Case Histories

Chapter 18. Amelia

Amelia was the only one who had seen that there were more of them. Julia was too busy flirting – Mr. Brodie this, Mr. Brodie that, and Jackson was too busy looking at Julia's breasts. Of course, it was difficult for a man not to look at Julia's breasts when they were on display like that. She had actually licked her lips when she'd suggested swimming naked to him! They had swum in the river when they were children, even though Rosemary always told them not to. Julia was the best swimmer out of the three of them. The four of them. Could Olivia swim? Amelia thought she could see Olivia's little frog body, in a blue shirred swimming costume, moving through the water, but she didn't know whether it was a real memory or not. Sometimes Amelia felt as if she had spent her whole life waiting for Olivia to come back, while Sylvia was talking to God and Julia was fucking. And she felt so unbearably sad when she thought of all the things Olivia had never done, never ridden a bike or climbed a tree or read a book on her own, she'd never been to school, or a theater or a concert. Never listened to Mozart or fallen in love. She had never even written her own name. Olivia would have lived her life; Amelia had merely endured hers. You're looking at my tits, Mr. Brodie. Julia was such a tart sometimes. Amelia could remember Victor once, hauling a teenage Julia back into the house when she was trying to sneak out to see some boy and yelling at her that she looked like "a common tart." (How many men had Julia slept with? Too many to keep count of undoubtedly.) Victor made her scrub her makeup off with a nailbrush. Sometimes he ignored them for days, only coming out of his study for meals. Other times he was on their case continually like some kind of religious patriarch.

After Rosemary died Victor employed a woman to cook and clean every day. She was called Mrs. Gordon and no one ever knew her first name. It was typical of Victor to employ someone who didn't like children and was a terrible cook. Sometimes Mrs. Gordon would make them the same tea every day for days on end – burned sausages, baked beans, and watery boiled potatoes were a particular favorite with her. Victor never seemed to notice. "Food is just fuel," he used to say. "It doesn't matter what it is." What an appalling childhood they'd had.

And really Jackson had been the last person she had wanted to see. Why was he sitting on the riverbank? Why him of all people? It wasn't fair. (Nothing was fair.) The gods were taunting her with him. She hadn't wanted to go to Grantchester, not at all, it was Julia who had persuaded her to go punting on the river, coaxing her as if she were a frail invalid or an agoraphobic. "Come on, Milly, you can't sit moping in front of the television all day." She wasn't moping. She was depressed, for God's sake. And she could be depressed if she wanted to be, she could sit and watch Dogs with Jobs on the National Geographic Channel and eat her way through a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits if she felt like it because nobody cared about her. In fact, she could sit there all day, from Barney and Friends to Porn Babes Laid Bare, with hours of the Landscape Channel in between, and eat the contents of an entire biscuit factory until she was an obese, earthbound balloon whose dead and bloated body would have to be hydraulically lifted from the house by a fire crew because nobody cared. "I care, Milly." Yeah, right, as the slaters would say.

If Julia cared so much she wouldn't flirt with Jackson in front of her. She imagined them in the water together, Julia swimming like an otter around Jackson's naked body, her red lips closing around his – no! Don't think that, don't think that, don't think that.

One evening Amelia found the God Channel between Discovery Health and the Fashion Channel and discovered that there was a program called A Word from God that went on at midnight and she had actually watched it! To see if God had anything to say to her. But he didn't. Obviously.

Milly, do you want honey on your scones? And now she was talking about Rupert Brooke being naked. Couldn't she just shut up about naked people? Because actually it was quite nice being here, sitting in a deck chair in the orchard, soaking in the warmth of summer – why couldn't she be here on her own with Jackson, without Julia, why couldn't he be pouring her tea and buttering her scones, why did Julia have to be here with her breasts almost popping out of her bra when she leaned over him, drooling honey onto his scones.

And it was such a pretty bra, all white and lacy. Why had Amelia never had underwear like that? It wasn't fair.

She had made an utter fool of herself the other night ("Are you married, Mr. Brodie?"), like some ruined girl in a sentimental Victorian novel. She could tell by the way he looked at her that he thought she was delusional. (Was she?) She was so embarrassed that she couldn't look at him. Thank goodness she was wearing sun-glasses and a hat. (Did they make her look even the slightest bit mysterious and enigmatic?) And his lovely face was all beaten up (because, of course, she had looked at him), and she would have liked to comfort him, to take his face and hold it between her own breasts (which were just as big as Julia's, even if they didn't occupy the same horizontal plane). But that was never going to happen, was it?

She had seen them though. The others. Jackson and Julia thought it was just the man who was reading Principia Mathematica but she had seen the others, seven or eight them, all as equally naked as the Principia Mathematica man. A couple of them dived into the water. but the rest chatted to one another, reclining on the bank in various positions of repose as if they were enacting an ideal pastoral scene. Were they naturalists? Amelia had a sudden, unexpected memory of swimming in the river, her sun-warmed body moving smoothly through the cool, lucent water. She felt a sudden physical craving, like hunger. Why was she trapped in her clumsy, baggy body? Why couldn't she have the body of her childhood back? Why couldn't she have her childhood back?

