Dying Fall

Explorer when her daughter’s steady breathing informs her that she isasleep and the rest of the evening is, miraculously, her own. She goes downstairs wondering if it’s decadent to drink wine when it’s still light outside. Oh sod it, she’ll just have a small glass.
    She pours herself a small glass but it looks so lonely that she tops it up. She’s sure it still only counts as one unit. Then, carrying the wine, she goes into the sitting room, sits on the sofa and opens her laptop. She wants to have another look at Dan’s diaries before Cathbad gets back.
    The best thing about electronic diaries is that you can use ‘Find’. Feeling rather guilty, Ruth searches for mentions of herself. There are just two. The one about asking for her help with the bones and one dated 2nd April, in the very early days of the dig, before the skeleton had been discovered:
    For some reason, found myself thinking about the old days at UCL. About Finn, Kamal, Ruth and Caz. In those days I always thought I’d be a big success as an archaeologist – write a best-selling book, make a devastating discovery. Well, it hasn’t quite worked out like that. I’ve been a jobbing archaeologist, nothing more. Teaching bored students and doing a bit of desultory digging at weekends. Coming up to Pendle felt like defeat. I was only here because of Karen and I have to admit it hurt that she had a better job than me. Her career was going places whereas mine seemed to have stalled. I knew, as soon as I met Clayton, that the department was in bad shape. They don’t attract enoughstudents or enough funding. The Dean, I think, would like to get rid of history altogether and replace it with something more lucrative and trendy. In the interview, Clayton told me that I’d have a free hand to run the archaeology courses but, in reality, there are so few students that we struggle to maintain anything like a proper programme. Clayton has no feel for or interest in archaeology. It’s too dry and labour-intensive for him. Sam’s really only interested in the modern stuff. Guy is keen and has a good mind. Elaine is just too weird ever to amount to anything as an academic – though she’s bright too. Pendle really seemed like a dead end, the graveyard of my hopes. But this find – this could change everything. A Romano-British temple dedicated to the Raven God. This could be worth an article, even a book. If only I could get the funding, we could do some really good digging here. Who knows what lies buried here?
    Who indeed, thinks Ruth, draining her glass without noticing. Dan was right that greater treasures lay beneath the earth but was it this discovery that led to his death? Was Pendle – ‘the graveyard of my hopes’ – literally the death of him?
    There are other things here that are interesting too. She remembers Finn and Kamal from their archaeology class. She wonders what they are doing now. She thinks that they, like Caz, got out of archaeology as soon as they could. Didn’t she hear somewhere that Kamal had become a solicitor? Dan’s feelings about his career strike a chordtoo. Ruth has also been feeling that her professional life has somehow stalled, despite her work with the police (which has proved interesting, if unexpectedly dangerous). She sympathises with Dan, coming to Pendle and finding a failing department full of warring individuals. He does say that Guy has a good mind and, of course, it’s Guy who wants to carry on his work, making a name for himself in the process. Elaine is ‘weird’, which chimes with what Guy has told her. There is little here to suggest that Dan was ever in love with Elaine. Karen must have been his wife. What’s she doing now?
    Some of these questions are easily answered. A google search for Kamal Singh comes up with hundreds of entries but Ruth tracks him down via Friends Reunited. Yes, he’s a solicitor, married with three children. What about Finn? Here she has a horrible shock. Finn is dead. He died three years ago of prostate cancer. She tracks him down via a tribute page at the school where he was clearly a much-loved history teacher. Poor Finn. Irish, rugby-loving Finn. Dead at forty. Finn and Dan both dead. Ruth shivers, as if the Grim Reaper is reading over her shoulder. The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on.
    A search for Karen Golding reveals her to be a professor of theoretical physics at Manchester University. Still a high-flyer then. Ruth wonders how she