Simon Beckett: The Chemistry of Death

But this evening neither they nor anyone else stopped me. I parked on the baked earth at the side of the cottage and let myself in. It was stuffy inside. I opened the windows as wide as they'd go and helped myself to a beer from the fridge. I might not have wanted to go to the Lamb, but I still needed a drink. In fact, realizing just how badly I needed one, I put the beer back and poured myself a gin and tonic instead.

I broke some ice into the glass, added a wedge of lemon and drank it at the small wooden table in the back garden. It looked out across a field onto woods, but if the view wasn't as spectacular as from the surgery, neither was it quite such a daunting landscape. I took my time over the gin, then cooked myself an omelette and ate it outside. The heat was finally ebbing from the day. I sat at the table as the sky slowly deepened and the stars began making their first hesitant appearance. I thought about what was going on a few miles away. The activity there would now be around the once peaceful stretch of country where the Yates boys had made their discovery. I tried to visualize Sally Palmer safe and laughing somewhere, as if thinking about it would make it so. But for some reason I couldn't hold a picture of her in my mind.

Putting off the moment when I would have to go to bed and face sleep, I stayed there until the sky had darkened to velvet indigo, pierced by the brilliant flickering of stars, a random semaphore of long-dead flecks of light.

I jerked awake, sweat-drenched and gasping. I stared around, with no idea where I was. Then awareness draped itself on me again. I was naked, standing by the open bedroom window, its lower edge pressing into my thighs as I leaned out into space. I backed away, unsteadily, and sat on the bed. Its crumpled white sheets were almost luminous in the moonlight. The tears dried slowly on my face as I waited for my heart to slow back to normal.

I'd had the dream again.

It had been a bad one. As always, it had been so vivid that waking seemed like the illusion, my dream the reality. That was the cruellest part. Because in the dreams Kara and Alice, my wife and six-year-old daughter, were still alive. I could still see them, speak to them. Touch them. In the dreams I could believe we still had a future, not just a past.

I dreaded them. Not in the sense that you would fear a nightmare, because there was nothing fearful about them in themselves. No, it was exactly the opposite.

I dreaded them because I had to wake up.

Then the shock of grief, of loss, would be just as fresh as when it first happened. Often I would wake to find myself somewhere else, my somnambulent body having operated without any awareness on my part. Standing, like now, by the open window, or at the top of the steep and unforgiving stairs, with no memory of getting there or what subconscious urge might have steered me.

I shivered, despite the cloying warmth of the night air. From outside came the lonely barking of a fox. After a while I lay down and stared at the ceiling until the shadows faded and the dark ebbed away.

The mist was still rolling off the marshes when the young woman closed the door behind her and set off on her morning run. Lyn Metcalf ran with an easy athleticism. The pull in her calf muscle was healing nicely, but she still took it easy at first, falling into relaxed, loping strides as she ran along the narrow lane from her house. Partway down she cut off onto an overgrown track that led across marshland to the lake.

Long grass stalks whipped at her legs as she ran, still wet and cold with dew. She took a deep breath, savouring the feeling. Monday morning or not, she couldn't think of a better start to a new week. This was her favourite time of day, before she had to worry about balancing the accounts of farmers and small businesses who resented her advice, before the day developed a less optimistic shape, before other people had a chance to sully it. All was fresh and sharp, reduced to the rhythmic thump of her feet on the track and the even rasp of her breathing.

At thirty-one Lyn was proud of her condition. Proud of the discipline that kept her in shape, and meant she still looked good in the tight shorts and cropped top. Not that she would be smug enough to admit that to anybody. Besides, she enjoyed it, and that made it easier. Enjoyed pushing herself, seeing how far she could go, and then trying for that extra bit further. If there was a better start to the day than pulling on a pair of running shoes and putting in the miles while the world came alive around her she'd yet to find it.

Well, OK, except sex, of course. And the edge had gone from that lately. Not that it wasn't still good – just the sight of Marcus showering off the day's plaster dust, the water flattening the dark hair on his body to an otter's pelt, could still produce a coiling in her belly. But when there was a point behind it besides pleasure it tended to blunt the enjoyment for both of them. Especially when it had come to nothing.

So far.

She leapt over a deep rut in the track without breaking stride, careful not to lose her rhythm. Lose my rhythm, she thought, sourly. I wish. When it came to rhythms her body was as regular as clockwork. Every month without fail, almost to the day, the hated flow of blood would begin, signalling the end of another cycle and a fresh disappointment. The doctors had said there was nothing wrong with either of them. For some people it just took longer than others; no-one knew why. Keep trying, they said. And they had, eagerly at first, laughing at being given medical approval for doing something they both enjoyed anyway. Almost like getting it on prescription, Marcus had joked. But the jokes had gradually petered out, replaced by something that wasn't quite desperation, not yet. But the embryonic beginnings of that, if nothing else, were forming. And it was starting to colour everything else, to taint every aspect of their relationship.

Not that either of them admitted it. It was there, though. She knew Marcus found it hard enough that she earned more from her small accountancy practice than he did as a builder. The recriminations hadn't started yet, but she was frightened they might. And she knew she was as capable of hitting out as Marcus. Outwardly, they'd reassured each other that there was nothing to worry about, that there was no rush. But they'd been trying for years, and in another four she'd be thirty-five, the age she'd always claimed would be her cut-off point. She did a quick sum. That's forty-eight more menstruations. It seemed frighteningly close. Forty-eight more potential disappointments. Except that this month was different. This month the disappointment was three days late.

She quickly closed down the burst of hope she felt. It was too soon for that. She'd not even told Marcus that her period hadn't started. No point raising his hopes for nothing. She would give it a few more days, then take a test. That thought alone was enough to send a flutter of nerves through her stomach. Run, don't think, she told herself, firmly.

The sun was coming up now, burnishing the sky directly ahead. The track ran along an embankment by the lake, cutting through reedbeds as it headed for a dark expanse of woods. Mist curled slowly on the water, as if it were about to combust. The sound of a fish jumping broke the silence with an invisible slap. She loved this. Loved summer, loved the landscape. Even though she'd been born here, she'd still been away to university, travelled abroad. But she'd always come back. God's own country, her dad always said. She didn't believe in God, not really, but she knew what he meant.

She was coming to her favourite part of the run now. A path forked off into the woods, and Lyn followed it. She slowed her pace as the trees closed in overhead, closeting her in shadows. It was all too easy to trip over a root in the dim light. It had been a stumble over one of them that had made her pull the muscle in her leg, and she'd gone almost two months before she could run again.