Case Histories
Page 1
What the critics wrote about
Case Histories
‘The best mystery of the decade. There are actually four mysteries, nesting like Russian dolls, and when they begin to fit together, I defy any reader not to feel a combination of delight and amazement. Case Histories is the literary equivalent of a triple axel. I read it once for pleasure and then again just to see how it was done. This is the kind of book you shove in people’s faces, saying “You gotta read this!” ’
Stephen King
‘Atkinson is very good indeed, and she makes her tragedies unbearably small-scale and human.… More satisfying than many detective novels – not just because it is so well-written, but in its defiant refusal to let the dark side win.… Everyone who picks it up will feel compelled to follow it through to the last page – and not just for closure.’
The Guardian
‘Ms Atkinson simply starts her story, grabs hold of the reader and doesn’t let go. Case Histories is a wonderfully tricky book … the lifelike characters are what make it such a compelling hybrid: part complex family drama, part mystery. It winds up having more depth and vividness than ordinary thrillers and more thrills than ordinary fiction, with a constant awareness of perils swirling beneath its surface.’
The New York Times
‘A wonderful novel told by a great storyteller who knows just how to create a voice, an image, a metaphor. On the way, Brodie learns something about himself, not in the clichéd way one expects. This witty and literate tale deserves to be read and reread.’
The Globe and Mail
‘As satisfying as anything dreamed up by Raymond Chandler, the beauty of the novel lies in its spot-on characterisations, pitch perfect observations of contemporary culture and a sharp, wisecracking narrative voice.’
Time Out
‘Brilliant and engaging … Every character comes to life in surprising and deeply human ways.’
San Francisco Chronicle
‘So exuberant, so empathetic, that it makes most murder-mystery page-turners feel as lifeless as the corpses they are strewn with.’
The New York Times Book Review
‘A greedy feast of a story by a masterful author … a more profound, exciting and lingering read than a crime novel. What it says about the randomness of life, the importance of truth and the essential ubiquity of goodness will stay with you for a long time after you’ve have finished reading it.’
Daily Express (UK)
‘One of the most brilliantly playful, witty and original writers we have … Atkinson’s pin-sharp observation, her massive and consistent talent for comedy, her sharp eye for linguistic nonsense, might delude you into thinking this is a book you can relax into, just waiting for the jokes to flow … what you remember when you close the book [is] a curious feeling you hardly ever experience on finishing a crime novel: as though you’ve laughed out loud in church.’
The Scotsman
‘Her best book yet … a much more grittily realistic, even politically engaged, novel than she has produced before … Atkinson has not lost her wicked sense of humour, her delight in eccentricity … movingly evokes parental love. Tethered firmly to the powerful emotions and credible characters, Case Histories is a triumphant return to form: a tragicomedy for our times.’
Sunday Telegraph (UK)
‘At heart a comic novelist, who explores the relationship between comedy and crime … Kate Atkinson’s distinctive novelistic skills – the depiction of a cast of odd characters with secrets, sudden descents into horror, and consistently fine, accurate period detail … have found their literary home.’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Sharp humour, together with a number of unexpected twists, make this a typically pacy and intelligent read.’
Daily Mail(UK)
‘Dark and funny … an amazing performance.’
Chicago Tribune
Also by
KATE
ATKINSON
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
A surprising, tragicomic and subversive family saga set in York, Kate Atkinson’s prizewinning first novel, like all her novels, has a mystery at its heart.
‘Little short of a masterpiece’
Daily Mail
Human Croquet
A multilayered, moving novel about the forest of Arden, a girl who drops in and out of time, and the heartrending mystery of a lost mother.
‘Brilliant and engrossing’
Penelope Fitzgerald
Emotionally Weird
Set in Dundee, this clever, comic novel depicts student life in all its wild chaos, and a girl’s poignant quest for her father.
‘Achingly funny … executed with wit and mischief’
Meera Syal
Not the End of the World
Kate Atkinson’s first collection of short stories – playful and profound.
‘Moving and funny, and crammed with incidental wisdom’
Sunday Times
Featuring Jackson Brodie:
One Good Turn
Jackson Brodie, in Edinburgh during the Festival, is drawn into a vortex of crimes and mysteries, each containing a kernel of the next, like a set of nesting Russian dolls.
‘The most fun I’ve had with a novel this year’
Ian Rankin
When Will There Be Good News?
A six-year-old girl witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later, Jackson Brodie is on a fatal journey that will hurtle him into its aftermath.
‘Genius … insightful, often funny, life-affirming’
Sunday Telegraph
Copyright © 2004 Kate Atkinson
Anchor Canada edition published 2010
Published by arrangement with Transworld Publishers, a division of Random House Group Ltd.
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Anchor Canada is a registered trademark.
