Authors: Katherine Hayton
Skeletal
skeletal
/ˈskɛlɪt(ə)l,skəˈliːt(ə)l/
Katherine Hayton
Copyright © 2015 Katherine Hayton
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-473-30927-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-473-30927-5
Watch this. Watch this now. Those men - the ones in the fluoro vests and the hard hats and the mud-caked boots. They’ve removed the bricks of the house, by hand. They’ve piled them up and put them aside in neat square packages wrapped in tarpaulin, ready to use again when the time comes. They’re about to raise the house off its foundations.
It’s amazing.
Before the earthquake, no one had ever really tried something like this before. It was a proposition of something that might work in a trade magazine that no one would ever have read. Except now it was read, and practiced, because there were so many opportunities to try out things people had never tried before.
Opportunity, and the potential to save money. A perfect combination for experiments. And this thing works.
Watch them. Right there. They’re lifting the denuded house up off the foundations. It creaks and groans but it holds together. Amazing.
And look down in the foundations. Where they’re cracked and broken and the floor on one side has dropped almost a foot in height because of the liquefaction souping up the earth. That bit, where it’s broken so much the bare earth can be seen straight through the concreted silt. Even before anyone starts to try to crack it up. Broken along a prior instability.
That’s where I am.
Watch them as they pull aside the hard clods, and now – that one – he’s reaching forward, pulling one aside to expose a creamy white bone. He’s taking a step back now. He’s calling over his shoulder to a colleague. His site manager is about to be wholly pissed off, and frustrated because he’s not allowed to show it. Not in this situation.
But the whole site’s going to be roped off and their work is going to be backed up and he’s going to be on the phone for the rest of the day trying to shuffle everything around so he doesn’t lose more than a day’s wages for his crew.
It’ll take a while before they know that it’s me. There’s going to be a stream of ‘professionals’ coming by. They’ll carefully dig, and photograph, and exhume each bone. They’ll lay it out on a board in a morgue, making sure that each and every little piece of me is tagged and laid out in place.
They’ll drill into the bone, the femur, and try to get a read on the DNA left in the dried out marrow. They’re going to find a match with a file on a missing person. And that missing person file is going to be me.
My mum’s going to get a knock on the door that she’s been waiting for, and dreading, for a decade. She’s going to break down and cry with the easy tears of a drunk, even though her ten year chip takes pride of place in her jewellery box.
She’ll cry, and won’t hear half of what they say. But they’ll be patient, and they’ll go through everything with her again. And again.
I would cry too, if I still had something to cry with.
But for now that’s all poised in the distance, a series of dominos not yet pushed into action. For now, there’s just the hi-viz workers and the glimpse of something they know shouldn’t be there. For now there’s just my dead bones and the cold ground they’ve been stored in, hidden in, waiting for the puff of fresh air to caress their curves and lines. Waiting for the dirt to be brushed aside and their porous surface to inhale the warmth of the sun.
Waiting to be found.
part one - bully
Coroner’s Court 2014
By the time the coroner sits down, the court is close to half-full. A lot of people for an inquest, but there’s a bit of public interest in this one, and a lot of witnesses.
The court isn’t in a building purpose-built for the function. Instead, it’s an old community hall taken over by the justice department for use as an ad-hoc venue now that the old District and High Court buildings are out of action due to earthquake damage.
Wood panelling reminds the participants that style belongs to the decade, and the seventies were a long time ago by anyone’s count. Still, it matches with the pews that were hurriedly installed after February, and at least it’s a room somewhere, which something can be done in safely. It doesn’t take long in Christchurch before you’re sick of your pathway being blocked by danger tape.
Hah! I’ve been looking around me for so long I’ve missed the start of the coroner’s speech.
‘I’ll try to call you in a logical order, to fit in with the anticipated timeline, but I’m afraid this may mean I’ll have to recall some of you at a later date.’
He’s talking to the witnesses who’ve all gathered along the front benches. Funny to see how they group themselves together. There’s no love lost between some of these folk. No love lost between me and them neither.
‘Mrs Harrow if you need to vacate the room during testimony at any time please feel free to do so, you needn’t seek permission. Has your representative shown you the facilities available?’
My mother nods her head. She looks so dignified in this setting. Nothing like the sloppy mess she was the last time I saw her in person. When I was a person, I mean. She would’ve had a hard time putting herself together at that stage, but now her hair is arranged in a complicated knot at the nape of her neck, and it glows softly with care, conditioner and colour. Nothing like the last time.
‘Okay. I want you to know that you can also ask questions through your rep at any time during the proceedings. Mr Anderson, you’ll let Mrs Harrow know when you’ll need to wait till the end, but otherwise?’
