She went to the wardrobe, flicked through dresses and blouses, 180taking each off the hanger and frisking it down like an airport security guard, throwing it onto the pile in the middle of the room. Skirts and trousers next, then shoes, checking nothing was hidden inside. She imagined using the Force like in Star Wars, closing her eyes and having a crucial clue drift across the room from a secret hiding place and into her hand. She closed her eyes for a moment and put her arms out, then felt immensely stupid when she opened them and looked at her empty hands.

She looked around the chaos of the room. Just the chest of drawers left. She pulled all three drawers out and threw them on the floor. Tights and bras, T-shirts and pyjamas, hoodies, leggings and jumpers, nothing unusual or out of place. All of it dumped behind her in the mound with bedding and other clothes, trainers and heels, everything Mel owned in a pile of pointless nothing. Hannah sat on the edge of the pile and imagined turning it into a funeral pyre, placing a lit match against the flimsiest blouse, lighting up all of Mel’s life and burning down the flat in the process.

She stared around her for a long time, thinking. Then she spotted something, a small piece of paper poking from underneath the empty suitcase that had been under the bed. She closed her eyes, breathed, opened them and reached for the paper. She unfolded it carefully. It was a receipt for a pay-as-you-go phone, purchased from Carphone Warehouse on Princes Street two months ago.

Hannah looked at the paper then around at the mess.

The Force is strong in this one, she thought.

181

35

DOROTHY

Jim always told her that sun-drenched funerals didn’t feel right, especially in Scotland, but any chance to have warmth on her skin was bliss for Dorothy. Craigmillar Castle Park Cemetery was the newest in the city, a languorous spread of gentle slopes hiding between the Inch Park football pitches and the fourteenth-century castle at the top of the hill. It was neatly mown with some fenced-off tree nurseries, the sapling beech trees already bent over from the wind that ripped over the hill most days.

Today was breezy and warm, bees sniffing at the flowers on the graves, a pair of rabbits with their tails bobbing in the long grass of the adjacent field. At the bottom of the slope was the area set aside for children’s graves, including those who were stillborn or died soon after birth. Dorothy had done a few of those funerals, heartbreaking for everyone, and she never felt she managed to help the bereaved parents. One grave down there had a scan photo pinned to the gravestone next to a cuddly duck that the kid never got to cuddle.