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R ose took her time. She warmed up in the shower, lathering her hair and singing, luxuriating and feeling ridiculous.

Laughter kept bubbling up.

Compared to all of that, having a brother who was a werewolf with a shapeshifter girlfriend seemed quite normal.

While her hair dried, she considered the paint brochure.

She could start with the bedrooms and sitting room and go from there.

For a moment, she thought about Saoirse’s vibrant palette and wondered if Rob would think neutral was dull.

Then she shook from her head the thought that it mattered what he thought, selected some variations on ‘depressed oatmeal’ and rang an order through to Higgins.

‘You’re just in time,’ he said. ‘I can get them delivered here Monday if you’re happy to come and collect them about lunchtime. What about tiles?’ He sounded resigned.

‘I’m keeping the bathroom tiles,’ said Rose, ‘and the kitchen’s too big a job for me, so I’m not worrying about that right now. But I’ll have a proper browse tomorrow. When I came in this morning I … eh… had a headache. You had some stuff which might suit some of my ideas.’

She could hear the smile in his voice as he said goodbye. See, that wasn’t so hard. Be nice. Off the top of her head, she couldn’t picture anything in his shop that she wanted, but then she had gone in determined to be disappointed and that’s one ambition which is almost always fulfilled .

She rummaged in the wardrobe for something that was attractive, told herself not to be stupid and eventually stood in front of the mirror to dress in a plain cream top and a long skirt, full enough to manage the cello, but with a hint of the exotic in its gold and cinnamon design.

She messed with her hair until deciding just to pull it back in a ponytail.

The evening had turned warm and she would get hot as they played.

She had looked into her own eyes in conspiracy, as she put on a hint of lipstick and a dab of perfume. Then she went to band practice.

By eleven, when the sunlight was finally disappearing, they spilled out onto Rob’s patio and continued playing, rolling from traditional tunes to one of Rob’s compositions to a solo by Rose while the others improvised and round and round into night.

Once, when they paused to catch breath and have a drink, a distant howl had come from the forest and they laughed, wondering if it meant ‘boo’ or ‘encore’ before they plunged back into playing.

There was a moment, as she rested, and pushed her damp hair from her face and closed her eyes, when Rose thought she heard a car, imagined, in the seconds between her eyes opening and focussing that a pale, scowling face peered round the back wall, then withdrew.

She was tired, having eaten little and drunk more.

Then Craig’s fiddle changed tempo into a wild jig, Patrick’s bodhran’s caught up the beat, Rob’s guitar picked up the rhythm and she forgot the beige face to raise her bow and dive into the melody and sometime after that she was asleep in bed without remembering precisely the walk across the road, the unlocking of the door and the climbing into bed.

She just knew she was asleep because she knew she was dreaming.

She was dreaming about David. He was suggesting that crows would be cuter than pigs on the bathroom tiles and she was complaining to him that Mick’s mate had chosen the wrong ones and then she said there ought to be wolves on the nursery walls but only if they had blue eyes and she was looking into his lovely face, his blurring face, his brown skin, reaching for his dark curls and staring into his brown, brown eyes, missing him, longing for him and she reached for his dark curls and was distracted by his long dark lashes and when she looked into his eyes again they were green, sea-deep green and the hair under her fingers were reddish blondish brown and he was Rob and she was longing for him too and the two faces were blending and reforming and she burned where his hands touched her and she was saying to David.

‘I didn’t know you wanted a baby too’ and Rob was saying ‘Get some stars for the nursery’ and she woke up .

Blinking in the light, she realised she’d forgotten to draw the curtains and was lying naked and confused in a tangle of sheets and duvet. The dream was dispersing into fragments - babies and pigs and wolves and eyes. She couldn’t quite remember it, just longing, grief, desire.

Without thinking she reached out to the other side of the bed, cold and flat and empty. After a few more seconds, she reached for the clock and saw it was past ten. No wonder she was thirsty.

What day was it? Saturday. Simon wasn’t coming back till Monday.

With the car broken down, she was stuck with the options of walking into town or cadging a lift from Rob. Maybe it would do her good to spend the weekend on her own, concentrating on checking the book of David’s photographs, maybe do a bit more composing.

She reached down the bed for her dressing gown and slipped it on, half- hunched, so that she wasn’t visible by anyone who could see through the window before going to the kitchen.

