By midday, the Saltmarsh is seething with people. It has started to rain again but still she can see little figures crawling over the sands and, in the distance, the lights of police boats out to sea. A new gaggle of journalists swarms past, screeching and cackling like flocks of feeding birds. Ruth sees David standing outside his house, binoculars in hand, looking thunderous. He must hate the Saltmarsh being invaded like this. The birds have been frightened away and the skies are low and dark. Thank God Sammy and Ed have gone back to London so Ruth doesn't have to bear their curiosity and concern. She pulls the curtains. Thank God too that the press haven't caught up with her yet.
Erik rings. He is conciliatory, concerned. Ruth wishes she didn't think that he is as much concerned with the archaeological site as with Scarlet's fate. The police are digging madly in the very centre of the henge circle. For Erik, as for David, the site will be contaminated forever.
He can hardly say this, though, and after a few platitudes he rings off.
Despite everything, she is still shocked when she switches on the TV news and sees the Saltmarsh, rain washed and grey, filling the screen. 'It was at this desolate spot,' intones the newsreader, 'that police made the tragic discovery, early this morning…' No mention of Ruth.
Thank you, God.
The phone rings. Ruth's mother. Not such good work, God.
'Ruth! It's on TV. That awful place where you live.'
'I know Mum.'
'They've found her, that poor little girl. Our Bible study group has been praying for her every night.'
"I know.'
'Daddy said he saw your house on TV AM.'
'I'm sure he did.'
'Isn't it terrible? Daddy says be sure to lock your windows and doors.'
"I will'
'That poor little girl. Such a pretty little thing. Did you see her picture on the news?'
Should Ruth tell her mother that she was the one who found the body? Who lifted up the little arm, miraculously preserved by the peat, and looked at the silver bracelet, decorated with entwined hearts? Should she tell her mother that she saw an identical bracelet on Delilah Henderson's wrist as they sat chatting in her kitchen? Should she tell her that she watched as the little body was lifted from its grave and the hand dangled down, as if in farewell? Should she tell her mother that she knows the murderer, even if she does not know his name, that she hears his voice in her dreams? Should she tell her about Sparky, left bleeding on her doorstep as a threat, or a warning?
No, she won't tell her any of these things. Instead she promises to lock her doors and to ring tomorrow. She feels too tired even to argue when her mother says she hopes the child was baptised and so can go to heaven.
'Who wants to go to heaven with all those Christians?'
has always been Ruth's response. Now she thinks about Alan and Delilah Henderson. Do they think they will see Scarlet again, that they will be reunited in a better place?
She hopes so. She really hopes so.
The rain continues to fall, somewhat thwarting the journalists who tramp back along New Road, their mobile phones subdued by frustration. Ruth, who hasn't eaten all day, pours herself a glass of wine and switches on the radio.
'What does the death of little Scarlet Henderson tell us about our society…' She switches it off again. She doesn't want to hear people, people who have never seen Scarlet, talk about lessons learnt or the decline of morals or why children are no longer safe to play. Scarlet wasn't safe; she was snatched from her garden while she played on the makeshift climbing frame with her twin brothers. Neither of them had seen anything. One minute Scarlet was there, the next she wasn't. Delilah, inside the house with a fretful Ocean, had not even known that her daughter was missing until she called her in for tea, two hours later. Forensics will have to prove when Scarlet was actually killed. Ruth prays it was soon, while she was still happy from the game with her brothers, before she knew too much.
It is dark outside now. Ruth pours herself another glass of wine. The phone rings. Ruth picks it up wearily. Peter?
Erik? Her mother?
'Doctor Ruth Galloway?' An unfamiliar voice, slightly breathless.
'Yes.'
'I'm from The Chronicle.'' The local paper. "I hear you were involved with the discovery of Scarlet Henderson's body?'
'I've got nothing to say.' Ruth slams down the phone, hands shaking. Immediately it rings again and she takes it off the hook.
Flint crashes in through the cat flap, making Ruth jump sky high. She feeds him and tries to get him to sit on her lap but he too is twitchy, prowling round the room with his head low and whiskers quivering.
It is nine o'clock. Ruth, who has been up since four, is exhausted but feels too strung up to go to bed. Neither, for some reason, can she read or watch TV. She just sits there, in the dark, watching Flint circling the room and listening to the rain drumming against the windows.
Ten o'clock and a heavy knock on the door sends Flint running upstairs. Though she doesn't quite know why, Ruth is trembling from head to foot. She switches on a light and edges towards the door. Though the rational archaeologist in her tells her that it is probably only Peter or Erik or Shona (who surprisingly hasn't rung yet), the irrational side, which has been taking hold all day, tells her that something dreadful lurks outside the door. Something terrible arisen from the mud and the sand. What the Sand gets, the Sand keeps forever.
'Who is it?' she calls out, trying to keep her voice steady.
"Me. Nelson,' comes the reply.
Ruth opens the door.
Nelson looks terrible, unshaven, red-eyed, his clothes soaking. He steps wordlessly into the sitting room and sits down on the sofa. It seems, at that moment, completely right that he should be there.
'Do you want anything to drink?' she asks. 'Tea?
Coffee? Wine?'
'Coffee please.'
When she comes back with the coffee, Nelson is leaning forward on the sofa, his head in his hands. Ruth notices the amount of grey in his thick, dark hair. Surely he can't have aged in just a few months?
Ruth puts the coffee on the table beside him. 'Was it terrible?' she asks timidly.
Nelson groans, rubbing his hands over his face.
'Terrible,' he says at last, 'Delilah just… just crumpled up like someone had squeezed all the life out of her. She just collapsed and lay there, curled up in a ball, crying, calling out for Scarlet. Nothing any of us could say was any good.
How could it be? Her husband tried to hold her but she fought him off. Judy, the DC, was very good, but what could anyone say? Jesus. I've broken bad news before in my time but never anything like this. If I go to hell tomorrow, it can't be worse than this.'
He is silent again for a few moments, frowning into his coffee mug. Ruth puts her hand on his arm but says nothing: what can anyone say?
Eventually Nelson says, "I hadn't really understood how much she believed that Scarlet was still alive. I think we all thought… after two months… she must be dead. Like with Lucy, you gradually stop hoping. But Delilah, poor cow, really believed that her little girl was going to walk back in through the front door one day. At first she kept saying, "She can't be dead, she can't be dead." I had to tell her, "I've seen her," and then, Christ, I had to ask them to identify the body.'
'Did they both go?'
"I wanted Alan to go on his own but Delilah insisted on coming too. I think, right up to the moment that she saw the body, she was still hoping it wasn't Scarlet. When she saw the body, that's when she collapsed.'
'Do they know how long… how long she'd been dead?'
'No. We'll have to wait for the forensic report.' He sighs, rubbing his eyes. Then, speaking for the first time in his business-like, policeman's voice, 'She didn't look like she'd been dead long, did she?'
'That was the peat,' says Ruth, 'it's a natural preservative.'
They are silent again for a moment, deep in their own thoughts. Ruth thinks of the peat, preserving the timbers of the henge and now guarding its new secret. If they had never found her would Scarlet, like the Iron Age bodies, have been left there for hundreds, thousands of years?