I don't think you would have liked me much. I was a bit in love and a bit forlorn and during that summer I was either with Natalie, though not so much as I had been, for various reasons; or with Theo; or on my own. That day, it was early afternoon, I was feeling particularly gloomy. So I took the sole existing manuscript copy of the love poems that I had been writing during the summer and I went down to the Col and lay there, right on the edge of the stream, against a boulder down at the beginning of the slope of Cree's Top. I sat there for a couple of hours reading through these poems and writing another one. Then, on an impulse, I tore the poems out of the book one by one, and screwed each one up so that it looked like a little white carnation and threw it into the stream and as I sat there I watched them float down the stream away from me until they were carried out of sight. Look, I don't think there's any point in going on about this.'
'Please, Jane, humour me.'
'If you say so. The problem I have with this process, what I distrust about it, is that I feel I'm being encouraged to indulge, maybe even increase, emotions that aren't particularly valid or positive.'
'What emotions?'
'I didn't mean any emotions in particular. But to take the situation I've just been describing. For years I felt this intense guilt that I could have done something to prevent what happened. I was so close and if things had been just a tiny bit different, if I had decided to walk over Cree's Top, it might never have happened, I might have been able to save Natalie. At the same time I always knew that that was ridiculous and that you could reason like that about almost anything.'
'You felt an intense guilt.'
'Yes.'
'Right, I think we'll stop there.'
Alex helped me up off the couch. 'I think you've done wonderfully,' he said.
I felt myself blush, the way I used to when I was singled out for praise at school and I felt a little cross at my own susceptibility.
Nine
There were bones among the bones. Natalie had been pregnant when she was strangled. The police told Alan and Martha, Alan called his sons, and Claud called me the day before the funeral. At first, I couldn't take in what his soothing voice was telling me. As always when Claud assumed his professionally calm manner, I became babblingly irrational. I could only think in unordered questions.
'How could she have been pregnant?'
'This is difficult for all of us, Jane.'
'Who could the father have been?'
Claud began to sound weary and impatient. 'Jane, I've only this minute heard, I know nothing more than you do.'
'The funeral isn't going ahead now, is it?'
'Yes, it is. The police have released the remains to us.'
'But aren't there examinations they can carry out? Couldn't they find out who the father is with DNA tests and things like that? You're a doctor, you must know.'
This was Claud's cue to assume his pedagogic tone. 'I'm sure the forensic scientists have retained specimens, Jane. But as far as I understand it, DNA profiling won't be possible. I believe that samples of blood or bodily fluid are required.'
'Can't you get DNA from bones?'
'Is this really the time, Jane? Bone cells have nuclei, so of course they contain DNA, but so far as I know it degrades in skeletons and if it has been buried in soil, the DNA strands don't just crumble, they also get contaminated. But this isn't my area. You must address your enquiries about this to the proper authorities, as they say.'
'It sounds hopeless,' I said.
'The situation is not good.'
Pregnant. I felt sick, and the feeling of foreboding that had been closing in on me felt like a fist around my pounding heart.
'Oh Christ, Claud, Claud. What are we all going to do?' I sat heavily on the old green easy chair by the phone and rocked to and fro slightly.
'Do?' he replied. 'We're going to stick together as a family, as we have always done, and we're going to get through this. I know it's hard for all of us, but we've just got to
'Please, Jane, humour me.'
'If you say so. The problem I have with this process, what I distrust about it, is that I feel I'm being encouraged to indulge, maybe even increase, emotions that aren't particularly valid or positive.'
'What emotions?'
'I didn't mean any emotions in particular. But to take the situation I've just been describing. For years I felt this intense guilt that I could have done something to prevent what happened. I was so close and if things had been just a tiny bit different, if I had decided to walk over Cree's Top, it might never have happened, I might have been able to save Natalie. At the same time I always knew that that was ridiculous and that you could reason like that about almost anything.'
'You felt an intense guilt.'
'Yes.'
'Right, I think we'll stop there.'
Alex helped me up off the couch. 'I think you've done wonderfully,' he said.
I felt myself blush, the way I used to when I was singled out for praise at school and I felt a little cross at my own susceptibility.
Nine
There were bones among the bones. Natalie had been pregnant when she was strangled. The police told Alan and Martha, Alan called his sons, and Claud called me the day before the funeral. At first, I couldn't take in what his soothing voice was telling me. As always when Claud assumed his professionally calm manner, I became babblingly irrational. I could only think in unordered questions.
'How could she have been pregnant?'
'This is difficult for all of us, Jane.'
'Who could the father have been?'
Claud began to sound weary and impatient. 'Jane, I've only this minute heard, I know nothing more than you do.'
'The funeral isn't going ahead now, is it?'
'Yes, it is. The police have released the remains to us.'
'But aren't there examinations they can carry out? Couldn't they find out who the father is with DNA tests and things like that? You're a doctor, you must know.'
This was Claud's cue to assume his pedagogic tone. 'I'm sure the forensic scientists have retained specimens, Jane. But as far as I understand it, DNA profiling won't be possible. I believe that samples of blood or bodily fluid are required.'
'Can't you get DNA from bones?'
'Is this really the time, Jane? Bone cells have nuclei, so of course they contain DNA, but so far as I know it degrades in skeletons and if it has been buried in soil, the DNA strands don't just crumble, they also get contaminated. But this isn't my area. You must address your enquiries about this to the proper authorities, as they say.'
'It sounds hopeless,' I said.
'The situation is not good.'
Pregnant. I felt sick, and the feeling of foreboding that had been closing in on me felt like a fist around my pounding heart.
'Oh Christ, Claud, Claud. What are we all going to do?' I sat heavily on the old green easy chair by the phone and rocked to and fro slightly.
'Do?' he replied. 'We're going to stick together as a family, as we have always done, and we're going to get through this. I know it's hard for all of us, but we've just got to
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