Library and Archives of Canada Cataloguing in Publication has been applied for
eISBN: 978-0-385-67131-6
Case Histories is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in Canada by Anchor Canada,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website: www.randomhouse.ca
v3.1
For Anne McIntyre
With thanks to:
My agent, Peter Straus
My editor, Marianne Velmans
Maureen Allan, Helen Clyne, Umar Salam, Ali Smith and Sarah Wood for Cambridge in July, with special gratitude to Ali Smith
Reagan Arthur, Eve Atkinson-Worden, Helen Clyne and Marianne Velmans for being enthusiastic manuscript readers
My cousin, Major Michael Keech
Stephen Cotton, he knows why
David Lindgren for the sheep story
And last, but not least, Russell Equi, god of all things vehicular
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1 - Case History No. 1 1970: Family Plot
Chapter 2 - Case History No. 2 1994: Just a Normal Day
/> Chapter 3 - Case History No. 3 1979: Everything from Duty, Nothing from Love
Chapter 4 - Jackson
Chapter 5 - Amelia
Chapter 6 - Theo: 2004
Chapter 7 - Caroline
Chapter 8 - Jackson
Chapter 9 - Amelia
Chapter 10 - Theo
Chapter 11 - Jackson
Chapter 12 - Caroline
Chapter 13 - Amelia
Chapter 14 - Jackson
Chapter 15 - Theo
Chapter 16 - Caroline
Chapter 17 - Jackson
Chapter 18 - Amelia
Chapter 19 - Jackson
Chapter 20 - Case History No. 4 1971: Holy Girls
Chapter 21 - Jackson
Chapter 22 - Caroline
Chapter 23 - Case History No. 3 1979: Everything from Duty, Nothing from Love
Chapter 24 - Theo
Chapter 25 - Case History No. 2 1994: Just a Normal Day
Chapter 26 - Amelia
Chapter 27 - Case History No. 1 1970: Family Plot
Chapter 28 - And Julia Said
1
Case History No. 1 1970
Family Plot
HOW LUCKY WERE THEY? A HEAT WAVE IN THE MIDDLE of the school holidays, exactly where it belonged. Every morning the sun was up long before they were, making a mockery of the flimsy summer curtains that hung limply at their bedroom windows, a sun already hot and sticky with promise before Olivia even opened her eyes. Olivia, as reliable as a rooster, always the first to wake, so that no one in the house had bothered with an alarm clock since she was born three years ago.
Olivia, the youngest and therefore the one currently sleeping in the small back bedroom with the nursery-rhyme wallpaper, a room that all of them had occupied and been ousted from in turn. Olivia, as cute as a button, they were all agreed, even Julia who had taken a long time to get over being displaced as the baby of the family, a position she had occupied for five satisfying years before Olivia came along.
Rosemary, their mother, said that she wished Olivia could stay at this age for ever because she was so lovable. They had never heard her use that word to describe any of them. They had not even realized that such a word existed in her vocabulary, which was usually restricted to tedious commands – come here, go away, be quiet, and – most frequent of all – stop that. Sometimes she would walk into a room or appear in the garden, glare at them and say, whatever it is you’re doing, don’t, and then simply walk away again, leaving them feeling aggrieved and badly done by, even when caught red-handed in the middle of some piece of mischief – devised by Sylvia usually.
Their capacity for wrongdoing, especially under Sylvia’s reckless leadership, was apparently limitless. The eldest three were (everyone agreed) ‘a handful’, too close together in age to be distinguishable to their mother so that they had evolved into a collective child to which she found it hard to attribute individual details and which she addressed at random – Julia-Sylvia-Amelia-whoever you are – said in an exasperated tone as if it was their fault there were so many of them. Olivia was usually excluded from this weary litany; Rosemary never seemed to get her mixed up with the rest of them.
They had supposed Olivia would be the last to occupy the small back bedroom and that one day the nursery-rhyme wallpaper would finally be scraped off (by their harassed mother because their father said hiring a professional decorator was a waste of money) and be replaced by something more grown-up – flowers or perhaps ponies, although anything would be better than the Elastoplast pink adorning the room that Julia and Amelia shared, a colour that had looked so promising to the two of them on the paint chart and proved so alarming on the walls and which their mother said she didn’t have the time or money (or energy) to replace.
Now it transpired that Olivia was going to be undertaking the same rite of passage as her older sisters, leaving behind the – rather badly aligned – Humpty-Dumptys and Little Miss Muffets to make way for an afterthought whose advent had been announced, in a rather offhand way, by Rosemary the previous day as she dished out a makeshift lunch of corned-beef sandwiches and orange squash on the lawn.
