Dreaming of the Bones

through his chest and he sobbed, his careful control shattering. Why her? Why couldn’t it have been him instead? Then he wouldn’t be here now, with this ache inside him that was more than he could bear. Kit pressed his face hard against his knee and wept.
    At first the rushing sound seemed a part of the buzzing in his head, but slowly he recognized it as separate from himself. His sobs subsided as he listened. It wasn’t the wind—the wind had been constant, a moan just below consciousness. He looked up, scrubbing at his face, and then the rain was upon him in a cold wave, stinging, pelting, soaking him to the skin within seconds.
    Kit pushed himself up from the ground like a sprinter and ran in a blind, instinctive dash for shelter. He heard the change in the timbre of his pounding feet as he reached the tarmac of the supermarket car park, then the Tesco loomed before him. Realizing the back was nearer, he swerved towards the rubbish bins and slid into a stack of cardboard boxes. Here the overhang of the loading bay blocked the worst of the rain, and he collapsed against the boxes, gasping.
    After a moment he pushed his sodden hair from his forehead and looked down at his dripping clothes. Grandmama would kill him. He could hear her already: ”Christopher, how much sense does it require to get out of the rain? And now look what you’ve done—I’m sure you’ve ruined my carpet.”
    ”Bitch,” he said, under his breath. Liking the sound of it, he filled his lungs and shouted into the rain, ”Bitch! Stupid cow!” But the wind sucked the sound away, and beneath it he heard something else. Was that a scrabbling beneath the boxes? A whimper? He listened, then knelt and lifted up the nearest overturned box. Two boot-button black eyes stared back at him, then the dog whimpered again and cringed away.
    ”It’s okay,” Kit said softly. ”I’m not going to hurt you. You’re wet and cold, too, aren’t you, doggie?” He went on in the same singsong voice, saying any sort of rubbish that came into his head and holding his hand out, palm up. The dog had a shaggy gray-brown coat—some sort of a terrier mix, Kit guessed—and he suspected that the matted, wiry hair hid prominent ribs.
    After a few moments, the dog inched forwards on its belly and licked his outstretched fingers. ”Good dog, that’s a good dog,” Kit whispered, turning his hand until he could stroke the dog’s ear, then gently touching its back. It flinched but didn’t move away, and beneath his hand he felt it shivering. ”What am I going to do with you?” he said gravely, as if he expected an answer. ”You can’t stay here like this, with no shelter and nothing to eat.” He stopped stroking the dog’s back as he thought, and it turned to nuzzle his hand, prompting him to begin again.
    At the touch of the dog’s cold nose against his palm resolution filled him. He dug in his jacket pocket for the twine his grandfather had been using that morning to teach him Snakes and Ladders. It was a makeshift excuse for a collar and lead, but it would have to do.

    Cambridge
    21 March 1970

    Dearest Mummy,

    Isn’t it odd how one gets attached to places? During the months with you and Nan, I dreaded coming back to Cambridge and trying to pick up the pieces of my life. It seemed only our cottage would ever feel like home to me again, and I wanted nothing more than the comfort of our domestic routine. What to make for tea... a bit of digging in the garden... a new novel from the library’... these small things made up a manageable universe.
    But all the while I could feel the urge to write growing in me, as inexorable as the rising of sap in the spring. I must write, blessed or cursed, it’s what makes me who / am, and to do so I must stand on my own, however wobbly.
    But you knew this all along, didn’t you, Mummy darling? You pushed me ever so gently, until I saw it for myself. And the funny thing is that, once here again, in this house which I’d thought would be filled with ghosts, I feel at home. By some odd process it is no longer Morgan’s house, or even Morgan and Lydia ‘s house, but mine, and it is reassuringly familiar.
    I try to keep things simple. A schedule helps keep the black thoughts at bay, so I spend an hour or two a day pottering about the house, putting things to rights, then a couple of hours reading, then no more than two hours writing. Any longer and I find I begin to fray, but I’m learning to recognize the