Case Histories

by Kate Atkinson

  She’d been round to the Jessops’ quite a few times without any babysitting being involved. She’d grown to like Kim. Being Kim’s friend made her feel more like a woman and less like a girl. Once, after a supper of (tough) steak and chips, Kim had plucked her eyebrows and given her a manicure, although usually she visited on a Saturday afternoon when Stan wasn’t there and they just sat in the garden while Nina crawled around on the grass. Stan played in an amateur football team on Saturdays. ‘You’ve got to let them off the leash sometimes,’ Kim said, as if she was giving tips on how to keep a difficult pet. That was when she’d encountered Stuart Lappin for the first time – he was mowing his lawn next door. When he finished, he looked over the fence and offered to do the Jessops’ lawn and Kim kept on filing her nails and said loudly to him, ‘No, thank you, Stuart,’ without making eye contact. It seemed a bit rude to Laura and she gave ‘Stuart’ an encouraging smile to compensate.

  ‘I can’t stand him,’ Kim hissed when he had disappeared, ‘he’s always trying to be friendly, he gives me the creeps. He’s in his thirties and he still lives with his mother, it’s pathetic,’ and Laura said, ‘He looks harmless,’ and Kim said, ‘Those are the ones you’ve got to look out for.’

  The last time was just before her final exam. Mr Jessop had suggested some extra tuition and she didn’t think anything of it because he’d offered it to some of the others. She was disappointed that Kim wasn’t at home. Stan said, ‘Oh, she’s taken Nina to her mother’s,’ very offhand, as if he couldn’t care less what his wife was doing. He had a pad of paper and a couple of textbooks out on the dining-room table but she didn’t even get to sit down before he started, coming at her from behind, arms round her waist, trying to kiss the back of her neck, and she could smell alcohol on his breath, which was absolutely disgusting. She was furious, how could he, it was so unethical. She jabbed him with her elbows and yelled at him to get off her, and he said, ‘Oh, come on, Laura, you’ve done it with half the boys in your class, it’s time you had a real man, you know you want it.’ The bastard, the fucking bastard! She stamped hard on his foot, the way they taught you in self-defence, but it was difficult because he was still holding her really tightly round the waist and she started to get panicky when she realized she couldn’t get away from him. He was twisting her round so that he could get his lips on hers and then he put his hand on her crotch, thank God she was wearing jeans, and it meant he had less of a grip on her and she managed to get far enough away from him to jab a finger into one of his eyes. And then she ran.

  * * *

  She’d been revising with Josh in the churchyard of Little St Mary’s. It was hot and they’d started fooling around a bit, no one ever went in that place, but then there was a rustling of leaves as if an animal was making its way through the summer vegetation and then a man’s face suddenly popped up from behind a gravestone and she’d shrieked in a really girly way, and Josh had got all manly despite having his jeans round his ankles and shouted at the guy to fuck off and then they had collapsed with laughter. She thought the man looked vaguely familiar but it was only when he ordered a half of lager shandy from her in the bar a couple of weeks later that she realized he was the Jessops’ lawn-mowing neighbour, but she couldn’t remember his name. Luckily he didn’t seem to recognize her at all.

  By then everyone had gone: Christina was teaching in Tanzania for a year, Ayshea was spending the summer in France, Joanna was Euro-railing with Pansy, Emma was in Peru (Emma, for God’s sake!) and Josh was a camp counsellor in the middle of nowhere in Michigan. She felt like she’d been deserted. They all agreed to meet up in front of the Hobbs Pavilion on Parker’s Piece in ten years’ time, but how likely was that really? Mr Jessop had tried to organize a ‘farewell get-together’ for his class but everyone had been busy – not that she would have gone, she hadn’t seen him since he’d tried it on with her. Dad, bless his heart, said, ‘Don’t you want to go travelling then, Laura?’ even though it would have been his idea of living hell for her to be abroad somewhere, somewhere he couldn’t pick her up from in the car at the end of an evening.