‘Wasn’t Olivia the afterthought?’ Sylvia said to no one in particular, and Rosemary frowned at her eldest daughter as if she had just noticed her for the first time. Sylvia, thirteen and until recently an enthusiastic child (many people would have said overenthusiastic), promised to be a mordant cynic in her teenage years. Gawky, bespectacled Sylvia, her teeth recently caged in ugly orthodontic braces, had greasy hair, a hooting laugh and the long, thin fingers and toes of a creature from outer space. Well-meaning people called her an ‘ugly duckling’ (said to her face, as if it was a compliment, which was certainly not how it was taken by Sylvia), imagining a future Sylvia casting off her braces, acquiring contact lenses and a bosom, and blossoming into a swan. Rosemary did not see the swan in Sylvia, especially when she had a shred of corned beef stuck in her braces. Sylvia had recently developed an unhealthy obsession with religion, claiming that God had spoken to her. Rosemary wondered if it was a normal phase that adolescent girls went through, if God was merely an alternative to pop stars or ponies. Rosemary decided it was best to ignore Sylvia’s tête-à-têtes with the Almighty. And at least conversations with God were free, whereas the upkeep on a pony would have cost a fortune.
And the peculiar fainting fits that their GP said were on account of Sylvia ‘outgrowing her strength’ – a medically dubious explanation if ever there was one (in Rosemary’s opinion). Rosemary decided to ignore the fainting fits as well. They were probably just Sylvia’s way of getting attention.
Rosemary married their father Victor when she was eighteen years old – only five years older than Sylvia was now. The idea that Sylvia might be grown-up enough in five years’ time to marry anyone struck Rosemary as ridiculous and reinforced her belief that her own parents should have stepped in and stopped her marrying Victor, should have pointed out that she was a mere child and he was a thirty-six-year-old man. She often found herself wanting to remonstrate with her mother and father about their lack of parental care, but her mother had succumbed to stomach cancer not long after Amelia was born and her father had remarried and moved to Ipswich, where he spent most of his days in the bookies and all of his evenings in the pub.
If, in five years’ time, Sylvia brought home a thirty-six-year-old, cradle-snatching fiancé (particularly if he claimed to be a great mathematician) then Rosemary thought she would probably cut his heart out with the carving knife. This thought was so agreeable that the afterthought’s annunciation was temporarily forgotten and Rosemary allowed them all to run out to the ice-cream van when it declared its own melodic arrival in the street.
The Sylvia-Amelia-Julia trio knew that there was no such thing as an afterthought and the ‘foetus’, as Sylvia insisted on calling it (she was keen on science subjects), that was making their mother so irritable and lethargic was probably their father’s last-ditch attempt to acquire a son. He was not a father who doted on daughters, he showed no real fondness for any of them, only Sylvia occasionally winning his respect because she was ‘good at maths’. Victor was a mathematician and lived a rarefied life of the mind where his family were allowed no trespass. This was made easy by the fact that he spent hardly any time with them: he was either in the department or in his rooms in college and when he was home he shut himself in his study, occasionally with his students but usually on his own. Their father had never taken them to the open-air pool on Jesus Green, played rousing games of Snap or Donkey, never tossed them in the air and caught them or pushed them on a swing, had never taken them punting on the river or walking on the Fens or on educational trips to the Fitzwilliam. More like an absence than a presence, everything he was – and was not – was represented by the sacrosanct space of his study.
They would have been surprised to know that the study had once been a bright parlour with a view of the back garden, a room where previous occupants of the house had enjoyed ple
asant breakfasts, where women had whiled away the afternoons with sewing and romantic novels, and where in the evenings the family had gathered to play cribbage or Scrabble while listening to a radio play. All of these activities had been envisaged by a newly married Rosemary when the house was first bought – in 1956, at a price way beyond their budget – but Victor immediately claimed the room as his own and somehow managed to transform it into a sunless place, crammed with heavy bookshelves and ugly oak filing cabinets, and reeking of the untipped Capstans that he smoked. The loss of the room was as nothing to the loss of the way of life that Rosemary had planned to fill it with.
What he actually did in there was a mystery to all of them. Something so important, apparently, that his home life was trifling in comparison. Their mother said he was a great mathematician, at work on a piece of research that would one day make him famous, yet on the rare occasions when the study door was left open and they caught a glimpse of their father at work, all he seemed to be doing was sitting at his desk, scowling into empty space.
He was not to be disturbed when he was working, especially not by shrieking, screaming, savage little girls. The complete inability of those same savage little girls to abstain from the shrieking and the screaming (not to mention the yelling, the blubbing, and the strange howling like a pack of wolves that Victor had never managed to fathom) made for a fragile relationship between father and daughters.
Rosemary’s chastisements may have washed over them like water but the sight of Victor lumbering out of his study, roused like a bear from hibernation, was strangely terrifying and although they spent their lives challenging all that was outlawed by their mother, they never once thought of exploring the forbidden interior of the study. The only time they were ushered into the gloomy depths of Victor’s den was for help with their maths homework. This wasn’t so bad for Sylvia, who had a fighting chance of understanding the greasy pencil marks with which an impatient Victor covered endless pages of ruled paper, but as far as Julia and Amelia were concerned Victor’s signs and symbols were as mysterious as ancient hieroglyphs. If they thought of the study at all, which they tried not to, they thought of it as a torture chamber. Victor blamed Rosemary for their innumeracy – it was clearly their mother’s deficient female brain they had inherited.