Inhuman Remains Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’re never sad.’
    I stifled a gasp. ‘Tom, I’m not sad.’
    ‘But you’re lonely. You don’t have anyone.’
    He’d made me want to cry. ‘Son,’ I told him, ‘I’m not lonely. I have you, and I promise you, you’re all the company I’ll ever need.’

Four
    T hose expats who have lived in St Martí and L’Escala for a while tell me that there was a time when Girona Airport handled nothing but charter flights and closed in the winter. That was before a low-cost airline decided to establish its northern Spanish hub there; now it handles scheduled services to upwards of forty destinations.
    Four aircraft seemed to have landed in quick succession on the Saturday afternoon that Tom and I went to collect Auntie Ade, rather a lot for the chuckers . . . sorry, baggage-handlers . . . to work their steady way through, and so we had to wait for almost an hour before she strode out of the hall. She was wearing white cut-off pants and a Tee-shirt that declared ‘Happy to be here’, and was pushing a four-wheeled case big enough to make me wish I’d pinned her down on her definition of ‘a few days’.
    I should tell you right now that I don’t recall Adrienne ever looking her age, except maybe one time. She’s tall, about five ten in her heels, and her hair has always been shoulder length, and dyed a shade of auburn that verges upon red. She drew a few glances from other unofficial taxi-drivers and from a couple of security guards as she spotted us, and headed our way.
    ‘Darling,’ she exclaimed, reaching out to hug me. ‘I thought I was going to melt in there. I must look bloody frightful.’ (Her makeup was immaculate: I could tell that she’d just spent some time in front of the mirror in the baggage-hall toilet.)
    She took a step back from me and looked down at Tom. ‘My God, Primavera,’ she said, ‘what a handsome boy.’ She wasn’t wrong there: the older he gets, the more he looks like his dad, dark haired and blue eyed. For a moment I thought she was going to bend and hug him too, which would have been a wrong move, but instead she reached out a hand for him to shake. ‘We haven’t really been formally introduced,’ she murmured. ‘I’m your great-aunt and I’m very pleased to meet you.’
    My son is a very open kid. He hasn’t developed one of the less-endearing male traits, the charm button that can be switched on and off at a second’s notice. I hope he never does: right now you can look into his eyes and know exactly what he’s thinking, and I pray that nothing ever happens to change the fundamental honesty with which he’s been blessed. I hadn’t been sure how he’d react to our visitor, but when he took Adrienne’s hand, said, ‘Hello,’ then gave her a smile that turned into an awkward laugh, I knew she’d cracked it with him.
    He took charge of her case as I led the way out of the terminal into the heat of the late-June day. At first Adrienne thought it might be too bulky for him, but he’s tall for his age, over one metre thirty already, and strong from all the swimming, running and cycling that he does, so he could handle it easily, although I had to give him a little help to lift it on to the back platform of our Jeep. (No, I’m not out to kill the planet. It has low carbon emissions, and it’s a necessity where I live. I gave up on the BMW Compact last April after the silencer was ripped off by a tree root that had pushed its way through a badly laid black-topped road.)
    ‘This is nice,’ said my aunt, as she slid into the back seat. ‘I haven’t had a car myself for twenty-five years. There’s no point in London any more, especially not since that awful man became mayor.’
    ‘It suits us,’ I told her, as we headed out of the airport car park, towards the northbound N11. ‘The roads can be a bit rough in the smaller towns and villages, plus it takes us up into the mountains whenever we feel like it. We can do that while you’re here, if you like. It’s