Dying Fall

granted.
    Grumpily she takes Kate back to the bouncy castle and watches her falling about. The motion of the giant pink mushroom is starting to make Ruth feel slightly sick.
    ‘Look, Mum!’
    ‘I am looking.’
    ‘Hello. Ruth, isn’t it?’
    Ruth swings round and finds herself facing the Brideshead man, Guy Whatsit. Like Elaine, he isn’t as glamorous close up. Although the day isn’t exactly torrid, he is sweating heavily and his white shirt is sticking to his back.
    ‘We didn’t get a chance to chat earlier,’ he says, smiling charmingly. Only because your girlfriend seemed hell-bent on insulting me, thinks Ruth. She doesn’t smile back.
    ‘I was a great friend of Dan’s,’ says Guy, wiping his brow with one of Clayton’s linen napkins.
    Another one, thinks Ruth. She must remember to ask Caz if any of these so-called friends were at his funeral.
    ‘I worked very closely with Dan on the Ribchester dig,’ says Guy. ‘It was really a joint project.’
    The hell it was, thinks Ruth. She remembers Dan’s words in his letter.
I’ve made a discovery
. No mention of anyone else. Ruth is as sure as if she had been present at the excavation that this find was Dan’s alone, his personal discovery.
    ‘So,’ Guy is saying, ‘if you find anything, anything interesting, and want to discuss it with someone …’
    I’ll ring Max, Ruth vows silently. Aloud, she says, ‘Clayton tells me you’re a graduate student.’
    ‘Yes,’ Guy stiffens slightly, recognising the challenge in her words. ‘But Dan treated me as an equal, we were always bouncing ideas off each other.’
    Before Ruth can answer, Kate does her own bouncing, falling heavily on her face. She bursts into tears. Ruth gathers her up. ‘She’s tired,’ she says, over Kate’s head. ‘I’d better take her home. Have you seen Cathbad anywhere? My … er … friend?’
    ‘He must be inside,’ says Guy. ‘I’ll come with you.’
    This is the last thing Ruth wants but she can hardly protest. Carrying a still sobbing Kate, she allows Guy to shepherd her through the French windows.
    In the conservatory, she finds Cathbad attempting to find ley lines using a barbeque fork as a dowsing stick and Elaine in floods of tears, weeping on the shoulder of a very embarrassed Sam Elliot.
    *
    Cathbad and Kate sleep all the way home. Ruth winds her way through the unfamiliar roads accompanied only by gentle snoring. That’s the last time she’s going to a party with Cathbad.
    The barbeque had not been without its compensations though. She has, at least, met some friends of Dan’s. But were they really his friends? She can imagine Dan getting on with Sam but is not so sure about Guy, with his cricket flannels and claims of joint projects. But then again, how well did she really know Dan? She hadn’t seen him for twenty years. People can change a lot in that time; she knows she has. Maybe Dan was best friends with Guy and spent many a happy evening bouncing ideas around with him. She just knows that if the bones yield any great surprises Guy won’t be the first person she rings. And what about Elaine (such a sweetie), where does she fit in? And why was she crying at the end of the party? Is she Guy’s girlfriend or Sam’s? Oh well, the tangled love lives in the history department are nothing to do with her, thank God.
    And why are the bones being held at a private forensics laboratory? Clayton gave her the address as she left. Why weren’t the bones kept at Pendle? Clayton mentioned a strong-room, and surely with all those science departments there must be a few laboratories going spare? She knows that the police are using private forensics firms more and more but surely this isn’t a police case? These bones are hundreds of years old, there’s no need for an inquest. She wonders again who it was that wanted the investigation kept quiet.
    Back at Lytham, Cathbad goes straight to bed. Kate, though, is awake and inclined to be grouchy. Ruth decides to take her for a walk to the windmill. It’s seven o’clock but a mild evening and at this rate Kate won’t be asleep for hours.
    Their progress, without the pushchair, is painfully slow, but when they reach the promenade, Kate cheers up and runs towards the windmill. It looks very different from Clayton Henry’s carefully restored home, thinks Ruth, following more slowly. This windmill, although obviously scenic, is still workmanlike, standing sturdily on its patch of grass, looking out to sea,