Humpty's bones

8. Tuesday Morning: 10.00

Dog Star stood on its plot, at the bend of the Via Britannicus, beneath lumbering cloud. Heather worked on her dig. The awning that sheltered the tomb shifted in the breeze as if uneasy about being so close to the spot that yielded up those burnt bones. Eden watched her progress from the kitchen.

Eden hadn’t spoken to Heather since her aunt had uttered ‘Thanks, Eden. Thanks a million. Now you’ve left me to pick up the pieces’. She watched her aunt haul a bucket of dirt from the pit. ‘I should have listened to the man on the train,’ Eden murmured to herself. She glanced at the door, its shattered safety glass held in place by the membrane of plastic. ‘He told me, You should always respect omens… beware, beware, beware… ’

She telephoned the builder. Could he start work on her apartment earlier? It would mean so much to her if he could. She was desperate to move back in.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice in her ear. ‘I’ve still to finish this loft conversion job in Salford.’

‘But you do know I’m homeless?’

‘I can’t just walk off a job. It wouldn’t be fair.’

After the call she nearly talked herself into returning to the apartment anyway. Okay, the kitchen had been burnt. She could live off breakfast cereal, if need be. There was a cafe over the road. Only she recalled the smoke-blackened walls. And the stink. Even the thought of it made her throat feel as if had begun to swell in reaction to the stench of burnt plastic. No. I can’t go back there. Not yet. Instead of destroying yet more bridges, she should start repairing some. She made coffee, then went out through the damaged door to face her aunt.

‘For the last five years,’ Heather told Eden abruptly, ‘I have been struggling to persuade Curtis that this house should be our home. He wants to live in York. Last year a valuable sofa that he was storing for his father was ruined when the garage flooded. A week after that the airing cupboard door swung open at him. It left him with a gash in his head. He turns on me. He yells that the house is cursed. I’ve never seen him so furious. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to talk him out of leaving.’

Heather revealed this to Eden as they both stood beneath the gazebo. The pit yawned at their feet. Rain had left the soil darker than before. Oozing moisture, it smelt of burnt things.

Heather took a sip of the coffee that Eden had brought her. ‘Now, this morning you brightly tell Curtis that we’ve got a damn werewolf sniffing at our front door.’

‘I didn’t use the word ‘werewolf’. I just — ’

‘No, but you said this was the tomb of a boy with a dog’s head.’

‘Curtis won’t believe in werewolves.’

‘Maybe not, Eden, but that kind of speculation’s hardly likely to endear him to the house, is it?’

Eden shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d be interested in what I’d figured out.’

‘Are you sure you’ve not got all this planned? A nice little scheme?’

‘Scheme? What scheme?’

‘Undoubtedly you know the terms of my mother’s will. It stipulates that even though she left the house to me I can’t sell it. Dog Star House stays within the family; it’s chained to us. Tied lock, stock and bloody barrel. Dog Star? The will doesn’t even allow us to change its stupid name.’ She looked shrewdly at Eden. ‘Tell me what happens to the house, then, if Curtis takes such a violent dislike to it that we have to leave?’

Eden shrugged.

‘Surely, your mother — my sister — showed you a copy of the will?’

‘I only heard that you’d inherited.’

‘So you didn’t know that I can’t sell it? No?’ Heather smiled, albeit coldly. ‘Or that I’m legally obliged by the will to offer it for rent at a nominal sum to a specific chain of family members starting with my son? Graham won’t take it because he’s at sea all the time. Besides, living here bored him. Next in line is your mother. But she’s such a free spirit she can’t stay in any one place for longer than a couple of months straight. When she goes they’ll have to concrete over her grave.’ A joke, only Heather didn’t smile. ‘So who will be next in line to live in this house? And who would only be required to pay a few miserable pounds a month?’

‘I’m not interested in the house, Heather.’

‘It’s a big property — five bedrooms; two bathrooms; new kitchen. If Curtis pushes me into leaving it’s a certainty you’d end up living here in luxury. No doubt free to offer a bed to every psychopathic fire-starter that comes along.’

‘Heather, that’s not fair.’

‘Okay. A deal. You stop telling Curtis that werewolves are laying siege to the house. I’ll lay off your rotten choice of one-night stands.’

Heather glared at Eden in such a way that suggested she’d dash the coffee in her face if she disagreed. What choice do I have? Eden asked herself. If I don’t back off I’ll end up on the train before the day’s out. I’ve nowhere else to go. Eden felt wronged by her Uncle and Aunt — the suggestion that she’d deliberately tried to scare Curtis into abandoning Dog Star House infuriated her — yet even after all this she knew she had no choice.

Eden took a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble. Thanks again for asking me to stay here.’ Even so, she couldn’t back down completely: she couldn’t surrender control over her own life entirely. She added with a splash of defiance, ‘And I wasn’t trying to steal your home from you.’

‘Good. We have an understanding.’ Heather’s voice softened. ‘Thanks for the coffee, by the way.’ She nodded at the pit. ‘It’s like working in a fridge down there.’

Small talk. At least Heather was trying to mend bridges, too.

Eden leaned over the hole. The stench made her flinch. Wet earth. Decay. Burning. Something else that suggested a heavy sweetness. Talk about unwholesome. Even so, for some inexplicable reason the thick scent took her back to that Tuscan villa with its otherworldly atmosphere. ‘Making any progress?’

‘Just trying to get back to where I was when I finished work last night. See the far side? Yesterday’s rain caused part of it to collapse. I’ve got to lift out all the muck that’s fallen into the bottom before I can start excavating again. And just when I’d reached the floor of a building, too.’

‘Any more bones?’

‘No.’ Heather said the word a little too curtly, as if to dissuade Eden from reopening the dog-boy debate.

Oh, blood’s thicker than water, Eden told herself. Prove to Heather you’re useful. ‘If you want, I could scoop out the dirt for you.’

This offer surprised Heather. ‘Really?’

‘Of course.’

‘That would be a great help.’ She sounded genuinely grateful. ‘I’ve got to recheck the garden centre’s accounts.’

‘Just tell me what to do.’

‘You will get your hands dirty.’

‘No problem. I scrub up well.’

‘Use the little ladder to climb down into the excavation. The sides are so soft you’ll bring the lot down if you try to climb in or out any other way. There’s a plastic bowl to shift the goo. I’d have suggested a spade normally but it might damage any finds. If you gently — gently, mind — scoop the debris out onto that plastic sheet. I can throw it into the flower beds once I’ve sieved it for hidden goodies. Sound good to you?’

Eden set to work. When she was standing in the grave pit, which once housed Humpty’s bones, the ground was level with her shoulders. It took more effort than she’d appreciated to scoop wet mud into the bowl then stretch up and out of the hole to tip it onto the pile already started by Heather on the plastic sheet.

‘How will I know when to stop?’ Eden asked.

‘When you’re down to the hard surface. The floor of the building consists of stone slabs. I want you to go gently because they might have carvings, which could be fragile by now. Also, there’s a slim chance there will be more tiles, too; maybe if we’re really lucky a mosaic.’

After that, Heather returned to the house to her accountancy work. Eden worked hard to remove the invading mud. Yet her imagination still concocted fantasy portraits of dog-headed boys. She suspected they might once more creep into her dreams tonight. And, if they did, what marvellous secrets might they whisper into her ear as she slept?