They nod to each other, old participants in this drama. Or similar dramas at any case. Mum looks content to know she’s being taken care of. It’s always nice to know that someone’s looking out for your best interest. I presume.
‘Okay, then we’ll start the proceedings. This is to re-open the coroner’s case file number 46782, the last verdict returned in this matter was manner of death undetermined. The transcript of that original hearing will be entered into evidence and will form the first part of this case.
‘The first witness I’ll call to the proceedings will be Ms Patricia Pearson.’
I settle back to watch the story unfold. It’ll be nice to see everybody again.
***
Daina 2004
I don’t know what it was about me that Ms Pearson the admissions secretary didn’t like, but whatever it was she didn’t like it a great deal.
The grimace of dissatisfaction her mouth screwed into when I appeared grew only deeper with distaste as I explained the reason for my appearance, late on a school morning, mid-way through term.
‘My previous school confirmed they forwarded the records through,’ I said and sat back in a hard wooden chair while she looked through the computer system for whatever the hell it was that she needed before I could be released into the horrors of the high school. This was the third high school I’d been enrolled at in a little under two years, and I believed I may have known just a tad more than she did about the process by now.
‘We haven’t received it through. We’ll need your guardian to sign you in.’
‘My mother isn’t available today. I can hardly call her away from work just to sign me in, when it’s all already been arranged. Isn’t there another place you could look?’ Experience mixed with desperation had given me some confidence.
‘Stay there,’ she barked and stalked out of the room on high-heeled shoes that would’ve labelled her a whore at my last school. Still, the woman could barely scrape five feet with them on. Who was I to judge?
‘Knock, knock, Patricia.’ A man stuck his golden-curled head around the corner, a smile on his face. ‘Who are you, and what have you done with Patricia?’
‘Sent her away,’ I replied. ‘She’s hunting down a transcript from my last school.’
‘What year are you?’
‘Year ten.’
‘Come with me, then. You’ll be in my English class that is due to start in,’ he made an elaborate show of looking at his watch, ‘Ten minutes ago. Pat’ll be ages if she’s chasing down paperwork. It doesn’t get on with her.’
When I remained seated, he smiled even broader. ‘You won’t get in trouble for actually attending a class, you know. On your feet.’
‘Not until you tell me who
you
are.’
‘I’m Bond,’ he said, coming into the room with his hand extended. ‘Jeremy Bond.’
He wasn’t like any teacher I’d come across before. He looked tall, blond, and like trouble. But I followed behind him as he led me out of the main administration building and along to a wing that looked as though it had been added as an afterthought. Two prefab classrooms, standalone from the two buildings we’d passed to get here. And painted a brand new shade of neutral.
When he walked into the classroom, the whole room gave him their attention. A popular teacher, then.
‘Class, this is our newest student,’ he turned to me with raised eyebrows.
‘Daina Harrow,’ I mumbled, embarrassed as I felt everyone’s eyes settle on me.
‘Daina.’ He rested his hand on my shoulder as he turned back to the room. ‘Daina Harrow, just transferred in this morning so make her welcome. You may as well sit there at the front so that I can make sure you’re okay.’ He pointed and I slid into the seat. No relief from attention, as I could now feel everyone staring at my back instead.
‘Right, where were we?’
‘You were going to get a “sacred text” from the main office,’ came a delighted yell from the back of the class.
‘Oh, right. So I was.’ He spread his empty hands wide. ‘But I found a new student instead, and that’s much better, isn’t it? So where was I before
that
?’
There were half a dozen cries from around the classroom this time. All with completely different references.
‘If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were trying to trick me,’ Mr Bond continued. ‘So I’ll just make it up myself.’ He turned back to the board and wrote BLOOD in huge letters across it, then flourished it with a long line underneath. ‘And whose blood would I be talking about?’ he asked, turning back to the class.
‘Lady Macbeth,’ they chorused in unison.
‘Well, not quite.’
‘King Duncan,’ came a lone female voice from the back of the class.
I wasn’t the only one who turned to see a thin blond with a satisfied smirk on her face.
‘Well done, Michelle. That’s right. The blood was
on
Lady Macbeth’s hands, but it was
from
King Duncan.’
He walked over to his desk, and looked puzzled at the lack of anything significant on its surface.
‘It’s in the office, sir,’ came a helpful yell from the back of the class.
Mr Bond’s face cleared, and he nodded. ‘Right, well I’ll just be a minute then. I need to fetch something…’
He walked out of the room, and there was a patter of snorts and giggles from the back of the class. ‘Bet you five bucks he forgets it again,’ said the same voice that had reminded his teacher he still didn’t have the book he’d gone to fetch.
