‘Really?’ Randolph’s blue eyes flash at her. ‘Why did you say that?’
‘Oh, nothing important.’ Caroline turns back to her files. ‘Just that we’ve all got things to feel guilty about. I know Mum thinks that she neglected him for her business and her animal rights mates.’
‘Rubbish. She always supported him.’ Randolph is always on their mother’s side.
‘Well, we’re all feeling rotten.’
‘Except Tamsin. Little Miss Fix It.’
‘I’m sure she’s very upset about Dad,’ says Caroline doubtfully.
‘Are you?’ says Randolph, stroking Lester who has just jumped onto his lap. ‘I’ll take your word for it. What did that policewoman want this morning?’
‘Just to look through the CCTV footage.’
‘Did she find anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You look nervous,’ Randolph teases. ‘What have you been getting up to in the woods?’
‘Bugger off, Dolph. What about you?’
‘What do you mean “what about me”?’
‘What have you been doing in the woods?’
They lock gazes, blue eyes meeting brown. Then Randolph gets up and strides out of the office.
CHAPTER 19
The Elginists’ conference is held in a Quaker Meeting House in Great Yarmouth. Ruth has always rather avoided Yarmouth in the past, thinking of it as a kind of east-coast Blackpool, full of roller-coasters and drunken holidaymakers. Nelson once tried to tell her that Blackpool wasn’t like that; it had some wonderful countryside nearby, he had said. But Ruth hadn’t been convinced. She likes her seaside to be deserted, miles of lonely sand, not crammed with donkeys in funny hats. So she is rather surprised to find that the Meeting House is a delightful white-painted house dating back to the seventeenth century. If you have to have a religion, thinks Ruth, walking through the shady garden, you might as well be a Quaker. They’re non-hierarchical, non-sexist and pacifist. But a notice in the lobby reminds her of an older, rather more bloodstained religion. The house, she reads, was built on the site of a medieval monastery, an Augustinian cell. This reminds her of Bishop Augustine and of Mother Julian, the mystic anchoress. The sign also tells her that Anna Sewell, the author of
It has been a hassle getting there for nine. Although Kate was awake and ready for action at six, Ruth still found herself running round the house like a mad thing in order to get to Sandra’s at eight. By the time she had fed Flint, changed her own clothes twice, got Kate strapped in the car with a bag full of nappies and a change of clothes, and gone back because she was convinced she’d left the gas on, it was a quarter past. After a lightning changeover at Sandra’s, Ruth was finally on her way to Great Yarmouth. Now, after getting stuck behind two holiday coaches (who on earth would go to Norfolk in November?), she finally makes it to the Meeting House by nine-thirty. She hopes the seminars haven’t started.
But when she enters the room signposted Refreshments, she realises that she has misjudged her colleagues. At nine-thirty, the assembled archaeologists are still tucking into coffee and Danish pastries. After agonies of indecision about her clothes, Ruth has finally settled on a black trouser suit to look professional (and slightly thinner). She is almost the only person not in jeans. The room also seems full of dyed hair – purple, red, pink, even a multi-coloured Mohican. Almost everyone has tattoos and multiple piercings. Someone has even brought their dog.
In the end, though, it’s the dog that makes Ruth decide that she was right to come. As she stands uncertainly in the doorway, the animal comes bounding up to her and jumps up to lick her nose. Ruth is taken aback. She likes all animals but she is really happiest with cats and this is a particularly large and whiskery dog. Why on earth is it so pleased to see her?
‘Claudia!’ calls an amused and familiar voice. ‘Come here.’
‘Hallo Max,’ says Ruth.
Max hasn’t changed much in the past eighteen months. If anything he looks slightly healthier than she remembers, less haunted-looking. His face is brown, making his hair look greyer and his eyes bluer. He is grinning now, a wider grin than she ever remembers him giving but, then again, there hadn’t been that much to smile about when they last met.
‘Ruth. How lovely. Cathbad said you might be here.’
The druid telegraph system is as efficient as ever. Ruth can see Cathbad across the room, his purple cloak not that outlandish in this setting. Bob Woonunga is standing next to him; he’s wearing a cloak as well but his looks as if it is made of fur.
‘I don’t really know why I’m here,’ says Ruth. She can feel herself smiling back at Max. Her facial muscles feel rusty from lack of use. ‘Cathbad persuaded me.’
‘Ah, well, he is very persuasive. Would you like a coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
They walk over to the urns, Claudia following them.
‘She’s grown,’ says Ruth, patting the dog’s head.
‘Yes,’ says Max. ‘She’s eating me out of house and home. As you see, I’ve turned into one of those pathetic creatures who can’t leave their dog even for a day. Actually, the dog sitter let me down.’
‘It sounds worse than childcare,’ says Ruth, helping herself to a pastry.
Max looks rather embarrassed, bending down to ruffle Claudia’s fur. ‘How’s your… how’s Kate? I’d love to meet her.’
Max had sent a card and a present when Kate was born and Ruth had expected him to follow these tokens in person, but somehow it had never happened. She told herself at the time that she was relieved. These last months have been complicated enough without Max reappearing in her life. It’s good to see him now though.
‘Kate’s well,’ she says. ‘She had her first birthday last weekend.’
‘Her first birthday,’ Max looks startled. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘No,’ says Ruth drily. ‘It seems much longer.’ But she knows what Max means. Before she had Kate, she had noticed how the years had begun to run together, nothing to distinguish one from the other except the appearance of a few more grey hairs. Now, with Kate, every week marks a new milestone. And while, on the one hand, it does seem amazing that Kate is already a year old; on the other, it seems as if she has been around forever.
Come and meet her, she is about to say. Come back to the house when we’ve finished discussing skulls and bones. We can walk on the beach and look at Kate and talk about life. But at that moment Cathbad claps his hands importantly.
‘Let’s go into the main hall now, friends. The first session is about to start.’
The first session, entitled ‘Honouring Our Ancient Dead’, is more interesting than Ruth had expected. She is shocked to discover that as recently as 2003 working parties were advising that human remains should not be returned to their country of origin because of doubts about their ‘care and preservation’. She learns that in 2005 three hundred and eighty-five sets of Aboriginal remains were held in eighteen different institutions around Britain. ‘Many of these relics,’ says the speaker, a woman called Alkira Jones, ‘were taken from their indigenous homelands through blatant acts of colonialism.’ Ruth thinks of Danforth Smith (now deceased)…
