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grief—even someone else’s—is exacting, draining.
    From the look on Grace’s face, I know she feels it, too, that she’s trying on Delphine’s shoes for size, as I have Jo’s.
    “Some of us want to go to the woods later. To take flowers . . .” Grace looks at me, half seeking my approval, though if she’s made up her mind, she’ll do it, anyway.
    “You may not be able to, sweetie. The police are probably all over the place, searching for any clues as to what happened.”
    She looks aghast. “It’s a public place, isn’t it? They can’t really stop us.”
    “They probably can. Until they know how Rosie died.” I pause. “Gracie? Why not leave it—just for now? Wait till the police have finished up there. Why don’t you ask Sophie round instead?”
    “I’m not staying in, Mum. We’re all meeting up. It’s already organized. Anyway, nothing else is going to happen, is it?”
    Her question hangs there, daring me to tell her otherwise, as we look at each other, as I stifle my inner voice, which is shouting silently, We don’t know that. We can’t be sure about anything.
    “Is it, Mum? Not with the police everywhere.” Repeating the question, eyes bright with tears, asking me to tell her nothing will happen to her, to make it all right. And I can’t, because with Rosie dead, I don’t know how to.
    “Of course not.” There’s nothing else I can say. “But I really think you should put off going—just until the police have finished, that’s all.”
     
    “I was in those woods,” I tell Angus, as we lie in bed later that night.
    His presence is reassuringly normal. It’s late—he had a dinner that dragged on—but he’s taken tomorrow off. That he didn’t know Rosie means he’s more detached than I am.
    “When I had that fall, I didn’t tell you, but the weirdest thing happened.”
    Now I think about it, and in the light of everything I’ve found out since, it isn’t just weird, it’s creepy.
    “I’m not mad, Angus, but it was like I could feel that something terrible had happened there. I’ve never known anything like it. Zappa felt it, too, I’m sure. It’s why he bolted.”
    He glances at me over the top of his glasses.
    “Sorry. I don’t know what I mean.”
    I hedge then, because Angus likes his world scientifically verifiable, and much as I adore my husband, his total inflexibility and pigheadedness, which can be strengths elsewhere, have caused many a heated row between us. So much so I wonder why I’ve even mentioned this.
    But for once, wisely, he doesn’t push me.
    “How was Jo?” he asks instead.
    I shrug. “Fragile. Devastated. I didn’t see Neal. He was with the police.”
    Angus shakes his head. “God. You read about these things happening to someone else, somewhere else. Not to someone you know on your own doorstep.”
    “I know.”
    “I suppose they’ll do a postmortem.”
    “I suppose they’ll have to.” I sit up. “She could have been murdered, Angus.”
    “Unlikely,” he says. “It was probably just an accident. I’m sure the police will get to the bottom of it.”
    “But it’s not like she fell off a horse, is it? How can a young, healthy person just have an accident that kills them?” I persist, unconvinced. “In the woods, of all places? And Jo said she was covered with leaves.”
    Dozens of us walk, run, ride our horses through there every day—the worst that ever happens is a bruised knee or sprained ankle.
    Angus puts down his book. “Anything could have happened, Kate. She might have fallen or even had a heart attack. It’s rare but not impossible. It can happen. To anyone, whatever their age.”
    Maybe I’m wrong and he’s right. He carries on reading, but my head fills with unwanted images. Of Rosie, alone in the dark. Rosie in the woods. Rosie with an unseen, unknown person who wishes her harm. In a morgue. Only now it isn’t Rosie anymore; it’s just her gray, empty body, with the pale hair that someone spotted in the