A Room Full Of Bones

CHAPTER 23

Ruth has had a perfectly lovely Sunday. After a leisurely breakfast, she and Max and Kate (and Claudia) had gone for a walk on the Saltmarsh. Claudia had rushed through the grass, putting up flocks of snipe, plunging knee deep into murky pools, barking excitedly at the sky.

‘She likes it here,’ said Max.

Kate had been fairly excited too. When they reached the beach, she ran towards the sea with her arms outstretched. The tide was coming in and Kate had been delighted when a wave broke over her wellingtons. ‘Again! Again!’ she had shouted.

‘That’s the thing about the sea,’ said Max. ‘It does it again and again.’

‘The relentless tide,’ said Ruth, quoting Erik. ‘The unending ebb and flow.’

‘That too,’ grinned Max, throwing a stick for Claudia.

On the way back, Kate had been tired so Max had carried her on his shoulders. A very male way to carry a child, thought Ruth. She never does it that way, preferring to hoist Kate onto her hip, but Cathbad always does. She is sure that Nelson carried his eldest daughters like this when they were young but he has never had the chance with Kate. But she wasn’t going to think about Nelson…

They drove to the Phoenix for lunch. The Phoenix is the pub near Max’s Swaffham dig, the scene of much drinking and carousing that summer, two years ago. Max insists on going to see the site, striding up the steep hill with Kate riding like a Queen. That’s the only problem with Max, Ruth remembered. He loves walking up hills. Nelson is a strider too, always in a hurry, never looking behind to check that she is following. But she wasn’t going to think about Nelson.

To the untutored eye there is little evidence of a Roman settlement in the grey undulating landscape, but Max was looking at a bustling garrison town with Italianate villas, a market place and a road leading directly to the sea. Ruth, arriving breathlessly at the top of the hill, saw it too. She also saw children’s bodies buried under walls, a skull in a well, the Goddess Hecate with her two spectral hounds. The Goddess of the crossroads. Luckily Claudia, distinctly unghostlike, provided a distraction by chasing a rabbit.

‘Claudia!’ shouted Max.

‘Perfectly trained,’ observed Ruth as Claudia, taking absolutely no notice of her master, disappeared over the horizon.

‘I’ve been taking her to obedience classes,’ said Max ruefully. ‘We got a medal for trying hard.’

Kate laughed, tugging Max’s hair.

Claudia arrived back in time for the descent to the Phoenix. Ruth and Max ate roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and even Kate managed three roast potatoes. After lunch, in the late afternoon, they stood outside the pub, Ruth holding Kate, Max with a struggling Claudia on the lead.

‘When will I see you again?’ asked Max. ‘What about next weekend?’

Ruth had been delighted that Max wanted to see her again, that he was making all the running, but, all the same, next weekend seemed a little too soon. ‘I think my parents are coming,’ she extemporised. ‘Maybe the weekend after?’

‘Sounds good,’ Max had said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. ‘Keep in touch.’

And now, driving back through the twilight, Ruth feels free to enjoy the thought that she actually seems to be in a relationship with Max. A proper grown-up relationship with a proper grown-up man who isn’t married to someone else. A weekend relationship suits her perfectly. She likes having her house to herself all week, not having to cook for another person or wear her chillier, more glamorous, nightwear. But it would be lovely to have someone to see at weekends, to go to plays or to the cinema, to walk with on the beach, to sit and watch Antiques Roadshow with on a Sunday evening. And to have sex with, of course.

It’s nearly dark when she reaches the Saltmarsh. The clocks went back last week and now, at four-thirty, it’s almost night. She has been chatting to Kate all through the journey, trying to keep her awake, and her efforts have been rewarded. Kate, though definitely sleepy, is still bright-eyed, exclaiming happily whenever Ruth starts a new verse of The Wheels on the Bus. What a sexist song, thinks Ruth, why do the mothers do nothing but chatter and the fathers nothing but nod? Kate won’t be able to accuse her mother of chattering – sleeping with strange men perhaps but not chattering. Ruth stops outside the cottage. Bob’s car isn’t there. It’s strange how quickly she has got used to having neighbours. Now she feels slightly nervous at being here on her own, on the edge of the world. Ridiculous, she tells herself, you were alone for nearly two years and nothing happened to you. But the wind is howling in from the sea and Ruth clutches Kate tightly as she gets her out of the car. You’re getting soft, she tells herself.

Kate screams, a cry of real terror. Ruth reels round and sees a monster lurching towards her through the darkness. A hideous misshapen figure, ink black, with a giant head, like a goblin or a minotaur. Ruth shields Kate with her body, unable to move further. The creature looms nearer and nearer. Where’s her phone? She has to ring Nelson. Oh God, it’s still in the car. She and Kate are going to be murdered and no one will hear them scream. Nelson will investigate and then, perhaps, he’ll be sorry for abandoning them. Her parents will pray for her soul. Cathbad will light a bonfire in her honour. The figure is getting nearer, making hideous squelching sounds. It has come from the sea, it’s one of Erik’s malevolent water spirits, come to put its slimy fingers round her throat and drag her back into the depths.

Suddenly they are flooded with light. The security light has come on and the monster has resolved itself into a young man wearing a wet suit and carrying a surfboard on his shoulders.

‘Hallo,’ he says. ‘I hope I didn’t startle you. I’m Cameron. Sammy and Ed’s son.’

