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

Ruth again had been as bad as he had imagined it would be. And when she mentioned Katie! Nelson’s feelings for Ruth are so tied up with guilt and fear that he finds them impossible to untangle. His feelings for Katie, on the other hand, are crystal clear. He loves her, the baby he has only held three times in his life, and he wants to be her father. But that’s impossible.
    The events at the christening six months ago are still so painful that Nelson finds his thoughts veering away whenever he tries to approach the recollection. Now he forces himself to remember. Michelle had been fine at first. She had been keen to be a godmother; in fact she had always taken a special interest in Ruth and Kate,something which, when he thought about it, had had the power to make him feel almost ill with guilt and foreboding. But like an idiot, he had ignored his misgivings. He had insisted on a Catholic christening because he’d been brought up a Catholic, and Cathbad’s naming day ceremony held a few months earlier had made him acutely uncomfortable. Worse, he felt that they were ill-wishing Kate in some way, invoking those faceless, bloodthirsty Gods that Cathbad admires so much. He’d wanted some protection from the angels and saints of his own childhood. So he had persuaded Ruth to have Kate baptised and had asked Father Hennessey, a Catholic priest whom he had met on a previous case, to perform the service. Ruth had agreed, partly because she too had been impressed by Patrick Hennessey and, he suspects, partly because Ruth herself had come close to death just a few weeks earlier.
    And, at first, it had been a happy occasion. A beautiful May day, he remembers, with blossom on the trees and the promise of summer in the air. He had held Kate (the third time) and Michelle, who loves babies, had been in her element. Cathbad and Shona, the other godparents, had been no madder than they could help. Afterwards they had driven to a country pub with Ruth and Kate in the back of the car. Michelle had chatted happily to Ruth on the journey but as Ruth got out of the car, Michelle had detained Nelson with an imperious hand. Despite trying not to, he can see her face now, an expression so glacial with anger that he can only describe it as terrifying.
    ‘She’s yours, isn’t she?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Kate. She’s yours. I was looking at her just now and she’s got this little whorl of hair that goes a different way from the rest. You’ve got one just like it. So has Rebecca.’
    At first he denied it outright. They had stood there, in the car park of The Phoenix, hissing at each other as the happy families walked past them, heading for a pub lunch in the sun.
    ‘You must be mad,’ he had said. ‘What are you talking about, a whorl of hair?’
    Michelle had looked at him disdainfully. ‘Don’t bother lying about it. Everything fits. I wondered why you were always so concerned about Ruth. I thought you might be becoming a nicer person in your old age. How wrong can you be?’
    He tried for bemusement. ‘What are you on about, love?’
    ‘Don’t call me love. You slept with Ruth, she’s had your baby, and now you’re trying to deny it. I never knew you were such a coward, Harry.’
    And he is a coward. He knows that now. They had been forced to go into the pub, to drink Kate’s health and laugh at Cathbad’s jokes. Michelle, brittle and beautiful with self-righteous fury, had even held the baby in her arms, thoughtfully stroking the telltale swirl of dark hair. When they got home Michelle had given him an ultimatum. He must never see Ruth or Kate again. ‘But I work with her,’ he had protested. ‘You know what I mean. You can speak to her as a colleague but never,never as anything more than that.’ And he had agreed.
    He had known all along that he could never break up his family, turn Laura and Rebecca into resentful strangers and Michelle into that age-old stock character ‘the ex-wife.’ Although his daughters are both at