The Bone Dragon (32 page)

‘Don’t be a twit, Paul,’ Uncle Ben interrupts.

Paul gives a sigh and I hear a dull sound as if he’s knocked into the table in the process of getting up to pace. ‘It just seems odd, that’s all. That perhaps they’re trying to . . .’

‘To what? Lull you into a false sense of security so that they can catch you red-handed doing what exactly? Burying empty petrol drums in your garden? Amy, you’re usually the nitwit: tell your husband not to be such an idiot.’

A murmur from Amy and a grumble I can’t make out from Paul.

‘Look, I’m sure they’d have been round here like a shot if there were anything suspicious about the fire. But there’s obviously nothing fishy going on: they know how the fire got started and there’s clearly no sign of anything sinister. They must be able to tell that the doors weren’t forced. No windows broken from the outside. No petrol or lighter fluid sprayed about. No sign of anything other than two horrible people quietly putting an end to themselves by accident. The police are probably no sorrier about it than we are.’

‘Maybe so,’ Paul says, heaving a sigh I can hear from the stairs. ‘Maybe they were glad to see no sign of anything suspicious so they could write it off as an accident right from the start.’

‘You got a guilty conscience worrying you that they’ll find stray fingerprints, Paul?’ Uncle Ben teases. ‘Or have you never heard of plastic gloves?’

‘Ben, don’t be awful,’ snaps Amy.

‘Not that your conscience would need to prick you if you had.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Ben,’ Paul says.

I can practically hear Uncle Ben roll his eyes when he says, ‘I’m not the one fretting over the fact that, for once, things have worked out like they should. Besides, I know you’d have called me over to help if either of you had even considered it. And you both know I would have come.’

There is silence below. I see Amy reach out to the coffee table and pick up the smart brass picture frame that holds the last picture of Adam, taken only two days before all chance of further photos was lost for ever. Amy wipes her sleeve across the glass one way, then the other. It’s a nervous habit, like twisting her ring: there’s never any dust on the photo. She and Paul both take it up too often for any to settle.

‘But you didn’t and I didn’t . . . And thank God that our collective cowardice has been rewarded. We’ve got what we want – what Evie needs – and none of us even had to get our fingertips dirty.’

‘I just can’t help feeling like we’ve still not seen the end of it yet,’ Paul says, with a weary sigh. ‘Like we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, as the Americans would say.’

‘For God’s sake, Paul. Just be happy about it. It’s practically a fairytale ending. What more do you want?’

I creep down one step, then two, leaning forwards until I can just make out the matching picture frame at the other end of the coffee table: a portrait of Adam’s family, everyone present and accounted for. Behind it, on the wall, I see the picture of my family.

In the kitchen, on the fridge, my latest drawing is taped next to one of Adam’s: I press my hand against his sometimes, just at the corner so I won’t ruin it, just to feel . . . I don’t know what exactly, but it’s a good feeling that has nothing to do with jealousy. And I’m proud of myself for that. Proud and happy. Somehow that picture makes the house feel full.

Paul collapses back on to the sofa, his hands clasped white-knuckled between his knees. ‘It just feels like there’s a price to be paid.’

‘Oh for Gawd’s sake,’ says Uncle Ben impatiently. ‘Don’t give me any rubbish about karma. If it’s karma, then it’s just what’s coming to them. Don’t you think Evie’s paid any price ten times over? This is just settling up the score. Balancing the scales. Why do you have to worry over the best thing to happen since she came through the operation such a star?’

Paul’s hands come up to rub at his temples. After a moment, he slumps back so that his head is tilted up to the ceiling over the sofa back.

‘Maybe some things are too good to be true.’ He sighs, and then rolls his head to look at Amy. ‘If you made chocolate mousse tomorrow, I might be persuaded that you were one of them.’

I return to bed, smiling.

