THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END

about Kate?’ Ruth’s voice wobbles.
    ‘She’ll be fine, love. Clara’s with her. And I’ll get you home if I can. I’ll phone for reinforcements. Get a chopper if necessary. Okay?’
    ‘Okay.’ Ruth manages a watery smile.
    Jack and Stella are all concern. They usher Ruth into the kitchen while Nelson makes his phone calls. Irene, of course, makes them tea with bone china cups and saucers. At Stella’s suggestion, Ruth rings Clara. The girl’s cheerful voice is a distinct comfort.
    ‘What a pain. That road is a nightmare. But don’t worry, Ruth. I can kip down on your sofa. I’ve made up Kate’s milk and she looks a bit sleepy.’
    ‘Is Tatjana back yet?’
    ‘No. But it’s pretty wild outside, maybe she’s stuck in town.’
    ‘Maybe. I’ll get home as soon as I can.’
    ‘Okay. But don’t worry. Really.’
    Ruth clicks off the phone feeling better but still hyper-ventilating slightly. It’s as if there’s still an umbilical cord attaching her to Kate. She can go away from her baby for short stretches of time, but after a few hours she starts to panic. It’s bad enough at the end of a working day, racing through the King’s Lynn streets, desperate to press her face against Kate’s and inhale her lovely baby smell. But now, stuck miles away from her, Ruth feels as if she will snap clean in two, so strong is the invisible pull of her daughter.
    Nelson returns. ‘Snow’s started again. We can’t get the chopper out in conditions like this.’ Ruth thought he’d been joking about the helicopter. ‘We’ll have to sit it out for a bit, love.’
    Love. It’s the second time he’s called her that.
    ‘You must be our guests,’ says Stella Hastings. ‘We’ll have a nice supper and I’ll make up the spare room for you,Inspector. Ruth, you won’t mind having Clara’s room?’
    ‘No,’ says Ruth. ‘But the snow might stop soon.’
    Hastings comes back into the room with snow on his peaked cap. ‘Not much chance of that, I’m afraid. It’s pretty heavy now. I walked up to the coast road and the lorry’s stuck fast. I knew something like this would happen one day. I’ve warned the council time and time again.’
    It’s a strange, surreal evening. Despite further assurances from Clara (Kate is sleeping, she’s fine, they’re both fine), Ruth still feels tense and twitchy. She also can’t forget the events of the day – the boat trip, the discovery of the buried box and, finally, the film itself. All through dinner – polished dining table, flickering candles, acres of silver and china – she keeps seeing Hugh Anselm’s face, hearing his voice, the voice of a precocious teenager.
The story I have to tell is an unedifying one … there was a difference of opinion … to my everlasting shame, I acquiesced.
But his story was not a teenager’s story. This was a man who had to face a terrible choice and bear an intolerable burden of guilt – all before he was twenty. What had the rest of Hugh Anselm’s life been like, she wonders? Why did he decide, in the end, to break the oath? Why had he written to Dieter Eckhart? Dieter, who is now dead.
    Yet Jack Hastings, who has just heard that his father murdered five men in cold blood, seems unaffected. Earlier, in the study, he had looked a broken man. Now he is every inch the genial host, pouring wine, telling amusing anecdotes about his family. His mother, Irene, smiles vaguely in the shadows. What does she know? What does she suspect?
    Yet despite all these cross-currents of emotion, there is something almost magical about the evening. The formal dining room, the candlelight, the knowledge that outside it is still snowing, all conspire to make the little group around the table seem somehow removed from the rest of the world. It’s as if, thinks Ruth, they have travelled in time. When they finally get up from the table and open the doors to the white expanse outside, will it be 2009 or 1940? Or will it be 1840, with carriage wheels whirling through the snow? Will the warning light shine in the tower, three short flashes, two long? Will Buster Hastings be walking down the cliff path towards the sea, gun in hand?
    And, if she’s honest, she likes the fact that she is there with Nelson. The configuration around the table, Jack and Stella, Ruth and Nelson, makes it almost seem as if they are a couple. She has never been out to dinner with Nelson and it is unlikely that she ever will again. So she enjoys looking at him across the