Dying Fall

Did they come closer still? Did Dan ever see the cloaked figure standing in the shadows outside his house? Did he ever look into the blackness where the face should be? If so, the diaries aren’t telling.
    Ruth is really spooked now.
Ladybird, ladybird. Fly away home.
Well, she’ll be home tomorrow and she’ll never again go further north than the Wash. Should she checkon Kate again? Calm down, she tells herself, it only half-past eight on a summer night. What’s going to happen to you? But, all the same, she thinks she’ll just draw the curtains.
    She has just got to the window when the doorbell rings. Ruth smiles with relief. Typical of Cathbad to have forgotten his key. She approaches the door rehearsing her reproaches, just as if she really is his wife. What time do you call this? Why didn’t you ring? Don’t you know we’ve got an early start in the morning?
    But it’s not Cathbad standing outside.
    It’s the last of the triumvirate. It’s Elaine.

CHAPTER 29
    ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling round like this,’ says Elaine.
    Ruth does mind but Elaine doesn’t actually seem dangerous or deranged. In fact, she looks rather forlorn, standing there in the twilight. In contrast to her glamour at Clayton’s party, she looks distinctly scruffy in faded jeans and an oversized jumper. She also looks very young.
    ‘Come in,’ says Ruth.
    ‘I’ve been driving round all day,’ says Elaine. ‘Trying to get up the courage to come and see you.’
    Ruth takes Elaine into the sitting room; it seems more formal somehow than the kitchen. It is only when they are sitting on the sofa that Ruth notices her laptop on the coffee table, open at Dan’s diaries. Will Elaine look at the screen? Surely not, but even so Ruth wishes that she could move it. But how can she do this without drawing attention to it?
    Elaine, though, seems hardly to notice anything. She sits, huddled in her big jumper, her knees pulled up to her chest.
    ‘I’m so frightened,’ she says. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
    ‘I’ll make you a nice cup of tea,’ says Ruth, aware how ridiculous this sounds. She hurries out, casually sweeping up the laptop on the way. In the kitchen, she hides the computer in the larder and crashes about with mugs and biscuit tins. She wonders about offering Elaine a drink (she could certainly do with another herself), but, remembering Dan’s diary, thinks it’s safer to stick to tea. It looks as if their conversation is going to be sticky enough without alcohol.
    When she goes back into the sitting room, Elaine is still in the same hunched position. Ruth puts a mug in front of her.
    ‘Here’s some tea. There are biscuits in the tin.’
    ‘Thank you,’ says Elaine tonelessly. ‘You’re very kind.’
    Ruth waits, wrapping her hands round her mug and listening for noises from upstairs. But the only sound in the room is Elaine’s ragged breathing. Ruth wonders if she’s ill.
    ‘I’m so scared,’ says Elaine, again.
    ‘Why?’ asks Ruth.
    Elaine looks at her. She has very pale blue eyes and blonde eyelashes. It gives her an exotic albino appearance.
    ‘Guy says you’ve found Daniel’s laptop.’
    Ruth thought at the time that her story about the policehaving the laptop hadn’t convinced Guy. He must have guessed that she would have taken copies of the files. If so, he knows exactly how much she knows. She thinks of her computer, at this moment crammed into the larder next to the cornflakes and teething rusks. Luckily, Elaine doesn’t wait for an answer.
    ‘If you’ve read his diary, you’ll know all sorts of things about me. I thought I ought to come and set the record straight.’
    ‘You don’t owe me any explanations,’ says Ruth. She is dreading a heart-to-heart with Dan’s ex-girlfriend. Oh God, why doesn’t Cathbad come back?
    Elaine ignores her. She is crying now but makes no attempt to stem the tears; they run, unchecked, down her pale cheeks.
    ‘I loved Daniel,’ she says. ‘I thought he loved me but he didn’t. I was convenient, I was next door. But when I started to get heavy he dumped me. He could be a cold-blooded bastard, you know.’
    Funnily enough, Ruth can believe this. Hadn’t she felt a faint chill, reading his diary just now? Against her will, she feels sorry for Elaine.
    Now Elaine reaches forward and grabs Ruth’s hand. ‘But I would never do anything to hurt him. You must believe that!’
    Gently Ruth extracts her hand. ‘No one thinks you did,’ she