Dying Fall

bare-footed, ball-bouncing Henry than meets the eye. Not only does he live in a
Grand Designs
show home, he also has a show wife. A show wife who islooking distinctly angry. She scoops up the dog and glares at Sandy.
    ‘Well?’
    ‘We’re police officers,’ says Sandy woodenly. ‘Investigating the death of Daniel Golding.’ He shows his warrant card.
    ‘What’s that got to do with Clay? He was devastated by Dan’s death.’
    ‘We’re following several lines of enquiry,’ says Sandy.
    ‘Well, you’ll have to come back another day,’ says Pippa Henry. ‘Unless you want to arrest him, that is. Can’t you see how upset he is? He’s been under a lot of strain lately.’
    For a second they glare at each other, the lugubrious policeman and the whippet-slim woman. The dog lets out a single shrill bark. Clayton sobs silently in the background.
    ‘We’ll come back another day,’ says Sandy.

CHAPTER 16
    By the afternoon it is raining heavily. So when Ruth says, for the second time, that she really must be going, Caz offers to drive her. Ruth, who is feeling tired and full of food, accepts gratefully. It has been a good day, though. Pete arrived after lunch with the children: Ashley, Becky and Jack. Ruth, after she’d got over the shock of Ashley being about six feet tall, had to admit that they were nice kids and very good with Kate. Perhaps this is what Kate has wanted all along, three older children to pander to her every need. ‘It’s good for them,’ said Caz. ‘They don’t know any babies.’ Caz has a breezy, authoritative way with her children that Ruth much admires. Within two seconds of coming into the house, they have changed their sailing gear for indoor clothes and are playing trains with Kate on the sitting-room carpet. ‘You’re in charge, Ash,’ Caz had said. ‘We grown-ups want some time together.’
    Caz, Pete and Ruth sat in the kitchen, drinking white wine and talking about life, children, jobs and whether everything has gone downhill since the Eighties.
    ‘The music,’ said Pete. ‘They have all this manufactured pop these days. The
X Factor
and all that.’
    ‘We had Kylie and Jason though,’ said Ruth. ‘It wasn’t all plain sailing.’
    ‘But we had Adam Ant and Boy George as well,’ said Caz. ‘Be fair.’
    ‘Do you remember,’ said Pete, ‘when Dan had that party and everyone thought that Boy George was coming?’
    ‘He was a friend of Dan’s sister,’ said Caz. ‘She knew lots of famous people.’
    That was the way it had been all afternoon. Dan was mentioned often and with affection but they didn’t allow themselves to be caught up in nostalgia. Dan was the reason that Ruth was sitting there, in that state-of-the-art kitchen in the frozen north, but none of them mentioned this. They all said how good it was to see each other again, but they didn’t dwell on the fact that if they had wanted to be reunited they could have done it any time over the last twenty-odd years. Fire and death have brought Ruth to Lancashire but no one says these words either.
    But as Ruth and Caz set out in Caz’s gleaming 4x4, a sleepy Kate in the back, Ruth knows that there is something she has to ask.
    ‘How far is it to Fleetwood?’
    Caz glances at her. ‘About twenty minutes. Do you want to see where it … do you want to see Dan’s house?’
    ‘Yes please.’
    They don’t speak much on the drive along the coast road, past Blackpool and the giant glitter ball and theroller-coaster reaching up to the sky. Despite the rain, families trail along the Golden Mile carrying candy floss and virulent cuddly toys won in arcades. Once past the north pier, the landscape changes again, with long stretches of windswept grass and grey sea. At Fleetwood the sea stretches out into an estuary, with boats beached high on the sand. They pass shuttered Victorian hotels, derelict dockyards, red-brick houses.
    Ruth knows from reading up about Ribchester that the town used to be a thriving port. In fact, the Roman Road might well have led from Ribchester to Fleetwood. But now, in the afternoon rain, the town doesn’t look as if it is on the road to anywhere. It looks tired, as tired as Kate, who is fast asleep in Jack’s old car seat.
    Caz turns down a side street and stops suddenly in front of a row of pebbledash houses. Nothing in Ruth’s imagination has prepared her for the horror of it. The middle house in the terrace has been reduced to a blackened stump, windows smashed, door