Case Histories

Amelia was awake early, too early. She wouldn't have minded if she'd been at home – her real home, in Oxford – but she didn't want to rattle around on her own in this place and Julia wouldn't be up for ages – Amelia sometimes wondered if her sister's genes hadn't been spliced with a cat's. Julia scoffed at the "provincial hours" that Amelia kept -Julia hadn't been in her bed before two in the morning since they arrived, emerging bleary-eyed at midday, begging hoarsely for coffee ("Sweetie, please,") as if she had been on some great nighttime quest that had tested her nerves and spirit, rather than having spent the time slumped on the sofa with a bottle of red wine, watching long-forgotten films on cable.

It had amazed them when they discovered that Victor – who neither of them could remember ever having watched television – not only owned a huge wide-screen set but also subscribed to cable – and to everything, not just sport and films but all of the X-rated channels. Amelia had been shocked, not so much by the "adult" content of these (although it was disgusting enough) but by the idea of their own father sitting there, night after night, in his old armchair watching Red Hot Girls and God knows what other filth. She was relieved that Julia – usually so airily tolerant of the shortcomings of the male sex – was as horrified as she was. One of the first things they did was to get rid of the armchair.

Amelia only watched the news and documentaries on television, occasionally the Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday, and was astonished at the absolute crud on offer twenty-four hours a day. Did this supply some sort of narrative in people's lives? Did they honestly think that this kind of balderdash was a high point of evolution? "Oh, lighten up, Milly," Julia (predictably) said. "What does it matter what people do? At the end of the day we're all dead."

"Well, obviously," Amelia said.

As soon as they cleared the house of Victor and his worldly goods they would be able to put it on the market and be done with it. Or at least, get it ready to put on the market, as Victor's solicitor had muttered "probate" with a kind of Dickensian gloom. Nonetheless, the will was entirely straightforward, everything divided down the middle, with nothing going to Sylvia because (apparently) she had expressly asked for nothing. "Like Cordelia," Julia said, and Amelia said, "Not really," but, surprisingly, they had left it at that. They were fighting less since Victor's death three days ago. A new air of camaraderie had been fostered between them as they raked Through Victor's clothes (fit only for garbage) and dumped pitted old aluminium cooking pans and maths books that disintegrated at their touch. Everything in the house seemed unsavory somehow, and in the kitchen and bathroom Amelia wore rubber gloves and cleaned constantly with antibacterial spray. "He didn't have the plague," Julia said, but without conviction because she had already boiled all the sheets and towels that they were using.

Even though it was July and hot, Victor's house had its own damp, chilly climate that seemed unconnected to the outside world. Every evening since their arrival they had lit a fire and sat in front of the sitting-room hearth with the same kind of devotion chat prehistoric people must have afforded flames, except that pre-historic people didn't have Victor's extensive cable package to entertain themselves with. During the daytime it was startling to wander out into the weed-choked garden to get some fresh air and discover a hot, white Mediterranean sun beating down on them.

Amelia was sleeping in Sylvia's old room, the one Sylvia had slept in until she discovered her absurd, inexplicable vocation. She had already converted to Catholicism, of course, which drove Victor to apoplexy, but when she gave up her place at Girton, where she was due to start a maths degree, to enter the convent, it seemed as if Victor might actually kill her. Julia and Amelia, still at school, thought that renouncing the world and entering an enclosed order was an unnecessarily dramatic way of getting away from Victor. (Were they really going to cremate him tomorrow, burn him into ashes? How extraordinary that you could be given the license to do that to another human being. Just get rid of them, as if they were rubbish.)