Free The Grave by Diane M Dickson

stages of pregnancy smiled out at her.  She was leaning into the arms
of a tall man in military uniform.  The soldier held her lovingly around her
waist, big hands spread over the slightly swollen belly.  Samuel cradling his
unborn child.
     
    The discovery of this sad space had been so surprising that
her nerves felt jolted.  Samuel must be married, or at some time he had been, or
anyway there had been a partner.  His past was a secret place and there had
been no reason for her to make assumptions but she had never imagined him with
a family.  The reality of him with a baby was impossible to equate with the
surly and brusque person she had first met.  True the Samuel emerging now was
very different but, a family man, a daddy, she was completely unprepared for
this.
     
    The love captured by the camera was real and undeniable. 
Where were they now, this lovely woman and the child she had carried.  How had
this love been lost and what misery had resulted in this empty, forlorn little
room and was it the reason Samuel had been hidden in the forest so many miles
away. 
     
    None of it made sense, he was older than she but surely he wasn’t
so old that his military career had reached its end.  What was he hiding from,
why was he running.  She had known from the very start that he was on the
outside limit of society but now layer upon layer of mystery was building and
it left her bemused and uneasy.
     
    She wrapped the picture carefully and replaced it, sliding
the drawer home.  Backing out of the little room she took one last look before
closing the door as gently as if a child slumbered in the white cot.  The
pleasure she had taken from this little house felt flattened now and she went
back into the bedroom and flopped onto the bed. 
     
    She tried to think rationally, so he was married, or he had
been.  There was nothing unusual in a broken marriage, no surprise in a
fractured family, it meant very little these days.  What if the photograph had
captured a time of love and happiness, so did millions of wedding portraits,
times changed, people fell out of love and moved on.  Did it explain why the
nursery was still there, yet not quite there, a shadow of what it should have been?
Where were the bits and pieces left after a sharp and sorrowful split, the old
outfits, no longer worth packing and carrying away, where were the half empty
bottles and jars?  Maybe it had been so long ago that those things had been
discarded, but if so why not the rest of it?  Surely the cartoon characters
should have been swamped below a coat of bland emulsion and the furniture
replaced by a bed or perhaps equipment for an older child, visiting for a
weekend with daddy. This wasn’t normal, not in her understanding of human
behaviour, limited though she knew this to be.  It was odd. 
     
    She swivelled her head on the bare mattress, there in the
corner was the big black bag.  She didn’t think about it now, there was no internal
struggle, sliding from the bed she took two small steps, bent and pulled the
zip.
     
    The bag gaped open, filled as it was almost to the top.  She
reached in and dragged out one of the bundles.  How much was this, she could
not compute the amount, she had never imagined she would ever see so much money
in one place at one time.  She plunged her hands in further and drew another
wad from the bottom, there must be thousands and thousands of pounds here, all
neatly bundled and all high denomination notes.  The fear now was real and
sparking on her nerve endings, this was wrong, there couldn’t be a simple
explanation.  The rumours had been true, he was rich, he had a great holdall
full of money, her heart pounded as she looked at it, not with avarice, but with
an animal instinct to flee and an acknowledgement that this could be the means.

Chapter 23
     
    Samuel had driven out of the valley to find a strong signal
for his phone.  He would need to pull in favours.  Contact with the people