I turned around to look at the back of the room again, and identified it as belonging to a short boy with a mess of long brown hair. He caught me looking and stuck out his tongue. I turned back to face the front of the class, my cheeks burning.
‘Paul, you don’t have five bucks,’ drawled Michelle. ‘And if you did you’d hardly pay up, welcher.’
‘Well fuck you, Miss know-it-all.’
Half of the class broke into horrified laughter, while the remainder ignored the two of them and carried on with whatever activities they’d chosen to fill their downtime with. I could see more than a few smuggled cellphones half-hidden in palms. At least I presumed they were smuggled. Cellphones were certainly contraband at the other high schools I’d attended.
There was a few minutes of peace, and then I heard the distinct sound of fist hitting flesh, followed by a low groan.
‘Fuck yourself, welcher,’ I heard Michelle whisper just before Mr Bond re-entered the classroom with a coffee in his hand and nothing else.
‘Now, where were we?’
***
Ms Pearson 2004
Patty left the office for a few minutes so the girl sat in there alone. She was a right piece of work. It wasn’t hard to spot the troublemakers, not when you’d been at this job for as long as Patty had.
She walked down to the end of the corridor and let herself into the staff room. It was gloriously empty, the whole coterie of teachers busy in their own classes. This was about the only time she used the room. Too much noise and too many people made her feel useless and alone. When she was actually alone, she felt neither.
There was a chair covered with battered leather that had her name on it. As Patty sank into it with a sigh of content she counted down the days until Friday and release into the weekend. Her garden needed some attention now that the days were longer and the sun was warmer. If she didn’t pour herself into it now she wouldn’t have the rewards of fresh vegetables and warm sun-kissed fruit in the height of summer.
Only one term left and then she could relax properly in the long stretch of summer holidays. During the term she felt constricted, but with a whole six weeks of freedom in front of her she could truly unwind. All the benefits of being a teacher and none of the marking or daily class planning. And her mother used to tease her for being stupid! Well, she was enjoying the last laugh.
Five minutes had gone by, but that was probably enough. For a girl sitting alone in a strange office in a strange school it would seem like longer. Patty stretched herself out to her full height – not that there was much of it – and got to her feet.
Already her toes were protesting, and they had a good few hours ahead. Patty walked briskly back down the corridor. Not a person in sight. She was stuck in a permanent tiptoe due to the heels, but she wasn’t about to give in and turn into a flat-foot. Nature’s oversight could be corrected, and god knows Patty was going to correct it.
She could see as she closed the distance to her office that it was now empty. Patty shrugged, and wondered how she could fill in her morning. There were still some payroll forms to be processed. Duty registers to be checked. If she didn’t get that done by Wednesday then the substitute teachers wouldn’t get their pay. So she would definitely do that for the ones she liked. The rest, and there were many, could play roulette with whatever else took her fancy.
The scent of cologne that assailed Patty as she walked into her office made her screw up her face with distaste. Mr Bond had been in here, then. Nausea brought a rush of saliva to her mouth.
There was a textbook filled with notes that he’d left in a corner of her office. He seemed to delight in dropping by whenever he felt like it, half the time when he should’ve been in class instead, making a nuisance of himself. A bully, that’s all he was. A stupid great bully.
She hinted as such every chance she could with Mr Fitzsimmons, the school principal, but he either didn’t get the hint, or didn’t want to take action. Certainly his class response was positive, and the results from his level had improved under his tutelage.
Patty opened the cupboard behind her and pulled out the office shredder. She’d need to use a bit of force to tear through the spine of the book, her nails would be put in jeopardy, but it would be worth it.
Once she’d shredded the entire textbook she put the remains into the office wastepaper bin and put the machine back away. She’d had to use her own money to purchase the shredder – the school’s budget didn’t run to such frivolities – but it was worth every cent she’d spent on it.
Patty pulled the stack of time record sheets towards her and started to check them against the school register, a smile on her face. She could easily get everybody’s cards through, she decided. No matter how much the subs had slighted her in the past. They’d all be paid on time.
No one could ever say that she wasn’t diligent.
***
Daina 2004
Just before the end of class Ms Pearson knocked at the door and entered, not looking pleased. She beckoned me out of the room with her forefinger, and a wit in back went ‘Oooooh, new girl’s in trouble,’ in a sing-song voice as I obeyed the command.
‘You shouldn’t have left just like that,’ she said sternly and handed me a clipboard. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
Mr Bond came out of the room behind me, and put a hand on my shoulder again. ‘Sorry about that, Pat,’ he said, as I tried to decipher what the form was all about. ‘Thought she was better off learning something while you sorted out the paperwork.’
