And something else, sticking out amongst the roots of the tree, lopsided, crude, and weathered.

A wooden cross.

Upon it, a name, painted in faded blue.

Bobby.

29.

There was bone, barely concealed under a thin layer of soil. It was a shallower grave than she had imagined it would be. It stuck out from the broken ground, white against dark, jagged, broken edges pointing skyward. Laura kept digging with the trowel she had packed especially for this purpose, not content with one, single bone. I need all of you, she thought. Every single piece. I want it all back. All of it. Each part of you.

The animals of the woodland watched her from afar as she dug, frantic arcs of flung earth spraying all around her, her breath coming thick and fast, her eyes bright with exertion, darkening blood still splattered across her face. They watched and listened to the desperate, urgent sounds that fell from her lips as she dug. Every now and then, she would stop, and extract bone, and lay it on a tarpaulin spread out next to her.

She felt like an archaeologist, felt as if she should be labelling each fragment and splinter, so that Bobby could be reassembled, later, like a jigsaw, and, in doing so, she could finally hold him, and say what she never had a chance to say when she was thirteen. Goodbye. It was all she had wanted. That one word. A chance to say it.

The trowel cut through the dank earth and brought up lumps of root, and stone, and moss, and bone, so much bone, and she marvelled at how many bones there were in a fifteen year old boy’s body. Behind her, she heard X rousing from his unconscious state, wheezing, and coughing, and gagging, as if he were choking on a mouthful of fluid, which he probably was. Let him choke, she thought, distantly, let him choke and I will not have murdered him. And when he is dead, I will bury him here under this tree, and the forest can have him. Or, no, she reconsidered. I’ll just leave him on the floor for the birds to peck at, and the foxes to eat, and they can scatter his bones so that no-one will remember him. He’ll become dust, fragments, like I have. Let him rot into pieces while I put my Bobby back together again. There is justice in that.

Her trowel hit something solid, resistant, something larger than bone fragments, but still jarringly white against the black earth. She threw the trowel to one side, and used her fingers to clean the surface of it. The object looked smooth, and round. She began to scrabble at it like a dog digging a hole, ripping great clots of soil away with her bare fingers, fingernails catching and tearing, skin snagging on tree roots and small, sharp pieces of flint. She excavated what felt like a ton of dirt in this way, and then she managed to dig her fingertips beneath the thing, feel the size and shape of it, get a purchase on it, and pull.