Maybe they were situationists, creating their own bizarre piece of art, indifferent as to whether anyone viewed it or not. Or some kind of cult? A nudist coven? Most of them looked as if they were more than forty, and they had imperfect bodies – jodhpur thighs and drooping bottoms, gray pubic hair and moles and freckles and old operation scars and some of them were as wrinkled as a Neapolitan mastiff. They were tanned all over, so whatever it was they were doing they must be doing it frequently. And then they were gone, beyond a bend in the river, vanishing like a dream.

Amelia stomped off ahead of Julia because she was annoyed with her about everything but particularly for flirting so much with Jackson yesterday on the river. Julia ran to keep up but then they heard the chimes of an ice-cream van and Julia said, "Hark the chimes of midnight," and Amelia said, "Hardly an appropriate analogy," but Julia had responded as obediently as a Pavlovian dog to the sound and had trotted off to find ice cream.

Amelia strode on, across Christ's Pieces, past the Princess Diana Memorial Rose Garden, in whose direction she threw a contemptuous glance. What nonsense (dead or alive) the whole Princess Diana thing was. There was no memorial to Olivia anywhere on earth, neither a rose garden nor a bench, not even a headstone on an empty grave. And then, suddenly, out of the blue, Amelia was accosted by the homeless girl with the canary-colored hair. She grabbed Amelia by one arm and started pulling her back along the path and Amelia thought, I'm being mugged, how ludicrous, and tried to cry out but found she'd fallen into the voiceless state of nightmares. She struggled to look around, to see where Julia was – Julia would save her from the yellow-haired girl, Julia had always been a scrapper when they were children – but the girl was dragging her along the path as if she were a recalcitrant child. It was absurd because Amelia was at least twice the size of her captor, but the yellow-haired girl was unnervingly and uncharacteristically animated, besides which she was filthy and homeless and addicted to drugs and possibly retarded in some way and Amelia was frightened of her.

The yellow-haired girl's dog ran along beside them, jumping up and down like an excitable accomplice. If the girl would just loosen her grip on Amelia for a second she would give over her purse or her handbag, or whatever it was she wanted. The words "stand and deliver" suddenly came into Amelia's mind (the brain really did do the oddest things under stress). Highwayman girl – highwaygirl – you never heard of "highwaywomen," did you? Did they exist? Were Highwaymen like pirates and robber barons – more myth than fact? What was a robber baron? The highwaygirl wasn't saying, "Stand and deliver." She was saying what she usually said – "Help me."

No, she wasn't. She was saying, "Help him, help him," pointing at a fat man on a bench who was wheezing the same death wheeze as Victor except that Victor had suffocated passively and the fat man on the bench was fighting the air around him, as if he could scoop up oxygen with his hands. "Help him," the yellow-haired girl said again, but Amelia stood paralyzed, staring at the dying fat man. For the life of her she couldn't think of a single thing she could do that would be of any help to him.

Fortunately for the fat man, Julia appeared at that moment, triumphantly bearing aloft two cones like someone (an actress perhaps) carrying naming torches. When she saw what was happening she dropped the ice cream and ran toward the bench, pulling her Ventolin inhaler from her handbag and holding it to the fat man's gaping fish mouth. Then she produced her mobile and thrust it at Amelia, shouting, "Phone an ambulance!" as if she were back in Casualty, but Amelia couldn't even put out a hand to take the phone from her. "For fuck's sake, Milly," Julia snapped and gave the phone instead to the yellow-haired girl, who might be retarded and stupid and filthy and homeless and addicted to drugs, but at least, unlike Amelia, she was capable of dialing 999 and saving someone's life.

Julia scrambled eggs for their supper, and after they had eaten she phoned the hospital and reported back to Amelia, "He's alright apparently," and Amelia said, "Really?" and Julia said, "Don't you care?" and Amelia said, "No." Because she didn't, not really, maybe in theory but not in her heart because why should she care for someone else (how could she care for someone else) when nobody cared about her? And Julia said, "Oh, for Christ's sake, Amelia, pull yourself together" (which, everyone knew, was something you weren't supposed to say to depressed people), and Amelia ran into the back garden in tears and flung herself down on the grass and sobbed.

The ground was hard and uncomfortable beneath her body, although it was still warm from the day's heat, and she suddenly remembered what it had felt like sleeping in the tent. In fact this was almost the exact spot where the tent had been pitched that fateful night. Amelia sat up and looked around. Here was where Olivia had slept. She ran her hand over the grass, as if Olivia's shape might have flattened it. Here Olivia had said, "Night-night, Milly," full of sleep and happiness, clutching Blue Mouse in her arms. Amelia had watched her fall asleep and had felt wise and grown-up and responsible because she was the one who had been put in charge by Rosemary, the only one who was allowed to sleep outside in the tent. With Olivia. Was "Milly" the last word Olivia had ever said? Or were there other words before the silence – dreadful words of fear and mortal terror that Amelia could never, would never, bring herself to imagine? Her heart started beating fast at the thought of the terror Olivia must have endured. No, don't think.

