‘While we were digging we found … something,’ says Darren, folding his arms across his dirt-streaked T-shirt.
‘What is it?’ Snowy strains against my hand and I tighten my grip.
‘Remains.’ Darren’s expression is grim.
‘Like … an animal?’ I ask. Darren and the others exchange a look.
Karl steps forwards confidently, almost gleefully, kicking up dust from the ground as he does so. ‘It looks like a hand …’
I step back in horror. ‘So you’re saying … they’re human?’
Darren regards me with sympathy. ‘I think so. You’d better call the police.’
2
By the time Tom arrives home two hours later I’m pacing our tiny kitchen. It looks like a relic from the 1980s with its farmhouse units and the scenes of fat-cheeked pigs and sheep on the wall tiles. We’ve managed to squeeze in our oak table from the flat, although we can pull out only two of the four chairs. Not long after we moved in, in February, we’d sat with the architect, a short balding man in his sixties called Clive with a good local reputation, planning the back of the house: the kitchen would be extended and span the width of the cottage, with Crittal doors leading out into the large garden. And, to be honest, it’s taken my mind off my pregnancy, which I still feel jittery about even though I’ve had the twelve-week scan and everything looks okay. But I’m blighted with what-ifs. What if I miscarry the baby? What if it doesn’t grow properly, or comes too early, or I have a stillbirth? What if I can’t cope when the baby is born or suffer post-natal depression?
The pregnancy hadn’t been planned. It was something Tom and I had spoken about, loosely, after perhaps a wedding, but we’d been busy starting up our respective career ladders and saving for a deposit to buy our own flat. Babies and weddings had been for when we were older. For when we became proper grown-ups. But I’d been ill with a stomach bug, had forgotten to take extra precautions. And that one slip-up had resulted in this. A baby. I’d be a young mother but not as young as my own mum had been.
Snowy is stretched out in his bed by the oven, head on his paws, watching me as I pace. From the leaded window I can see the hub of activity in the back garden. A white tent has been erected over half of the lawn, and police officers and men in forensic suits come and go, along with another officer, a camera slung around his neck. Fluorescent yellow tape has been put up around the tent and it flaps in the slight breeze. It has CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS printed along its length, and it makes me feel nauseous every time it catches my eye. It might look like a scene from an ITV crime drama but its presence drives home the reality of the situation. I’d been surprised （and, actually, a little bit proud） of myself for how quickly I’d taken control of things after I’d recovered from the shock. First, calling the police and then, after we’d given our statements, sending the builders home, saying I’d let them know when they could resume work, even if my heart still pounded the whole time. Then I’d called Tom at his office in London; he’d said he’d be on the next train home.
I hear Tom’s Lambretta pull up on the driveway; he’s always wanted one and treated himself to the second-hand moped when we moved here to get back and forth to the station. It’s cheaper than running two cars, and all the spare money we had saved is going on this extension.
I hear the front door slam. Tom rushes into the kitchen, concern etched all over his face. He has his glasses on, the trendy black-rimmed pair he bought when he started his new job in the finance department of a tech company over a year ago. He felt they gave him more gravitas. His sandy-blond fringe falls over his face and he’s rumpled in his linen shirt and blazer over jeans. It doesn’t matter what he wears, he still manages to look like a student. He smells of London – of fumes and trains and takeaway lattes and other people’s expensive scents. Snowy is circling our legs and Tom bends down to pat him distractedly, but his attention is firmly on me.
‘Oh, my God, are you okay? What a shock … the baby,’ he says, straightening up.