Dying Fall

out.
    ‘That dog’s as soft as they come,’ said Cathbad. ‘Still, I’m glad Pen’s got some company. He’s a funny bloke, a bit prone to black moods.’
    He’s a druid, Ruth wanted to say, of course he’s odd. He wears white robes and leaves gifts out for a witch who died four hundred years ago. But she didn’t say any of this because, despite being a druid, Cathbad had unblocked the sink that morning. As she trudges along the coast road she thinks about the phrase ‘black moods’. Isn’t there another phrase, about having a black dog on your shoulder? A black dog sounds a bit like a witch’s familiar. She remembers Max once telling her that the Romans sacrificed black animals, particularly dogs, to Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Black birds too, she remembers, thinking of the Raven God and the birds’ bones found in the temple at Ribchester. Animals and birds are everywhere in language and mythology, something that probably started as soon as the first primitiveman and dog decided to team up together. Cats too. As far back as the Egyptians, cats have been found buried with honour. Ruth thinks of her own familiar, her beloved Flint, now being looked after by Bob Woonunga, a man who believes that the world was created by a sacred rainbow snake. Maybe humans need animals to help them understand the world. Certainly it’s hard to see what else cats do for humans, aside from looking cute and killing the odd mouse. But then, thinks Ruth, pushing her untidy hair back inside her cagoule hood, looking cute has always had too high a value in society.
    *
    As soon as she sees Caz, Ruth realises that she needn’t have worried about looking good. She’s clearly out of her league. Caz’s whole lifestyle oozes sophistication and laid-back style, from the rambling Victorian house to her beautifully cut jeans and crisp white shirt, to the photogenic offspring seen scattered in photo frames around the house.
    ‘How old are your children?’ asks Ruth, hanging her wet cagoule on a curly coat stand (it started raining roughly five minutes into her walk).
    ‘Fifteen, twelve and eight,’ says Caz. ‘Pete’s taken them sailing but they’ll be back after lunch. Pete’s dying to catch up with you.’
    Ruth and Kate follow Caz into a dauntingly perfect kitchen, all islands and French windows and retro chrome. There is even a sofa and a piano, displaying a Grade 5 scales book. Ruth feels sunk into inadequacy. Not onlyhas Caz got a fifteen-year-old child (something chronologically possible but, to Ruth, almost miraculous) but she’s got children who play Grade 5 piano and go sailing. Sailing! Who on earth does that on a Tuesday morning?
    ‘How is Pete?’ she asks. Pete was also at UCL; he studied maths and played rugby. But, even so, he wasn’t a bad bloke.
    ‘Fine,’ says Caz. ‘Going bald, longing for retirement. Aren’t we all?’
    Ruth doesn’t know how to answer that one. She never thinks about retirement, except as a far-off dream involving a lake in Norway. She’s only forty-two, and at this rate she’ll have to carry on working into her seventies to pay for Kate to go to university. Are there really people who retire in their forties?
    Caz gets out a basket of toys for Kate and she plays happily on the floor. Caz crouches down next to her, helping her assemble a wooden rail track. The trains are battered and chipped, obviously much-loved family heirlooms.
    ‘Oh, you are lucky, Ruth,’ says Caz. ‘Having one this age. I’d give anything to go back.’
    Ruth takes this with a pinch of salt, looking round Caz’s perfect kitchen. If she had a baby, the house and Caz herself would probably look a bit different. Ruth reckons that those jeans are a size eight.
    Caz makes coffee in a professional-looking machine that takes up half her working surface. She gets out carrot cake and animal-shaped biscuits for Kate.
    ‘So, Ruth,’ she says, perching on a chrome stool that looks like something from
Happy Days
. ‘What are you doing these days? It seems like ages since I saw you.’
    Ruth feels uncomfortable. She’s always acutely aware of how dull her life sounds to others. ‘Oh, not much,’ she says, watching Kate enact a high-speed rail crash. ‘Still working at the university. The head of department’s a bit of a pain but the students are lovely and I get to do a few digs.’
    ‘How do you manage with Kate?’ asks Caz. ‘Have you got a nanny?’
    A nanny? She’s speaking a different