It turns out that Fiona’s parents didn’t leave a will. No one can even seem to work out if they had a lawyer. I’m their only family so it’s been decided – I don’t understand exactly who did the deciding, but it seems to be something Amy and Paul’s lawyer arranged – that I inherit. They had a bit of money in a bank account and then there’s the insurance on the house. I don’t really care about all that. The important bit was that the lawyer asked me what I wanted by way of funeral arrangements and so forth. So I got them cremated and the ashes put in a plain wooden box. Amy offered to get something nicer for them if I wanted, but I said that I knew exactly where I wanted the ashes to go and so they wouldn’t be staying in the box for very long.

We’re with the lawyer now, in his office, and they’re all watching me carefully: Amy with worry, Paul with pride and the lawyer with rather excessive sympathy.

‘Well . . . Well, I’m sure it’s all been a bit trying for our young lady,’ the lawyer says, smirking all over his big, fat face. ‘Maybe we should . . .’

‘If there aren’t any wills and that means it’s all up to me, does that mean I can change something?’ I interrupt.

‘What sort of thing were you thinking of changing?’ the lawyer asks, looking puzzled.

‘Fi— my . . . my mother’s grave,’ I say, refusing to let myself dwell on the words. ‘If . . . if my . . . grandparents,’ I get out, ‘put something – an inscription – I don’t want, can I change it?’

The lawyer opens his eyes as wide as they’ll go and blinks. ‘Well . . . Well, I suppose it would be possible. Provided that your mother didn’t leave a will specifying any of the arrangements that you would like to . . . er . . . undo.’

I smile. I know that Fiona can’t have left a will – at least none that was honoured. The grave must have been her parents’ idea. I might talk to Ms Winters about that, actually. It would be interesting to see if she thinks they knew it was the last thing Fiona wanted.

The day before we went to live with her parents, Fiona took me out on to the fens and we scattered Dad’s ashes. We walked for hours and hours, scattering a bit here, a bit there. I nearly cried at first because I had a horrid image of the ashes being blown about the fens, trying to reunite into my father. I remember asking her if it would hurt him to be all divided up like that, but Fiona just smiled and took my hand and guided it into the little wooden box.

‘It wouldn’t hurt him at all,’ she said. ‘He loved to feel free. He would want to be spread out so he could be in lots of places at once. Then, if his ghost decides to come back, he can wander around, all over the fens. He won’t have to be trapped. Stuck in just one place. That’s why we didn’t get him a grave. He would have hated that. Being stuck in a box: being put down into the ground in a box. Being trapped there in the dark.’

Her face is haunted and pale in the sunlight. I tilt my head back to look up at her. The sun is like lightning in a white sky. In the glare, her eyes glow like glass. I turn to follow her gaze, to see what she is looking at that is making her face so sad and desperate. Almost as if she’s afraid. Tightening my hand around hers, I wonder if she is seeing ghosts: other people whose ashes have been scattered here and are walking through the fens with us. But there is nothing. Just the golden late-summer grass and the dazzle and shimmer of water glinting through the reeds.

‘She didn’t leave a will,’ I tell the lawyer. ‘I’m sure she didn’t.’

The lawyer sighs. ‘Well, I don’t doubt you’re right, but I’m afraid that we’ll need to establish that as fact. We’ll need to prove it,’ he explains, as if I’m five
and
stupid.

‘So
can
you find out?’ I ask. Then I suck in a breath. ‘I want you to find out,’ I amend. ‘And when you do and you
establish
that there’s no will or anything then I . . . I want the grave to just have her name and the dates. I don’t want anything else. Not even “RIP”. Just her name and the dates. If it says anything else, then I want it taken off or the stone changed or whatever has to happen, but I just want the name and the dates.’

‘Evie dear . . .’ says Amy, putting her hand on my knee.

‘That’s what I want.’

Amy looks up at Paul, her face a picture of worry, but Paul is looking steadily into my eyes. He nods. ‘If no one said anything in a will about what has to go on the grave, then it’s up to you, Evie.’

The lawyer looks deeply uncomfortable. ‘It is a most . . . unusual . . . request . . .’

