and uncommunicative, silently eating a bowl of Frosties. At least she was eating, Laura thought. She’d made her a cup of hot Ribena and put CBBC on and now Autumn was sitting in front of the TV, still in her pyjamas.
Laura thought she should change the sheets – it had been ages since she’d last done it – when she remembered Autumn had stuck one picture back on the wall. She walked over to look at it. It was of a girl. She had grey eyes and long brown hair in plaits. She was smiling and she had a gap in her teeth. On her knee was a baby. The child was gurgling, open-mouthed. She had the same pale-grey eyes and light-brown hair as her big sister.
Autumn and her imaginary little sister, Emily. Autumn had told her about her once. She used to draw pictures of Emily all the time. Laura had hoped Autumn had stopped wishing for a sister or a brother. Maybe because she was feeling so vulnerable, she’d started thinking about Emily again.
It wasn’t too late, Laura thought. She could meet someone. It was still possible.
The phone rang. Laura ran down the stairs and into her office.
‘Laura! I’ve been trying to reach you.’
She had an image of Matt, snow-clad Himalayas in the background, five stunning athletes flanking him as he strode down the mountain. He must be ringing because he couldn’t get through on Skype, she thought, but it was too early for his call with Autumn – and it was not like Matt to waste money using the satellite phone unless it was an emergency.
‘What’s the matter? Where are you?’ she asked.
‘That’s the problem. We’re stuck.’
‘What? Where?’