  Then she bumped into him coming out of Heffers bookshop and she said, ‘Hello,’ in a neutral kind of way because it wasn’t as if she was looking to get into a conversation with the guy or anything and then the next day there was this teddy bear left on the doorstep, not that she really connected the two things, not consciously anyway, it was just this stupid-looking bear, an ugly pink thing with eyes that were all wrong, not like the cute old-fashioned ones Laura had piled on her bed. The bear on the doorstep was the kind of thing that someone with no taste would buy if they thought you liked teddy bears.

  She went up to London for the day (she was beginning to hate everyone for having left Cambridge for the summer). She visited the British Museum and then went and bought some new clothes but it wasn’t much fun on her own. She didn’t see him getting on at King’s Cross but she saw him walking into her carriage about ten minutes after the train had pulled out of the station – she was sure he was looking for her, even though when he spotted her he tried to look surprised. Luckily, there were no empty seats near her but when she got up at Cambridge he followed her down the carriage and stood at the door with her and spoke for the first time, saying, ‘Are you getting off here?’ which was a bloody stupid question as it was obvious she was but she just said, ‘Yes,’ and then when they were on the platform he said, ‘Can I give you a lift home, my car’s in the car park?’ and she said, ‘No, thanks, my dad’s meeting me,’ and hurried away from him. And she remembered his name was Stuart. Kim was right, he was pathetic. She couldn’t go and see Kim any more because that would probably mean seeing Mr Jessop. She phoned the house a couple of times and he always answered and she put the phone down and said nothing. The last time, he’d shouted down the phone, ‘Kim – is that you? Where the fuck are you?’ so she figured things couldn’t be too good between them.

  Her last night in the bar and he came in and sat in the corner and made his one half-pint of lager shandy last an hour. When he got up to leave he said to her, ‘I don’t know why you’re ignoring me,’ and she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ and he said, ‘You know there’s an incredible bond between us, you shouldn’t deny it,’ and she was suddenly furious (the guy was a fucking nutter, for God’s sake) because she’d been feeling sorry for him but really he was just intruding into her life uninvited – just like Mr Jessop – and she said, ‘Look, just leave me alone will you, my dad’s a solicitor and he could make real trouble for you if you keep turning up like this,’ and he said, ‘Your father can’t stop our love,’ and then he slunk away and the bar manager said, ‘Everything OK?’ and she said, ‘Yeah, just some guy who can’t hold his drink.’ Of course, she would never have told her father, he would have worried himself to death. And anyway Stuart Lappin was harmless. He was a total freak but he was harmless.

  The good thing about working in the bar was that she only worked the evening shift and had the day to herself. It was going to be a real drag being stuck in an office all day for the rest of the summer. Dad was so happy and he was upset that he had to go to Peterborough instead of being there for her first day.

  She made him promise to walk to the station because he was (supposedly) on a new, healthy regime after he’d been to the doctor.

  ‘Don’t forget your inhaler, Dad,’ she said to him as he was leaving the house and he patted his jacket pocket to prove it was in there and said, ‘Cheryl will show you the ropes. I’ll be back in the office before lunch, maybe we can go out?’ and she said, ‘That would be nice, Dad.’ And then she saw him off at the front door, kissing him on the cheek, saying, ‘I love you, Dad,’ and he said, ‘Love you too, sweetheart,’ and she’d watched him walk down the street because she suddenly had a horrible feeling that she wasn’t going to see him again but when he got to the corner and turned back to look at her she gave him a cheerful wave because she didn’t want him to know that she worried about h
im because he worried enough for the two of them.

  She watched him disappear round the corner and felt her heart fill up and she wondered if she’d ever meet anyone she loved as much as her father. And then she cleared the breakfast table and loaded the dishwasher and made sure the house was clean and tidy for them both to come home to later.

  26

  Amelia

  NO MORE SLATERS, NO MORE GARYS AND CRAIGS AND Darryls. No more Philip and his yapping Pekinese. No more Oxford. No more old Amelia. A fresh start, a new person.

  She had thought it might be an orgy, but it really was just the barbecue they had promised (‘Oh, do come.’) and the conversation was about the difficulty of finding a good plumber and how to keep snails off delphiniums (‘Copper tape,’ Amelia offered, and they all said, ‘Really? How fascinating!’). The only difference was that they were all naked.

