Hope to Die

They trudge up the drive, the gravel crunching beneath their feet, puffing white in the cold air. They can almost feel the temperature dropping; there’ll be ice on that SUV by morning.

The front door has a wrought-iron carriage lamp and a fake-old bell you pull like a lavatory chain. Barnetson makes a face; it’ll be bloody horse brasses next.

They hear the bell ringing deep in the house, but despite the light in one of the upstairs windows there are no signs of life. Puttergill starts stamping to keep warm. Barnetson rings again, waits; still nothing. He takes a couple of steps back and looks up at the first floor, then gestures to Puttergill.

‘Can you try round the back? I’ll wait here.’

It’s so quiet he can hear Puttergill’s feet all the way along the side of the house. A distant knock, a ‘Hello, anyone in?’, a pause. And then, suddenly, the sound of running and Puttergill appearing round the corner and slithering to a halt in a spatter of gravel.

‘I think there’s someone in there, Sarge – on the floor – it’s too dark to see much but I reckon they could be injured –’

Barnetson strides up to the door but even as he stretches out to knock there’s a crunch of bolts being drawn back and the door swings open. The man on the step is late sixties or early seventies, slightly stooped, an angular and bony face. He’s wearing the sort of threadbare cardigan that keeps for thirty years if you look after it, as he evidently has. He doesn’t look like someone bad things happen to, either. In fact, as Barnetson is already concluding, Puttergill must have got the wrong end of the stick: no one with a casualty in their kitchen could possibly look as composed as this.

‘Yes?’

His vowels are more clipped than his hedge.

‘Mr Swann, is it?’

The man frowns. ‘Yes?’

‘Sergeant Barnetson, PC Puttergill, Thames Valley Police. We had a call from a member of the public. They thought you might be in need of assistance.’

There’s something on the man’s face now. Irritation? Surprise? His glance flickers away. He doesn’t, Barnetson notes, ask them what the caller said or why they thought something was wrong. ‘I think,’ he says heavily, ‘you’d better come in.’

He heads off into the house and the two officers exchange a glance. There’s something, obviously, but clearly nothing that drastic, and certainly not a corpse. So, what? Break-in? Some sort of minor domestic?

The hall is paved with quarry tiles. There’s a rack of wellington boots, hooks with waxed jackets and tweed caps, a line of musty watercolours running along the wall, most of them hanging skew. Somewhere upstairs a loo is flushing. Barnetson glances back at Puttergill, who shrugs and makes a mental note to suggest a tea-stop at the garage on the bypass on the way back: it’s not much warmer inside than it was out.

‘It’s in here,’ says Swann, gesturing forward. They round the corner after him, two steps down and into the kitchen.

Thirty seconds later Puttergill is stumbling blindly out of the back door and throwing up what remains of his lunch over the crazy paving.

* * *

‘So they think it went well?’

Everett tries to catch Somer’s eye, but she’s just staring at her hands.

The ward around them whirrs with hospital white noise. Bright nurse voices, rattling trolleys, the swish of curtains on metal rails.

‘Erica?’

Somer looks up and takes a heavy breath. ‘As far as I know.’

‘But they caught it really early, right? That’s what they said – before – when –’

Before, when Somer was told she had a malignant tumour on one of her ovaries. She makes no answer to Ev’s question, leaving all the others festering in the air, unasked.

Somer starts to fiddle distractedly with the plastic bracelet round her wrist. Her mouth is trembling with the effort not to cry.

Ev reaches for her hand. ‘What about your mum and dad? Have they been in?’

Somer bites her lip and shakes her head. ‘I can’t face seeing them. It’s bad enough –’

The sentence dies. Ev suspected as much. And she gets it – the last thing Somer needs right now is a deluge of parental sympathy, however kindly meant. But Somer has a sister too – and a boyfriend. Where are they?

Somer glances up, reading her mind.

‘Kath’s in Washington.’

There’s a silence. A silence filled with Giles.

Giles who loves Somer; Giles who for some reason was being shut out, even before Somer’s diagnosis. Ev doesn’t understand it. She didn’t then and she doesn’t now.

She sighs. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Why don’t you call Giles? He doesn’t even know you’re here, does he?’

The tears spill over now, but Somer makes no move to brush them away.

Ev feels bad even sparing a thought for him – Somer’s situation is so much worse. And it’s not just this – there’s a looming disciplinary process at work that’s been put on hold for the time being but isn’t going to go away. Giles deserves some pity all the same, though: the poor bastard must be wondering what he did wrong.

She gathers her courage and opens her mouth to say something.

But at that exact moment there’s a ping from her phone.

* * *