‘I’d better head home.’

‘I’ll walk you.’

She smiled and stood. She remembered kissing him against the wall last time. She was in control then and she was in control now. She could nip this in the bud anytime she liked. She could, but she wasn’t going to.

288

56

DOROTHY

Piershill Cemetery was easy to break into. She walked with Archie down Fishwives’ Causeway, a dark lane that ran off Moira Terrace towards Portobello. The lane ran round the back of people’s houses and split in two, the narrower part heading over the railway, the gloomy metal bridge covered in graffiti, then running between Craigentinny rail depot and the graveyard. The back of the cemetery was just a low wall, easy to clamber over. In fact it was much harder to get into the railway sidings, spiky railings, CCTV cameras, trespassing signs. Nobody cared if you trespassed on the dead.

Dorothy felt her legs and arms ache as she slid onto the manicured grass. Archie dropped the holdall he’d been carrying and followed her. Dorothy took out her phone and checked, no calls. She’d been trying to get hold of Jenny for hours, since before the business with Jacob Glassman’s postwoman. But Jenny wasn’t answering. Maybe she’d had enough of digging up dead people. Understandable. Dorothy was still reeling from the woman in the attic, was struggling to get her head around it. So easy to fall through the cracks, that’s what Amy said. And so easy to just occupy someone else’s space. She thought about the loft in the Skelf house, how she would feel if she discovered someone up there. Thomas had taken Amy down to the station to make a statement and charge her, though he wasn’t exactly sure what to charge her with. He called later in the evening to say that she’d be spending the night in the cells until she could see a duty solicitor in the morning, but he’d found a place in a Women’s Aid shelter for her after that. It was only temporary, but she could speak to social services, try to sort out something more permanent.289

Dorothy thought about living nocturnally, sneaking about like a rodent, reducing your life to mere existence. But did any of us really do anything so different to that? Were any of us really much more connected?

She took a torch from her pocket and switched it on, they needed it here away from the streetlights. There were houses overlooking the cemetery to their left but they were far away, a long stretch of grass between. There was something about untouched land in a graveyard, waiting to be filled up by the deceased, which tugged at Dorothy.

‘OK?’ she said to Archie as he straightened up, holding his back.

‘Not really,’ Archie said.