Free Crossed Bones by Jane Johnson Page A

own sad life, but about my poor cousin. What must it feel like to share your life with someone who suddenly and with no explanation or warning removes himself not just from your relationship but from the whole world, irretrievably and for ever? However bad their marriage had become, what would have driven the usually buoyant and thick-skinned Andrew to take his own life, in such a brutal manner, and in the very house the two had resurrected from the shamble of dust and mildew and rotting timber they had bought so long ago?
    But when at last I turned the light out and went to sleep, it was not Alison I dreamed of, nor of Andrew swinging from a beam, but of Cat Tregenna. Something was happening to her: something terrible, but I could not quite grasp the nature of the threat or see the menace that had come for her. The words ‘Lord save us!’ echoed over and over in my head, and when I awoke it was in a state of some alarm. Usually I woke slowly, like a diver coming up to the surface from deep water, but that morning something was different. My skin felt prickly and alert, as if someone had been watching me as I slept. Suddenly fixated by this thought, I hurled the bedclothes from me and leaped out of bed, staring wildly around as if I might surprise an intruder. There was, of course, no one there. Cursing myself for such pointless and neurotic behaviour, I made a cup of coffee and called Alison’s number again.
    This time, she picked up.
    ‘Hello?’ Her voice was thready and faint as if coming from a very long way away down a very poor line.
    ‘Alison, it’s me, Julia. Look, I’m so sorry about my gaffe yesterday, I wasn’t thinking…’ I tailed off, unable to think of anything useful to say.
    ‘That’s all right. I just couldn’t talk to you – to anyone – any more. I had to get away from it, from him; from the house.’
    ‘But you’re back now,’ I observed, stupidly.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, sounding unsure.
    ‘Look,’ I said quickly and without any real thought, ‘why don’t I come down to help you with the arrangements and stuff? Give you a break, or a shoulder to cry on: anything, really. It’s no problem, there’s nothing keeping me here.’
    There was a long pause. Then, ‘Could you? I can’t bear it here. Will you come? Today?’
    ‘Of course,’ I said. After a few minutes of practical arrangements, I put the phone down, my heart sinking. Why had I offered? I really did not want to go all that way – to the end of the world, as it seemed. There were ghosts waiting for me down in Cornwall; and I did not count Andrew’s among them.
    Nevertheless, two hours later I found myself at Paddington buying an open return to Penzance.
    It had been nearly three years since I had visited my home county, commuting back and forth to visit my mother, a particularly dark time in my life. My mother, who had right up to that last year been a remarkably hale and energetic woman, still running marathons at sixty, still swimming at seventy, had suffered a sudden stroke and in a moment lost not only the use of one side of her body but her independence and her entire personality, and had ended up in a care home which stank of urine and antiseptic.
    It was guilt that drove me to my frequent visits, guilt and fear: a barely suppressed terror at the realization that this was what we all came to in the end. And at least my mother had some moments of comfort in having friends and family around her as she failed. Being a single woman with no children made the prospect of old age and physical and mental decline cut me particularly deeply, even at thirty-three. As a result, I clung to Michael out of a yawning need that soon had him avoiding late-night phone calls and making more trips away from town than he had before, anything, I suspect, to avoid hearing my woes and sensing my pain. It took me some months to realize that my behaviour and his more frequent absences – geographical and emotional – had a direct