Case Histories

And she was crying because she didn't believe in Jesus or dog heaven and no one was ever going to lie in bed with her on a Sunday morning and read the papers or rub her back and say, "Is there anything I can do for you?" And because there was no happiness, only emptiness. And because she wanted to be sixteen years old with long shiny hair (which she'd never had), and she wanted to be looking anxiously out of an upstairs window and hear her mother downstairs shouting, "He's here," and then she would run lightly down the stairs and climb into the car where at the wheel would be her good-looking boyfriend and they would drive away and have warm, blurry sex somewhere and then he would bring her back home and her family would be waiting. Victor would acknowledge her with a gruff paternal nod as she came in the door, contrary teenage Julia would ignore her while willowy first-year student Sylvia would smile in a superior manner. Somewhere, in the guest bedroom perhaps, the vague unformed shape of a five-year old Annabelle could be found sleeping. And Rosemary, her mother, would ask her, in a womanly, conspiratorial way, if she'd had a nice time and then would offer her hot milk and honey (which she was sure she had never done in real life) and perhaps before she dropped into the sweet untroubled sleep of a pretty sixteen-year-old, Amelia would look in on Olivia, eight years old and safely asleep in her own bed.

Sometime in the night, Julia came into her bedroom and lay down on the bed, putting her arms around her and holding her the way she had the dying Sammy. And Julia said, "Everything's all right, Milly, really it is," which was such a huge, wonderful lie that it wasn't even worth arguing about.

Chapter 14. Jackson

"Jesus, Jackson, what happened to you?" The same note of reproach in Deborah Arnold's voice as in Josie's, Jackson noticed.

"Yes, thank you, I'm feeling much better," he said, making his way into the inner sanctum where Shirley Morrison was waiting for him. She visibly flinched when she saw him (and she was a nurse so he must look bad). He had a stunning black eye thanks to David Lastingham (the bastard) and he imagined that being hit over the head and lying unconscious all night in the open air had probably not improved his appearance.

"Not as bad as it looks," he said to Shirley Morrison although it probably was. Shirley Morrison was sitting in a neat lotus. She was straight backed and had a thin dancer's body. She was forty but could have passed for thirty until you looked in her eyes and saw that she'd lived enough for more than one lifetime. He knew who she was, she'd never changed her name, it was before Jackson 's time in Cambridge but when he'd asked Deborah to find out about Shirley Morrison she said, "Shirley Morrison – wasn't she Michelle Fletcher's sister? The ax murderer?"

"… She was just sitting on the floor, still holding the ax. I don't know how long she'd been there. Keith had been dead about an hour, according to the pathologist's report." Shirley Morrison held her cup of coffee with two hands as if it were providing her with warmth, although it was as hot as hell inside Jackson 's office and the coffee must have gone cold a long time ago. She stared off into the distance and Jackson got the impression that she was mentally reviewing Keith Fletcher's autopsy. "When I walked in," she continued, "she smiled at me and said, 'Oh, Shirley, I'm so glad you're here, I made you a chocolate cake.' So I knew straight away that she'd lost it."

"Her defense pleaded temporary insanity," Jackson offered. Deborah had done the research for him, as well as giving him the gossip. Michelle Rose Fletcher, nee Morrison, eighteen years old. sent down for life for, in the esteemed judge's words, "the coldblooded, calculated murder of your spouse. An entirely innocent man." Jackson didn't believe in the entire innocence of anyone apart from animals and children, and not all children, at that. He offered her more coffee but she just shook her head as if he were a distracting insect.

"Michelle was such a control freak, I mean I loved her to bits, she was my big sister, you know?" Jackson nodded, he knew what big sisters were like. His own big sister, Niamh.

"But everything had to be just so for Michelle, all the time. All the bloody time. I can see why, I mean the way we were brought up – it was…" Shirley Morrison shrugged, searching for a word "Shambolic. Our mother couldn't control a dog, let alone a house and kids. Dad was a drinker and Mum was not exactly capable And so it was really important to Michelle not to be like them. But the baby did her head in. You can't control babies."