A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation Read Online Free PDF Page A

too disorganised to arrange weekend childcare. Ruth can’t be the only one, surely? At least she is paying Sandra, which means it’s a clean commercial transaction, unlike those murky arrangements with friends. Could you do me a favour? Are you sure you don’t mind? I’ll do the same for you one day. Much better like this, cash in hand.
    Ruth likes Sandra but never knows what to say to her, so she thanks her, picks up Kate – floury hands on her best jacket – and backs out of the small terraced house. Sandra waves her goodbye, a child on each hip.
    ‘She hasn’t slept, kept going all afternoon, so you might be lucky tonight,’ she says.
    There was a time when Ruth wouldn’t have understood this sentence. She is wiser now. Kate hasn’t slept. This means that if Ruth keeps her awake all the way home, she may fall asleep at six and not wake until the morning. Kate and Ruth still haven’t really got the sleeping thing sorted. Get her into a routine, the books say, but the only bedtime routine that suits her daughter is Ruth staying with her for hours, reading stories, singing lullabies, or just lying there holding her hand. If Ruth tiptoes out of the room, Kate starts to wail. Let her cry, say the books, but Ruth can’t bear to. Maybe it would be better if there was another parent, someone to pour her a glass of wine and tell her to be strong, but on her own Ruth weakens. Before she has got downstairs, she’s back in attendance, singing, story-telling, hand-holding. She usually falls asleep too, lying beside Kate’s cot, and wakes up stiff and dry-mouthed at midnight. When morning comes, horrifyingly early, one of them is bright-eyed and raring to go and it isn’t Ruth.
    ‘Mum,’ says Kate now. ‘Mum mum mum mum.’
    This is a new development, one which never fails to bring a lump to Ruth’s throat. She likes the way that Kate says ‘Mum’ and not ‘Mummy’, as if she’s a tiny teenager. Ruth’s more comfortable with mum anyway. Mummy sounds twee and home counties. She’s sure that Shula and David Archer call their mother ‘Mummy’.
    Slightly more disturbingly, Kate has also started saying ‘Dada.’ As there’s no male person currently standing inthis relation to her, she employs a scatter-gun approach and has so far bestowed the title on Ruth’s cat, Flint, her grandfather, Cathbad, and the postman. Ruth’s father and Cathbad were delighted; Flint and the postman under-whelmed.
    As she drives through the King’s Lynn streets, past the quay and the customs house and the market square, Ruth keeps up a merry flow of prattle designed to keep her daughter awake. ‘Look Kate, look at that dog! He’s spotty isn’t he? Just like the hundred-and-one Dalmatians. Mum will read you that one day. It’s brilliant. Much better than the film. Look, children dressed as witches! And some more of them! And here are some children dressed as mass-murderers. How cute!’ As afternoon turns to evening, more and more of these mini-devils swarm onto the streets. When did trick-and-treating become so ubiquitous? She’s never going to let Kate do it. But then, there are no neighbours where they live, only the sea and the miles of whispering marshland. Perhaps she should move. Ruth winds down the windows, hoping that the cold will keep Kate awake. She ejects Bruce Springsteen and puts in a tape of children’s songs. ‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea.’ All in vain. Kate’s head droops.
    Ruth’s not too disappointed. She knows she’ll pay for it later but right now she could do with the quiet. Maybe Kate will stay asleep when they get home and Ruth can carry her up to her cot. Mum needs to think, Ruth tells Kate silently. She’s a bit churned up because she saw your dad today. Dad. Kate has never called Nelson ‘Dada’but then she hasn’t seen him for six months. In the first few months of Kate’s life, Nelson was a frequent visitor, torn with guilt over Michelle but also