Dying Fall

‘I’m looking forward to seeing it,’ she says, sprinkling parmesan on her pasta.

‘When are you going?’ asks Max. He smiles at her across the table, making Ruth feel ashamed of her a

‘At the end of July,’ she says, smiling back. ‘When term ends.’

‘Perhaps I could come too,’ says Max. ‘For some of it at least.’

‘That would be great,’ says Ruth, wondering why she doesn’t feel more enthusiastic about the idea. ‘I’m not quite sure when I’m going yet.’

‘Will you take Kate?’ asks Shona. She is leaning against Phil’s shoulder, hair tousled and eyes sparkling. How can she fancy him?

‘I don’t know,’ says Ruth. ‘Depends how long I’ll be there. If it’s only for a few days, I might ask my parents to look after her. They’d love it.’

This is true. There is nothing Ruth’s parents would like better than to get their hands on Kate while she is still young enough to brainwash.

‘You should go,’ says Phil, pouring himself more wine without offering it round. ‘It’s been a while since you’ve done any original research, hasn’t it?’

*

Ruth feels rather embarrassed, coming home with Max to find Cathbad on the sofa watching Graham Norton. It’s as if she and Max are carrying a huge ba

‘How was Kate?’ asks Ruth. She has sobered up at bit but is still finding it an effort not to slur her words.

‘Fine. Not a peep out of her.’

‘It was very kind of you to babysit.’

‘Not at all. I enjoyed it.’ He gets up and reaches for his jacket. Ruth feels rather sad that he isn’t wearing his cloak.

‘Bye, Cathbad,’ says Max from the kitchen. ‘See you soon.’

At the doorway, Cathbad turns and says, with elaborate casualness. ‘Oh, Ruth. If you are going to Lancashire, I’d love to go with you.’

CHAPTER 7

As they turn onto the motorway, a huge sign above them points the way unambiguously to The North. Ruth, rather stressed from following Cathbad’s directions (‘I think it’s this way— Oh, look at that bird! Is it a buzzard?’), views it with relief. At least this must mean that they’re going the right way. All the same there is something, to her, slightly chilling about the wording. She remembers Dan’s letter with its reference to the ‘frozen and inhospitable north’. She is going into alien territory, and for a moment she thinks she understands how the Roman legions must have felt, leaving the su

It is July 29th and, as Ruth had predicted, the good weather has broken and rain is forecast. Ruth, Cathbad and Kate are on their way to Lytham. When they stopped for petrol outside King’s Ly

For the last few weeks, Ruth has been thinking a lot about her relationship with Max. In July, after term had finished, Max came down for a week and they hired a boat on the Broads. Having nearly been murdered on a boat once, Ruth is not that keen on sailing as a pastime, but despite being involved in the same incident Max is a keen waterman. And it had been lovely, drifting through the flat Norfolk fields with the sky high and blue above them, Max at the helm, Kate shouting out with pleasure whenever she saw a swan, or a cormorant, or another boat – or anything really. That had been the only problem; Kate had been so excited that Ruth had had to keep hold of her all the time. She had been fitted with her own cute baby life-jacket, but even so Ruth wasn’t taking any chances. By evening, as they moored under willow trees or in shallow backwaters, Ruth was exhausted, far too tired (and conscious of Kate only a few feet away) to make love in the narrow double bed.

On their last evening, as they drifted along the Wherryman’s Way, Max had said, ‘Kate’s had a great time, hasn’t she?’

‘She’s loved it,’ said Ruth. Max had bought Kate a miniature captain’s cap and she was sitting on his lap with her hands firmly on the helm. It would make a great picture, if only Ruth could remember where she’d put her phone or camera.

Max turned to Ruth, who was sitting on the bench seat behind him.

‘Do you worry about her being an only child?’

Ruth had been surprised. She had been so shocked to have a baby at all that she had never considered Kate’s single-child status. Of course, in theory she had two half-sisters, but in reality it was just the two of them – Ruth and Kate. Was there something wrong with that?

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not as if I have much choice.’

‘But you do,’ Max had said, turning back to Kate. ‘We could have a baby.’

Now, filtering into the motorway with all the other families, hot and fractious at the begi

‘Kate’s asleep,’ says Cathbad, looking over his shoulder.

‘Good,’ says Ruth. Kate had been grizzling quietly for about half an hour. They made an early start but traffic has been bad. It’s now midday and they are only just past Doncaster.

‘I’ll take over driving when we stop for lunch,’ says Cathbad.

Ruth says nothing. She is not sure that she trusts Kate’s life – or her own – to Cathbad’s driving.

She is not sure, even now, why she decided to embark on this long and potentially tedious journey. Partly it was Phil’s breezily dismissive attitude to the Ribchester bones. And she still remembers his crack about ‘original research’. If Dan really had made a momentous discovery, then she could be the one to bring it to light, thus fulfilling her debt to her friend and making her reputation in the process. Phil’s comment had underlined the feeling that her career is going nowhere; she has published nothing in the last few years, not even an article or a review. She really needs something big, and if Dan had found the grave of King Arthur, that could be the biggest archaeological find of the decade.