Case Histories - Страница 26

"I mean, it's not impossible that Olivia's still alive," Julia said, as if she had been listening to Amelia's thoughts (what a horrible idea). "Perhaps she was kidnapped by someone who wanted a child, and they brought her up as their own, so she forgot about us, forgot she was Olivia, just thought she was someone else, say… Charlotte -"

" Charlotte?"

"Yes. And then when the kidnappers were on their deathbed they told her who she was. ' Charlotte, you are really Olivia Land. You lived on Owlstone Road in Cambridge. You have three sisters- Sylvia, Amelia, and Julia.'"

"How likely is that, Julia?"

Amelia changed the channel until she came across Now, Voyager, and Julia said, "Oh, leave that on."

"Your bath will overflow."

"Milly?"

"What?"

"You know what you were saying about Victor?"

"What?"

"If he ever interfered with me. That's such a stupid term, such a euphemism. What it means is did Daddy ever make you suck his cock or did he ever stick his fingers inside you while he jerked himself off-" Amelia couldn't bear this. She concentrated on Bette Davis looking tragic and tried to block out the obscenities Julia was spouting.

"Whichever way you look at it, it's rape," Julia concluded. "And no, since you ask, he didn't. He tried though." Amelia wanted to put her hands over her ears. She wanted to be deaf.

"He tried? What do you mean he tried?"

"He tried to stick his hands down my knickers once but I just screamed the place down. He was trying to explain fractions," she added as if that were somehow relevant.

That would be Julia, she would scream. Amelia would simply have let him do it. Only he didn't, he'd never tried to do anything with her. He'd never interfered.

"What did he do to you, Milly?" Julia asked gently, putting her hand on Amelia's forearm as if she were sick or bereaved. Amelia had caught him once with Sylvia. She had walked into the study without knocking, which was absolutely forbidden, so she must have been in one of her dreamy moods, and there had been Daddy with Sylvia and ever since she had tried to forget what she had seen. Sylvia facedown on Victor's desk like a half-crucified martyr, her skinny white buttocks exposed, and Victor preparing himself- Amelia shook Julia off and said harshly, "Nothing. He never did anything, I would never have let him. Go and get your bath, Julia."

Amelia woke up with a start. It was dark and silent in the house, no ghosts walking, only the slight electrical buzz of the street lamp outside. Amelia couldn't remember if Julia had got out of the bath and had to get up to check that she hadn't drowned silently. The bath was empty, the bathroom dripping with cold condensation. There were towels thrown around everywhere. Julia was safely in her bed, her bedclothes in the usual disorder and her poodle hair still damp. Her breathing was heavy and regular, although Amelia could hear a gurgling in her chest. Julia's lungs always sounded as if they needed wringing out, like dishcloths. What would she do if Julia died before her? If she was the last one left? (Sylvia didn't count.) Sammy, asleep on Julia's bed, woke up and wagged his tail when Amelia came in the room. Amelia straightened Julia's covers and the dog slipped clumsily off the bed and followed her out of the room.

On the way back to her own room Amelia paused outside Olivia's closed door. Sammy looked at her inquiringly and she turned the doorknob and walked into the room. Moonlight shone diffusely

through the filthy window. She lay down on her back on the small bed. Sammy flopped to the floor. The effort made him groan.

On the last day of her life, Olivia had woken in this bed, looked at these walls. Would she have died if she'd slept here and not in the tent? If only Amelia could go back, take Olivia's place that night, fight off whatever evil it was that had taken her. If only Amelia could have been chosen instead.

Chapter 10. Theo

The girl had a tube of sweets clutched in her hand – garish-colored things that were probably made entirely of chemicals and E-numbers. She offered one to Theo and he took it out of a sense of politeness. It tasted vaguely of petrol or lighter fluid. It didn't taste as if it could do any good to growing bones and minds. Theo never bought sweets, and although he loved chocolate he didn't like buying it in shops because of the disapprobation this always attracted. Fat people weren't supposed to eat anything, but they were especially not supposed to eat confectionery, so instead he belonged to an online "tasting club," which meant that every month a chocolate company sent him a new selection to try and in return he sent back a review ("creamy and delicious, the hazelnut praline gives just the right amount of contrast") that felt oddly onerous, like doing bizarre homework. That was how he rationed his chocolate consumption, just the one box of something creamy and delicious every month.

