A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

across the heavens. Romilly appears briefly, hand-in-hand with a shadowy figure that he doesn’t recognise. Then Randolph, laughing and laughing. Then Tamsin, but her face is turned away. Then Caroline. She’s trying to tell him something but he can’t hear. Now Lester the cat appears, swollen to the size of a lion. Lester opens his mouth and a man’s voice says, ‘The great snake will have its revenge’.
    The snake has reached his face. He can see its yellow eyes. In the background, Randolph laughs harder than ever. He wants to say that he’s sorry but he knows it’s too late.
The great snake will have its revenge
. He prays that it won’t hurt, that he’ll be able to see his horses galloping one last time.
    The yellow eyes are level with his. The black horse waits for him outside.

CHAPTER 13
     
    Nelson is not normally much of a one for breakfast. He likes to leave early and grab a bacon butty on the way to work. Sometimes he even accompanies Clough for a traditional McDonald’s breakfast. What he doesn’t do is sit at his breakfast bar consuming the Full English and trying to make conversation with his wife. But today, 6 November, is his birthday and Michelle announced that she was going to ‘cook him a proper breakfast for once’. The trouble is that it’s only seven-thirty and neither of them feels much like eating. All Michelle has on her plate is a single piece of toast.
    ‘Have some of this bacon, love.’
    Michelle shudders. ‘I couldn’t.’
    ‘It’s too much for me. You know I’m trying to lose weight.’
    Michelle’s face falls. ‘I thought you’d like a proper breakfast. You always used to when we lived in Blackpool.’
    Nelson and Michelle are both from Blackpool. They lived there when they were first married and Nelson has noticed that, in the last few months, Michelle has increasinglybeen harking back to those days. It’s as if she wants to remember a time before Norfolk, before the children grew up, before Ruth.
    ‘I was young then. I didn’t have to watch my weight.’
    ‘You should come to the gym with me. You said you were going to.’
    In the euphoria of reconciliation, Nelson and Michelle had agreed to do more things together. Nelson would go to the gym, Michelle would watch football matches, they would go out for meals, book mini breaks. So far Nelson has been to the gym once, they have had two unsatisfactory meals out and Michelle has leafed through a brochure full of details of spas and golf links but coy about prices. Nelson did try to get tickets when Blackpool played Norwich but neither of them had been too disappointed when he was unsuccessful. Michelle hates watching Blackpool; orange isn’t her colour.
    ‘I haven’t got time,’ he says now, gulping his tea. ‘Work’s a nightmare. We’re getting nowhere on the drugs case.’
    ‘I thought we’d have more time together now the girls have left,’ says Michelle. Both daughters are now at university. Laura reading marine biology at Plymouth, Rebecca doing media studies at Brighton. Nelson is rather in awe of higher education (he and Michelle both left school at sixteen) but he wishes his daughters would study subjects he understood. Still, Brighton’s a grand place. Perhaps they could have a mini break there.
    ‘We’ll go out for a meal tonight,’ he says, kissing Michelle on the cheek. ‘I’ll try to get off early.’
    She smiles, rather forlornly. ‘Happy birthday Harry.’
    Nelson leaves the house feeling depressed. He’s not wild about his birthday at the best of times and forty-three sounds worryingly old. His dad died at fifty. Bloody hell. Only seven more years. And Michelle had seemed so sad, so unlike the confident woman he had married. How can he make things better, short of obliterating the last two years? It’s ironical that now he thinks about Ruth more than ever. In the past, he was able to forget her when he was with Michelle but now she is there all the time, the invisible presence. The elephant in the room. He smiles thinly to himself. She’d love that description, he’s sure. He notes with irritation that there are two spent rocket cases in his garden. Why can’t people go to organised bonfire parties rather than trying to set themselves alight in their own gardens? It just makes more work for the emergency services. He opens the garage and starts up the Mercedes. He’ll make sure that he’s home early, take Michelle somewhere nice for dinner. But, before he has even left