Dying Fall

open front door comes the scent of grass and the sea. Ruth makes herself a cup of tea and tells herself that this is all she fancies but before too long she’s tucking into cold pasta. She really must get a grip and stop eating Kate’s food. If someone asked her if she’d like a gourmet meal of sucked toast soldiers, congealed egg and soggy carrot sticks, she’d say no, thanks very much, but that’s what she eats every time she clears the table. Ruth has never been thin but she has an uneasy feeling that now she’s less thin than ever. Still, all that digging will have used up a few calories. Ruth takes another piece of fusilli.
    ‘Mine,’ says Kate.
    What was Dan’s great discovery? It obviously included bones, by the sound of it. What sort of archaeology is there up there anyway? When Kate has finished eating, Ruth forces herself to throw away the remaining pasta then adjourns to the sitting room in search of an atlas. The cottage is tiny, just two rooms plus loo downstairs, with the front door opening straight into the sitting room. This room is full of books, overflowing on the shelvesthat reach up to the low ceiling and piled in heaps on the wooden floor, the sofa and the table. Ruth loves reading and is eclectic in her tastes: scholarly archaeological tomes jostle for space next to romances, thrillers and even children’s pony books. She’s sure there’s an atlas in there somewhere. She starts pulling books from the shelves and, enthralled, Kate joins her. ‘Me too.’
    Here it is.
The Reader’s Digest Atlas of Great Britain
. Ruth takes the book to the table by the window. Where was Dan living? Fleetwood, Caz said. Near Lytham. Bloody hell – Ruth smoothes down the page – it’s right next door to Blackpool, the much-loved and much-missed home town of DCI Harry Nelson. She had no idea that Dan had strayed into Nelson’s territory. Fleetwood is right on the coast – there could be Viking remains, maybe even a Roman garrison town. But what could be so earth-shattering that Dan was scared to write about it in an email?
    The Raven King, he had said. Abandoning the printed word, Ruth switches on her laptop. Kate is sitting on the floor, apparently absorbed in Ruth’s tattered edition of
The Women’s Room
. Excellent choice, Kate.
    Ruth googles ‘raven king’ and, seconds later, her screen is full of heavy metal lyrics, on-line gaming tips and images of swarthy men in feathered cloaks. The Raven King is obviously a potent symbol but, trawling through the sites, Ruth can only find a few solid references. One is to a Celtic God and hero called Bran, or Raven. The other is to a fifteenth-century Hungarian king famous for his library. Neither of these seems to fit Dan’s great discovery.Interestingly, though, the Raven King myth is often especially linked to the north of England. Ruth thinks of Erik’s descriptions of the Norse God Odin, who sits with his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, on each shoulder. Huginn and Muninn; thought and memory. Odin, Erik used to say, saw all and knew all. Rather like Erik himself, or so Ruth thought once.
    Ruth is reading about the ravens in the Tower of London when the phone rings. For a second, she has the ridiculous idea that Dan is ringing back, calling from the realms of the lost. Her hands are shaking when she picks up the phone.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Hi, Ruth, it’s Caz.’
    ‘Oh, hi, Caz.’ Ruth watches as Kate abandons Marilyn French for the TV remote. Oh well, perhaps eighteen months old is too young to be a fully fledged feminist. Soon the soothing strains of
Emmerdale
fill the room. Kate snuggles on to the sofa and Flint sits beside her, though not too close.
    ‘I said I’d ring to tell you about the funeral.’
    ‘Oh, yes, it was today, wasn’t it?’
    So Dan was buried on the day that she received his letter. Ruth shivers.
    ‘It was grim, Ruth. Only a few people. His parents, Miriam, his ex-wife.’
    ‘Ex-wife?’
    ‘Yes, apparently they were divorced a few years ago.She seemed very upset though, cried all the way through the service.’
    ‘Did they have children?’
    ‘No. Miriam said that was partly why they split up, she wanted children, he didn’t.’
    ‘Is Miriam married?’
    ‘No. She’s as stunning as ever, though.’
    Ruth thinks of her friend Shona, who is also often called ‘stunning’. To stun someone – it’s quite a violent image. What must it be like to be so beautiful that looking at you is like a blow on the head? Ruth