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But she had always tried not to give in to self pity. That would have been just too easy. And so she shrugged off her frustration and lay the first strip in place across the cheekbone of the skull. Which is when the thought first came to her, and she wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her before.

She reached for the phone and pulled Tom’s home number from its memory, then listened as it rang at the other end.

‘What!’ Tom didn’t sound happy.

‘Tom?’

‘Jesus, Amy, I’d just dropped off. It’s been a long shift, and I’m on again at seven tonight.’

‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Can you talk?’

Tom put his hand over the phone and there was a muffled exchange between him and another male voice. Then the hand was removed. ‘This isn’t a good time.’

‘I’ll call later.’

But he relented. ‘Was it important?’

‘It can wait.’

She heard him sigh deeply. ‘Aw, shit, Amy, I’m awake now. You might as well tell me.’ His voice went ambient and he said, ‘I’m still listening. I’m just going to make a cup of tea. How’s it going with the skull?’

‘It’s going well.’

‘Given her a face yet?’

‘Hey, come on, I’m not that fast. It’ll be a few hours.’ She paused. ‘Tom, what tests did you order up on the bone marrow?’

He cursed as he dropped some piece of crockery. ‘Shit!’ Another muffled exchange, then, ‘You know, in the end I didn’t think it would be worth it, Amy. I mean, anything we get from toxicology is going to be really inconclusive.’

‘That’s what Sam thought.’

‘You’ve been discussing it with Sam?’

‘Yeah. Is that alright?’

‘I guess.’

‘We thought maybe we could get a DNA sample from the marrow.’

‘It’s possible. I’m not sure how useful it would be though, unless we had something to compare it with.’

‘And I had another thought,’ Amy said. ‘We could run a virology test. PCR. See if she’d had the flu.’

‘Half the bloody city’s got the flu!’ Tom didn’t sound particularly impressed by her thought.

‘Yeah, but that might be what killed her.’

‘So why would anyone try to cover that up?’

Amy shrugged to herself. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It just seemed like something we should know. I mean, the information we’re going to get from a skeleton is limited enough. We might as well find out everything we can.’

She heard him sigh again. Then a pause. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t you call Zoe and ask her to do it? It’ll give the little bitch something to do, rather than stand smoking on the steps all day.’

The wind had stiffened, picking up cold, damp air from the estuary and carrying it upriver into the heart of the city.

MacNeil and Martha made their way back around the perimeter of the Dome. It had been a long hour, and then MacNeil had made them wait another fifteen minutes. There was no point in going back too soon. But in truth, it was just a way of putting off the news they didn’t want to hear. Ignorance was hope.

A group of soldiers, rifles pressed across their chests, trotted past them at the double, young boys with frightened eyes behind army-issue gas masks designed for a biological war in Iraq which had never materialised following the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. A little further around the curve of the Dome, several gates beyond theirs, they could see the unmarked black vans lined up to take the dead to the official disposal centres. The council-run crematoriums throughout the city had been overwhelmed by numbers, and the government had set up emergency facilities to dispose of the growing backlog of bodies. There were literally thousands awaiting disposal daily, and nowhere to keep them. It was considered a health risk for bodies not to be burned within twenty-four hours. Family funerals were impossible. Even commemorative religious services were banned because of the risks of spreading infection at public gatherings. The government had promised memorial services at a later date. And so the process of grieving remained unfulfilled, and the distress amongst relatives was almost unbearable.

The double doors at Gate C still stood open. There was a different nurse behind the desk, but she was engaged in earnest conversation with a group of orderlies, and did not look in their direction as they walked past. MacNeil led Martha through the maze, following the yellow arrows until they reached section 7B. The beds were still occupied. Four children. But Sean wasn’t one of them.

Martha clutched MacNeil’s arm. ‘Where is he?’

MacNeil saw a medic beyond the next partition. He was re-attaching a drip to a young girl’s arm. It was not the young man they had spoken to earlier. MacNeil grabbed him. ‘The boy who was in the right-hand bed in 7B, where is he?’

The medic pulled his arm free, irritated by MacNeil’s aggression. He glanced back along the passage between the partitions. ‘The dark-haired kid?’

‘Yes.’

‘He died.’

MacNeil stood in his son’s bedroom, looking from the window into the back garden at the swing he had assembled from a kit and concreted into the grass. He could still hear Sean shrieking in delight as MacNeil pushed him higher and higher, terrified and exhilarated at the same time. Don’t stop, Daddy, don’t stop!

A train rumbled past the foot of the garden, beyond the high wooden fence, and the vibration of it shook the house. It was something they had stopped even noticing.

MacNeil let the net curtain drop and turned back into the room. Posters of Arsenal players adorned the walls, a red and white scarf draped over the bedside chair, pennants hanging from a wire strung across the ceiling. In the next room, he could hear Martha sobbing, and he kicked Sean’s football at the far wall in a sudden explosion of frustration. The ball rebounded into the chest of drawers, knocking over a framed family photograph. The glass shattered. MacNeil stooped to pick it up, and shook the photo free of its broken frame. They’d had it enlarged from a snap taken on a family holiday on the Costa Brava. The three of them crouching together in the sand, a crowded beach behind them, sunlight coruscating across an impossibly blue sea. They’d asked some young woman to take it with their camera, and it had turned out to be the best picture of them they’d ever had. A moment of happiness caught forever. And lost now for eternity.

He sat on the edge of Sean’s bed, holding the photograph in his hand, and thought of his own parents for the first time in a very long time. Somehow the loss of his child made his feud with his parents seem futile and foolish. We all had only one life, and it was too short to waste on something as destructive as anger.

He had told himself time and again that it was not his fault, but he knew he had done nothing to bring about a rapprochement. He had never been close to his parents, and called them only occasionally from London. And when he had, there had always been a tone. Veiled barbs. How nice it was to hear from him — when what they meant was why hadn’t he called before? His mother was the master of the acid reproach delivered with a silvered smile.

When Martha had told him she was pregnant he had delayed in telling them. He knew they would not approve. They didn’t even know that he was living with someone. Sex before marriage, in their world, was a sin. And the longer he put it off, the harder it became. Until the point where he decided not to tell them until after the wedding. He and Martha had married in a London registry office with a couple of friends as witnesses.

And when he finally told them, his parents had been mortally offended. Not just because his vows had not been taken before God, but because they had not been invited. To their own son’s wedding. And when they learned about the coming baby, and put two and two together, that had been the last straw.