He meant the business with Craig, not Simon, and she had to shift gears in her mind to accommodate. She still had marks on her neck from Craig’s fingers, bruises on her body from being thrown about. At her age, these things took a long time to fade. You carry ghosts of injuries all the time when you’re old. She raised a hand to her neck as the waiter took their order.

Thomas smiled. ‘Here.’ He took something from his jacket pocket and placed it on the table. It was Jim’s bone in an evidence bag.

She raised her eyebrows.

‘It’s clear you were acting in self-defence,’ Thomas said. ‘And he’s confessed, so there won’t be a trial.’330

She could see dark stains on it, Craig’s blood.

‘You were very brave,’ Thomas said.

‘Jenny and Hannah have been braver.’

‘How are they holding up?’

Wind riffled the leaves on the trees above them as their coffees and pastries arrived.

‘As well as can be expected,’ Dorothy said. ‘It was Mel’s funeral today.’

‘You Skelf women are strong.’

Dorothy cocked her head to the side. ‘You think?’

‘Come on, you’re the strongest women I’ve ever met.’

Dorothy sipped her coffee, watched the stream of people up and down the street. Magpies in the trees were cackling, pigeons picking at crumbs in the gutter.

Thomas shifted in his seat. ‘What about Simon Lawrence?’

Dorothy tried to think how much he knew. The missing person, the negative DNA test. He would’ve heard about the disturbed grave, but she hadn’t told him anything about her search, and there was nothing to link the two.

‘I’m letting that lie.’

Thomas gave a slow nod of the head. ‘Probably for the best.’

Dorothy pictured the skulls in the dirt.

Thomas drank from his latte. ‘For what it’s worth, you know what I thought of Jim. He was a good man.’

She touched his hand on the table, looked him in the eye.

‘I’m glad to have you, and not just because you get DNA tests done super quick.’ She touched the evidence bag still on the table. ‘Or because you can sneak evidence out of a police station.’

He laughed. ‘So that’s how it is.’

She put on a mock shocked face and felt him squeeze her hand. A look passed between them.

She took Jim’s bone and placed it in her bag and sat there, happy in silence, just in the moment, with a friend on a sunny day, the world still spinning through the universe.

331

64

JENNY

Jenny took a handful of her dad from the ashes casket and weighed it in her hand. She felt the grit against her fingertips, the only father she would ever have.