Case Histories

"Yeah," Milanda said. "Black cats are very lucky for you." And Jackson felt an unexpected disappointment because for one weird, unnerving moment he thought she was actually going to say something portentous.

Chapter 9. Amelia

Don't be a cross-patch, Mr. Brodie," Amelia mimicked. "What are you like, Julia?" (And she had kissed him! She had actually kissed him!) "Why not just take your clothes off in the street?"

"Oh, I do believe you're jealous, Milly!" Julia laughed with (cruel) delight. "What would Henry say if he found out?"

"Shut up, Julia." Amelia could feel herself heating up and she walked faster to get away from Julia. Julia had to run to keep up. She sounded wheezy and Amelia thought it was insane for someone with hay fever to smoke so much. Amelia had absolutely no sympathy for her.

"Do we have to go so fast? Your legs are much longer than mine."

They were on Regent Street, approaching a girl who was sitting on the ground, on an old sheet, a dog – some kind of lurcher – stretched out at her side.

Jackson hadn't given two hoots that she'd thought he was an English pointer, but he looked downright pleased to know that Julia thought he was a German shepherd. And Julia would choose that because it was exactly the right dog, not a Doberman, not a rottweiler, and certainly not a pointer – he was German shepherd through and through. She had lied to Jackson, well not exactly lied, but she had led him to understand that she was an Oxford don when in fact she was just a lecturer at the poly, teaching "communication skills" (as it was so laughably called) to day-release slaters and apprentice bricklayers and other assorted riffraff. She wanted to like those boys, to think they were good – perhaps a little too rumbustious but at heart decent human beings – but they weren't. They were little shits who never listened to a word she said.

Julia was immediately attracted to the homeless girl's dog, of course, which meant that one or the other of them would have to give the girl money because you could hardly make a fuss of the dog and not give something in return, could you? Julia was on her knees on the pavement, letting the dog lick her face. Amelia wished she wouldn't do that, you didn't know where that dog's tongue had been – well, you did, that's why you didn't want it washing your face.

The girl had yellow hair, an odd canary color, and her face was sallow, almost jaundiced. Amelia used to give money to beggars and Big Issue sellers, but these days she was more circumspect. She had once come across one of her own students begging on Oxford High Street. Amelia knew for a fact that the girl – Lisa, a day-release hairdresser – was living comfortably at home with her parents, and the dog she had with her (because they all had dogs, of course) was the family pet. Plus, it was a well-known fact that a lot of beggars actually had homes, and some of them even had cars. Was it a well-known fact? How did she know it? From the Sun probably. The slaters were always leaving copies of the Sun strewn around in their wake. What an extraordinary image that suddenly conjured up in her mind – copies of the sun broadcast carelessly around the universe like gold coins. She laughed, and the girl looked at her and asked, "Can you help me?" and Amelia said, "No." "Oh, Milly, for heaven's sake," Julia said, abandoning her puppy talk and raking through her bag for her purse. "There but for for-tune and all that." Julia came up with a five-pound note – five pounds that she actually owed to Amelia – and handed it to the girl, who took it as if she were doing Julia a favor. It hadn't been the money, the girl hadn't wanted money, not really. She had asked Amelia if she could help her and Amelia had told the truth. She couldn't help her, she couldn't help anyone. Least of all herself.

"She'll spend it on drugs," she said to Julia as they walked away from the girl.

"She can spend it on what she wants," Julia said. "In fact drugs sound like a good idea. If I was in her position I would spend money on drugs."

"She's in that position because of drugs."

"You don't know that. You don't know anything about her."

"I know she's sponging off people who exhaust themselves working for a living." Oh God, she was turning into a fascist in her old age. She'd be demanding the return of hanging and flogging soon, well not flogging perhaps but capital punishment – after all, why not? There were enough people in the world, surely, without keeping space for the evil bastards who tortured children and animals and macheted innocent people. "Evil bastards" – that was tabloid language from the slaters' Suns. She may as well cancel her subscription to the Guardian right now, the way she was going.

"Is 'macheted' a verb?" Amelia asked Julia.

"Don't think so."

Well, that was the end then, she was Americanizing words. Civilization would fall.