Red Bones

the figurehead of one of the sailing ships that in Hattie’s imagination had brought goods to trade with her merchant husband.

Hattie would have liked to ask who was in the Pier House the night before. Who did you stay up drinking with? But as usual the words stayed inside her head.

‘Is there anything for breakfast?’ Sophie asked. ‘I’m starving.’

Sophie was always starving. She ate like a horse without putting on weight. A natural athlete, she loped across the island at a pace that left Hattie breathless and panting, and she could work all day without seeming to get tired. Recently she’d been recruited by Anna to take her place in the Whalsay women’s rowing team. Hattie had watched her practising with the group, bending and pulling on the oars, collapsing in laughter at the end of the session. Why can’t I be like that? Hattie thought now. I’m scared of the world and I always have been. I can’t blame Paul Berglund for that. The image of her supervisor slid into her brain, filled it with his size and his strength. She felt a return of the old panic and forced herself to breathe slowly, to retreat to her dreams of the merchant house and her island lover.

‘I’m starving,’ Sophie repeated.

‘There’s bread,’ Hattie said. ‘Some of Evelyn’s marmalade.’

‘That’ll keep us going until elevenses at Mima’s.’ Sophie stepped out of her sleeping bag. Hattie was embarrassed by the sight of the girl’s naked body, but fascinated too. She couldn’t help looking at it, at the flat belly, the golden pubic hair, the muscular shoulders. She turned away quickly and began to slice bread.

Usually Sophie was full of chat about what had happened in the bar the night before, the island gossip, news of any overseas trawlers that had put into Symbister during the day, men she fancied, but this morning she seemed subdued and got dressed in silence. She opened the main door of the Bod and looked outside.

‘God,’ she said. ‘Do you think this fog will ever clear? It’s getting me down. Don’t you long for sun and a clear blue sky? It’s spring. In the south there’ll be green leaves and primroses.’

‘At least it’s not pouring with rain. I left my spare coat at Mima’s last night and the other one is still wet.’ But Hattie found the mist disturbing too. It slid across the island, changing her perspective and challenging her ideas about the landscape and its history.

She spread marmalade thinly on to a slice of bread, folded it in half and forced herself to eat it. There’d been a stage in her life when food had become a source of conflict between her mother and herself. Her mother had decided Hattie was anorexic, panicked and dragged her off to a specialist clinic. Being Junior Minister for Health made Gwen James sensitive about things like that, sensitive at least about what the press might write if they got the idea that Hattie was unnaturally thin and her mother doing nothing to address the problem. Hattie hadn’t been able to understand the fuss; not eating had been a symptom of her problem, not the root of her illness. Occasionally she got engrossed in her work and forgot to eat. So what? Now she remembered meals as a duty – like taking regular medicine – to keep her mother off her back. She was never hungry and seldom took any pleasure from food, even after a day’s work on the dig when Sophie was ravenous. It astounded her that people could waste time planning what they would cook, that a meal out was considered a treat.

Sophie had already finished breakfast and was brushing her hair, her one vanity. It hung halfway down her back, the colour of a barley stalk. Now she tied it back into a long loose ponytail at the nape of her neck. ‘We ’d better go,’ she said. ‘I suppose we can’t really be late with the boss on the island.’

The boss. Their supervisor, Paul Berglund. Another obsession from an earlier period in Hattie’s life. Now she realized the obsession had turned into an unhealthy paranoia. Sophie knew nothing of this; she hadn’t picked up on the antagonism between them. To Sophie, Paul was just ‘the boss’, someone who turned up occasionally to lay down the law about their methods, treated them to a decent meal out in a restaurant in Lerwick if he was in a good mood, signed off their expenses. She couldn’t know that Hattie was counting the days until he left.

Hattie didn’t think Paul would have allowed her to set up the project if he’d been supervising from the start. But he’d only joined the department the year before. She remembered the meeting at which he’d been introduced to her and Sophie. ‘You’ll have heard of Paul Berglund,’ the head of department said. ‘You couldn’t wish for a better supervisor.’ Paul had shaken Hattie’s hand, said how pleased he was to be working with her and given no sign that they’d met before. His hand had been cold and dry; hers was sweaty. She’d muttered something about feeling unwell, fled the office and thrown up in the nearest ladies’ toilet. Perhaps he expected her to dump the project, find another subject for her PhD.

