THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

urgency with which Shona now grabs a glass and fills it to the brim.
    ‘Do you want some?’ asks Shona as an afterthought.
    ‘No thanks. I’ve got to drive.’
    ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ says Shona, not moving.
    ‘It’s okay,’ says Ruth. ‘I ought to be going.’ She starts to arrange Kate in her car seat, an unnecessarily complicated device bought for her by Cathbad.
    ‘How was the dig? Things looked pretty busy when I left you. What did you find?’
    Ruth looks over her shoulder at Shona, who is sitting cross-legged in an armchair, her bright red hair falling over her eyes. In the past she has had reason to distrust Shona’s interest in her work but she feels that she, or Kate, owes her something, information at the very least.
    ‘Six skeletons,’ she says. ‘They look comparatively recent.’
    ‘Good God, Ruth,’ says Shona, sounding almost amused. ‘Are you going to be mixed up in another murder?’
    ‘I wasn’t exactly mixed up in the last one,’ says Ruth with asperity. ‘Unless you count a madman trying to kill me.’
    ‘I would definitely count that.’
    ‘Well, in this case, I’ve simply been called in to examine the bones. Look at how they’ve been buried and so on.’
    ‘Mmm.’ Shona looks unconvinced. ‘I saw the mad Irishman there,’ she says. ‘And that purple-haired bitch. Anyone else from the university?’
    Ruth looks curiously at Shona as she struggles with the last strap. Shona also works at the university, teaching English, but for the last year she has been having an affair with Ruth’s boss, Phil. Just before Christmas, much to everyone’s surprise, Phil left his wife for Shona. Ruth isn’t sure if Shona herself wasn’t rather shocked by this development. Certainly she hasn’t rushed to move Phil into her house. He is renting a flat nearby ‘while the kids get used to the situation’. Presumably Shona knows a good deal about the workings of the archaeology department. Ruth wonders why she dislikes Trace so much.
    ‘Steve and Craig from the field team,’ she says. ‘I thought Phil might look in.’
    ‘Oh, he had a meeting with some sponsors,’ says Shona vaguely.
    ‘How are things?’ asks Ruth, not sure that she really wants to know. She gets on all right with Phil, he’s a decent enough boss, but that’s as far as it goes. He’s very much the new style of archaeologist, obsessed with technology and appearing on television. Ruth has always got the impression that Phil regards her as a throwback, an expert in her own field but a grafter, a plodder, not someone suited to the centre stage. Which suits her fine. Their working relationship works. She just doesn’t particularly want to get to know Phil in his new guise as her best friend’s partner.
    ‘Oh, all right,’ says Shona, twisting a strand of hair between her fingers. ‘His wife’s being a cow.’
    ‘Well, it must be difficult for her,’ offers Ruth. ‘They were married for … how long?’
    ‘Fifteen years. But it hadn’t been working for the last five.’
    Not for the first time, Ruth wonders how Shona, who is, after all, an astute literary critic, can be so gullible when it comes to men. Who says the marriage hadn’t been working for the past five years? Phil, presumably. Ruth has met Phil’s wife, Sue, at various department functions over the years and the couple always seemed perfectly comfortable together. They have two children, boys, who must be teenagers by now.
    ‘Fourteen and twelve,’ says Shona, in answer to Ruth’s question. ‘I get on brilliantly with them.’
    Ruth can believe that this is true. She imagines Shona, with her beauty and vivacity, utterly charming the two boys. Whether the infatuation, on either side, will last, is another matter.
    Ruth picks up Kate’s bottle, blanket and the various stuffed toys that have become strewn around the room. Shona makes no move to help her, just stays curled up in her chair, sipping her wine. She obviously feels that her work is done and, really, Ruth agrees with her.
    Ruth stuffs the last toy in the nappy bag and says, ‘Thank you, Shona. I’m sorry you had such an awful time of it.’
    ‘That’s okay,’ says Shona, not denying that it was awful. ‘Any time.’
    ‘I’m praying Sandra will be better tomorrow,’ says Ruth.
    Driving home across the Saltmarsh, she thinks about her friendship with Shona. They met when Ruth first started working at the University of North Norfolk, but they onlyreally got to