Dying Fall

suspects that he and Ruth are living in sin, but with a daughter over forty you can’t afford to be choosy. ‘Not sure,’ says Ruth, truthfully. ‘Where are you going?’ asks her mother. ‘Blackpool,’ says Ruth, on impulse. ‘
Blackpool
?’ repeats her mother. ‘Why ever would you want to go there?’ ‘There’s some interesting archaeology in the area,’ says Ruth, knowing that this answer will silence her mother, at least temporarily. Neither of her parents shares her passion for the past and her mother is often heard loudly lamenting that Ruth (such a clever girl at school) couldn’t have studied something more useful, like nursing or accountancy or fulltime religious mania.
    The next caller is Max. He is interested to know about the Swaffham dig. He was the first archaeologist to excavate the site and is full of theories and suggestions. He thinks that Ruth’s animal bones might point to the existence of a butcher’s shop or even a tannery. Ruth is happy to chat about bones and slaughter. She is aware of an odd reluctance to tell Max about Dan’s death. She wants to keep the conversation on a workaday note, a pleasant chat about cattle skulls and animal skins. But, eventually, she tells him that a college friend of hers has died. He says all the right things – how awful, he was so young, makes you think, doesn’t it, is Ruth OK? ‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Sad but fine.’ She doesn’t want to tell him about the invitation to Lancashire and she’snot sure why. Maybe it’s just because she doesn’t want Max, the Roman expert, offering advice on the possible find. At the moment that’s her secret. Hers and Dan’s. After a few more minutes’ chat they ring off, promising to see each other in a week’s time.
    By now, Ruth is carrying a tired and irritable Kate up for her bath. She almost doesn’t answer her mobile when it rings again. She has left it downstairs on the sofa and can’t be bothered to retrace her steps. But it could be Nelson, or Sandra ringing to say that she can’t have Kate tomorrow. So Ruth comes slowly back downstairs, holding her sleepy daughter against her shoulder.
    ‘Hi, Ruth.’
    ‘Hi, Shona.’
    Ruth supposes that Shona is her best friend in Norfolk. But it’s not like her relationship with Caz, which had been a friendship of equals, unmarked by jealousy or resentment. Ruth is both in awe of Shona’s beauty and slightly wary of her. A few years ago, she had found out something about Shona that had shaken their friendship to the core. Now the rift has healed but Ruth feels she will never be able to trust Shona again. It doesn’t help that Shona is living with Ruth’s boss Phil, whom she doesn’t trust either.
    ‘How are you?’ she says now. ‘How’s Louis?’
    In February, Shona had given birth to a son, her first child and Phil’s third. Shona, with her willowy grace and Pre-Raphaelite hair, is so essentially feminine that Ruthhad been sure her baby would be a girl. But Louis is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bruiser. A delightful boy with a shock of ginger hair and the build of a prizefighter. At birth he weighed over ten pounds and now, at five months old, is in clothes meant for one-year-olds. In fact, he’s not that much smaller than Kate, who is a slight child, causing Ruth to panic every time she looks at her growth chart at the doctor’s.
    ‘He’s great. Huge. Eating all the time.’
    Shona has thrown herself into the role of earth mother, vowing to breastfeed Louis ‘until he goes to university’. Ruth, who found the whole business difficult and uncomfortable, tries not to feel envious.
    ‘What about Kate?’
    ‘She’s fine. A bit tired at the moment, I was just putting her to bed.’
    ‘Oh, I won’t keep you. I just wondered if you could pop in tomorrow. It seems like ages since I’ve seen another adult.’
    ‘What about Phil?’
    ‘He’s a man. He doesn’t count.’
    ‘It’s a bit difficult. We’re digging all week.’
    ‘I know,’ says Shona fretfully. ‘It’s all I hear about from Phil. Samian ware this, bath house walls that.’
    Ruth can see that life with Phil as your only link to the outside world could feel rather stultifying. ‘I’ll try to pop in on my way home,’ she says.
    Kate is almost asleep so Ruth skips the bath and puts her straight into bed. A few lines from Dora and Kate isfast asleep. As Ruth tiptoes out of the room, her mobile phone bleeps. Jesus. Who is it this time?
    It’s a text