Skeletal (24 page)

There’s a television in a side room. This is the one that my mother retreats to when it all gets too much. Open to the public, but not
too
open. A place for people to gather themselves before, and compose themselves after.

‘He’ll reserve the decision,’ the Grey Man tells me as he walks in, ‘There’s no way he’s going to get to the end of your mommy’s speech and then render a verdict straight away.’

Whatever. The longer it all goes on the less it matters to me. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Everyone just saying whatever makes them look good. And then my mother, so desperate to tell her warts-and-all truth.

‘They could still find the documents,’ he says. I look at him critically. He should know better than that.
I
know better than that, and he knows what I know.

He shrugs in response to my glare. ‘They still exist somewhere.’

Yes, they still exist somewhere. No one set fire to them, no one shattered the glass vial to let the simulated protein spill away. Someone wanted insurance against future finger-pointing. But it’s not coming their way. No one even knows they exist. A ghost. A phantom. A myth.

And a decade may seem like nothing to the Earth. A decade may seem like nothing to the Universe. But to a roomful of human beings, a decade is too long to start chasing up leads that were buried deep to start with.

My mother is still going on. I wander back through and watch her for a while. Her teeth are the thing that give away her past the most. Age may have brought her a serene beauty, but the dentures – no matter how well-fitted – draw her cheeks in too deeply. They tell the story of use and abuse. Of years of ill-living that no amount of yoga and self-discipline can wipe away.

‘When did you first notice that your daughter was missing?’

Oh good. Wouldn’t want to miss this recollection of a drunken haze.

‘The school had rung early in the week. I knew that Daina was around because her clothes kept changing. I could hear her running in and out even if I could never catch up with her.’

My mother comes to a halt, and pushes the side of her cheek in with her middle knuckle. She’s using her dentures to bite through the top layer of skin on the inside of her mouth. She’ll nibble at it, wearing and tearing, then swallow and start again. A remedy for boredom expanded into a habit.

‘I was still taking clients. There was one, he was always interested to know what my daughter was up to. I shouldn’t have allowed him into the house really. But he was a regular and he was a good payer.

‘He was the one who noticed that she was truly gone. He asked me about her, and when I said she was around; he pointed out the ways that he knew she wasn’t.’

She laughs, but there are tears in her eyes as well. ‘If he hadn’t been creeping around my house and looking, it may have taken a bit longer. But the school rang on the Monday or Tuesday; he noticed she was gone by the Friday.’ She bites away at the inside of her cheek again, pressing her forefinger below her lower lip so she can nibble across the bottom in a line.

‘I didn’t believe him at first. When he’d gone, I checked her room, and looked through the whole house. I thought I’d find evidence that would contradict him. But there wasn’t.

‘I hoped that she’d just stayed a few nights overnight somewhere. Her backpack was gone. She didn’t go anywhere without that grubby thing. I sat in the living room and waited for her to come home.’

I wonder how long I lasted while she was waiting. There wasn’t that much of a window of opportunity to reach me, and considering how long it took anyone to find me in the end, the reporting time didn’t matter. Doesn’t matter now.

But still, I count back the hours, the ones I can remember. I count back and think of what I tried to do to get out of there. How many times I picked at things that were never going to give, picked my fingertips bloody. How I’d kicked and yelled. Even when I was told to be quiet.

Kicked and yelled and screamed in full-blown panic. While my mother had to have a client tell her that I was missing.

‘When it got around to Monday again, I knew he was right. She wasn’t coming back. I went to the police to report her missing, but they wouldn’t really take an interest. A fifteen-year-old from a bad home. They just thought she’d run away.’

And maybe they didn’t want the old drug addict stinking up their pristine lobby. Maybe if you’d cleaned yourself up they would’ve paid more attention. But no, you had to make it so obvious that you were someone that any teenager would’ve run a million miles away from.

‘I called Graham in the end. I couldn’t think of what else to do. It was news to me that she’d been in trouble at school. He should’ve told me.’ She wipes at the corner of her eyebrow, trying to still a twitch. She gives a little smirk. ‘Although I understand why he wouldn’t want to.’

The self-discovery arriving a bit too late for me.

‘I stopped using while I was waiting for her to come home that weekend. I gave up drinking a week later. I answered the phone once so drunk that the person on the other end hung up on me. Even in my state, I realised that wasn’t going to help Daina any, so I stopped.’ She laughs, a tight hard sound. ‘I found out later that it’s one of the most dangerous things you can do. Stop drinking without medical supervision. But nothing bad happened.’

My mother shrugs her shoulder. ‘Nothing apart from the bad you’d expect. Graham’s comments got me worried all over again, so I went down to the school and talked to Patty in the office. She was the one who got the police concerned enough to really start looking. She pointed out that the bullying had been against my daughter, not caused by her.’

She coughs, and rearranges herself on the stand. ‘Patty was the one who suggested that the police look into Mr Bond.

‘That worried me. That Daina had been harassed and bullied, for months, but had never felt confident enough to tell me. Some of the things that happened…’ My mother shakes her head. ‘You don’t expect your daughter to have to go through that at all, and to go through it alone.’

‘Patty came along with me to the police station again and again. She helped get the message through that with the end-of-year examinations about to start up in earnest, there’s no way that Daina would’ve moved on. She was smart; she passed exams whether she studied or not, and she’d enquired about scholarships based on her results. She wasn’t going to run away and risk her future, not when she’d lived with the status quo at home for so long.’

‘I’ve read through the police reports at the time, and they’re submitted into evidence,’ the coroner interjected. ‘I can assure you that the police were looking for your daughter from the moment she was reported missing.’

