Dust to Dust by Ken McClure Page A

cup down beside Brian, who didn’t acknowledge it. He simply said, ‘You’d better start phoning around. People will have to be told.’
    ‘Maybe you could get off your arse and give me a hand,’ snapped May in an uncharacteristic outburst as her grief spilled over into anger.
    Brian looked at her in amazement, suddenly unsure of his ground. ‘Right, well, maybe I’ll go round and tell Maureen …’ he said, getting to his feet.
    ‘You do that,’ said May. ‘Tell her her wee brother’s … been killed … Oh, Christ! Sweet Jesus Christ, what am I going to do?’ She dissolved into floods of tears, her shoulders shaking silently as Brian tried awkwardly to put an arm round her.
    ‘Easy, hen,’ he murmured. ‘I’m hurtin’ too.’
    ‘Maureen’ll want to come round,’ said May, as she fought to compose herself. ‘Tell her no. I need some time to myself. I’ll talk to her in the morning. Give my love to the bairns.’
    ‘Right you are,’ said Brian, putting on his jacket. ‘Will you be all right? Is there anything …?’
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ said May, giving a final blow of her nose and throwing the tissues in the bin. ‘I’ll drink my tea, then I’ll start phoning folk.’
    ‘Good girl … I’ll see you later.’
     
     
    Brian returned two hours later, after telling his daughter Maureen and her husband what had happened and watching Keith trying to explain to their two young children, who’d been woken by the noise, why Granddad was there and their mummy was crying. ‘I’m back,’ he announced.
    There was no response. The living room was empty; it seemed cold and alien with the television off. Thinking that May might have gone to bed, he had started in the direction of the bedroom when he glanced along the hall and saw a light under the door of Michael’s room. He went along and opened it slowly to find May sitting on Michael’s bed with photographs in her hands and spread all over the bedspread. She didn’t look up when Brian came in but knew he was there. ‘Do you remember the holiday in Kinghorn?’ she said, holding up a print. ‘That awful, bloody caravan and the sound of the rain on the roof …’
    ‘Aye,’ said Brian. ‘Rained every bloody day.’
    ‘But Michael loved it … happy as Larry in his wellies, he was.’ She finally looked up, pain etched all over her face. ‘What am I going to do?’
    Brian sat down beside her, hands clenched between his knees. ‘We’ll get through it, hen. You and me, eh? We always do.’
    May had a faraway look in her eyes.

TEN
     
     
    ‘Did you get your report off to St Raphael’s?’ Cassie Motram asked her husband when she arrived home from evening surgery to find him preparing what he’d need for the excavation at the end of the week.
    ‘I did.’
    Thinking that she detected some unspoken qualification in the reply, Cassie asked, ‘A problem?’
    ‘Far from it. The donor seemed a perfect match for his highness in every way …’
    ‘But?’
    ‘What I really can’t get my head round is why they asked for my opinion in the first place. Many of the tests they asked for seemed utterly pointless in the circumstances.’
    ‘As you said, they wanted the best and they could afford it,’ said Cassie. ‘You’re the top man in your field.’
    ‘All they needed to do was make sure that blood group and tissue type were compatible for the transplant. All the other stuff they asked for was quite superfluous, an attempt to inflate the bill, if you ask me.’
    ‘Always better to have too much information than too little,’ said Cassie. ‘And it’s their money.’
    ‘I suppose.’
    ‘Why look a gift horse in the mouth? If they want you to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, it’s their business, and if it helps to pay for your excavation at Dryburgh, who are you to complain?’
    ‘You’re right.’ Motram smiled. ‘I should just take the money and run.’
    ‘At last, some sense. Expecting wet weather?’ Cassie was