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I knew it. I had known it even with my flesh crawling, my legs, heart and lungs pumping. But even so: “There were . . . bones in it!” I said, contrary
to common sense. “A skull.”
    He drew close, sank down beside me gulping at the air. “The little ‘un’s bones,” he panted, “caught up in the fibres. I just wanted to showyou the extent of the
thing. Didn’t want to scare you to death!”
    “I know, I know,” I patted his hand. “But when it moved –”
    “It was just the effect of the box collapsing,” he explained, logically. “Natural expansion. Set free, it unwound like a jack-in-the-box. And the noise it made
–”
    “That was the sound of its scraping against the rotten timber, amplified by the sarcophagus,” I nodded. “I know all that. It shocked me, that’s all. In fact, two hours in
your bloody Easingham have given me enough shocks to last a lifetime!”
    “But you see what I mean about the rot?” We stood up, both of us still a little shaky.
    “Oh, yes, I see what you mean. I don’t understand your obsession, that’s all. Why don’t you just leave the damned stuff alone?”
    He shrugged but made no answer, and so we made our way back towards his home. On our way the silence between us was broken only once. “There!” said Garth, looking back towards the
brow of the hill. “You see him?”
    I looked back, saw the dark outline of an Alsatian dog silhouetted against the rise. “Ben?” Even as I spoke the name, so the dog disappeared into the long grass beside the path.
    “Ben!” Garth called, and blew his piercing whistle. But with no result. The old man worriedly shook his head. “Can’t think what’s come over him,” he said.
“Then again, I’m more his friend than his master. We’ve always pretty much looked after ourselves. At least I know that he hasn’t run off . . .”
    Then we were back at Garth’s house, but I didn’t go in. His offer of another coffee couldn’t tempt me. It was time I was on my way again. “If ever you’re back this
way –” he said as I got into the car.
    I nodded, leaned out of my window. “Garth, why the hell don’tyou get out of here? I mean, there’s nothing here for you now. Why don’t you take Ben and just clear
out?”
    He smiled, shook his head, then shook my hand. “Where’d we go?” he asked. “And anyway, Lily-Anne’s still here. Sometimes in the night, when it’s hot and I
have trouble sleeping, I can feel she’s very close to me. Anyway, I know you mean well.”
    That was that. I turned the car round and drove off, acknowledged his final wave by lifting my hand briefly, so that he’d see it.
    Then, driving round a gentle bend and as the old man sideslipped out of my rear-view mirror, I saw Ben. He was crossing the road in front of me. I applied my brakes, let him get out of the way.
It could only be Ben, I supposed: a big Alsatian, shaggy, yellow-eyed. And yet I caught only a glimpse; I was more interested in controlling the car, in being sure that he was safely out of the
way.
    It was only after he’d gone through the hedge and out of sight into a field that an after-image of the dog surfaced in my mind: the way he’d seemed to limp – his belly hairs,
so long as to hang down and trail on the ground, even though he wasn’t slinking – a bright splash of yellow on his side, as if he’d brushed up against something freshly
painted.
    Perhaps understandably, peculiar images bothered me all the way back to London; yes, and for quite a long time after . . .
    Before I knew it a year had gone by, then eighteen months, and memories of those strange hours spent in Easingham were fast receding. Faded with them was that promise I had
    made myself to visit my parents more frequently. Then I got a letter to say my mother hadn’t been feeling too well, and another right on its heels to say she was dead. She’d gone in
    her sleep, nice and easy. This last was from a neighbour of theirs: my father wasn’t