Case Histories

She regarded her naked body in the foxed, silver-spotted mirror on Sylvia's small wardrobe. Her flesh looked like curd cheese, she had rolls of fat, like the Michelin Man, her belly folded over, her breasts swinging with their own weight, she looked as if she'd borne a dozen children, she looked like one of those ancient fertility symbols carved from stone. Yet there was nothing fertile about her, was there? She was passing the point of childbearing, her womb was shrinking unseen inside her. "I've still got time to push one out," Julia said to her yesterday in her usual disgusting way. Amelia no longer had time to push one out, soon the planet would have no further use for her. No one had ever found her attractive, no one had ever wanted her, even Victor hadn't wanted her, her own rather had found her too ugly to seduce – a howl cut into her thoughts, a terrifying noise as though Julia was having her bowels ripped out, a noise that presaged absolute horror and Amelia grabbed her dressing gown and ran downstairs.

Julia was lying on the floor in a corner of the kitchen and at first Amelia thought something dreadful had happened to her, but then she realized that she had her arms clasped around Sammy's body. His eyes were dull, everything about him was dull as if he were fading, but when he heard Amelia's distressed voice his tail gave a weak little beat. "I'll call the vet, shall I?" Amelia said, and Julia, her voice muffled because her face was pressed into Sammy's neck, said, "I think it's too late. I think he's had a stroke."

"Then we have to call the vet,"

"No, really, Milly, he's on his way out, he's an old dog. Don't upset him." Julia held one of his paws and kissed it. She murmured soothing words into the dying dog's ear, she kissed his ears, his nose, his mouth, rubbed her face on the white hairs of his muzzle. Amelia hated her for being the one who thought she was doing the right thing. "Just stroke him," Julia said but Amelia was raking through the yellow pages looking for the number for an out-of-hours vet and so she missed the moment when the dog died and only realized he was gone when Julia got up from the floor, covered in dog hair and her face all creased. She looked as if she had been hanging onto the dog for a long time.

She couldn't bear it. She had phoned Jackson because she wanted him to stop the pain. She didn't want anyone else to stop the pain, just Jackson. She wanted him to take her in his arms and soothe her the way Julia had soothed the dog. ("Please, Jackson, please come, I need you." There had been something thrilling about speaking such passionate, desperate words. She had felt passionate. She had felt desperate.) What she hadn't wanted was for him to arrive on the doorstep looking pissed off (oh, God, slater language) and she certainly hadn't wanted him arriving on the doorstep with a small child in tow. His small child. She had never imagined him having a child, of course, she had never asked. Did he have a wife? She asked him that, when he was hardly over the threshold, accusing like a madwoman, she knew she looked like a madwoman, her hair all over the place, her face ravaged by crying, her breasts flapping around inside the oversize dressing gown. "I didn't know you were married, Mr. Brodie," spitting out the words as if he had betrayed her. The girl looked upset and Jackson was even more annoyed because she was upsetting the girl and it was Julia who calmed the situation, saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. Brodie, we're not ourselves tonight, I'm afraid poor Sammy passed away." After that it was all a little shadowy, Julia kept pouring from the brandy bottle, and the child had been almost unnaturally interested in the dead dog, stroking its lifeless fur, saying, "Poor dead dog," until Amelia wanted to slap her because the dog didn't belong to her, forgetting that it was actually Victor's dog. Jackson had explained to the girl that the dog was happy in dog heaven and then Julia had helped Amelia up to bed and that's where she'd been ever since, sobbing her heart out in a quiet but nonetheless ugly fashion, and it was a crying that wouldn't stop because it encompassed too much.

She was crying from a general sense of wretchedness (which everyone was allowed now and then, surely), and crying for herself and her dried-up meaningless little life. She couldn't bear it, she really couldn't. Crying for Victor and Olivia and Rosemary and for Rascal (who died two years after Olivia disappeared). And she was crying because she'd only ever had sex with Andrew Vardy and because Mozart had died young and Sammy had died old, and because she was fat and ugly and had to teach the slaters and was never going to be wrapped in the comfort of Jackson 's arms.