The Bone Dragon (22 page)

If the anniversary is a school day, I stay home. Like today. Every year, Phee and Lynne are agog with curiosity over the whole thing: they’re fascinated afresh every time I tell them about it. Only some of it, of course. I wouldn’t tell them about Amy talking to Adam, or the expression on her face when she does. Or the fact that when we get home the first thing Amy does is take out the stepladder. Some years she goes to the kitchen and cooks, or takes down all the curtains to wash, or attacks the rust on the garden furniture with sandpaper. But this year she takes out the stepladder.

I give Paul a worried look.

He shrugs, looking tired. He draws his lips inwards and sighs. ‘I’ll go make some tea, sweetheart,’ he says, stopping to press a kiss – presses it just a little too hard – to my forehead. ‘Why don’t you go and hold the bottom of the ladder for Amy?’

So I do. Amy has a fixed, intense look on her face. She is up on the stepladder, fiddling with the smoke alarm in the living room. She presses something in the machine and it squeals. I slap my hands over my ears, putting my foot on the crossbar of the stepladder to keep it balanced. The noise stops, but Amy glares at the machine as if she is about to rip it from the ceiling.

‘Is it all right?’ I dare to ask.

‘I don’t know,’ says Amy in a blunt, quick sort of way. ‘It thinks it’s fine, but I can’t remember the last time I replaced that battery. I thought I heard it beep when we came in.’

‘I don’t think so. It only started beeping when you pressed the thingy.’

‘Not that kind of beeping. It does this very slow beeping – just once every few minutes – when the battery is getting low, before it runs out altogether. I thought I heard it.’

‘Maybe it was the one next to the cupboard at the top of the stairs?’

Amy slams the lid closed on the alarm and I hurry out of her way as she kicks the stepladder into flattened submission and marches up the stairs. The upstairs alarm is fine too. Next we go to the kitchen.

Doesn’t that just say it all? Fiona’s parents had one smoke alarm in their house. I can’t remember anyone ever checking it. Amy and Paul have three and on the anniversary of the worst day of her life, Amy checks them all.

The one in the kitchen is fine too, only this time, when she finishes checking, the stepladder decides to stand firm, refusing to close. There’s a horrid shrieking of metal on metal and floor tiles.

‘Amy,’ says Paul, reaching out cautiously to her. ‘Amy, darling, let me do that for you.’

Amy ignores him, wrenching even more violently at the stepladder. ‘Why can’t I find which one it is? One of them isn’t working. One of these stinking, stupid alarms . . .’

‘Amy . . .’

‘Don’t Amy me, Paul! One of the alarms isn’t working. It’s important. They’re there to protect us.’

‘Amy . . .’

‘They’re meant to protect our family, Paul. And I’m going to find which one it is . . .’

A hand comes down on my shoulder and I look up to find Uncle Ben standing next to me, holding out a cup of tea. ‘Come on, Evie. Let’s go in the garden for a bit. Clear up some of those leaves for your . . . for Amy and Paul.’

As we work, I think I hear snatches of shouting.

Soon we’ve gathered a most satisfactory heap of leaves. I stare down at it and then sigh and stump off to get the garden bin-bags from the shed. I don’t dare chuck leaves at Uncle Ben today. It might cheer him up, but it also might make him feel that I don’t understand. It seems better not to risk it: everyone’s allowed one day a year when they’re not all that much fun.

I get one of the bags opened up, and Uncle Ben bends to draw up a huge armful to chuck in . . . and suddenly I’m in a hurricane of leaves. I’m laughing and spitting, then, even before the leaves have finished falling around me, I’m diving towards the pile for ammunition of my own.

Eventually we collapse together on the ground, spreadeagled, my head on Uncle Ben’s stomach to indicate my victory. I stare up at the grey clouds as we both gasp for breath to laugh with and I pretend I don’t notice when there’s an extra sobbing rhythm to Uncle Ben’s laughter. After a while, I reach out until I find his hand and tuck mine into it.

‘I love you, Evie-girl,’ Uncle Ben gasps, gritting the words out so that they sound furious, enraged.

I squeeze his hand. ‘Me too.’

‘Me too?’ Uncle Ben asks, his voice going almost normal. ‘Me too? You love you too, do you?’ he asks, sitting up so he can lean over and tickle me as I shriek and curl into a ball in the curve of his body.

When Uncle Ben pauses, I wriggle around until I can hug him about the middle. ‘Love you too.’

Uncle Ben kisses my hair.

Somehow I don’t hear the front door open, even though I’ve been listening out for it.

‘Evie, what on earth are you doing?’ Amy calls up the stairs. ‘I told you not to go clambering around on things when you’re alone in the house.’

‘You told me not to use a chair. You said it wasn’t stable enough.’

‘I didn’t mean you should start fiddling around on the stepladder instead! Evie darling, I know you’re feeling much better now and it’s wonderful, it really is, but you still need to be
careful
.’

She plonks her shopping down at the bottom of the stairs and comes up to help me close the stepladder.

‘Why do you keep messing around in the top of this cupboard anyway? Grandma Suzie said that they had to ring the doorbell for nearly five minutes when they came over last weekend because you didn’t hear them, though you know I told you they’d be here at four. What
are
you looking for?’

I shrug, looking away, and catch Paul’s eye by accident. He grins at me, then pulls a face and ducks out to bring in the rest of the bags from the car.

I turn back to Amy, but she is staring up at the ceiling with a frown on her face. ‘I suppose I should check the alarm while the ladder’s out,’ she says. ‘I can’t believe that battery hasn’t run out by now.’

‘It did,’ I say.

Amy blinks at me, aghast. ‘I never even heard it beeping. Evie darling, why didn’t you
tell
me!’

