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
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
She opens the door.
It’s Michelle.
CHAPTER 24
‘Can I come in?’ says Michelle.
She looks terrible – unmade-up, hair lank, clothes crumpled – but she is also, mysteriously, more beautiful than ever. Ruth thinks that she looks other-worldly, a creature of the night, an ageless picture of feminine grief.
‘Of course.’ Ruth stands back.
‘Have you heard?’ asks Michelle. ‘About Harry?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth.
Michelle comes in and sits on the sofa. Flint appears from nowhere and tries to sit on her lap. Ruth shoos him away.
‘Can I get you some tea or coffee?’ Ruth is aware of how ridiculous she sounds, but Michelle must have come straight from the hospital. Maybe she hasn’t eaten all day.
