THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

people. They usually come down for a week or two in summer.’
    ‘And your work at the university. Is it good?’ Perhaps Tatjana is realising that Ruth has contributed very little to the archaeology stories.
    ‘It’s okay. I like my students. I like teaching. I haven’t done any interesting digs for a while. The last one was a year ago, on the Saltmarsh, with Erik.’
    ‘I can’t believe that Erik is dead,’ says Tatjana. ‘How did it happen? I always thought he’d live forever.’
    ‘He died here on the marshes,’ says Ruth. ‘It was dark, the tide was coming in. He drowned.’ She hopes that Tatjanawon’t want to hear the details; she never wants to think about that night again.
    ‘Dear God.’ Tatjana is silent for a minute. Kate’s eyelids droop, the bottle lolls out of her mouth and a fine stream of milk pours onto Ruth’s arm.
    ‘Ruth.’ Tatjana sounds pained. ‘Your sleeve.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Ruth. ‘She’s nearly asleep. I’ll put her down in a minute.’ She can feel Kate getting heavier and heavier in her arms. It is six o’clock, with any luck she’ll sleep now for a good part of the night.
    Tatjana sits opposite, looking at Ruth so intently that she is embarrassed, conscious of the contrast between Tatjana’s sleek clothes and salon-perfect hair and her own crumbled, milk-stained appearance.
    ‘I look a mess,’ she says, meeting Tatjana’s gaze.
    ‘You look great,’ says Tatjana. ‘You haven’t changed at all.’
    Ruth knows that she has. She is older, fatter and sadder. But she has noticed before that if you don’t do anything to yourself people will assume that you haven’t changed. Also, that you don’t care.
    ‘I’m forty,’ she says.
    Tatjana grimaces. ‘Me too.’ Unexpectedly, she reaches out and touches Kate’s hair. ‘It seems a long time ago, doesn’t it? Bosnia?’
    It did, but it also seemed like yesterday. Ruth only has to close her eyes and she sees the hotel, Erik telling stories by candlelight, Tatjana standing in the dark holding a gun. Whatever else, they mustn’t talk about Bosnia.
    So she tells Tatjana about the bodies at Broughton Sea’s End.
    Tatjana’s son, Jacob, was dead. Ruth was grateful that Tatjana told her this straight out, saving her from making any crass comments like, ‘I didn’t know you had a son, how old is he?’ making things worse and worse, as if they could possibly be worse. In that summer of 1995 Ruth did not know what it was to have a child, and to lose a child … well, that is still unimaginable. She remembers that she sat there, in the shadow of the pine trees, literally stiff with shock. She simply did not know what to say; her life’s experience so far had not prepared her for that moment. Her parents were experts on death and the afterlife, of course. They would have known what to say. ‘We’re praying for you.’ ‘I’m sure he’s in heaven with all the other little angels.’ But Ruth could say none of this. She didn’t believe in God, especially not in a God who could take a child just so that he could have another little angel. What can you say to a girl your own age who has lost her child?
    Perhaps fortunately, Tatjana did not seem to expect Ruth to speak. Calmly, almost coldly, she told the story. Tatjana had married young, her husband was another academic and, unusually for a Yugoslavian man of that time, he supported her career. Even now, Ruth remembers the expression on Tatjana’s face when she said the word ‘career’. When Jacob was born, Tatjana continued with her studies, teaching part time at the university. Then, when Jacob was two, she got the chance to study for a PhD at Johns Hopkins University. Encouraged by her husband, Tatjana left Jacob with her parents and went to America. While she was away, all hell broke loose.
    ‘My husband died very early on. He was in a convoy oftrucks taking the injured out of Mostar. His truck was hit by a grenade. I was trying to arrange for Jacob and my parents to fly out to the US when I heard that their village had been attacked. I couldn’t get news, I was going mad. Eventually I travelled there overland, a nightmare journey. The village was destroyed. As if it had never been.’
    ‘But do you know for sure that Jacob—’
    Tatjana had laughed. A sound that Ruth hopes never to hear again.
    ‘I tracked down one of the only survivors. She told me that she had seen Jacob and his grandparents shot. The only question remaining is: