But the doctors don’t give Clough the go-ahead for another three weeks. He is due to resume work on Monday the ninth of December. Judy is going on maternity leave on the sixth, which is also the date of the Blackstocks’ ‘wrap party’ celebrating the end of the filming. Judy seems increasingly twitchy as this date approaches. Maybe it’s because Clough is coming back just when she’s leaving, maybe it’s because Tanya is showing signs of enjoying her Acting DS status too much (‘Don’t worry Judy,’ she told her colleague, ‘I’ll look after the boys when you’re away’). Either way, Judy is so bad-tempered during her last few days at work that Nelson and Tim often hide in the gents when they hear her coming.
Nelson is fed up too. He’s almost certain that Patrick Blackstock was killed by a member of his estranged family, but with no evidence, there is no way he can prove it. Similarly, it seems that the death of Senior Airman Frederick Blackstock will for ever remain a mystery. But Nelson is sure that the answer has something to do with Blackstock Hall, that it lies buried deep in the family grave, or at least in the pets’ burial ground. But, again, with limited resources and no new evidence, there is nothing he can do.
Even the investigation into the attack on Clough is moving slowly. There don’t seem to be any witnesses. The DNA found on the mask doesn’t match any held on the register and, although he’s asked for further tests, the results haven’t come back yet. The attack on Cassandra is even less likely to be solved. Once again there are no witnesses and there is a general feeling that Cassandra might even have imagined the assault. As Whitcliffe put it to Nelson in one of their weekly meetings: ‘A highly strung girl, an actress, probably in an extremely emotional state, just come from a funeral, been drinking, a howling gale. Put those together and what have you got?’ Nelson doesn’t bother answering the question. For his own part, he believes that someone did creep up behind Cassie while she stood amongst the family tombstones, someone who was willing to take any chance to do away with the Blackstock heir. But what are his policeman’s instincts against Whitcliffe’s all-too-rational version of events? Again, it’s not worth answering.
To add to Nelson’s woes, he is booked to go on a training course from the sixth to the eighth of December. The course, ‘Community Engagement in Twenty-first-century Policing’, is, of course, Whitcliffe’s idea. ‘You’ll enjoy it, Harry,’ he said, passing him the application form which he had already counter-signed. ‘You never know, you might even join the twenty-first century.’ Then, seeing Nelson’s face, ‘It’s in York, a lovely city. Why don’t you take Michelle and make a minibreak of it?’ It’s a measure of Nelson’s desperation that he did suggest this idea to Michelle. She hadn’t been keen. ‘I’m really busy at work in December, and what’ll I do in York all day when you’re on the course?’ ‘There’s a cathedral,’ said Nelson but he hadn’t pressed the point. Michelle isn’t really one for old buildings.
Now, as Nelson packs his overnight bag, he reflects that Michelle hasn’t been herself recently. She normally loves the build-up to Christmas: buying presents, ordering the turkey, getting the tree down from the loft, forcing him to go to parties. But this year she has seemed lethargic and uninterested. Maybe it’s the weather, which is still stormy and grey with an unrelenting icy wind. Maybe it’s because Laura is staying in Ibiza for Christmas with her new boyfriend. He’ll have to do something to cheer Michelle up. Go to a show in London, perhaps. She’d like that. As long as it’s not a musical. There are limits to being a good husband.
At least the course means that he’ll avoid the party at Blackstock Hall. The Blackstocks are the very last people he wants to see, except perhaps the American film crew. He has heard rumours that Ruth is now very friendly with Frank Barker. Well, that’s OK (he supposes) as long as he doesn’t have to see them together. He has ordered Judy to go to the party though. Someone has to keep their eye on the Blackstocks and, as Judy is off on maternity leave next week, it’ll be a nice treat for her.
You’re all heart, he tells himself.
Ruth is not looking forward to the party either. It’ll be the first time that she and Frank will be seen together as a couple. They have seen each other most nights since the boeuf bourguignon evening. Ruth doesn’t stop to think about the wisdom of this. She doesn’t ask herself what will happen when Frank goes back to America. She just lets herself be carried along by the tide.
But the tide is one thing, the party is another. She wants to look her best, glamorous even. She has to buy something nice to wear and, if possible, lose about two stone. So Ruth is at the gym. She has actually been a member there for ten years. When the receptionist made her a new card (everything has been automated since Ruth’s last visit), she commented that Ruth was one of their oldest members. She didn’t add that Ruth has visited the gym only twice in those ten years, which averages out, Ruth calculates, at about a thousand pounds a swim.
But now she’s determined to do it properly. She has had an induction with a charming young man called Dean and, for the last month, has been to the sports club three times a week. She spends half an hour in the gym, following the programme designed for her by Dean, and then she swims for half an hour. She hates it. She hates the other members in their designer sportswear, running marathons on the treadmill, then stopping to do complicated stretches, carrying their little bottles of water everywhere. She hates the changing rooms where the women strip off and then wander around naked chatting about their Pilates sessions. She even hates the pool, which is too warm and emits a stinging smell of chlorine. It’ll be worth it if she gets fit but, so far, she has only lost one pound. It doesn’t help that the only place in the club that she likes is the cafe, which sells delicious Danish pastries.
But today Ruth is determined. The party is tomorrow. Surely it’s not too late to change her body shape completely? She slogs away on the cross-trainer, ignoring the flashing lights informing her that she has so far burnt one hundred calories, approximately a third of a Mars bar. It is so boring, that’s the problem. Everyone else has iPods to plug in but Ruth is stubbornly old fashioned and prefers her transistor radio. There’s a television but it’s too far away and, besides, at this hour it always shows a breakfast TV programme of breath-taking vacuousness. Ruth is reduced to looking out of the window, but the view is pretty boring too. Just the car park, a few trees and a recycling station. She watches as a man and a woman walk out to their car. The woman has long blonde hair and, even from the back, has the sort of figure that makes Ruth feel envious. The man is tall and athletic, carrying his sports bag high on his shoulder. At the car, they stop and kiss. Maybe they aren’t a couple then. Maybe they are illicit lovers who just meet at the gym. There’s certainly something going on, judging by the length and passion of the kiss. Then the woman puts her bag in the boot and turns to say something to the man. He reaches out and touches her cheek. Ruth stops. The cross-trainer bleeps at her angrily but she ignores it. The man turns and heads off towards his own car. For a moment he is staring directly at Ruth but can’t see her because of the tinted glass. She recognises him though. It’s Tim.
And the woman is Michelle.
Ruth drives to the university in a daze. She can’t stop thinking about Michelle and Tim, replaying their embrace in the car park like a dreary X-rated film on a loop. Are they having an affair? Something must be going on. No two adults kiss like that unless they’re having an affair. It’s a strange thing but Ruth’s first emotion was disappointment. She has got so used to thinking of Michelle as perfect—the beautiful loyal wife who loves her husband so much that she can even forgive him for fathering a child with another woman—it’s a shock to realise that she is human after all. Not just human but cheating on her husband with one of his own team, a young man who is supposed to like and respect Nelson. When she thinks of this double betrayal, Ruth finds herself feeling physically sick.
What should she do? She can’t imagine herself telling tales to Nelson. The tale-teller never comes off well in these situations and, besides, she doesn’t really know what’s happening between Michelle and Tim, if anything. Should she speak to Michelle, tell her what she saw? Her entire body shrinks from the thought of such a confrontation. What would Michelle say if she was accused of infidelity by the woman who slept with her husband and had his child? What about Tim? Could she talk to him? No, that’s even more impossible. She hardly knows him. Besides, that might mean telling Tim the truth about her own relationship with Nelson. Thinking this makes Ruth feel ashamed, for herself, for all of them. But then, her predominant emotion is one of shame. Because, when she saw Michelle and Tim, almost her first thought was: if Nelson finds out about Michelle, perhaps he’ll leave her. Perhaps he’ll marry me.
Why should she think this when she’s having what is, frankly, a rather passionate affair with Frank? Why should she fantasise about being married to Nelson when she doesn’t want to marry anyone? She and Nelson would kill each other in a week, arguing about whether Kate should be allowed to play on the wet grass or watch unsuitable Disney films. Even after a night of great sex with Frank, she’s quite keen to get him out of the house so she can be alone with the view and her daughter and her cat. She doesn’t want to live with a man. So why, while she was still standing on the cross-trainer, did a shamefully regressive picture of a white wedding flash into her mind? ‘Do you, Ruth Alexandra, take this man . . .’ She takes the turn for the university, glad that no one else is privy to this image.
The campus is like a ghost ship. Term is nearly over and a lot of the overseas students have already left. She walks up the stairs to her office, hoping to spend a couple of hours getting to grips with her marking. But no sooner has she opened the first of the mid-sessional booklets, ‘Field Techniques in Archaeology’, when there’s a knock on her door.
For one mad moment she thinks it’s Michelle, come to confess about Tim and throw herself on Ruth’s mercy. But that’s crazy. Michelle didn’t see Ruth at the gym and she’s not exactly the confessing sort (unlike her husband, she’s not a Catholic).
‘Come in,’ says Ruth, still in her angel of mercy voice.
It’s Phil. Ruth’s voice changes very quickly.
‘Hi, Phil. What do you want?’
‘Just wondering if you were going to the party at Blackstock Hall tomorrow? Shona and I are thinking of putting in an appearance.’
Putting in an appearance. That’s exactly how he (and Shona) would see it. Even so, Ruth feels guilty about Shona. She hasn’t seen her for weeks. It’s partly because she knows that Shona would wheedle the truth about Frank out of her in seconds. Not that her relationship with Frank is exactly a secret. It’s just that’s she’s not quite ready for it to be common knowledge, discussed at university dinner parties by Phil and Shona and their friends, picked over by Clough and the police team, known to Nelson.
‘I’m going to the party,’ says Ruth. ‘I might not stay long though. Horrendous rain is forecast.’
‘Oh, forecasters always get it wrong,’ says Phil. ‘I’d like to go. After all, we were there when the plane was first discovered. We’ve been involved in this story from the beginning.’
I was there, thinks Ruth. You just tagged along for the ride. Aloud she says, ‘Are you looking forward to seeing the finished film? I think they’re going to show it tomorrow.’
‘I’m not that bothered about the film,’ says Phil. That’s because you’re not in it, thinks Ruth. ‘I’m sure it’s very American and sensationalised. No, I’m just interested in the archaeological investigation.’
Phil has shown so little interest in the archaeological investigation that he has never even asked about Ruth’s dig at Blackstock Hall or about how Fred’s body came to be in the plane in the first place. This is just as well, really, because Ruth’s dig was inconclusive. She is pretty sure that the soil in the pets’ graveyard showed traces of decaying human body matter but the samples she took proved difficult to analyse because too much animal matter was mixed in. The context didn’t yield much either, besides the dog-tag and the Victorian glass. But Ruth is sure that the earth had been moved fairly recently and that a human body had once been buried amongst the dogs and cats.
‘There’s not much to say about the archaeological investigation,’ she says now. ‘It’s a bit frustrating really.’
‘What about the body that was found in the pig farm? You were involved with that too, weren’t you?’
Nelson told Ruth about the body turning out to be that of Patrick Blackstock but the information hasn’t been released to the general public and, in this instance, Ruth regards Phil as very much one of the public.
‘The police are still awaiting DNA results, I think.’
‘And they say universities are slow.’ Phil turns to leave, pausing at the door to ask Ruth if her American friend will be at the party.
‘If you mean Frank,’ says Ruth evenly, ‘yes.’
Phil heads off down the corridor whistling ‘I Like to Be in America’.
Ruth’s American friend is waiting for her when she gets back to the cottage. She had said that she’d be home at five but she was held up by traffic and by collecting Kate from her childminder. This has happened a few times but something stops Ruth from giving Frank a key to the cottage. He’s going back to America in a few weeks, says the voice in her head, you don’t want things to get too serious. A key, now that’s serious. Besides, Frank always says that it’s no hardship to wait outside.
