Dying Fall

him.’
    Shona puts her son on a rug on the floor, propped up by cushions. Kate sits next to him and solemnly shows him how to work his shape sorter. Louis doesn’t seem that interested in shape-sorting himself. He just sits and smiles goofily at Kate.
    ‘Isn’t it sweet?’ says Shona. ‘Maybe they’ll get married.’
    ‘Maybe,’ says Ruth drily. ‘Maybe they’ll achieve something neither of their mothers managed.’
    Shona looks sideways at Ruth. She knows about Nelson but is usually very good about ignoring Kate’s parentage. Like most of Ruth’s friends, she acts as if Kate sprang fully formed from the maternal egg.
    ‘How’s Max?’ she asks.
    ‘OK,’ says Ruth. ‘He’s down next weekend.’
    ‘We should get babysitters and go out, the four of us,’ says Shona.
    ‘We should,’ says Ruth. She has no desire to see more of Phil than she has to but maybe it would be good forthem to socialise with another couple. It might make her relationship with Max seem more like a relationship.
    ‘We might be going on holiday,’ says Ruth.
    ‘You and Max?’
    ‘No.’ Ruth realises that this isn’t what she meant. ‘Me and Kate.’
    ‘Oh.’ The sideways glance again. ‘Where?’
    ‘Blackpool. Well, Lytham.’
    She tells Shona about Dan and about the invitation from Pendle University. She doesn’t tell her about the text message or about the possibility that the fire might not have been an accident. Shona listens, entranced. She always loves a story. Her subject is English literature, after all.
    ‘Oh you must go,’ she says. ‘Kate would love Blackpool. She could ride on the donkeys, go on the rides at the Pleasure Beach.’
    ‘Most of the Pleasure Beach rides look terrifying.’ Ruth had looked on the website last night.
    ‘Well, there must be a carousel or something,’ says Shona. ‘You ought to go. Dan might have discovered something big after all. It would be good for your career.’
    Her career. In recent years Ruth has wondered whether her career hasn’t, in fact, become a job. She still loves archaeology but she has never written a book or made her name in any way. She did discover the Iron Age girl and has certainly helped the police a few times, but students in years to come are hardly going to talk about the Ruth Galloway Theory or the Ruth Galloway Method. She is a jobbing forensic archaeologist, that’s all.
    ‘I might go,’ says Ruth. ‘Funny, I’ve travelled all over Europe but I’ve hardly ever been further north than the Midlands.’
    ‘Oh, it’s all different up north,’ says Shona. ‘I’ve got an aunt in Hartlepool, so I know.’
    *
    Nelson, too, is on mother and baby duty. He had been surprised when Leah informed him that Judy was already back at home. ‘They only keep them in one night these days.’ Then, as he and Clough had driven back from investigating a reported shooting near Castle Rising (turned out to be an airgun being fired at pigeons), Clough remarked casually, ‘Judy lives near here, boss. Shall we pop in?’ So they had stopped at a petrol station and bought flowers and chocolates and were now, rather self-consciously, examining the tiny object wrapped tightly in a yellow blanket.
    ‘Can I hold him?’ asks Clough. Nelson looks at him curiously. He’d heard rumours that Clough and Trace had been talking about starting a family, but now the relationship is over and Clough has custody of the couple’s dog, a rather demented labradoodle. Certainly Clough seems better with babies than is usual for an unmarried (straight) man.
    ‘Say hello to your Uncle Dave,’ says Clough, but the baby’s eyes remain resolutely shut. He is very dark with soft down over his forehead.
    ‘How are you?’ Nelson asks Judy. She looks exhausted, he thinks, her hair dark with grease and her eyes bloodshot.Darren, on the other hand, who is now preparing tea in the kitchen, seems manic with happiness.
    ‘Bit tired,’ says Judy. ‘It’s hard work, having a baby.’
    ‘So Michelle tells me.’
    ‘He’s beautiful,’ says Clough. ‘Have you got a name yet? What about David after his favourite uncle?’
    ‘Michael,’ says Darren, coming in with the tray. ‘We’ve decided on Michael.’
    ‘Why Michael?’ asks Clough. ‘After Michael Owen?’
    ‘No. I’m a Chelsea supporter. My granddad was called Michael and we just liked the name, didn’t we, love?’
    Judy nods. To Nelson’s expert eye (he has three daughters, after all), she looks close to tears. He