Nelson is not normally much of a one for breakfast. He likes to leave early and grab a bacon butty on the way to work. Sometimes he even accompanies Clough for a traditional McDonald’s breakfast. What he doesn’t do is sit at his breakfast bar consuming the Full English and trying to make conversation with his wife. But today, 6 November, is his birthday and Michelle announced that she was going to ‘cook him a proper breakfast for once’. The trouble is that it’s only seven-thirty and neither of them feels much like eating. All Michelle has on her plate is a single piece of toast.
‘Have some of this bacon, love.’
Michelle shudders. ‘I couldn’t.’
‘It’s too much for me. You know I’m trying to lose weight.’
Michelle’s face falls. ‘I thought you’d like a proper breakfast. You always used to when we lived in Blackpool.’
Nelson and Michelle are both from Blackpool. They lived there when they were first married and Nelson has noticed that, in the last few months, Michelle has increasingly been harking back to those days. It’s as if she wants to remember a time before Norfolk, before the children grew up, before Ruth.
‘I was young then. I didn’t have to watch my weight.’
‘You should come to the gym with me. You said you were going to.’
In the euphoria of reconciliation, Nelson and Michelle had agreed to do more things together. Nelson would go to the gym, Michelle would watch football matches, they would go out for meals, book mini breaks. So far Nelson has been to the gym once, they have had two unsatisfactory meals out and Michelle has leafed through a brochure full of details of spas and golf links but coy about prices. Nelson did try to get tickets when Blackpool played Norwich but neither of them had been too disappointed when he was unsuccessful. Michelle hates watching Blackpool; orange isn’t her colour.
‘I haven’t got time,’ he says now, gulping his tea. ‘Work’s a nightmare. We’re getting nowhere on the drugs case.’
‘I thought we’d have more time together now the girls have left,’ says Michelle. Both daughters are now at university. Laura reading marine biology at Plymouth, Rebecca doing media studies at Brighton. Nelson is rather in awe of higher education (he and Michelle both left school at sixteen) but he wishes his daughters would study subjects he understood. Still, Brighton’s a grand place. Perhaps they could have a mini break there.
‘We’ll go out for a meal tonight,’ he says, kissing Michelle on the cheek. ‘I’ll try to get off early.’
She smiles, rather forlornly. ‘Happy birthday Harry.’
Nelson leaves the house feeling depressed. He’s not wild about his birthday at the best of times and forty-three sounds worryingly old. His dad died at fifty. Bloody hell. Only seven more years. And Michelle had seemed so sad, so unlike the confident woman he had married. How can he make things better, short of obliterating the last two years? It’s ironical that now he thinks about Ruth more than ever. In the past, he was able to forget her when he was with Michelle but now she is there all the time, the invisible presence. The elephant in the room. He smiles thinly to himself. She’d love that description, he’s sure. He notes with irritation that there are two spent rocket cases in his garden. Why can’t people go to organised bonfire parties rather than trying to set themselves alight in their own gardens? It just makes more work for the emergency services. He opens the garage and starts up the Mercedes. He’ll make sure that he’s home early, take Michelle somewhere nice for dinner. But, before he has even left the cul-de-sac, he gets a message on his phone:
Ruth has no one to cook her breakfast and right now she’s glad. Kate woke up twice in the night and then, inexplicably, slept in until eight. Ruth has got used to Kate being her alarm clock and so no longer sets the other kind. She rose in a panic, flinging on clothes and ignoring Kate (and Flint’s) demands to be fed. She usually drops her daughter off at Sandra’s at eight, and even then it’s a rush to be at the university for nine. She gets in early these days because she does so much more of her work there – home no longer being a place where she can read for hours and forget the rest of the world. And today she has a lecture at ten. Bloody hell. No time for make-up, she’ll just have to scare her students with her naked face. Maybe they’ll think she’s wearing a Halloween mask.
Ruth slops cat food down for Flint, stuffs porridge into a resistant Kate and is just heading out to the car when her phone rings. The landline. She hesitates. Should she leave it? Surely if it was important they’d ring her mobile, but it might be her parents who regard mobile phones as the work of the devil (they are experts on the Prince of Darkness). Ruth goes back inside, still carrying Kate. Flint, delighted by this turn of events, climbs onto the table, purring loudly.
‘Doctor Galloway?’ Not her parents then.
‘Yes.’
‘This is Janet Meadows. I’m a local historian. Cathbad said that you wanted to talk to me.’
Not for the first time Ruth marvels at the efficiency of Cathbad’s information service. He left her house last night at nearly midnight yet has already had time to network. She looks at her watch. Nearly nine. Ruth hates being late, she can feel her facial muscles knotting into a tension headache.
‘That would be great. It’s just that I’m in a bit of a-’
‘What about today? Midday. At the cathedral refectory.’
‘I don’t think I can…’ Ruth tries to conjure up her timetable. She doesn’t think she has any lectures between eleven and three.
‘Cathbad said it was important.’
Why is Cathbad so keen for Ruth to meet this woman? It’s not important in any real sense but still… Ruth would like to talk to someone about Bishop Augustine before the press gets hold of the story. And lunch in the cathedral cafe sounds tempting. Weird but tempting.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you there.’
Nelson is surprised to find that it’s business as usual at the yard. He meets a string of horses coming through the gates and another set are being saddled up in the quadrangle.
‘Horses can’t wait, I’m afraid,’ says a leathery individual who identifies himself as Len Harris, Head Lad. ‘They need to be exercised. We’ve got runners today and the owners expect to see their horses run. So life goes on.’ He grimaces as if he realises how inappropriate this sounds. ‘Though we’re all devastated about the governor.’
Nelson can’t see any evidence of devastation in the faces of any of the riders but he has begun to realise that jockeys and stable lads don’t give much away. There is something watchful, almost withdrawn, about them. Perhaps it’s the strain of keeping their weight under ten stone. The only creature who seems at all upset is Lester the cat, who is meowing piteously in the office. When Nelson walks through the yard towards the house, Lester follows him.
This time, Nelson knocks at the front door, which is opened immediately by Randolph. He
Nelson follows Randolph, still gibbering, into a large, light sitting room. There, looking rather lonely on a vast leather sofa, are two women. One he recognises as Caroline, the other is a slim woman with short, grey hair. The wife, presumably.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he begins formally. ‘Do you feel up to talking to me?’ He wishes Judy Johnson were here; he has asked her to join him as soon as possible.
‘Of course,’ says the woman, who introduces herself as Romilly Smith, Danforth’s wife. ‘It’s just been the most terrible shock. I’ve only just got back from the hospital.’
‘Was your husband taken ill in the night?’
‘It was so sudden,’ says Romilly. She’s about sixty, Nelson reckons, but still powerfully attractive. The sort of woman confident enough not to dye her hair. She’s distressed now, holding her handkerchief tightly in one hand, but still very much in control. ‘He seemed fine yesterday,’ she says. ‘He was full of the opening of the coffin, finding out that the skeleton was female. He was really intrigued.’
Randolph, who is pouring himself a whisky, lets out a sudden laugh.
‘Isn’t it a bit early?’ his mother indicates the drink.
‘I’ve had a shock, Ma.’
‘We’ve all had a shock,’ snaps Caroline. She, too, looks very shaken. Her dark hair is pulled up in a bun which makes her look older but rather beautiful.
