It was exhausting being dead. He had more of a social life than when he was alive. It wasn't as ifthey had any conversation, the most he had got out of them was a vague mumbling, although Amelia had, to his baillement, suddenly shouted, 'Stuffing!' to him, and a middleaged woman he had never seen before bent down to whisper in his ear to ask if he had seen her dog. His brother never visited and his sister never came back. She was the only person he really wanted to see.

He was woken by a small terrier barking at the foot of the bed. He knew he wasn't really awake, not by any previous definition of the word. The voice of Mr Spock (or Leonard Nimoy, depending how you looked at it) murmured in his ear, 'It's life,Jackson, but not as we know it.'

He'd had enough. He was getting out of this madhouse, even if it killed him. He opened his eyes. 'You're back with us then?' a woman's voice said. Someone loomed in and out of his vision. Fuzzy round the edges.

'Fuzzy,' he said. Maybe he only said it in his head. He was III hospital. The fuzzy person was a nurse. He was alive. Apparently. 'Hello, soldier,' the nurse said.

Outlaw WHAT WERE THEY DOING UP AT THIS UNEARTHLY HOUR? ALL FOUR of them back at the dining table, breakfasting together this time. Patrick had made French toast, served it with creme fraiche, out-ofseason raspberries, the Wedgwood plates snowy with icing sugar as if they were in a restaurant. The raspberries had been flown all the way from Mexico.

Bridget and Tim had slept undisturbed but Louise had been up for hours at the train-crash site. She felt drained of her lifeblood, but Patrick, who had operated throughout the night as one accident victim after another was wheeled into theatre, was his usual chipper self. Mr Fix-it.

Louise poured a cup of coffee and contemplated the red raspberries on the white plate, drops of blood in the snow. A fairy tale. She felt sick with tiredness. She was trapped in a nightmare, it was like that Bufmel film where they all sit down to eat but never get any food, only in this case she was constantly being faced with food she couldn't stomach.

Bridget had once been a fashion buyer for a department store chain although you would never have guessed it to look at her. She was wearing an aggressive three-piece outfit that was probably very expensive but had the kind of pattern you would get if you cut up the flags of several obscure countries and then gave them to a blind pigeon to stick back together again.

Tim had been the head honcho in a big accountancy company and had taken 'the luxury of early retirement'. 'I'm a golf widow,' Bridget said with an expression ofmock bereavement. Bridget didn't say what she did with her time now and Louise didn't ask because she suspected that the answer would irritate her. Patrick was good Irish, Bridget was bad Irish.

'Mexican raspberries,' Louise said. 'How absurd is that? Talk about leaving a carbon footprint.' 'Oh, too early in the day, Louise,' Tim said, holding a hand to his forehead effetely. 'Let's leave the food miles off the breakfast table.' 'Where else do they belong?' Louise said. Guess who was the bolshy kid in this family?

'Louise didn't have a rebellious phase when she was a teenager,' Patrick said. 'She's making up for it now, apparently.' He laughed and Louise gave him a long look. Was he patronizing her? Of course it was true, she hadn't had a mutinous youth because it was hard to kick against the traces when your own mother was corning in late (if at all) and puking her guts up like the best of badly behaved teenagers. Louise had been a grown-up for longer than most people her age. Making up for it now. Apparently. She'd never had a father to speak of -one night on Gran Canaria hardly counted -and she wondered if that was Patrick's appeal, had she subconsciously seen him as the father figure she had never had -was that how he had got past her defences and under her duvet? What did that make her -a complex Electra?

'I don't think it's rebellious to want to talk about the politics of consumption,' she said to Tim. 'Do you?'

While he was searching for an answer she turned to Patrick and said, 'French toast. Or eggy bread as we in the lower classes used to call it.'Why didn't she just poke him with a fork?

'My father worked for Dublin Corporation all his life,' Patrick said genially. 'I hardly think that qualified us for belonging to the upper echelons of society.' He was an Irishman, his weapons were words, whereas Louise was by her nature a street-fighter and for a brief but satisfYing moment thought about throwing his precious French toast at his head. Patrick smiled at her. Positively beamish. She smiled back. Marriage -tough love.

'Oh, I don't know about that, Paddy,' Bridget -the other half of 'us' -piped up. 'It wasn't as if Dada was a dustman, he was a surveyor. The Brennans were never what you would call lower class.'

'Huzzah for the bourgeoisie,' Louise said. 'Oops, did I say that out loud? I didn't mean to.'

'Louise,' Patrick said gently, laying a hand on her arm.

'Louise what?' she said, shaking his arm off.

'There goes the diet,' Bridget said, gamely ignoring everyone and forking up her food. Louise wanted to say Looks to me like it went a long time ago, but managed to zip her lips.

'Eat something, Louise,' Patrick coaxed. There he went again, Dada knows best. Love is patient love is kind, she reminded herself. But should she really be taking marital advice from a misogynist firstcentury Roman? 'French bread, eggy toast, whatever you want to call it,' he said, 'you should eat.'

'Shame about last night,' Bridget said. 'That the train crash wrecked dinner?' Louise said. 'Yeah, big shame.' 'Thank goodness we decided to come up by car,' Tim said. Louise wondered about pouring coffee on his balding head.

'I am aware it was a terrible disaster,' Bridget said primly. 'Poor Paddy was operating all night.' Louise didn't count, of course. Patrick was a saint. He saved people, according to Bridget. 'He saves their hips, usually,' Louise said and Patrick barked a laugh.

Nice and clean in an operating theatre, only a bit ofblood, patients quiet and well-behaved. Not down and dirty on a rail track, soaked with rain, finding severed limbs and listening to people crying out, or worse, not crying out at all. She had held a man's hand while a doctor amputated his leg at the scene. She was still wearing her diamond ring, its facets glinting in the emergency arc lights. She hadn't needed to go, but she was police, that's what you did.

'Are the transport police handling the investigation?'Tim asked, all pomp and no circumstance, as if he knew something about accident procedure.

'They're providing the deputy SIO,' Louise said without elaboration. 'Senior Investigating Officer,' Patrick said helpfully when Tim looked blank. Or blanker than usual. 'But isn't there a -what's it called, Rail Accident Investigation Bureau now?'

'Branch.' Louise sighed. 'It's called the Rail Accident Investigation Branch. The transport police aren't big enough in Scotland to handle this investigation.'

'And sudden loss of life immediately involves the Procurator Fiscal,' Patrick said. 'But why-' Christ on a bike. How boring could you get?

Louise didn't care what kind ofshit was thrown her way, it had to be better than the company of Bridget and Tim. Patrick was taking them to St Andrews today.

'I hope neither ofyou are thinking ofplaying golf?' Bridget asked fretfully.

'Oh, you never know, we might get a round in,' Patrick laughed. He was relentlessly good-humoured with his sister, downright twinkly, in fact. It seemed to mollifY her quite successfully and Louise wondered if she could manage twinkly. It felt like a stretch.

Patrick touched the back of Louise's hand with the back of his fingertips, gently, as if she were sick, possibly terminal. 'We were thinking of driving up to Glamis tomorrow. We'd like it if you came with us. I'd like it,' he added softly. 'I know you're not working tomorrow.'