A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

kept silent. Nelson had admitted everything and he and Michelle had ‘had it out’. They had argued furiously (‘It was terrible, Ruth, we argued for two days. We never argue.’ ‘Really?’) and the upshot was that Nelson had agreed not to see Ruth or Kate again. Ever. ‘It was the only way I could save our marriage. I’m sorry.’ What if they met in the course of work, Ruth had asked, stony-faced. ‘She accepts that that might happen, of course.’ Nelson had wanted to make a‘financial provision’, to give her money every month, but Ruth had refused. She hadn’t realised how far Nelson would go to save his marriage. Or how much it would hurt.
    Seeing Nelson at the museum had been worse, far worse, than seeing poor Neil Topham’s body curled up beside the bishop’s coffin. Her feelings for Nelson are so complicated that she has long since stopped trying to make sense of them. As soon as she sees him she always feels, in quick succession: irritation (he’s the bossiest person she knows), respect (he’s very good at his job), pleasure (he makes her laugh), and undeniable attraction. Does she love him? She has stopped asking herself this question too. She knows that she never wants to live with a man again. Ten years ago, when Peter moved out, she remembers the way the house itself seemed to sigh with relief. It was just Ruth and the cats and the wild skyline, alone at last. And now it’s just Ruth and Kate and Flint. But it had been nice having Nelson around. He may be a male chauvinist pig but he’s quite useful in a crisis.
    Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my Bonnie to me …
    She has reached the Saltmarsh. It is dark now but she can hear the sea sighing in the distance. The road is raised up over the flat marshland, and at times like this it feels as if you are arriving at the end of the world. She may have left the plastic ghouls and miniature witches behind but this is the real thing. The dark, the unknown. Ruth has known real terror on the Saltmarsh but still she loves it. Her cottage is one of three but one is empty and theother is a holiday home, seldom occupied. It’s a lonely place but, on the whole, Ruth enjoys the solitude. So, when she parks outside her house and the security light (installed two years ago by Nelson) illuminates the Sold sign on the house next door, she feels a familiar irritation, almost anger. The house has been bought for rental, she knows, and any day now she’ll have some trendy couple leaning over the fence and inviting her round for sushi, or some bearded loner who wants to show her his dried seaweed collection. Or some—. Stop, she tells herself, unlocking the door and carrying Kate inside. It may well be a new soul mate, or someone with children the right age to play with Kate, but the truth is that Ruth doesn’t really want any new friends. She has enough trouble with the ones she’s got.
    Nelson drives to the hospital in a similarly uncomfortable state of mind. Seeing Ruth again had been as bad as he had imagined it would be. And when she mentioned Katie! Nelson’s feelings for Ruth are so tied up with guilt and fear that he finds them impossible to untangle. His feelings for Katie, on the other hand, are crystal clear. He loves her, the baby he has only held three times in his life, and he wants to be her father. But that’s impossible.
    The events at the christening six months ago are still so painful that Nelson finds his thoughts veering away whenever he tries to approach the recollection. Now he forces himself to remember. Michelle had been fine at first. She had been keen to be a godmother; in fact she had always taken a special interest in Ruth and Kate,something which, when he thought about it, had had the power to make him feel almost ill with guilt and foreboding. But like an idiot, he had ignored his misgivings. He had insisted on a Catholic christening because he’d been brought up a Catholic, and Cathbad’s naming day ceremony held a few months earlier had made him acutely uncomfortable. Worse, he felt that they were ill-wishing Kate in some way, invoking those faceless, bloodthirsty Gods that Cathbad admires so much. He’d wanted some protection from the angels and saints of his own childhood. So he had persuaded Ruth to have Kate baptised and had asked Father Hennessey, a Catholic priest whom he had met on a previous case, to perform the service. Ruth had agreed, partly because she too had been impressed by Patrick Hennessey