‘The view’s different every day. I could never get tired of looking at it.’
She loves the fact that Frank loves the view. And further than that, she’s not prepared to go.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she says now. ‘Traffic. Camper vans. Horse trailers. All the usual stuff.’
‘I’ve never known such a place for camper vans and horse trailers,’ says Frank, swinging Kate up into the air. ‘Maybe they could get the horses to pull the vans and halve the traffic.’
‘Cathbad used to live in a horse-drawn caravan,’ says Ruth, opening the door. ‘When he lived in Ireland.’
‘Figures,’ says Frank, who has come to know Cathbad well over the last few weeks.
Kate drags Frank off to look at her Sylvanians. Kate’s enthusiasm for Frank has become rather worrying for Ruth. It’s all very well for her to decide that she won’t think about her feelings for Frank until he’s on his way back to America, but what will Kate make of this romantic fatalism? She’s not going to accept the explanation that Frank’s not coming round for tea any more because Mummy’s afraid of commitment. She’ll miss Frank and she’ll keep asking questions about him until Ruth either explodes or gives her a proper answer. Kate has already chatted about Frank on days out with Nelson, prompting several sarcastic asides: ‘Your American friend is quite the Mary Poppins’. Even if he goes away, she’ll keep talking about him. And why shouldn’t she? As far as Kate is concerned, Frank is her friend.
Ruth makes tea and puts the crumpets under the grill. Frank has said that he’ll make supper tonight so she doesn’t have to worry about that. Frank is a good, if limited, cook, specialising in the meals he taught himself to make after his wife’s death: spaghetti bolognaise, chilli con carne, steak and roast chicken. Ruth doesn’t mind; these meals suit her fine. It’s bliss to have someone else cooking for her and to eat the meals together, drinking wine and talking about their various days. This is how Ruth has always imagined Nelson’s home life, Nelson and Michelle sitting down to cosy meals together, laughing softly and talking about delicious trivialities. But it turns out that, instead of cooking Nelson’s supper, Michelle has been busy kissing Tim at the gym. Does Nelson know? Does he care that his marriage might be about to collapse?
Frank comes into the kitchen just in time to save the crumpets from burning. They eat them in the sitting room while Kate watches Dora the Explorer and Flint, probably jealous, claws steadily at the sofa.
‘Stop it, Flint,’ says Ruth. He blinks at her and carries on.
‘Are you looking forward to the party tomorrow?’ asks Frank.
‘Not really,’ says Ruth. ‘I don’t like parties and the weather’s meant to be horrible.’
It’s raining now, it sounds as if someone is throwing little stones against the window. High tides and heavy rain mean a serious risk of flooding, as the news is always reminding Ruth. She is sure that this morning the sea was nearer than ever, swallowing the water meadows, edging closer to the road.
‘It’ll be OK,’ says Frank. Ruth has noticed that he likes parties, that he’s rather social in fact. Another thing they don’t have in common. ‘We’re hoping to show the film. The dailies have been looking really good. We’re having a postproduction meeting tomorrow and then hoping to have a version to show over at the Hall. I’d really like Nell to see it before she goes back to the States.’
‘I like Nell,’ says Ruth. ‘She’s very sweet.’
‘I like Sally too,’ says Frank. ‘The women in that family are worth ten of the men.’
‘You might have something there,’ she says.
‘Ruth,’ says Frank. There is something in his voice that makes Kate look round from the screen. Even Flint stops clawing momentarily.
‘Ruth,’ he says, ‘Paul and Earl are going back to the States a couple of days after the party. There’s a lot of editing to be done.’
‘I suppose there must be,’ says Ruth. She knows absolutely nothing about film editing.
‘But I was thinking of staying on for a couple of weeks.’
‘That would be nice,’ says Ruth, her throat dry.
‘Would it?’ Frank takes her hand. ‘Would it, Ruth?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth. ‘Term’s over in a week. If the weather gets better, we could go on some trips, we could . . .’
‘The thing is,’ says Frank, ‘I might even be able to stay for good. That is, if you wanted me to.’