Dead Men's s Boots

Water in a dry place: she blinked it away almost angrily, but it kept right on coming.

‘You’ll have to go now,’ she said, her voice perfectly clear despite the rain of tears.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Seaforth,’ I said, meaning it. ‘We didn’t want to upset you. But there’s one more thing we’d really like to do while we’re here. If you could just point us to where Myriam’s grave is, with your permission we’ll visit it before we leave.’

Ruth stood up and folded her arms with brittle ferocity. ‘No,’ she said.

‘No?’

‘No, you do not have my permission.

Like I said, you have to go. I’m sorry, it’s not because you’ve offended me in any way. I’m just very tired now, and I need to sleep. I hope you’ll take account of my age and do as I ask.’

‘Of course.’ I stood up, and Juliet followed my lead. ‘Thanks for all your help, Miss Seaforth. And I’m sorry if we’ve trespassed on « trOf your time. We’ll let ourselves out.’

Ruth watched us all the way to the door, not moving an inch. I opened the door and stood aside for Juliet to go first, but she waved me through and then didn’t follow.

‘I’ll be a moment,’ she said.

I turned and stared at her. ‘What?’

‘I’ll be a moment, Castor. Wait on the porch.’ She took hold of the door and shut it in my face.

I think it was all that talk about abusive men that made her so brusque – and as symbolic humiliations went, it was one I could walk away from without a permanent limp so on the whole I was cool with it. I sat on the porch swing and waited for Juliet to finish whatever business she had with Ruth that required my not being there.

She came out about a quarter of an hour later, shot me a look in passing and walked on down the steps back into the thick, encroaching undergrowth. I jumped to my feet, ran and caught her up.

‘Is it this way?’ I asked, falling in beside her.

She didn’t look in my direction, or slow down. ‘Is what this way?’

‘Myriam’s grave.’

‘No. It isn’t.’

‘Then-?’

‘I’ll tell you in the car.’

We retraced out steps in silence, back to our bloodied, bowed Cobalt, and I unlocked the doors.

When we were inside we sat in silence for a moment. Then, since Juliet didn’t speak, I started the car up and got us out onto the road. There was no way we’d make it all the way back to Birmingham in this undead heap, but we could drive into Brokenshire and then make some calls, see where we had to go to drop it off and pick ourselves up another ride for the homeward leg of the journey.