The Bone Dragon by Alexia Casale Page A

thought she was going to walk away, but she just turned her chair to the side and sat down again so that we were neatly at right angles to each other: every movement precise and careful, as if it was important to get the actions just right. Then she drew the locket out from under her jumper, peering down at it as she flicked open the tiny catch with her nail. I twisted, turning in my chair so I could peer close as she held it out to me.
    ‘Who’re they?’ I asked, pointing at the second photo.
    ‘My parents.’
    I reached out to tug Amy’s hands closer because the light was reflecting off the glass over the pictures, obscuring the tiny faces. Her fingers were cold and rigid as if they’d frozen.
    Little by little, Amy leaned forwards, further and further forwards, until our heads touched. Then she jumped, jerking back into her chair, hand reflexively shielding the locket against her chest.
    For a moment, there was nothing in her face or her eyes, then she started.
    ‘Goodness,’ she said in this strange voice, the words too light for the heaviness in her tone. ‘I really let myself get swept away for a minute there. Let’s have a look at this maths, then.’
    When I turned back to my book, I realised that Paul was gone.
    That was one of the only times either of them has mentioned Adam in front of me while the other was there. Separately, they’ve added a few facts over the years. Hints at happy memories. Fragments. Tatters of a different life. They’ve never refused to answer the few questions I’ve dared to ask – only when I’m with just one of them, of course – but they’ve always cut those conversations short. Uncle Ben’s the one I go to when there’s something I’ve just got to know about Adam, just like it’s Amy or Paul I ask when I want to know something about Aunt Minnie.
    But while Amy and Paul adopted me only two years after the deaths, I’m pretty sure Uncle Ben hasn’t gone on a single date. Lately, I’ve been thinking more and more about how Uncle Ben seems like he needs some help to start moving on a bit. But this is the first time it’s struck me that the only way Uncle Ben is different from Paul and Amy is that they’ve found themselves a new child to love while he hasn’t found a new wife. I never really thought about it before but in some ways Amy and Paul haven’t moved on with life any more than Uncle Ben has: they’ve just tried to start a new one, as if they’ve pushed all their memories of Adam into a room and closed the door on the wreckage and then papered over that door to pretend it’s not even there any more: that there never was another door to another room. Maybe they think they can eventually open the door and all those broken things will have mouldered away, or been dissolved by time, so that all the wood splinters and the glass shards will be rounded at the edges, safe to pick up again. Soft as ashes.
    I tried that. With my memories of Fiona and her parents. But it never worked. Not properly. The pain in my ribs made it impossible to pretend that none of it had happened: to pretend that I had always been Amy and Paul’s daughter. There were all sorts of stories I tried to pretend. But then my ribs would shift and grate, the ends of the bones rubbing together – or I’d twist and there would be sharp, long needles of pain through my chest – and it would all still be here and now instead of there and then. And here and now can’t be pretended away.
    As I drift from one aisle of the shop to another, for the first time it strikes me that maybe it’s worse to be able to do that thing with the room and the locked door all papered over. Even though it seems easier to lock misery away, perhaps it’s just as much work to pretend you can’t ever hear things shifting and sliding behind the door behind the wallpaper when a wind creeps in through some unstoppered gap. Perhaps it hurts less, but there’s something infinitely sad about that store of discarded,