As she turned on the kettle, she tried to work out the time difference to Denmark and wondered if David would be up to answer a video call or if she should just message him.

She couldn’t find his name in the contacts.

Blinking, she stared at the phone. Had she picked up Simon’s by mistake? No it was hers. Even if it had been his, David’s number should have been there.

As the kettle started to boil, her fingers started to tremble.

She remembered now. She remembered deleting his name, unable to bear the sight of his words, the fragments of conversations, the bad spelling, the jokes. Now they were gone and she had spent half yesterday flirting with someone else.

Rose left the phone in the sitting room, made herself some coffee and stared out of the kitchen window. Her car wasn’t there. Presumably it had been collected as promised. She blushed, wondering if someone had peeked into the house while trying to get her attention and seen her naked.

She could just make out Rob, moving around in his own kitchen, and she stepped back from the window. Her phone rang, making her jump and she went into the sitting room to answer it, nearly falling over her cello which she’d dumped in the doorway.

‘Hello?’ Her heart thudded. It was bad news, surely. Simon was away and...

‘Hello, Rose? Is that you?’ David’s mother.

A pause as her heart slowed. ‘Maggie! Hello. How are you? How’s Jack? ’

Was it disappointment or reproof in her mother-in-law’s voice? ‘I thought I’d ring to see how you’d settled in. We haven’t heard from you for such a while.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. The last weeks were such a rush. Simon’s been…’

‘Not well. Yes, so I assumed. Are his attacks becoming more frequent?’

‘No, but it’s just been…’

‘We thought you might visit before you moved so far away.’

‘I’m sorry, really, I would have but there was so much to organise.’

‘It’s not so much us. We thought you might want to visit David. But then, I suppose, maybe it’s not the same for you.’

I can’t visit David, thought Rose , David’s dead. The only thing I can visit is a pile of earth over an urn of ashes. Then she thought of the fresh flowers on Saoirse’s grave.

‘I brought David with me,’ she said as gently as she could.

‘He’s in my heart all the time. I can’t think of him in a grave.

I want to think of him out in the open with his camera.

’ There was silence and she felt ashamed.

‘Maggie, I don’t mean… I know that David’s grave is important to you and Jack.

It’s why I didn’t argue even though I wanted to scatter his ashes somewhere.

I have my own way of visiting him.’ She thought of her mobile with his name deleted and glanced over at the wedding photograph on the mantlepiece, dusty and faded from direct sunlight.

She thought of the touch of Rob’s hands and even while she talked to David’s mother, her pulse pounded.

‘Listen,’ she said aloud. ‘Why don’t you come and stay? I’m just about to do up the spare room. It’s beautiful up here.’

‘Oh I don’t know love, it’s a long way.’

‘Well think about it anyway, I promise I’ll ring you when we’re a bit more settled. Look, I’ve got to go, Simon will be back soon.’

‘Back?’

‘He’s been at the studios getting the film ready.’

‘They’re not still thinking about putting it out, surely?’

Rose closed her eyes. Was this how she felt too?

‘I know what you mean, but David worked hard on that film. He was proud of it. He wouldn’t want all that work to go to waste. Simon …’

‘Simon won’t want to miss the accolades.’ Maggie’s voice was bitter.

‘No, honestly, no he’s not like that. Not underneath. He was proud too. They worked hard. All of them. This will be a tribute to David.’

‘His last film. The one which killed him.’

‘I’m going to see it before it goes out. Maybe you could too.’ Silence. ‘It will be a tribute,’ Rose repeated. ‘I promise I’ll be down soon to see the grave and you two can come and stay in the autumn.’

‘Oh I’m sorry, love,’ Maggie said after a while.

‘I’m not trying to be unkind. We always felt bad about not letting you have the ashes but they were all we have left.

If there had been grandchildren, half of him, half of us for the next generation…

We always felt if you’d been the maternal sort, you’d not have let David go away so much and then maybe…

Anyway, that’s by the by, I suppose you couldn’t help it, I expect you were too busy.

We miss you too. We always thought you were a lovely girl. ’

I’m still alive, thought Rose, it’s only David in that urn.

‘Goodbye,’ she said after a second or so. ‘I’ll ring soon. I promise.’