‘Rachel will take good care of you,’ said Marilyn. I knew it was her way of saying she still trusted me, and I loved her for it. ‘I’m just going on a food run.’

The day went on, and I was almost able to lose myself in the dogs, their trusting gaze and cold noses. Accompanied by an almost silent Callum, a restful and undemanding companion, I cleaned out cages, brushed coats, detangled leads. Around half eleven Katrin went on her lunch break and didn’t come back for two hours, but I wouldn’t say anything, as she wasn’t getting paid, after all. Neither was I, but I had plenty to live off, thanks to the compensation. I’d had the odd embarrassing conversation with Marilyn about it at the start, and I think she got the impression I was from some aristocratic family I had turned my back on, living off a trust fund. I told myself I’d earned that money, with my blood and tears, but I still felt guilty about it.

Dogs fed and pens cleaned out, I stripped off the apron and stuck my head out the back door to look over the small lawn area where we exercise the dogs and teach them basic obedience. In the distance was the shimmer of our small lake, Coldwater Tarn, coloured bright grey by the shifting light. Autumn was in the air, the lake quiet, no kayaks or paddleboarders. My walking boots dug into the marshy grass. I was all right. I was breathing. I was outside, not behind bars.

My thoughts returned to the body in the woods – Anna, it had been Anna. I had to try to understand this. Anna was dead. I imagined her body on a slab, waiting for the pathologist to confirm what had killed her. I pictured her small white hands lying beside her, or perhaps folded on her chest, which was no longer moving up and down. Anna had been a beautiful woman, but beauty is very quickly lost along with life. Death is so strange, its alchemy, its sudden and irreversible descent, like the fall of an axe. No wonder people enjoy reading about it, as ghoulish as it is – in our safe and sanitised modern world, death is one of the few mysteries left. I wondered, with a kind of detached and fatalistic curiosity, what Anna’s death would mean for me.

Casey

Casey

AUGUST 2000