  When she arrived on the river bank (feeling overdressed and terrified), Cooper (‘Cooper Lock, erstwhile history professor at St Cat’s, now a ne’er-do-well,’) strode towards her, his balls swinging, and said, ‘Amelia, you came, how wonderful,’ and Jean (‘Jean Stanton, lawyer, amateur rock climber, local Conservative Party secretary’) rushed up, all smiles and small bouncing breasts, and said, ‘Good show. Everyone, this is Amelia Land, she’s so interesting.’

  And then she had swum naked in the river with them and it had been just as she remembered it except that there was no swimming costume between her body and the water and she could feel the plants and weeds streaming over her like thick wet ribbons. And then they ate grilled sausages and steaks and drank South African Chardonnay as the twilight deepened and then later she had lain next to Jean, in Jean’s pine sleigh bed in an attic room painted white and scented by Diptyque candles, the cost of one of which would probably have kept a family in Bangladesh for a year. But Amelia managed to ignore this fact, as she managed to ignore the fact that Jean was the secretary of the local Conservative Party (although obviously Jean’s politics couldn’t remain off the conversational agenda for ever), and Amelia could ignore these things and many more other things because even though Jean was in her fifties she had a hard, lithe, brown body that she slid along Amelia’s own pale, soft body (she felt like a sea creature that had been shelled) and Jean said, ‘You’re luscious, Amelia, like a big ripe melon,’ and the old Amelia would have snorted with derision at this point but the new Amelia cried out like a startled bird because Jean was lapping at her labia like a cat (‘Oh, call it a cunt, Amelia, don’t be shy,’) and giving her her first ever orgasm.

  * * *

  And it was funny because she really had wanted to die, and now she really wanted to live. Just like that. Really and truly there wasn’t much more she could ask for. She had a huge garden to look after, as many cats as she could handle and she had experienced an orgasm. Was she really a lesbian? She still wanted Jackson. ‘Everyone’s bi these days,’ Jean said nonchalantly. Amelia thought she might introduce Jean to Julia. She would have liked just once to see Julia look shocked (‘Jean, this is Julia, my sister. Julia, this is Jean, my lover. Henry? Oh, everyone’s bi these days, Julia, didn’t you know that?’ Hah!). She must try to be nicer to Julia, she was her sister, after all.

  They had been unsure what to do with Olivia. Neither of them wanted to cremate her, to lose what little they had, so hard won after all this time. On the other hand, she had been buried in the dark alone for so long that it seemed wrong to put her back in the ground. If it hadn’t been against all social practice (and probably illegal) Amelia would have kept her bones on display, made a kind of reliquary, a shrine. In the end they buried her, in a tiny white coffin, alongside Annabelle, the afterthought baby, on top of Rosemary’s coffin in the family plot. Amelia and Julia both sobbed throughout the funeral. The local press had tried to take photographs (‘Lost local tot finally laid to rest’) and Jackson’s big black friend had got very demonstrative with them. Amelia found Howell both terrifying and ravishing at the same time (thereby testifying to her bisexual nature, she supposed) and much more politically correct than Jean, of course. Jackson – utterly bizarre – was accompanied by the yellow-haired homeless girl, who was now pink-haired and no longer homeless. ‘Why?’ Amelia said to Jackson, and Jackson said, ‘Why not?’ and Amelia said, ‘Because—’ but Julia came along and dragged her away.

  Did it feel better to have found Olivia? To know that she had wandered off, wandered off while she was in her care? Amelia had been fast asleep and her sister had wandered off and died. Didn’t that make it her fault? Then Jackson had taken her aside at the funeral and said, ‘I’m going to break the sanctity of the confessional,’ as if he was a priest. He would have made a very good priest. The thought of Jackson as a priest was very alluring, in a perverted kind of way. ‘I’m going to tell you what happened,’ he said, ‘and then you have to decide what you want to do about it.’ He didn’t tell Julia, he told her. She finally became the keeper of a secret.

  So Olivia would have a shrine, she would have a garden. And Amelia would fill Binky Rain’s garden with roses, with Duchesse d’Angoulêmes and Félicité Parmentiers, Eglantynes and Gertrude Jekylls, the pale rosettes of the Boule de Neige and the fragrant peachy Perdita, for their own lost girl.

