Free Grave Doubts by Elizabeth Corley

in the tedium of counting steps. She leant forward, hands on thighs, her head hanging down towards last year’s leaves lying on the packed earth under the tree. She watched drops of sweat speckle their dusty surfaces and define the faint veins in skeleton shapes. When these leaves had fallen her parents had been alive.
    A sob escaped from her mouth. She covered her lips with her hands, as if trying to swallow the noise but it was impossible. Another great cry fell from her and tears joined the spattering of sweat evicted from her body. The sounds ran together until she was howling continuously. Her legs folded beneath her and she crumpled to the ground holding her head tight, as if she could squeeze the raw emotion that was pouring from her back inside. Instead she felt a counteracting pressure swell against the bone of her skull and press her lungs inside their ribcage so that she had to pant for breath.
    The crying had no point of origin or purpose, it just was. Wave after wave passed through and out of her, rocking her body backwards and forwards in an awkward rhythm. At some point the crying quietened and then the tears stopped. She took her hands away from her head and looked at her fingers. They were bleached white of blood from the pressure she’d exerted on them. She stared at the ring on her right hand, recalled the Christmas it had been given and felt another sob form at the memory. The tears returned and she bit down hard on her tongue in a vain attempt to stop them. The next wave of grief hit her, softer but somehow deeper and sadder, with no thread of hope.
    There was a juddering in the ground beneath her that turned into heavy running footsteps and she looked up to see two curious children staring at her. Her eyes were so swollen from weeping and unshed tears that she couldn’t make out their faces, but she could see that they were dressed incongruously in shorts and Wellington boots. Another picture from her mental childhood scrapbook clicked into focus. She and Simon had worn the same. There were adders in the woods and Wellingtons were safer than sandals.
    ‘I’m OK,’ she said, her voice husky. ‘I’m fine,’ but they ran off. She hoped that she hadn’t scared them.
    It was cold in the darkening shade of the tree and Nightingale shivered as she tried to stand, protecting her body from unexpected frailty like an old woman.
     
    ‘Daddy! Daddy! Come quickly. There’s a sad lady crying under our tree.’
    Fenwick’s heart sank. Since the funeral the children had assumed a disconcerting façade of babyishness, behaving badly during meals, insisting on long bedtime stories and a nightlight. When they weren’t squabbling they would collapse in strange bouts of giggling over the most stupid things. They refused to discuss their mother’s death and glared at him angrily whenever he tried to raise the subject. He’d hoped that this walk to one of their special places would break the mood and bring them all closer together.
    He’d begun to hope that the plan was succeeding. The shell he had seen grow over both Chris and Bess had started to crack as they retraced familiar paths and splashed through memories of streams now drying to a trickle. He was inclined to ignore this woman whoever she was. Life was complicated and it was tough. Sometimes the knocks made you cry. It was usually best to deal with them in private and she wouldn’t thank him for intruding, he was sure of that.
    ‘Come on, Daddy.’ Bess’s concern shot through him. He felt awful. She expected him to behave with common decency in response to another person’s need. What had he been thinking even to consider passing by on the other side?
    ‘Which way?’
    ‘Over here.’ Chris ran on ahead, forcing Fenwick and Bess to sprint in order to catch him.
    The woman was no more than a girl; thin, grubby, sweaty, in running clothes that were covered in dust and fragments of leaves. Fenwick wondered whether she had fallen and went over as