That was my first reaction. It was impossible. She was vibrant and beautiful and bubbling with life. She always wore red, highlighting her silver hair, and pictures of her flashed up before me: Rosie the first time I saw her, sitting behind a desk at the grammar school; Rosie waving her geologist’s hammer at me deep in a quarry in the Dales; Rosie at the football match, shouting for the referee to put his spectacles on. She couldn’t be dead. It was impossible. But that was the visible Rosie. There were other times, when she wouldn’t see me, when her demons came, and I knew it wasn’t impossible at all. Gilbert was talking but I hadn’t heard a word. ‘I’m sorry, Gilbert. What was that?’ ‘I was just saying that Graham Myers, Superintendent Myers from Scarborough, has been on the phone. Rosie was found this morning in a bed-and-breakfast in Scarborough. First indications are that she’d taken an overdose of paracetamol. There was a note, addressed to you.