‘Because I got the spare from the drawer and changed it already.’

‘Oh, Evie, you must be careful. And are you sure you got the new battery all the way in? And did you press the test button?’

‘We’ll check it later,’ Paul says firmly from the bottom of the stairs.

‘But Paul darling . . .’

‘If the house catches fire while we’re awake, we’ll know all about it. We can double-check the alarm before we go to bed, but I’m sure Evie’s done it perfectly. Come on now. You can stand over me with a bucket in case I set lunch on fire.’

Amy heaves a huge sigh, but folds the stepladder up and carries it back downstairs. I traipse after her and collect her shopping, bringing it into the kitchen. ‘Fire alarm aside, Evie, what
do
you keep looking in that cupboard for?’

I do the shrug thing again and busy myself with making tea, while Amy sets about putting the shopping away. She only gets halfway through the first bag before she stops and, gesturing with the tinned tomatoes, says, ‘I don’t like this climbing about on ladders right at the top of the stairs, Evie. Not when you’re still healing. And why do you always do it when we’re out of the house? I swear every time we’ve gone out for the last month . . .’

‘OK, Amy,’ Paul says. He puts his hands on her shoulders, kissing her cheek as she huffs a little sigh of frustration. ‘I’m sure Evie’s got the message now. Whatever it is she’s trying to hide from our ancient eyes, I’m confident that if we set the stepladder up by the cupboard and then give her ten clear minutes while we go in the garden, it’ll end up somewhere much lower down. And, in return for humouring us, we will
promise
,’ he grins at me as he stresses the word, ‘not to be nosy because everyone’s entitled to a little privacy, and now that Evie’s an official teenager, with a year of experience behind her, she’s even entitled to the odd secret.’

Amy’s face screws up in a mixture of worry and embarrassment. ‘Evie knows I’m not trying to be nosy, Paul. No, really I’m not,’ she protests as his arms tighten about her and he laughs into her hair. ‘Of course she’s entitled to her privacy . . .’

‘And secrets,’ Paul says, kissing her cheek again.

‘Well, yes, of course, but only when . . .’

Paul laughs. ‘I knew there was going to be a “but”,’ he says.

‘Oh, Paul, don’t be so difficult. Evie knows what I mean: that of course she should be able to have secrets, so long as they’re not
dangerous
.’

‘In which case, all bets are off,’ Paul interrupts again.

Amy smacks his arm where it rests across her chest, starting to look truly annoyed. ‘It’s nothing to laugh about, Paul. We’d need to know if Evie were hurt or . . .’

They both go very still and it takes me a minute to realise that they’re thinking about my keeping the ribs secret from them for so long.

‘Evie’s a brave, clever girl,’ Paul says. ‘She knows we love her and that she can tell us anything.’

‘Yes, darling,’ Amy says, her knuckles suddenly white where she is gripping Paul’s arm, her eyes fixed on mine, ‘of
course
we know you’ll tell us anything we really need to know. We do know that. We’ll let you move your little secret and I promise I won’t ask you anything more about it.’

We all stand there, Paul and Amy staring at me and me staring at them until Paul clears his throat. ‘Right. Come on, Evie love. Let’s go put that stepladder back up, then Amy and I will have a nice cup of tea in the garden while you sort it all out.’

I trail after Paul, chewing at the ends of a loose curl of hair.

‘Is that about right?’ he asks, checking the stepladder to see that it’s stable.

I nod at him, but he is staring up at the fire alarm.

‘I’m going to get someone in,’ he says suddenly. ‘Have them set up one of those systems that are hardwired into the mains electricity. Get rid of these stupid battery-operated things before Amy drives us mad over them. Maybe I can get them to come this Saturday, while Amy’s out at my parents’. Get it done as a surprise.’ He sighs as he turns his attention back to me and finds me chewing my hair even more vigorously. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. You know Amy doesn’t mean to upset you . . .’

‘I know,’ I say. ‘She didn’t.’

‘Evie, I was hoping . . .’ Ms Winters trails off with a sigh. We’ve just put our books away for the day, so it’s not like I don’t know it’s Talking Time, but I already have a bad feeling about where this is headed. ‘I was hoping we could talk about something . . . difficult today. Since things are going so well . . . Well, I thought maybe this would be a good time to ask if you would tell me a little bit about when your . . . when Fiona decided to give you up.’

I shift my gaze to the window. Ms Winters isn’t going to take the hint, not after that speech, but I stare out at the clouds anyway. In my pocket, my hand closes about the Dragon. The bone warms to my touch.

‘We’ve talked a little before about how Fiona didn’t protect you like she should have, but today I was hoping we could explore the possibility that maybe that was what she was trying to do when she put you into care.’

‘Maybe if she’d done it when Dad died, before she took us to live with her parents,’ I say, trying to make my voice dismissive, as if there’s nothing further to say on the subject.

‘Or maybe it was finding out how ill she was that finally gave her the strength to make the right decision.’

I wonder again just how much Amy and Paul have told Ms Winters. I can’t make up my mind whether it’s a good thing she knows so much or not. ‘No,’ I say firmly, pleased at how calm but definite it comes out.

‘Well, perhaps she finally managed to persuade her parents that giving you up would be the best option for everyone when they understood how difficult it was going to be when she . . . as her illness progressed.’

I turn a flinty stare on Ms Winters. ‘You’re the one who told me they probably did the same things to her. You think they decided to let me go because they wanted to be able to look after her?’

Ms Winters sighs heavily. ‘People are very strange, Evie. Sometimes . . . sometimes they do things that are completely contradictory: that make absolutely no sense. Sometimes people can be caring in one way and terribly abusive in another.’