Olivia was close, she was palpable. Where was she? Amelia stood up too quickly and felt dizzy as she stumbled around in the grass trying to sense a direction, as if her body were a divining rod. No, she had to stop and listen. If she listened she would hear her. And then very faintly she did hear something, a tiny mewling from the other side of the wall, a cat, not Olivia, but a sign surely. She tried opening the wooden door in the wall, tugging off the ivy that was binding it shut. She pulled hard on its rusty old hinges until she managed to squeeze through an opening and found herself in the lane.

The cat, tiny, half cat, half kitten, looked cowed when it saw her but it didn't run away, and Amelia bent down and tried to make herself smaller and friendlier (fat chance) and held out her hand to it and said, "Here, kitty, kitty. Good kitty," until it advanced cautiously toward her and she was able to stroke its small, bony body. Eventually, after much cajoling, it allowed her to pick it up and she pressed her face into its fur and wondered if maybe she could keep it.

The door opposite, the one that led into Mrs. Rain's garden, was open. They used to climb over a broken-down part of the wall and hide in that garden when they were small. Amelia never thought of Mrs. Rain as still being alive. Sylvia had fallen out of her beech tree and broken her arm.

"Shall we take a little look?" Amelia whispered to the cat.

Yes, this had been an orchard. They used to steal the apples and plums. And they knocked on the door and shouted, "Is the witch at home?" and then ran away, terrified. Sylvia, Sylvia was always the ringleader, of course. Sylvia the tormentor. Sylvia had just been Sylvia then, but looking back Amelia thought what an odd powerful child Sylvia was, always leading them into trouble.

It was a huge garden, out of proportion to the size of the house The garden had been overgrown when they were children, and now it had reverted to nature. How wonderful if she could get her hands on all that untamed wilderness. She could replant the orchard, put in a wildlife pond, an arch of roses, perhaps a herbaceous border to rival Newnham's.

The sense of Olivia was even stronger in here. Amelia imagined her hiding behind a tree, like a sprite, leading her on. Amelia's feet caught on the couch grass and sticky willow, she was stung by nettles and scratched by briars, but she was being drawn onward by an invisible hand until she almost stumbled over the dark shape on the ground, a bundle of rags and twigs dropped beneath a tree –

"Frisky," Jackson said, nodding at the kitten in Amelia's arms. Amelia couldn't let go of the kitten. A policewoman had walked Amelia home and made her a cup of tea. (Why was it always the women? Still?) There were a lot of police in Victor's kitchen – they seemed to be using it as a makeshift command center (Was that the word?). Woken by the commotion, a sleepy Julia wandered into the kitchen and looked astonished. She was half naked, of course, wearing just her knickers and a T-shirt and completely unbothered by the fact. Oh, Mr. Brodie, we can't keep meeting like this.

When Amelia had touched old Mrs. Rain's dead body she had felt as fragile and bony as the cat in her arms. The police had put a little marquee over her body and had erected arc lights and you wouldn't do that for an old woman that died of natural causes, which meant that Amelia had not just discovered a dead body, she had discovered a murdered body. A shiver spasmed her body and woke the cat. It jumped out of her arms and Julia went into full Kitty, kitty, kitty mode, picking it up and holding it against her obvious breasts, and Amelia said, "For God's sake, Julia, put some clothes on," and Julia made a face at her and sauntered out of the kitchen, the cat still in her arms, while all the policemen watched her bottom. Thank God she wasn't wearing a thong – which was surely the most ridiculous piece of underwear ever invented, apart from crotchless knickers, of course, because it was all about sex – "Amelia, do you want more tea?" Jackson was regarding her with concern, as if she were a mental patient.

It was almost morning and they had only just gone to bed. She could still hear the police, cars departing and arriving, the sound of their radios. At least Sylvia's room was at the front of the house, away from the arc lights. She didn't even have the cat now because it had followed Julia to her room. She was never going to sleep, not unless she took something. Julia kept her sleeping tablets in the bathroom. Julia always had prescription drugs of one kind or another, it was part of the drama of her life. Amelia couldn't read the bottle without her glasses, but then what did it matter? Did two send you to sleep, four into a deeper sleep? How about ten, where would they send you? They were so tiny! Like children's pills.

Rosemary used to give them a junior aspirin every day, even when there was nothing wrong with them. That must be where Julia got it from. Rosemary had always had a medicine chest of drugs, even before she was dying. How about twenty? That would be a long sleep. Nothing had saved Rosemary, of course, but then nothing would save any of them, would it? Thirty? What if they just made you groggy? Jackson thought she was ridiculous and she was never going to find Olivia and now Julia had a cat and nothing was fair.

No one wanted her, even her own father didn't find her attractive enough to want her. Not fair. Not one little bit. Not fair, not fair, not fair. The whole bottle? Because it wasn't fair. Not fair, not fair, not fair. Can you help me? No.

Notfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnot fairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfairnotfair –

"Milly, are you alright? Milly? Milly?"