Case Histories

He didn't really care about his cholesterol and his blood pressure. He would be happy to die of a stroke or a heart attack. "Strokes don't necessarily kill, Dad," Jennifer e-mailed crossly from Toronto. "They're more likely to leave you incapacitated. Is that what you want?" Perhaps she was afraid she would have to look after him, but he would never do that to her. As far as Theo was concerned the parent-child relationship was one way, you gave them all your love and they were under no obligation to pay a penny back. Of course, if they did love you then that was the icing on the cake with cherries on top. And chocolate shavings and those little silver balls that cracked your fillings. Laura used to love those. He always decorated the cakes he made. Cakes, pastry, scones – he'd learned how to make everything after Valerie died. He turned out to be a much better cook than his wife.

He hired a woman to come in and clean twice a week and a girl, a student, to pick them up from school and look after them until he got home from work. Otherwise he did everything himself- housework, child care. He went to PTA meetings, parents' evenings, took the girls to birthday parties, threw birthday parties in return. The other children's mothers treated him as an honorary woman and said he would make someone a wonderful wife, which he took as a compliment.

The girl said she was eight but she was dressed more like a teenager. But that was how it was nowadays. In the past, children used to be dressed as small adults so there was nothing new in that. When Laura was eight she wore dungarees and jeans and nice dresses for best – "frocks," Valerie would have called them, if she'd been around. White ankle socks, sandals, T-shirts, and shorts. He bought Laura her own clothes and didn't make her wear Jennifer's castoffs. A lot of people thought Theo spoiled his girls, but how could you spoil a child – by neglect, yes, but not by love. You had to give them all the love you could, even though giving that much love could cause you pain and anguish and horror and, in the end, love could destroy you. Because they left, they went to university and husbands, they went to Canada and they went to the grave.

Theo declined a second sweet. "It's polite to offer one to everyone.'" Deborah Arnold said to the girl. Rather reluctantly, Theo thought, the girl slid off her seat and went over to Deborah's desk and without a word offered the tube of sweets to her. Deborah took three. There was something oddly admirable about the woman. Terrifying but admirable.

"What's your job?" the girl asked him.

"I'm retired," Theo said, wondering if she knew what that meant.

"Because you're old," she said, nodding sagely. Theo agreed with her, "Yes, because I'm old."

"My daddy's going to retire," the girl said. "He's going to live in France." Deborah Arnold laughed derisively.

" France?" Theo said. He couldn't imagine Jackson in France somehow. "Have you been to France?"

"Yes, on holiday. Some people ate thrushes."

"Oh my God," Deborah Arnold said. "Neither of you are sup-posed to be here," she added as if they were jointly responsible for the French dining on innocent songbirds.

"I just wanted a quick chat with Mr. Brodie – to see how things were going," Theo said apologetically. Deborah Arnold seemed extraordinarily busy – typing, filing, and copying like a woman possessed. Did Jackson Brodie really generate this much business? He seemed a little too laid-back to keep an assistant so fully occupied. She'd called herself his assistant; he'd called her his secretary.

"So, Mr. Brodie's out on a case?" Theo asked, to make conversation more than anything. Deborah gave him a pitying look over the top of her spectacles as if she couldn't believe he could be duped into thinking that Jackson actually worked. After five minutes, she said, "He's at the dentist. Again."

"Dad fancies the dentist," the girl said, popping another sweet into an already overloaded mouth. It seemed sad that such little girls knew about "fancying," knew anything at all about sex. Perhaps they didn't, perhaps they just knew the words. The girl, Marlee, did seem very precocious though, more like an eighteen-year-old than an eight-year-old. Not like his eighteen-year-old (because Laura would always be eighteen). Laura had had a freshness about her, an innocence, like a light shining from within. Jackson had never mentioned having a daughter, but then you didn't, did you? Bank managers, bus drivers, they didn't spend their time saying, "I have a daughter, by the way."

"Have you got children?" Marlee asked him.

"Yes," Theo said. "I have a daughter called Jenny. She lives in Canada. She's grown-up." Of course, he felt like he was denying Laura, expected to hear a cock crow every time he made this answer, but people didn't want to hear him say, "Yes, I have two, one alive and well and living in Toronto and one dead and in the earth."

"Grandchildren?" Marlee asked.