‘There’s more than enough money in the estate for the work, and for whatever changes are necessary to effect the result my daughter wants,’ Paul says firmly.

‘I don’t want to know, though,’ I say quickly. ‘I don’t want to know what the grave says now: whether you have to change it . . . I don’t want to know.’

Paul squeezes my shoulder. ‘I’ll take care of it, Evie.’

And he does. One day, I come back from school and Paul is home early.

‘The grave’s exactly how you want it, Evie,’ is all he says.

And I say, ‘Can we go and visit?’

So here we are, standing at the church gate.

‘Can you wait here for me?’ I ask.

Paul puts an arm around Amy’s shoulders as she opens her mouth to protest. ‘Call when you want us,’ he says, and leads Amy away up the path.

I smile as she strains over her shoulder to stare back at me and see her sigh then smile in return before she turns away.

I go through the gate.

There’s no one in this part of the graveyard. On one side is a tennis court, but no one is playing there. I know that the grave is at the far end, on the third row. It doesn’t take me long to find it. When I get there, I kneel to stare at the stone. Just her name and the dates. If anything had to be removed, it doesn’t show. Pulling my bag off my shoulder, I take out the trowel and start digging. I go deeper than I need, but no one disturbs me.

Amy offered to get flowers of course, if I wanted: ‘But only if you want, darling. You will ask, though, won’t you, if you
do
want anything?’

But all I wanted was my school bag. Amy stared a bit when I came out to the car with it, but Paul just gave me a one-armed hug and reminded me to put my seatbelt on.

I don’t talk to Fiona. I thought about it, but it seems wrong to talk to her like Amy talks to Adam, even though I’d say such very different things. But now I am here I find I don’t feel the need to say anything to her at all.

Instead I take out the wooden box of ashes, unlatch the little clips and reach down into the hole to tip it out. Then I pile the soil back in and punch the whole thing down with the trowel again, and again, and again.

I wipe my hands on the grass until most of the dirt is gone, then take the bottle of water from my bag and use it to rinse the rest of the mud off before picking the last flecks out from under my nails and wiping my fingers dry on a tissue. I inspect my hands – all clean again – then get to my feet.

The muddy trowel goes into a shopping bag and then back into my school bag. The box stays in my hand. When I let myself back through the gate, I detour away from the church towards the tennis court. There’s a bin there, right by the fencing, and I push the wooden box into it. Its fall is cushioned by the rest of the rubbish and makes no sound, as if it has just dropped down, and down, and down into nothing and beyond.

I thought about just tipping the ashes in our wheelie bin the day the lawyer handed them to me. Instead, Fiona and her parents can rot in the dark together.

As I walk back up the path towards the church, I see Amy twisting her scarf anxiously about her hands. She says something to Paul that makes him hug her to his side and kiss her hair. Then he glances back and sees me, bends to tell Amy. She comes hurrying down the path so fast she is almost running, while Paul strolls behind, grinning at her.

I stop and smile as I watch them come towards me. Amy slows to a walk and smiles too, her face alight with relief, and with love.

They put their arms around my shoulders, one on either side, as we walk back to the car.

‘Ms Winters did say she would come over tonight, didn’t she?’ I ask as we crunch across the gravel.

‘Of course she did,’ Amy says softly, smiling down at me. ‘She’s very proud of you for coming here today. We all are.’

I got Amy and Paul to invite her. And I made sure that they went on and on about how important it was to me: how much it would mean for all the people who understand the significance of my going to see Fiona’s grave to be there tonight to support me . . .

Although I know she must suspect the real reason I want her to come is that Uncle Ben will be there too, I figured she’d agree anyway because she
is
proud that I came today. And that’s the perfect excuse for her to give in because I know she wants to see Uncle Ben again. And over a family dinner she’s not just my teacher or even my not-counsellor but a friend. Someone who’s slowly becoming part of
all
of our lives. I mean, I know that it’s mostly because of me right now, but I doubt that’s how it’ll turn out in the end.