‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s all a right mess.’
He thinks that Sandy will leave it there, go back to talking about the past or discussing Blackpool’s prospects in the Premier League. Instead, his friend leans forward and says, almost urgently, ‘Be careful, Harry. What you’ve got with Michelle, that’s worth keeping. I’ve seen the way that Ruth looks at you. She’s in love with you. Just don’t do anything stupid. I know what you’re like when you think you’re doing the right thing.’
Nelson can think of nothing to say to this. His pie arrives but he doesn’t feel hungry somehow.
CHAPTER 28
Caz delivers Ruth and Kate back to Beach Row, happy and exhausted. It has been a brilliant day, thinks Ruth, as she dumps wet towels in the washing machine and starts to prepare supper. The Water Park had been heaven. Kate had adored playing on the desert island and the pirate ship, splashing in the Blue Lagoon paddling pool and negotiating Ratty’s Rapids. Caz’s children, when not flinging themselves down death-defying slides, had played sweetly with Kate, leaving Ruth free to enjoy some actual swimming (though it was hard to do lengths in a trapezoid-shaped pool crammed with over-excited toddlers).
Cathbad was wrong to say that it was naff and over-priced, decides Ruth. Well, not entirely wrong, but sometimes, with children, naff is good. It had been expensive, though. Ruth shudders at the memory of the cappuccinos drunk at the ‘poolside reef’. But Cathbad has no right to be so judgemental. He keeps going on about how much Kate had loved playing on the beach with him. ‘Just the sand and the sea. No commercial rubbish. Just good natural energies.’ Well of course Kate had liked playing on the beach. She’s two, for God’s sake. That doesn’t mean that she can only enjoy herself in Cathbad’s wholesome company. He should try looking after her on a rainy afternoon when she’s got toothache and the DVD player’s broken. That would test his powers as a godfather.
Where is Cathbad anyway? She had expected him to be back when she got home. He is probably wandering somewhere in the Pendle Forest, Thing at his side. Well, she doesn’t begrudge him that, exactly. He’s had a tough few days – a tough year – and she knows that he finds walking therapeutic. Still, she hopes he’s back before dark. She doesn’t want to be alone with Kate in the cottage. She is so pleased that they are going home tomorrow. Even in the water park, surrounded by grinning plastic dolphins and mermaid friezes, she kept thinking about that figure on the riverbank. The hooded man, the monster without a face. So many stories involve the appearance of an unknown ‘other’, the stranger whom nobody recognises. Who is the third who walks beside you? Christ on the road to Emmaus. Poor Tom on the blasted heath. Countless fairy tales about the mysterious traveller who arrives by night. Guess my name or I will take your soul.
After a desultory supper, Ruth takes Kate upstairs for her bath. One of the best things about spending the day at a vile commercial theme park is that, by half past six, Kate is so tired that she can hardly keep her eyes open. Ruth is barely two pages into Dora the Explorer when her daughter’s steady breathing informs her that she is asleep and the rest of the evening is, miraculously, her own. She goes downstairs wondering if it’s decadent to drink wine when it’s still light outside. Oh sod it, she’ll just have a small glass.
She pours herself a small glass but it looks so lonely that she tops it up. She’s sure it still only counts as one unit. Then, carrying the wine, she goes into the sitting room, sits on the sofa and opens her laptop. She wants to have another look at Dan’s diaries before Cathbad gets back.
The best thing about electronic diaries is that you can use ‘Find’. Feeling rather guilty, Ruth searches for mentions of herself. There are just two. The one about asking for her help with the bones and one dated 2nd April, in the very early days of the dig, before the skeleton had been discovered:
For some reason, found myself thinking about the old days at UCL. About Finn, Kamal, Ruth and Caz. In those days I always thought I’d be a big success as an archaeologist – write a best-selling book, make a devastating discovery. Well, it hasn’t quite worked out like that. I’ve been a jobbing archaeologist, nothing more. Teaching bored students and doing a bit of desultory digging at weekends. Coming up to Pendle felt like defeat. I was only here because of Karen and I have to admit it hurt that she had a better job than me. Her career was going places whereas mine seemed to have stalled. I knew, as soon as I met Clayton, that the department was in bad shape. They don’t attract enough students or enough funding. The Dean, I think, would like to get rid of history altogether and replace it with something more lucrative and trendy. In the interview, Clayton told me that I’d have a free hand to run the archaeology courses but, in reality, there are so few students that we struggle to maintain anything like a proper programme. Clayton has no feel for or interest in archaeology. It’s too dry and labour-intensive for him. Sam’s really only interested in the modern stuff. Guy is keen and has a good mind. Elaine is just too weird ever to amount to anything as an academic – though she’s bright too. Pendle really seemed like a dead end, the graveyard of my hopes. But this find – this could change everything. A Romano-British temple dedicated to the Raven God. This could be worth an article, even a book. If only I could get the funding, we could do some really good digging here. Who knows what lies buried here?
Who indeed, thinks Ruth, draining her glass without noticing. Dan was right that greater treasures lay beneath the earth but was it this discovery that led to his death? Was Pendle – ‘the graveyard of my hopes’ – literally the death of him?
There are other things here that are interesting too. She remembers Finn and Kamal from their archaeology class. She wonders what they are doing now. She thinks that they, like Caz, got out of archaeology as soon as they could. Didn’t she hear somewhere that Kamal had become a solicitor? Dan’s feelings about his career strike a chord too. Ruth has also been feeling that her professional life has somehow stalled, despite her work with the police (which has proved interesting, if unexpectedly dangerous). She sympathises with Dan, coming to Pendle and finding a failing department full of warring individuals. He does say that Guy has a good mind and, of course, it’s Guy who wants to carry on his work, making a name for himself in the process. Elaine is ‘weird’, which chimes with what Guy has told her. There is little here to suggest that Dan was ever in love with Elaine. Karen must have been his wife. What’s she doing now?
Some of these questions are easily answered. A google search for Kamal Singh comes up with hundreds of entries but Ruth tracks him down via Friends Reunited. Yes, he’s a solicitor, married with three children. What about Finn? Here she has a horrible shock. Finn is dead. He died three years ago of prostate cancer. She tracks him down via a tribute page at the school where he was clearly a much-loved history teacher. Poor Finn. Irish, rugby-loving Finn. Dead at forty. Finn and Dan both dead. Ruth shivers, as if the Grim Reaper is reading over her shoulder. The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on.
A search for Karen Golding reveals her to be a professor of theoretical physics at Manchester University. Still a high-flyer then. Ruth wonders how she feels about Dan now. Caz said that she seemed very upset at his funeral and it was apparently Karen, the career woman, who wanted to settle down and have children. Why didn’t Dan want children? Ruth remembers his bitter observation that she was probably married with ten children ‘like everyone else’. Maybe Dan just didn’t want to be like everyone else. Maybe he was happy living on his own, having a succession of affairs. But in his diaries he doesn’t sound like a happy man exactly.