Free Transgressions by Sarah Dunant

hard to imagine, but, then, old age always was. One thing you could say about her and Tom. They would always be young together, no paunches or liver spots, no hardening of the arteries.
    It was, she realized, a long time since she had thought of their relationship as something to be celebrated rather than regretted. What had the feckless Sally once said to her? “It’s like death, darling. You can’t hurry the grieving, it has to take its own course.” Eight and a half months. At least now something seemed to be shifting. Maybe his leaving was part of that process. Vancouver, eh? He wouldn’t come back, she knew that. He’d meet some lady—if he hadn’t met her already—and end up buying some house near the university and siring a pack of little Canadians with funny accents and a love of the great outdoors. And with any luck they wouldn’t notice the ways in which he became dissatisfied—as he most certainly would; either that or he’d grow up a bit and find a way not to take it out on them. She hoped so. She was surprised by how easy it was to wish him well. And by how clearly she could see his future, while at the same time not understanding her own.
    She thought back for a moment to Tom’s comments of last night. Had she really become so reclusive? What others saw as a symptom of pain she saw as a part of her recovery. Making herself whole again. She tried to imagine waking to another lover beside her, turning to him in sleepy lust, the world and the morning spread out endlessly before them. But her imagination was stubborn and the bed remained large and empty beside her.
    She pulled on her robe and went down to the kitchen. Before she entered she gave the door a little tug to make sure it had stayed locked, then opened it and swiftly walked in.
    It was exactly as she had left it eight hours before, the Van Morrisons all in their little plastic boxes on the shelf, the stereo turned off at the source, the main light still on, eclipsed now by the morning sunshine. The only thing that was different was the cat’s bowl, which was now empty. Millie had obviously come and gone in the night. She went to the French windows to see if she could spot her, but could see no sign. On the edge of the patio where the paving stones met the grass, a small brown lump caught her attention. A plump clod of earth? A wet cloth?
    She turned the key to the French doors and went out, her feet cold on the stones. It turned out to be a bird, not one of the little ones that Millie sometimes proudly pulled in through the cat flap in spring, but a fully grown thrush. The pattern on its breast was startling: perfect little nut-brown marks against downy cream feathers. It was well and truly dead, its eyes staring and glassy, its neck lying at an awkward angle. It didn’t look so much mauled as broken. She put out a finger and touched the breast feathers. Cold. A long time gone. She looked around the garden, but Millie was nowhere to be seen. She picked the little body up and carried it across the lawn to the nearest flower bed. The grass was wet and slimy beneath her toes, like walking on snail trails. She slid the bird under a bush. It was neither the time nor the climate for burials and, anyway, Millie would just have it up again. She wondered where it had come from, or, more important, where it would not go back to. Would anyone miss it? Come looking for it? No such thing as a formal identification for these little fellows. She smiled. So much for her day off. The smells of the Prague city morgue were already curling their way back into her nostrils. She made herself an industrial-sized cappuccino and gave in to the inevitable.
 
    The head had been savagely beaten. The flesh of the face was unrecognizable, a mash of blood and bone, the jaw crushed so badly that even the dental work might not be salvageable. The only thing that remained was the hair, soaked and matted but still intact. Blond. Long. Fine. Woman’s hair. With any luck, the