Red Bones (Shetland Quartet 3)

family so entirely different from her own.
    Her parents had started a family in middle age. Anna’s father was a junior civil servant, bookish, reserved and a little distant. She had the feeling he’d been bored at work and had felt undervalued. His work had been routine and he wasn’t the sort of man to put himself forward for promotion. Her mother taught in a primary school. Anna and her sister had been brought up in a family where money was saved, thrift was encouraged and academic achievement was valued but not flaunted. Treats were only obtained after hard work. It was a suburban, respectable life of church-going, music lessons and weekly visits to the library. Nobody put their elbows on the table at mealtimes. Restraint was taken for granted.
    Of course at university she’d met people from different backgrounds but she’d come out at the end with her view of the family intact – represented by the smell of the Sunday meal as her mother lifted it out of the oven, the sight of her father dead-heading roses in a late-summer garden, her sister dressing the Christmas tree with the faded baubles brought out each year. Anna had imagined that she’d replicate it in her turn, with a few minor changes: certainly she’d be more assertive than her mother – you wouldn’t catch her cooking a roast dinner every Sunday – and she’d marry someone a bit more exciting than her father. But the basic pattern would be the same. What other was there?
    Then she’d met the Whalsay Cloustons and realized there was quite a different model of family life. Their house was always full of noise, the radio playing, Ronald’s mother Jackie talking and the gossip of cousins, aunts and neighbours who regularly dropped in. Restraint didn’t feature. If Jackie decided she needed a new outfit, kitchen or car, she had it. There was no question of saving up first. Once Anna had asked where the family money had come from in the first place. Cassandra was only a few years old and she had been bought from the proceeds of the old trawler. ‘But before that?’ Anna had asked. ‘How did your father get his first boat?’
    ‘Hard work,’ Ronald had said. ‘It was hard work and the willingness to take a chance.’
    Anna could imagine Andrew would have been a risk taker when he was young. She’d seen photos of him, big and strong, his head thrown back in laughter. Then he’d become ill and Jackie had wanted her son to give up college and take his father’s share on the boat. She’d got her own way there too. Anna had thought that Ronald was different, thoughtful, less spoiled. Now it seemed he was just the same as the rest of them, determined to have his own way, whatever the consequences. Thought of his selfishness made her angry again. She could feel the tension in the back of her neck and her arms. How could they maintain their life on the island after this?
    James stirred on her knee and stretched his hands towards her, fingers opening like the petals of a flower. His eyes were still shut, the skin around them wrinkled. How will you grow up here? she thought. Will you be spoiled too? And she thought that he would drain the life out of her, just as she felt Ronald was doing.
    She felt very tired. They’d been invited to a meal at Jackie’s house. ‘You won’t feel like cooking,’ Jackie had said. ‘Besides, we haven’t celebrated the baby properly. You must come here.’
    It hadn’t occurred to her that Anna and Ronald might like some time on their own, so soon after the birth of their child. Jackie had a knack of transferring her own desires into the wishes of other people: she loved entertaining, so they would be grateful to be entertained. Ronald hadn’t seen any problem with the plan. He found it impossible to deny his mother anything. ‘We don’t have to stay long,’ he’d said when the invitation had been made and Anna had been less than enthusiastic. ‘And it’ll be great to have a proper meal, won’t it?’
    The baby whimpered and Anna undid her shirt and put him to her breast. She’d expected feeding to be difficult; she’d never been a particularly physical person. But she had lots of milk and the baby guzzled so greedily that the thin white liquid dribbled from the side of his mouth and ran down her skin. Sometimes she felt that he sucked her dry. She looked at the clock and wondered where Ronald was. He’d put on his smart clothes and gone out before lunchtime. She’d assumed he’d gone to pay his