  27

  Case History No. 1 1970

  Family Plot

  IT WAS SO HOT. TOO HOT TO SLEEP. THE STREET LIGHT SHONE through the thin summer curtains like a secondary, sickly sun. She still had a headache, like a rope tied tightly round her skull. Perhaps this was what a crown of thorns felt like. God must be making her suffer for a reason. Was it a punishment? Had she done something bad? Something worse than usual? She’d slapped Julia earlier today but she was always slapping Julia, and she’d put nettles in Amelia’s bed yesterday but Amelia was being a prig and deserved it. And she’d been horrible to Mummy, but Mummy had been horrible to her.

  Sylvia took three junior aspirins from a bottle in the bathroom cabinet. There were always a lot of bottles of medicine in the cabinet; some had been there for ever. Their mother liked medicine. She liked medicine more than she liked them.

  It said two o’clock on the illuminated dial of the big alarm clock beside her mother’s bed. Sylvia swept her little Ever Ready torch over the bed. Their father was snoring like a pig. He was a pig, a big mathematical pig. He was wearing striped pyjamas and her mother was wearing a cotton nightdress with a tired frill around the neck. Their parents had flung the covers off and were lying with their limbs askew as if they had been dropped from a height on to the bed. If she was a murderer she could have killed them right there in their beds without them ever knowing what had happened to them – she could stab them or shoot them or chop them with an axe and there would be nothing they could do about it.

  Sylvia liked wandering the house at night, it was her own secret life that no one else knew about. It made her powerful, as if she could see their secrets too. She wandered into Julia’s room. No chance of disturbing her sleep: you could have pushed her out of bed on to the floor and jumped on Julia and she wouldn’t have woken up. You could have put a pillow over her face and suffocated her and she would have known nothing about it. She was drenched in sweat, you couldn’t even put your hand near her she was so hot, and you could hear her breath being squeezed in and out of her lungs.

  Sylvia suddenly realized that Amelia’s bed was empty. Where was she? Did she have a secret, wandering night life too? Not Amelia – she didn’t have the initiative (Sylvia’s new word) for a secret life. Was she sleeping with Olivia? Sylvia hurried to Olivia’s room and found Olivia was gone from her bed too. Half of them missing: not taken by aliens, surely? If aliens existed – and Sylvia suspected they did – God must have created them, because God created everything, didn’t he? Or had he not actually created everything, only the matter in our own galaxy? And if there were other worlds then they must have been created by other gods, alien gods. Was that a blasphemous thought?

  There wasn’t really anyone she could consult wit
h over these knotty theological problems. She wasn’t allowed to go to church, Daddy didn’t believe in God (or aliens) and the religious education teacher at school had told her that she had to stop ‘bothering’ her so much. Imagine Jesus saying, ‘Go away, don’t bother me so much.’ God would probably send the religious education teacher straight to hell. It was very difficult when you had been brought up by an atheist who was a mathematical pig and a mother who couldn’t care less and then you heard the voice of God. There was so much she didn’t know – but then look at Joan of Arc, she was an ignorant French peasant and she’d managed, and Sylvia was neither ignorant nor a peasant. After God spoke to her Sylvia began to read the Bible, at night under the bedcovers by the light of her trusty Ever Ready torch. The Bible bore no relation to Sylvia’s life in any way. That alone made it very attractive.

  Sylvia tried to recollect bedtime the previous evening but she could form only a hazy memory. She had felt sick with the heat and the sun and gone to bed before anyone else. The minute her back was turned had Mummy allowed Amelia and Olivia to sleep in the tent? Would she? Mummy had been so adamant all summer (for no good reason whatsoever) that they couldn’t sleep outside.

  Sylvia crept downstairs, avoiding the two steps that creaked. The back door was unlocked so that anyone could have walked right in and done the aforementioned murdering in the beds. It was unlocked, of course, because Amelia and Olivia were sleeping in the tent. It would be dawn soon, she could already hear a solitary bird greeting the morning. The grass on the lawn was wet. Where did all the dew come from when it was so hot and dry during the day? She must look it up in a book. She trod carefully across the lawn in case she stood on the soft, sluggy body of some other nocturnal creature leading its own secret life.