The Chapter of St Cloud. Marcus Attwater

      DI Collins looked at the singers so he would not have to look at the mourning parents in the front pew, or the tearful schoolfriends sitting across the aisle from him. It was almost too beautiful, this music. It gave voice to things that weren't there yet, perhaps never would be. Acceptance, serenity, strength. The broken couple staring at the coffin knew nothing of all that. All they had was the gaping emptiness where their daughter had been. Collins wondered who had chosen the music, who had organised this sad and dignified ceremony. Certainly neither Mr or Mrs Miller would have been capable of it, he had seen what their grief did to them.

      There had been no need for him to come. The girl's death had been only briefly suspicious, and the inquest ruled her overdose an accident without any questions asked. The police were no longer involved. But he had been the one to tell the parents, breaking their world apart in one shocked moment, and later he had been the one to bring them the useless reassurance that she had not died at someone else's hands. Somehow he felt responsible. So he had come to pay his respects, on his own, to listen to the choked-up tributes to a girl he had never known, and now never would.

      Death by misadventure. What an odd phrase it was. It must have been an adventure for her, seventeen years old, out with her friends, something new - 'go on, try it, it'll be fun'. But she had been a wisp of a girl, and the pills in combination with the amount of alcohol she had already drunk stopped her young heart. Death by misadventure. She had been no more stupid or reckless than many of her contemporaries, just unlucky. But of course the neutral finding of the inquest did not stop people from apportioning blame. In newspapers, during coffee breaks, on web forums, people dealt in reasons and opinions. It was the drink, the drugs, the parents, the schools, young people today. It was all or none of these things. Sitting in his hard pew listening to the singing, Collins knew it was never so simple. The only way to prevent accidents like these was for parents to lock up their children until age twenty-five, and then they'd probably still break their necks trying to climb out of the window. The hardest thing of all was facing that there was no one to blame, nothing you could do. Naomi Miller died, the world went on without her, and the heavenly assurances of the choir could never change that.

       2

      Claire sang as she drove away from London. It was a perfect late-August day, with sunshine and clouds chasing each other across a big sky, but Claire would have been just as happy if the weather had been dismal. She was on her way to see Simon, and that was enough to make her sing. She would be staying with his family for a week, a good end to her holidays. Next year they would travel, they had promised each other, have three or four weeks in Italy. Simon wanted to show her Florence and Siena, show her the country that gave life to the art he loved. In preparation for this far-off prospect, Claire's luggage contained a teach-yourself-Italian course and a brand-new dictionary. She had even, schoolgirlishly, bought a new pen and a bright green exercise book. If she got bored during her week in the country she would know what to do. She couldn't stand it that Simon spoke a language she didn't, and she was determined to catch up with him.

      She had met him at her best friend's wedding. Such a cliché, really, but one she was happy to embrace. Only last June, it was, and she'd been feeling old and left-over and not very generous towards her friend, who was trying to outdo the Duchess of Cambridge in radiance. Bryony had been the third of four friends to hook up. Gina was living with her boyfriend, and Julia was married ages ago. Only Claire was still single, and she was two years older than Bry. She'd been reflecting on this, watching the chattering couples around her - and they had all seemed to be couples - with a jaundiced eye, when a good-looking young man materialised beside her and started talking about the architecture of the church, of all things. They had introduced themselves: Simon, art historian; Claire, medievalist. She noticed he had the same combination of dark hair and blue eyes she had herself, but although she did not consider herself particularly striking, in him it was startling and attractive. They had continued talking until Bryony broke them up, clearly feeling that one of her husband's guests was monopolising her friend. 'Who is he, Bry?' Claire had asked, but the bride just shook her head. 'Must be one of Paul's friends, I don't know half the people here.' Claire resolved on the spot that when she got married, they would have just a small party for people they really knew. Suddenly, it hadn't seemed such a strange thought. Especially not when Simon sought her out again after the best man's speech. She found herself telling him all about her research, her ideas for a book. He was the first man she'd ever met who didn't glaze over at the phrase 'feminine theologies'.

      They continued to meet in the weeks that followed, until he was spending almost as much time at her flat as she was. Her friends were doubtful, but she ignored them. All right, he was younger than she was, but so what? There were horrible men of all ages, why discriminate against the nice ones? And sometimes they were just being silly.

      'You're not going to marry one of Paul's posh friends, are you?' Gina had said, 'One public schoolboy among one's acquaintance is enough, thank you very much.'

      'Simon's not like that at all,' Claire had protested, wondering what this implied about her opinion of Bry's new husband. Still, for all her casual reply, she was glad she hadn't told the others precisely where he lived. The first time he had taken her home she'd thought 'you have got to be kidding me'. Maybe she had even said it aloud, as they had approached his parents' house on the long drive.

      'It's a former bishop's palace, built in the early seventeenth century,' Simon had explained, with art-historical detachment, 'It's been our family home for a long time.' If she hadn't been apprehensive about meeting his family already, she would have been then. But her fears were groundless. They were the most welcoming family in the world, and she felt at ease almost at once. And there was a lot to feel at ease with. When Simon said 'family home' he didn't just mean his family had been living there for generations, he meant that most of it was living there right now.

      Claire grew up the eldest of two daughters, the gap between her and her sister just too big for them to be company. Her grandparents died early, her only set of cousins had lived too far away to visit often. She had dreamed of a large family as a girl, she wanted aunts and uncles and lots of cousins like other children had. Later she thought she would have a large family herself, she would have four children at least. That was pushing it a bit by now, half a year after her thirty-first birthday. She'd settle for two, if she had to. But arriving at Simon's parents' for the first

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