‘Bring her too,’ says Clayton breezily, leaving Ruth to ponder, once again, on his choice of pronoun.

*

Nelson rings just when Ruth is getting into her car. Clayton had driven her back to the university and she is keen to get back to Kate. In fact she almost doesn’t answer the phone.

Nelson, typically, goes straight onto the attack.

‘Where have you been?’ he says. ‘I’ve been ringing your home number for days.’

‘I’m on holiday. Just for a week or so.’

Thank God he doesn’t ask where, instead he says, ‘With Katie?’

‘Of course with Kate.’ What does he think she’s done, thinks Ruth, left Kate at home with a week’s supply of nappies? Asked Bob Woonunga to look after her as well as Flint, putting food for them both through the cat flap? And why can’t he ever bloody well get her name right? But she does feel slightly uncomfortable as she’s not sure why she hasn’t told Nelson that she’s in Lancashire. He has a right to know where Kate is, after all. Is it because she thinks it will seem as if she’s stalking him? Is she stalking him?

‘I talked to Sandy about your friend Dan Golding.’

‘What did he say?’

‘The fire was definitely arson. Someone pushed petrol-soaked rags through the letterbox.’

‘Oh my God. Why would anyone do that?’

‘Well, Sandy says there are some funny things going on at Pendle University.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Racist groups. Neo-Nazis. White supremacists. They’ve had trouble on campus before.’

‘But why would white supremacists want to kill Dan?’

‘I don’t know. Sandy thought maybe because he was Jewish.’

Ruth thinks of her easy-going friend Dan. Can he really have been killed for this most horrible of reasons? She’s not a stranger to racism, she was brought up in Eltham, a south London borough that has its share of such problems. She had already left home by 1993 when a black student called Stephen Lawrence was killed by a gang of white thugs, but she remembers many smaller incidents, taunts in the playground, graffiti on walls, a general sense of anger, bitterness and frustration. She’s seen racism in Norfolk too, mainly directed towards Eastern European incomers, but somehow she never thought it would happen at Pendle and certainly never to Dan.

‘Anyway,’ Nelson is saying, ‘Sandy’s going to do some investigating. I’ll let you know how he gets on.’

‘Thanks,’ says Ruth. ‘How’s your holiday?’

Nelson grunts. ‘OK. My mum and sisters are driving me mad.’

‘Happy families.’

He gives a short laugh, then says. ‘Funny thing, Ruth. I was at Lytham today and I thought I saw Cathbad.’

‘Cathbad?’ echoes Ruth rather wildly.

‘Yeah. Cathbad pushing a pushchair. Crazy, eh?’

CHAPTER 12

Clayton Henry turns out to live in a converted windmill just outside Kirkham, another picturesque town on the Roman road to Ribchester. Ruth, expecting a few charred sausages washed down with warm wine, is amazed to see a marquee, a bouncy castle and what looks like liveried staff carrying trays of champagne glasses.

‘Bloody hell,’ says Cathbad, as they park behind two Porsches and an Alfa Romeo. ‘Is it a wedding?’

‘He said barbeque,’ says Ruth, getting Kate out of her car seat. Kate looks up at the pink castle swelling out of the side of the windmill.

‘Balloon,’ she says, in wonder.

Ruth feels rather embarrassed, turning up with Kate and Cathbad in tow. She doesn’t know quite why she accepted Clayton’s invitation in the first place. For years, her instinct has been to start inventing excuses at the first mention of the word ‘party’. What an earth has made her become sociable in her old age? Partly it’s curiosity. She wants to meet Dan’s colleagues. Up until now she has been unable to imagine her glamorous friend in the grim surroundings of the cigarette factory or even digging outside the city walls in Ribchester. Maybe the party will shed some light on Dan’s decision to abandon the dreaming spires for a shabby ex-polytechnic. And Cathbad had been keen to come. Unlike Ruth, he enjoys a party and she feels that he deserves some fun. He has been sweet to her over the last few days, looking after Kate, cooking for them all, asking interested questions about the finds at Ribchester. But it makes her sad to see him so muted and domesticated. He has even stopped wearing his cloak. Maybe a party will awaken the old, eccentric, libation-loving Cathbad.

All the same, as they walk towards the windmill, she wishes they didn’t look so much like a couple. But Kate insists on holding one of Ruth’s hands and one of Cathbad’s so that they approach the house as a unit – man, woman and child. It’s like an advertisement for a company strong on family values but weak on style. And that’s another thing; she’s wearing the wrong clothes. Cotton trousers and loose top are OK for a family get-together but all wrong for a party with waiters. As they walk through a rose-strewn archway into the garden all Ruth can see are women in flowery dresses. Although it’s a cool summer’s day, there seems to be an abundance of flesh on show – spaghetti straps, Lycra minis, strapless midi dresses. She sees men in striped blazers, women in hats. No one else is wearing beige cotton trousers.

‘Ruth!’ Clayton Henry comes towards them, resplendent in a Hawaiian shirt and white trousers.

‘Hi.’ Ruth has brought a bottle, which seems wrong now. She pushes it into Henry’s hands nonetheless.

‘How kind.’ He looks around for somewhere to put it.

‘This is Cathbad,’ says Ruth, ‘my friend. And Kate, my daughter.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Cathbad and Henry exchange a hearty handshake though Ruth thinks there is something watchful about both men, as if they’re summing each other up.

‘Cathbad, did you say?’

‘Yes,’ says Cathbad modestly. ‘It’s a druidical name.’

‘How fascinating,’ says Henry and looks as if he’s going to say more, but at that moment a glamorous woman with long blonde hair floats out of the house.

‘Darling, have you seen the …’ She stops.

‘Pippa,’ says Henry, with apparent delight. ‘Do come and meet Ruth and Cathbad and their little girl. This is Pippa, my wife.’

If Clayton Henry is making assumptions about Ruth, Ruth realises that she has been guilty of the same crime. Without thinking much about it she had assumed that Henry, with his soft voice and pointed shoes, must be gay. She could just about imagine him married to some plump Bohemian type but not this willowy beauty with model-girl hair and the kind of shoes that make Ruth nervous. Apart from anything else, Pippa Henry is at least four inches taller than her husband.

She seems very friendly though, kissing Ruth on the cheek and bending down to talk to Kate.

‘Would you like to go on the bouncy castle, sweetheart?’

Kate, perhaps, like her mother, intimidated by glamour, hides behind Ruth. A white fluffy dog appears from nowhere and starts barking furiously. Pippa Henry scoops it into her arms.

‘What a lovely poodle,’ says Ruth, drawing Kate away.

‘Actually it’s a bichon frisé.’

Of course it is.

In the end Ruth takes Kate onto the bouncy castle. This is the great thing about having a child, she thinks, grabbing a glass en route. You can escape to play with them and no one thinks you’re unsociable, they just think you’re a great mother. Ruth watches Kate bouncing on the Barbie castle, sips champagne and thinks that she wouldn’t mind if she spent the entire afternoon like this. Across the lawn, she can see Cathbad chatting animatedly with Pippa. He has always been susceptible to pretty women. She hopes Pippa will take his mind off Judy for a bit. Still, she’d better corner him before long and establish who’s driving home. God, they really are getting like a married couple.

‘Ruth?’ says a voice in her ear.

She swings round to see a pleasant-faced man of about her own age, with thinning sandy hair and a hesitant smile.