He didn't really care about his cholesterol and his blood pressure. He would be happy to die of a stroke or a heart attack. "Strokes don't necessarily kill, Dad," Jennifer e-mailed crossly from Toronto. "They're more likely to leave you incapacitated. Is that what you want?" Perhaps she was afraid she would have to look after him, but he would never do that to her. As far as Theo was concerned the parent-child relationship was one way, you gave them all your love and they were under no obligation to pay a penny back. Of course, if they did love you then that was the icing on the cake with cherries on top. And chocolate shavings and those little silver balls that cracked your fillings. Laura used to love those. He always decorated the cakes he made. Cakes, pastry, scones – he'd learned how to make everything after Valerie died. He turned out to be a much better cook than his wife.

He hired a woman to come in and clean twice a week and a girl, a student, to pick them up from school and look after them until he got home from work. Otherwise he did everything himself- housework, child care. He went to PTA meetings, parents' evenings, took the girls to birthday parties, threw birthday parties in return. The other children's mothers treated him as an honorary woman and said he would make someone a wonderful wife, which he took as a compliment.

The girl said she was eight but she was dressed more like a teenager. But that was how it was nowadays. In the past, children used to be dressed as small adults so there was nothing new in that. When Laura was eight she wore dungarees and jeans and nice dresses for best – "frocks," Valerie would have called them, if she'd been around. White ankle socks, sandals, T-shirts, and shorts. He bought Laura her own clothes and didn't make her wear Jennifer's castoffs. A lot of people thought Theo spoiled his girls, but how could you spoil a child – by neglect, yes, but not by love. You had to give them all the love you could, even though giving that much love could cause you pain and anguish and horror and, in the end, love could destroy you. Because they left, they went to university and husbands, they went to Canada and they went to the grave.

Theo declined a second sweet. "It's polite to offer one to everyone.'" Deborah Arnold said to the girl. Rather reluctantly, Theo thought, the girl slid off her seat and went over to Deborah's desk and without a word offered the tube of sweets to her. Deborah took three. There was something oddly admirable about the woman. Terrifying but admirable.

"What's your job?" the girl asked him.

"I'm retired," Theo said, wondering if she knew what that meant.

"Because you're old," she said, nodding sagely. Theo agreed with her, "Yes, because I'm old."

"My daddy's going to retire," the girl said. "He's going to live in France." Deborah Arnold laughed derisively.

" France?" Theo said. He couldn't imagine Jackson in France somehow. "Have you been to France?"

"Yes, on holiday. Some people ate thrushes."

"Oh my God," Deborah Arnold said. "Neither of you are sup-posed to be here," she added as if they were jointly responsible for the French dining on innocent songbirds.

"I just wanted a quick chat with Mr. Brodie – to see how things were going," Theo said apologetically. Deborah Arnold seemed extraordinarily busy – typing, filing, and copying like a woman possessed. Did Jackson Brodie really generate this much business? He seemed a little too laid-back to keep an assistant so fully occupied. She'd called herself his assistant; he'd called her his secretary.

"So, Mr. Brodie's out on a case?" Theo asked, to make conversation more than anything. Deborah gave him a pitying look over the top of her spectacles as if she couldn't believe he could be duped into thinking that Jackson actually worked. After five minutes, she said, "He's at the dentist. Again."

"Dad fancies the dentist," the girl said, popping another sweet into an already overloaded mouth. It seemed sad that such little girls knew about "fancying," knew anything at all about sex. Perhaps they didn't, perhaps they just knew the words. The girl, Marlee, did seem very precocious though, more like an eighteen-year-old than an eight-year-old. Not like his eighteen-year-old (because Laura would always be eighteen). Laura had had a freshness about her, an innocence, like a light shining from within. Jackson had never mentioned having a daughter, but then you didn't, did you? Bank managers, bus drivers, they didn't spend their time saying, "I have a daughter, by the way."

"Have you got children?" Marlee asked him.

"Yes," Theo said. "I have a daughter called Jenny. She lives in Canada. She's grown-up." Of course, he felt like he was denying Laura, expected to hear a cock crow every time he made this answer, but people didn't want to hear him say, "Yes, I have two, one alive and well and living in Toronto and one dead and in the earth."