Sammy and Ed? Who the hell are they? Then Ruth remembers. The weekenders. Her other next-door neigh-bours. And this massive creature must be the little boy she remembers trekking over the marshes with his inflatable boat. Well, he obviously still likes the sea.

‘Just come down for a couple of days surfing with some pals,’ he says. ‘Hope we won’t disturb you.’

He has a very posh accent, far posher than his parents, but he seems friendly enough. Who on earth would go surfing in November? A public schoolboy called Cameron, that’s who.

‘No problem,’ she says. ‘Make as much noise as you like. You won’t disturb me.’

‘Dada,’ says Kate.

Inside, she makes Kate some supper (though she isn’t very hungry after the roast potatoes) and gives her a bath. Sitting in her cot, fluffy-haired, clutching her bottle, Kate looks angelic, the sort of baby who is going to sleep for eight hours without a murmur. What will Kate think if Max starts visiting regularly? She seems to like him but will she resent him taking up Ruth’s time? What if Max and Ruth break up and Kate misses him terribly? What if Claudia savages Flint or vice versa? Stop it, she tells herself. The relationship hasn’t started yet and you’re worrying about it ending. From next door she can hear the soothing thump of rock music.

Maybe it’s Guns ’n’ Roses or Ruth’s minor key version of Wheels on the Bus but Kate is soon fast asleep. Ruth tiptoes out of the room. Six o’clock, just time to catch the end of Time Team. Maybe she can have a glass of wine too. She realises that she is smiling.

The phone rings. Ruth answers, still smiling.

‘Ruth. It’s Judy. It’s about the boss. About Nelson.’

She isn’t sure when she stopped smiling. She just knows she isn’t smiling now.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s ill. In hospital. It looks pretty serious. I thought you’d want to know.’

Why, Ruth wonders. Why did Judy think she’d want to know? As far as Judy knows, Ruth and Nelson are just acquaintances, professional colleagues who’ve worked together on a couple of cases. Why this urgent phone call on a Sunday night? But, of course, she does want to know.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Her voice comes out in a whisper.

‘No one really knows. Cloughie’s just spoken to Michelle. They think it could be a virus, one of those that’s resistant to antibiotics.’

‘Is he-’ Ruth stops, afraid to go on. Judy’s voice is kind, professionally concerned.

‘He’s in a coma but his internal organs seem to be shutting down. It doesn’t look good. Michelle and the girls are with him.’

Michelle and the girls. From a long way off, Ruth hears her voice saying, ‘Thanks for telling me Judy. I’ve got to go now. Bye.’

Ruth puts the phone down and realises that she is shaking. In all her worst fears, in all her most fevered ‘what ifs’, she has never imagined this. She had thought that Michelle and Nelson might move away, even that Nelson might be killed in the line of duty, never that he would succumb to something as prosaic as a virus. It’s like Hercules dying of a common cold. It just can’t happen. She sits down, stands up again, switches on the TV, switches it off again. What can she do? She can’t exactly ring Michelle or turn up at the hospital. She tries to remember the last thing that she said to Nelson. It was at the museum, wasn’t it? Nelson had just been winding up their interview when Danforth Smith had barged in. ‘We’ve finished, haven’t we?’ she’d said to Nelson. And he’d answered, ‘Yes. We’ve finished.’ So is that it? Finished. Over. Can there really be a world without Nelson? She thinks of her daughter sleeping upstairs. Now Kate may never have a chance to get to know her father. Ruth realises that she is crying.

The phone rings and she snatches it up. She steels herself to hear Judy saying, compassionately, ‘It’s over, he’s gone’ or any of the hundreds of platitudinous things people say to avoid telling you that someone is dead. But it’s Shona. Ruth feels quite weak with relief.

‘Hi Ruth! What are you doing?’

‘Nothing much. Watching TV.’ Not for anything in the world is she going to tell Shona about Nelson.

‘Cool. Can I come over? Phil’s got the flu and he’s being such a man about it. I’m so bored. I haven’t been out of the house all day. It’s hell being pregnant.’

But to Ruth now it seems like heaven. When she’d been pregnant, Nelson had been alive and well and Kate had been safe, safe inside Ruth.

‘I’m sorry,’ she hears herself saying, ‘but I’ve got a lot of work to do.’

‘OK. Not to worry.’ Shona sounds disappointed, then her voice picks up again. ‘Did you go to that Aborigine conference? Phil was invited but he thought it would be too weird.’

‘It was weird. Weird but interesting.’

‘Are you sure you’re not free for a quick chat?’

‘Sorry Shona, I’d love to see you but I’ve got a ton of essays to mark.’

‘All right then. See you soon.’

‘Bye. Hope Phil feels better.’

Outside, the wind continues to blow. The front door rattles and she hears her dustbin falling over. She remembers the time when she was lost on the Saltmarsh and Nelson came to save her. He had found his way along the hidden paths, the secret crossing places, and he had come to rescue her. She remembers the time when he had thrown himself into a freezing river for her sake. She’d taken him for granted, Nelson and his lunatic bravery. What would it be like not to have that presence in her life, that massive, exasperating presence? Although she has only known Nelson for a few years, she just can’t imagine it.

The knock on the door freezes her with terror. She thinks of other unexpected summonses: Erik, Cathbad, David, even Nelson himself, that dreadful night when they found Scarlet’s body. Who is it this time? The reaper whose name is death? The nameless creature from The Monkey’s Paw? Maybe it’s Cameron, come to invite her for a spliff and a talk about the meaning of life.

She opens the door.

It’s Michelle.