Dying Fall

that make Ruth nervous. Apart from anything else, Pippa Henry is at least four inches taller than her husband.
    She seems very friendly though, kissing Ruth on the cheek and bending down to talk to Kate.
    ‘Would you like to go on the bouncy castle, sweetheart?’
    Kate, perhaps, like her mother, intimidated by glamour, hides behind Ruth. A white fluffy dog appears from nowhere and starts barking furiously. Pippa Henry scoops it into her arms.
    ‘What a lovely poodle,’ says Ruth, drawing Kate away.
    ‘Actually it’s a bichon frisé.’
    Of course it is.
    In the end Ruth takes Kate onto the bouncy castle. This is the great thing about having a child, she thinks, grabbing a glass en route. You can escape to play with them and no one thinks you’re unsociable, they just think you’re a great mother. Ruth watches Kate bouncing on the Barbie castle, sips champagne and thinks that she wouldn’t mind if she spent the entire afternoon like this. Across the lawn, she can see Cathbad chatting animatedly with Pippa. He has always been susceptible to pretty women. She hopes Pippa will take his mind off Judy for a bit. Still, she’d better corner him before long and establish who’s driving home. God, they really are getting like a married couple.
    ‘Ruth?’ says a voice in her ear.
    She swings round to see a pleasant-faced man of about her own age, with thinning sandy hair and a hesitant smile.
    ‘I hope you don’t mind me introducing myself but Professor Henry said that you were a friend of Dan’s.’
    ‘Yes, I was,’ says Ruth, thinking that the past tense is both sad and appropriate. She was a friend of Dan’s in the past, when they were both young.
    ‘I’m Sam,’ says the man, extending a hand. ‘Sam Elliot. I was a friend of his too. I just can’t believe that he’s gone.’
    ‘Nor can I,’ says Ruth. ‘I hadn’t seen him for ages but even so …’ Her voice dies away. Suddenly, surprisingly, she feels close to tears and has to cover up by checking on Kate, who is sitting on the very edge of the pink castle, rocking to and fro while the other children caper around her.
    When she turns back, Sam Elliot is also looking sombre but he smiles when he sees her looking at him. His face isn’t made for sadness, all the lines go upwards. Ruth can easily imagine him being friends with Dan.
    ‘This is quite a party,’ she says.
    ‘Yes,’ says Sam. ‘It’s a yearly event, Clayton’s barbeque. He always has a big do at Christmas as well.’
    Ruth tries to imagine Dan at one of Clayton Henry’s parties, playing the piano, drinking champagne, flirting with the prettiest women. She remembers him as something of a party animal and says as much to Sam.
    ‘Funny,’ he says. ‘I think of Dan as rather quiet. Always friendly but a bit aloof until you got to know him. Were you at university with him?’
    ‘Yes, at UCL.’
    ‘I was at Leeds,’ says Sam. ‘It seems a hundred years ago now. Mind you, a hundred years is nothing to an archaeologist, is it?’
    ‘Are you an archaeologist?’
    Sam shakes his head. ‘I teach modern history. I was one of Dan’s colleagues. As Clayton may have told you, we cover everything from Boadicea to Adolf Hitler.’
    ‘I’m a teacher too,’ says Ruth. ‘I teach forensic archaeology at North Norfolk.’
    ‘I know,’ says Sam. ‘Clayton said you’d come to look at Dan’s discovery.’
    ‘Oh, do you know about that?’ asks Ruth, surprised. From Clayton’s manner, she had assumed that the whole thing was a deadly secret although, come to think of it, Dan could never have managed an excavation that size without some help.
    Sam’s reply confirms this. ‘I was on the first dig with Dan,’ he says. ‘We were all volunteers then. Later he got a grant and was able to get the professionals in. It was really exciting though, when we first realised that there was something important buried there.’
    Ruth knows this excitement well. She remembers when they had first discovered the wooden henge on the beach in Norfolk. The incredible feeling of something rising from the ground, something that had been hidden from sight for thousands of years, the sense of looking at the world through ancient eyes. All the same, she wonders exactly how much Sam knows.
    ‘Did he tell you about the bones?’ she asks.
    ‘Bones?’ says Sam. ‘Oh, they found a tomb, didn’t they? That was later. When I was digging Dan was just happyto have found the temple. The Temple of the Raven