But she hadn’t left – the dig on Whalsay had been her idea from the start – and she had made sure that he had no excuse for excluding her. Now the merchant’s house mattered more to her than escaping from him. Her record-keeping was impressive and though she wasn’t as physically strong as Sophie, her fieldwork was deft and thorough. Whenever she was in Paul’s presence she felt tense. She watched him, always aware of the space he took up, of his position in the room.

‘Paul Berglund was in the bar after you left,’ Sophie said. They’d left the Bod and were on their way to Lindby. They couldn’t see much beyond the field on each side of the track. Sheep were darker shades in the mist.

‘Oh.’ Hattie tried to sound unbothered. She didn’t want to hear about him.

‘Yeah, he was drinking whisky. I’ve never seen him pissed before. Not that pissed.’

I have, Hattie thought, and shivered inside her fleece. ‘Anything else happen after I’d gone?’ She wanted to move the discussion away from Berglund.

‘Not really. I was chatting to Sandy, but he left before I did. He had to get home to his mammy. I mean, what is he like? He still acts like a fourteen-year-old.’ She shifted the straps of the rucksack on her shoulders. ‘I do see him as a bit of a challenge, though. I’m sure he gets up to all sorts of mischief in Lerwick. It would be fun to see if I can get him to misbehave here, on his mother’s doorstep.’

Hattie didn’t know what to say about that. She supposed Sophie could look after herself, but in her opinion all games around sex were dangerous. She would be quite pleased though if Sophie and Sandy hooked up with each other for a while.

They’d reached the dip in the land that led to Setter, the most sheltered spot on the island. The merchant had chosen the land for his grand house well. Hattie wondered if it had the same name then, something similar perhaps which had become corrupted over the years. They always called in on Mima before they started work, both as a courtesy and because she’d put on the kettle and bring them out tea if she knew they were there. The house seemed unusually quiet. Mima liked Radio Two, the chat of Wogan and singing along to the ballads she recognized. Sophie opened the door and called in but there was no answer.

‘She’s not there.’ Paul Berglund appeared from the back of the house, squat, short-necked, looking more like a soldier than a professor of archaeology. Hattie couldn’t work out what he could be doing there. He didn’t usually arrive on site so early. And if he’d been drinking the night before, shouldn’t he still be in the hotel nursing a hangover? ‘Come into the house,’ he said as if he owned the place. ‘Sit in the kitchen in the warm.’

Something awful’s happened, Hattie thought. What’s he done now?

She held back so Sophie walked into the house first. Usually they would have taken off their boots, but Paul was beckoning them in and they were used to following his instructions. He’d been cutting up an apple with the knife he always carried on site. It lay on the table and Hattie thought again what a cheek it was that he should make himself so at home. In the kitchen the cat wound itself round her legs and almost tripped her up. She picked it up and it hissed.

‘Mima’s dead,’ Paul said. His voice was quiet but matter-of-fact. ‘The police were here earlier. They called me at the Pier House Hotel first thing this morning and asked me to meet them. There was a dreadful accident late last night. Some guy out after rabbits hit her by mistake.’ He paused. They were all still standing. ‘I think it would be better for you not to work today, out of respect for the island. Take the day off. I’ll give you a lift into Lerwick if you like. I’m going anyway, to catch the ferry south this evening. I need to get home.’

‘Cool,’ Sophie said, then must have realized how that sounded. ‘I mean about the lift into town and the day off. Not Mima. We’ll really miss her. I mean, what a shit thing to happen.’

Hattie could tell the only thing Sophie would miss was the tea in the morning and the home baking, sitting in front of the Setter fire when it was raining outside. She didn’t care about a dead old lady.

‘What about you, Hattie?’ Paul said. ‘Do you want to come too?’

‘No, I’ll stay here.’ She must have spoken more sharply than she’d intended because they both stared at her. She’d been wondering about his sudden decision to go south. They’d been expecting him to stay for another week. The undergraduates were still on holiday for Easter. ‘I’ll go to see Evelyn and tell her how sorry we are, ask if