Case Histories

They stopped outside a burger bar. Inside it was heaving with foreign-language students, they were spilling out onto the pavement and Amelia groaned at the sight of them. She was sure the only language they improved when they were in Cambridge was obscenities or vocabulary for junk food.

In London, Julia did a lot of mystery shopping for an agency – burger bars and pizza places, high-street clothes shops and big chemists' chains. As far as Julia was concerned it almost qualified as acting and as a bonus she usually got to keep the goods or eat the food. The agency was delighted when they discovered she was in Cambridge, where they no longer had a mystery shopper.

"Right," Julia said, consulting a piece of paper. "We have to ask for one burger with fries and one chickinlickin burger with no fries, a large Coke, a banana milk shake, and a strawberry slurry."

"Which is?"

"An ice cream. More or less."

"I'm not asking for a chickinlickin burger," Amelia said. "I wouldn't ask for a chickinlickin burger to save your life."

"Yes, you would. But you don't have to. I'm going to ask for it all. And it's not to take away. It's to sit in."

"That's not even grammatical," Amelia said.

"There's nothing grammatical about this meal. Grammar isn't the issue. We're looking for attitude. We're assessing quality of service."

"Can't I just have a coffee?"

"No." Julia started sneezing again. It was always embarrassing when Julia had a sneezing fit, one after the other, explosive, uncon-trollable sounds, like a cannon firing. Amelia had once heard someone say that you could tell what a woman's orgasm would be like if you heard her sneeze. (As if you would want to know.) Just recollecting this thought made her uncomfortable. In case this was common knowledge, Amelia had made a point ever since then of never sneezing in public if she could help it. "For God's sake, take more Zyrtec," she said crossly to Julia.

Amelia was acutely uncomfortable in places like this. They made her feel old and elitist and she didn't want to feel either of those things, even if they were true. Julia, on the other hand, was a chameleon, adapting immediately to whatever was in hand, shouting her order to the spotted, callow youth behind the counter (did any of them wash their hands?) in a kind of Essex accent that she probably thought was plebeian but sounded completely at odds with the way she was dressed. The coat Julia was wearing was bizarre, like something from a Beardsley drawing. Amelia hadn't really looked at it properly until now. It was such a bright color that it would be impossible to lose sight of Julia, unless she were to lie down on a hill of green summer grass, which would have rendered her invisible. When Olivia became invisible she was wearing a cotton nightdress that had belonged to each of them in turn and had once been pink but by the time it reached Olivia was a washed-out kind of no color. Amelia could see her as clear as day, climbing into the tent in the washed-out nightdress, the pink rabbit slippers, one arm clamping Blue Mouse to her chest.

Julia's coat was too big for her. It flapped open and trailed on the floor as she maneuvered the tray of food through an impassable wad of foreign students. Amelia kept saying, "Excuse me, excuse me," in a pointed way but it was no good. The only way you could get them to move was by elbowing them roughly out of the way.

When they finally got a seat Julia commenced to tear into the burger with a kind of primitive gusto. "Mm, meat," she said to Amelia.

"Are you sure?" Amelia said. She would have been sick if she'd eaten any of this food. "It's definitely meat," Julia said. "What animal it's from is another question. Or what part of the animal. We used to eat tail, after all. Oxen – what kind of a plural is that?"

"Old English. I think. There must be a whole generation of children thinking 'chicken' is spelled 'chickin.'"

"There are worse things."

"Such as?"

"Meteors."

"The possibility of a meteor colliding with the earth doesn't mean that we should embrace the Americanization of our language and culture."

"Oh, shut up, Milly, do."

Julia ate the chickinlickin burger, but the strawberry slurry defeated even her. Amelia sniffed the milk shake tentatively. It tasted completely artificial, as if it had been made in a laboratory. "This is made entirely of chemicals."

"Isn't everything?"

"Is it?"

"Come on," Julia said. "Enough of the chitchat, let's get to work." She took out a form and began to fill it in. "Did your server greet you? I'm sure he did."

"Why don't you wear your glasses? You can't see a thing without them."

"What did the server say?"

"You're so vain, Julia."

"I think he said, 'G'day there.'"

"I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. Julia?"

"They're all Australian. The entire British workforce is Australian."

"Julia. Julia, listen to me. When Victor went over your homework with you in his study, did he ever, you know, do anything? Did he ever interfere with you?"