‘Two weeks to get it liveable again.’ There was something about Curtis’s expression that prompted her to add quickly, ‘Are you sure it’s alright for me to stay with you for so long?’
‘Fine… its fine.’
‘It really is good of you to put me up.’
‘No, the pleasure’s all ours.’ The smile was a tad professional, his eyes cold looking. ‘Heather could do with some company. We’re isolated out here… we love the peace of course. And that landscape, once you get use to the flatness, is really quite beautiful you know. Vast open spaces, enormous skies. You can almost reach out and touch the tranquillity of it all.’
Eden found she could only repeat her gratitude. ‘Thanks for inviting me to share it with you. I’ll do what I can to help out around the house.’
‘That’s very generous. With Heather standing in that damn hole in the garden all day sometimes the more mundane day-to-day stuff slips. And she has her accountancy work, too.’ He laughed. ‘We don’t want her clients banging on the door, do we? Howling about delayed tax returns. Now… seeing as Heather won’t come out of her lab and leave those bloody bones alone. Shall we take these to her?’
Eden picked up two wine glasses. Curtis followed with his.
‘Right to end of the passageway, Eden. Last door on your left. Duck your head; it’s the oldest part of the house. The doorways were built for goblins.’
The door was part open, so even with a glass in each hand, Eden managed by pushing it ajar with her elbow. Heather leaned over the long table in the centre of the room, with the kind of expression of concentration someone might wear when immersed in a jigsaw puzzle. On the table were laid fragments of bone; most still coated with mud. The low-ceilinged room accommodated ‘treasures’ from the dig: plastic trays full of those greenish copper coins, fragments of pottery, pieces of tile. On a desk in the corner, a microscope and a laptop sat side by side. Heather was oblivious to the new arrivals.
‘Have you put the chap back together again, yet?’ boomed Curtis.
Heather flinched. She shot him a glare that clearly said,
‘Lab?’ Curtis chuckled. ‘This is where they used to do the laundry way back when. So? Humpty Dumpty here… a Roman Legionnaire stabbed in the vitals, or a Vestal Virgin done horribly to death for being a tease?’
‘Ooh, wine. Lovely, thank you.’ Heather took the glass, her fingers still coated in good Yorkshire earth. ‘And at least it’s not too dry.’
‘White wine can never be too dry.’ As he sipped his he pulled a face that suggested he thought the wine mediocre. ‘Please note, Eden, your aunt isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. I tell her that stuff sticking to her fingers… if what she’s digging up is a stable… is two thousand year old poop.’
‘Hardly a stable. The dimensions are too small.’
‘A lavatory then. With contents thereof in situ.’
‘And these bones. There is definite charring.’
Heather offered a thighbone for her husband to examine more closely. He responded with a terse, ‘I’ll stay with the
Again Eden felt as if she had to reassure them that her visit wouldn’t be a long one. ‘And thanks again, Heather for inviting me to stay. I’ve told Curtis that I’m more than willing to help out around the house; I won’t get under your feet.’
Heather gulped her wine. ‘A boy, wasn’t it? Didn’t he do it deliberately?’
Eden tightened her grip on the glass. ‘I invited a friend home.’
‘But it turned out he didn’t give you his real name, did he?’ Heather’s gaze became uncomfortably penetrating as she regarded Eden.
‘That’s right. For whatever reason he didn’t want to… ’ Simply voicing the events that led to the destruction of half her home weren’t only painful, but they made her feel so foolish.
Curtis uhmed. ‘And you’d only met him the once, I understand?’
‘Yes. I feel such an idiot.’
Heather turned back to her bones. ‘You’re a very trusting person. Your mother’s like that. The trouble is that people aren’t always nice.’
Curtis took the empty glass from Heather as she picked up a jaw bone; it still had brown canines embedded in the sockets. Almost as if he couldn’t stop himself, he added, ‘The police think it was arson, don’t they?’
Heather murmured, ‘You can’t be too careful who you let into your home these days.’
‘Drug addict, was he? Or insane? Did he look right to you when you met him in the pub?’
Eden’s face burned. ‘He looked perfectly normal. There was nothing odd about him.’
‘Outwardly, maybe. But, with hindsight, you must remember some strange quirk about his behaviour?’
Eden’s hand shook enough for a drop of wine to spring over the rim to fall onto the bones laid on the table.
‘Careful!’ Heather used a tissue to dab wine from a rib bone.
Curtis laughed. ‘Did he spend the evening fiddling with a cigarette lighter?’
‘Look, I’d had a drink, I was lonely — ’
‘Eden, there goes more wine. Stand back from the table —
Curtis still laughed. ‘But a dirty, great keg of diesel would have been a dead give away. I wonder what turns people into arsonists?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Eden’s eyes pricked. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. People could have died that night. My neighbours have children — ’
‘Uh, there it goes again.’ The phone in the passageway began to ring. ‘Excuse me.’ Curtis vanished back through the door. A second later Eden heard his brisk voice dealing with what appeared to be more problems. ‘You’ve tackled Klein, I hope? He gets no more studio time unless he pays at least half upfront… what’s that? If it’s not Klein, what is it then? The heating? What do you expect me to do about it this time of night? No, don’t call out the engineer. We can’t afford to run up more bills. The studio’s supposed to generate income for us. At this rate we’ll be pouring more cash in than we’re getting out. Damn it, Wayne. Look at the thermostat. Somebody’s probably just dicked around with the thing. Turn it down; don’t expect me to hold your hand while you do it.’
As Curtis fought his battles by phone Heather murmured, ‘Tibia, ribs, though not quite a full set. Vertebrae. Shins. Part of a pelvis. Do you know what we’ve got here?’
‘What?’ Eden had been so wound up by this couple’s insensitivity that she’d not been listening. If anything, she found herself thinking about her apartment. The stench of smoke that clung to everything. The heat in the kitchen had melted the windows so they hung down the wall like surreal icicles. The mess, the bloody awful, stinking mess.
‘Eden, do you know what we’ve got here?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I’m sorry that my mother asked you to put me up. It’s not working out. In the morning I’ll — ’
‘Oh, don’t let Curtis bother you. It’s just his way. Ever since he set up this studio he’s been like an old dog with a sore backside. Growl, growl, growl… I don’t even listen to what he says half the time. Water off a duck’s back. Now, see this ankle joint. Hardly any wear.’
Eden stared in disbelief. How can anyone take part in what had been a bullying interrogation, then switch subjects like nothing had happened?
Heather pressed on, clearly fascinated by the skeleton. Eden could smell the wet soil. It added to the oppressive air of the house. She longed to go out into the fields and walk and walk until sheer exhaustion released the emotional pressure she felt building inside of her. Heather purred her observations as she lovingly touched each bone in turn. ‘No sign of disease, or wear, certainly no arthritis in the big ball joints of the hips. We’re looking at the skeleton of a youth, I’m sure of it. Late teens at the most. From the lightness of the bones I’d say he was slightly built. Almost willowy you could say. Eden? We’ve been thugs, haven’t we? You come here as our guest and we’ve talked about that fire like it was nothing more than broken plate. You must have been devastated, poor thing.’
‘It’s not fair!’
