Burial

'It must.'

'We're only human. So these things might not even come up. They probably won't.'

Nathan wet his lips with the tip of his tongue.

'Okay,' he said.

Jacki set down her mug and began to gather her things. She patted her pockets, looking for car keys. Thus distracted, she said, 'Give her time.'

'All the time she needs.'

Jacki got her coat and checked its pockets for the keys. The coat jingled. There they were.

Nathan said, 'You've always been a good friend to her.'

'Well, I made her a promise.'

She shrugged herself into her coat and said goodnight. She walked down the hallway, swinging the car keys from her index finger.

40

Six weeks later, Elise's remains were released. She was buried in the grounds of Sutton Down church, where Nathan and Holly had married.

Some print journalists were there, but there were no cameras.

When it was over, June hugged Nathan and kissed him. Graham clasped both his hands. There was a great distance between them.

They had not spoken since the morning Holly left him. They didn't know what to say to each other.

Most of the village seemed to be there, and many of Elise's school friends, older now. One of Elise's old boyfriends was there. He greeted Graham and June diffidently. At first they didn't recognize him. He had put on weight and lost hair. The sight of him made June cry. She touched his face.

Nathan watched them.

The mourners were drifting away. Nathan buttoned his coat and headed for the gates.

There were brisk footsteps behind him.

Holly.

She took his elbow.

He buried his hands deep in his pockets and turned to face her, saying, 'Hi.'

'Hi.'

She'd lost weight: she was thinner in the face. And she'd got her hair cut. It was much shorter now, and it shone red and autumnal in the ancient graveyard. She wore a black coat, black shoes. She carried a little black handbag, patent leather with a brushed-steel clasp.

He looked at his own shoes, shiny black and said, 'How are you?'

'I'm getting there. You?'

'Getting by. Y'know.'

'How's work ?'

'Same old, same old. Justin's wife left him.'

Holly grinned.

'How's he taking it?'

'He's fine. Suddenly we've got a lot to talk about. That makes him happy.' He scratched his chin, considering it, then told her, 'We came up with a new line.'

'That's good.'

'We're calling it 'Congratulations, You Left Him at Last'. Until we can think of something better. The trade's gone mad for it. If it sells like we think it will, we might actually make our bonus this year.'

When he talked about work, she got a little upward turn at the inner corner of her eyebrows. And there it was, right now.

He said, 'People leave people all the time. The trade might as well get to grips with it.'

They stood on the grass verge to let some mourners pass by.

Nobody knew what to say to anybody.

That knot between Holly's eyes.

She said, 'You knew.'

He kicked at a wet tussock.

'Knew what?'

'That it was him.'

He shifted his weight. Looked at the sky and drew in a long breath. 'It did occur to me, yeah.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'How could I ?'

She narrowed her eyes.

Nathan said, 'I like your hair.'

She touched it. 'It was time for a change. I kept it the same for too long.'

He tugged at a lock of his own hair, just behind the temple. 'I looked in the mirror this morning. I'm going grey.'

'You've been going grey for a long time.'

He took a step back

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'How could I ?'

He laughed, sudden and hard; it shocked a murder of crows from the bare trees. They launched into the low sky and described a slow, outraged spiral.

He said, 'You always made me laugh.'

She leaned on a grave. It was eight hundred years old, worn smooth with time.

She said, 'I have something else to tell you.'

Six months later, their daughter was born.

Nathan held her, still bloody, and looked into her black eyes. He put his nose to the warm suede of her scalp. He breathed in the rich, fungal smell of her and had to sit for the headiness of it. She held his finger and he wept. He cradled her. He passed her to her mother, who bundled her in a crocheted blanket.

He stood at the bedside, looking on.

Bob didn't die. But his brain had been starved of oxygen; it lost its higher functions. Bob was in a persistent vegetative state. The vehicle of his consciousness had been destroyed.

Bob's library was put into storage. The reels of tape were examined and found to contain nothing but Bob's voice, asking questions to an empty room.

Information retrieved from the hard drives of his computers included the first fifty pages of a PhD thesis that had been discontinued in 1988, when the university rejected his proposal.

1988 was five years before Bob met Nathan, in the days when Nathan lived in the shared house at the end of Maple Road.

Nathan visited him sometimes. He never told Holly. He'd drive all the way to the hospital and sit at the bedside and just look at him.

Sometimes Bob made noises. He howled or whooped or snarled. And sometimes he opened his mouth or tried to roll over. Sometimes he opened his sightless eyes. Nathan watched them spin in the sockets.

But whatever had made this body Bob was gone.

Nathan wondered.

Once, he brought along a tape recorder. He set it down and let it record the stillness next to Bob's bed. He played the tape several times. But he never heard Bob's voice, or any other. There was just the hiss of silence and the random, distant clattering of the hospital.

He threw the tape away. From beneath the spare tyre in the boot of his car, he removed the reel-to-reel tape he'd taken from Bob's flat.

He thought about playing it. But he knew it would be blank. So he unspooled the tape, cut it up with a pair of scissors and burned it.