My mother waves away his comment. ‘There’s looking and there’s
looking
. And what they were doing before Patty got involved wasn’t nearly enough.’

I find it strange even with all of this knowledge that the woman who started off as my nemesis became instead my champion. Look at her sitting there. Still prim, still with her hands neatly folded in her lap and her legs together. Not crossed, only whores cross their legs – or women who like their calves to look fat. She still looks like she wouldn’t take any prisoners, or suffer any fools.

I wonder, if I’d survived, if I would’ve developed some of her same defence mechanisms. Wearing tweed like armour plate. Waving my wit like a sword.

There are worse things I could aspire to become.

This is all very boring and depressing. I don’t understand why the coroner is allowing it anyway. He’s meant to be determining my cause of death. My mother’s belated discovery that I was missing in no way contributed to that. It just stopped any chance there was of preventing my eventual death. And that only if I’d been found.

And let’s face it. Both me and the Grey Man went to great lengths to make sure that I wouldn’t be. Mum being a drug user didn’t contribute to
that
.

So maybe that’s the only part of the story left to tell. There’s no correction to be made here because there’s no testimony to correct. Only I know what happened. There’s a couple of spooks who could lend perspective. If they were found and were willing.

They’re as likely to make an appearance in this courtroom as the papers I tried so hard to find and keep safe. And for the same reason.

So while my mother witters on the stand about how terrible she was – no contradiction arriving anytime soon from this quarter – I’ll take you through what happened to me while she was still waiting to notice. Waiting to notice I was gone. Waiting to notice I was in trouble. Waiting to notice I was dead.

***

Daina 2004

When the hand clamped down on my shoulder I bit my lower lip clean through. Blood swelled and tipped down my chin while I tried to stem it with my hand.

‘We’d like you to follow us,’ the man behind me said. I turned to look at him. His face was blank of all expression. Just a skin holding all the parts together. Just a working Joe doing his job, and not stopping long enough to consider if he liked it or not.

That was the part that was frightening. It didn’t even look like he was giving what he was doing consideration. A few hours at most since he’d killed a man in his car, and he was stopping me in a mall in public to take me somewhere and do something similar but he wasn’t even going to check it against some moral compass before he went ahead.

If he had a moral compass to check against, that is.

His companion was nothing more than a blur to my side. The blood was still dribbling from my lip.

The panic grew too much for my body to take. There was a flash of light, and then my whole body was calm. Everything snapped into focus. My heart seemed to pause between beats instead of racing at a trot.

I wiped at my chin again, but instead of cleaning the blood away I smeared it over as much of my face as I could. Then I opened my mouth and screamed.

‘Help!’ I jerked back as though the man’s outstretched hand had been holding me instead of resting on my shoulder. I stumbled back, and turned so the shoppers could clearly see my bloodstained face.

‘Help me, please. I don’t know this man!’

That turned out to be the magic phrase. A domestic dispute, or a parental admonishment, instantly coalesced into a man assaults woman, or man assaults child.

I pulled at the bottom of my school uniform and curled over to hide my height. With my hair hanging down either side of my face, my face covered with blood, I hoped I looked younger. I hoped I looked like the child I wished I still was.

There were hands helping me to my feet. I pretended to be limp so that I didn’t have to straighten up. Activity was on all sides, and then a security guard arrived.

He assessed my condition, and picked up his radio.

Before the crackle of static could clear into an open channel the two suited men faded back into the crowd, and walked briskly away. The guard started to follow them, but as more concerned people gathered, his way was blocked so they escaped outside.

He returned to me. ‘Are you okay? Do you want me to call an ambulance?’

I shook my head. ‘I think I’ve just cut my lip. I’m sorry to make such a fuss.’

More magic. A cluster of womenfolk reassured me that, ‘You’re not causing any trouble,’

‘Don’t you worry,’

‘It’s not your fault,’

‘You just sit and rest.’

I allowed them to seat me, and clean up my face. There was a lace-edged hankie offered, and when I hesitated at its intricate needlework, it was pressed to my lip by old-age-pensioner hands.

‘Let me see,’ said a kind voice further back. A woman stepped forward, and knelt to examine me. ‘It looks like you’ll need some stitches. Is there a doctor on site?’ she asked, turning to the guard who was still standing and fiddling with his radio.

He shook his head. ‘There’s a doctor’s surgery down the road. I can give them a call.’

‘You should call the police,’ said another voice, and there was a chorus of agreement.

I saw the Grey Man edge into the cluster. He shook his head. I understood. Police would take time, and they would take effort, and they would more than likely divine that the state of my life wasn’t quite up to scratch.

Group home. That was what the police meant. Group home.

So now I needed to find the magic words that would let the group disperse.

‘The surgery’s nearby?’ I questioned. The guard looked relieved to have a solid question to answer.

‘Just down the road. Opposite the McDonalds and a few doors further down.’

‘Well?’ said the woman tending to me. ‘Are you going to take her?’

‘That’s not his job,’ I interjected. ‘If it’s that close I can easily walk there.’

‘I’ll walk with you, and make sure you get there okay,’ the woman said as she stood. ‘We can’t have you fainting out there and doing more damage.’

There were a few mutters, and the crowd began to disperse back to its shopping.

The guard hovered as the woman helped me to my feet. ‘Can I call someone for you? Your mum or dad, maybe?’

‘They’ll be at work,’ I answered. ‘Thank you,’ I quickly called as I saw the old lady who’d donated her hanky was moving away. I turned back to the guard, ‘I’ll let them know once they’re home. If I’m not back by then anyway.’