Case Histories

And, of course, Sylvia didn't have to deal with any of the after-math of their father's death. What a fantastic form of avoidance being a bride of Christ was. Julia enjoyed telling people that her sister was a nun because they were always so astonished ("Your sister?"), but Amelia felt embarrassed by it. God spoke to Sylvia on a regular basis but she was always coy about the content of these conversations, just smiling her holy smile (enigmatic and infuriating). Anyone would think God was an intimate acquaintance, someone with whom Sylvia discussed existential philosophy over bottles of cheap wine in the snug of a quaint riverside pub. God and Sylvia had been on speaking terms for almost as long as Amelia could remember. Did she really think he spoke to her? She was delusional, surely? At the very least a hysteric. Hearing voices, like Joan of Arc. In fact, it was Joan of Arc she used to speak to, wasn't it? Even before Rosemary died or Olivia disappeared. Had anyone ever entertained the possibility that Sylvia was schizophrenic? If God spoke to Amelia she would presume she had gone insane. Someone should have paid attention to Sylvia's oddness, they really should have.

Sammy, sprawled full length at the foot of Amelia's too-small single bed, began to whimper in his sleep. His tail thumped excitedly on the eiderdown, and his paws made ghostly scrabbling motions as if he were chasing the rabbits of his younger days. Amelia would have left him to this happy dream but then the thought struck her that, rather than chasing something, perhaps he himself was being chased, and that the noises he was making were the sounds of fear rather than excitement (how could two things so opposite seem so similar?), so she hauled herself into a sitting position and stroked his flank until he was soothed back into a calmer sleep. His body felt hollow with age. Sammy was the only living creature that Amelia could remember Victor treating as an equal.

She supposed she would have to take Sammy back to Oxford with her. Julia would say she wanted Sammy, but she would never manage with a dog in London. Amelia had a garden in Oxford, she owned the upper half of a small semidetached Edwardian villa, just the right size for one person, and shared a garden with her downstairs neighbor, a quiet geometrician at New College called Philip who seemed to have a complete lack of sexual interest in either gender but who had a dog (albeit a noisy Pekingese) and was handy at fixing things and therefore constituted the perfect neighbor. ("Or serial killer," Julia said.) He wasn't a gardener, to Amelia's relief, and allowed her to get on with as much mulching and digging and planting as she liked. Amelia believed in gardening in the same way that Sylvia believed in God. Like Sylvia, she had been converted. She didn't know she was a gardener until she was thirty, when she had planted a Queen of Denmark rose one November and the following June had watched as blossom after blossom burst forth. It was a revelation – you plant something, it grows. "Well, duh," Julia said (like a moronic teenager) when Amelia attempted to explain this miracle.

She had been in Cambridge only a few days and yet her other life, her real life, already seemed a world away and she had to occasionally remind herself that it existed. Part of her wanted to stay here forever and blunder on into an argumentative old age with Julia. Together, perhaps they could keep all the dread and loneliness of life at bay. And she could get to grips with Victor's garden – there were years of neglect to make up for. She would have liked to lie there for hours, planning out beds (delphiniums, campanula, coreopsis, veronica) and redesigning the lawn (A water feature? Something Japanese perhaps?), but she climbed reluctantly out of bed, followed loyally by Sammy, and went down to the cold kitchen, where she filled the kettle and then slammed it on the hob to show how annoyed she was that Julia was still asleep.

Amelia was in the dining room, boxing up an endless parade of crockery and ornaments. Julia was in the study where she was supposed to be. She had been in there since they started clearing out Victor's goods and chattels, and said (melodramatic as ever) that she thought she might be under a spell that condemned her to be trapped in there forever. Victor's dank, airless lair had remained a black hole throughout the years and was now piled high with all kinds of dusty papers, files, and folders. It was like a bonfire waiting for a match. They had pulled the curtains down, and Julia said, "Let there be light!" and Amelia said, "It's quite a nice room really."

Julia was so badly affected by the dust in the house that, as well as all the medication she took (she treated it like sweets), she had started to wear a face mask and goggles that she'd bought in a do-it-yourself place. You could still hear her chesty cough from half a mile away.