Case Histories

He was about to close the curtains when something caught his eye. Walking along the wall on the other side of the lane, weaving its way in and out of the hollyhocks that grew like weeds. A black cat. If Binky Rain were reincarnated, would she come back as a cat? A black one? How many black cats were there in Cambridge? Hundreds. Jackson opened the window wider and leaned out and – and truly he couldn't believe he was doing this – softly shouted, "Nigger?" into the warm night air.

The cat stopped in its tracks and looked around. Jackson ran down the stairs and out of the house and then slowed himself down to a cartoon kind of tiptoe so that he wouldn't frighten the animal. "Nigger?" he whispered again, and the cat meowed and jumped off the wall. Jackson picked it up and felt its skinny weight in his arms. He experienced an odd sense of comradeship with the bedraggled animal and said, "It's okay, old boy, do you want to come in my house?" He didn't have any cat food in the house – he didn't have any food in the house – but he had some milk. He was surprised by an unexpected surge of affection for the cat. Of course, it probably wasn't Nigger (and, dear God, that name would have to be changed by whoever took this cat on). The cat would probably have responded to anything, but the coincidence seemed too much for Jackson in his exhausted state. He turned to go back into the house. And the house exploded. Just like that.

What was it Hank Williams had sung? Something about never getting out of this world alive?

Chapter 18. Amelia

Amelia was the only one who had seen that there were more of them. Julia was too busy flirting – Mr. Brodie this, Mr. Brodie that, and Jackson was too busy looking at Julia's breasts. Of course, it was difficult for a man not to look at Julia's breasts when they were on display like that. She had actually licked her lips when she'd suggested swimming naked to him! They had swum in the river when they were children, even though Rosemary always told them not to. Julia was the best swimmer out of the three of them. The four of them. Could Olivia swim? Amelia thought she could see Olivia's little frog body, in a blue shirred swimming costume, moving through the water, but she didn't know whether it was a real mem-ory or not. Sometimes Amelia felt as if she had spent her whole life waiting for Olivia to come back, while Sylvia was talking to God and Julia was fucking. And she felt so unbearably sad when she thought of all the things Olivia had never done, never ridden a bike or climbed a tree or read a book on her own, she'd never been to school, or a theater or a concert. Never listened to Mozart or fallen in love. She had never even written her own name. Olivia would have lived her life; Amelia had merely endured hers. You're looking at my tits, Mr. Brodie. Julia was such a tart sometimes. Amelia could remember Victor once, hauling a teenage Julia back into the house when she was trying to sneak out to see some boy and yelling at her that she looked like "a common tart." (How many men had Julia slept with? Too many to keep count of undoubtedly.) Victor made her scrub her makeup off with a nailbrush. Sometimes he ignored them for days, only coming out of his study for meals. Other times he was on their case continually like some kind of religious patriarch.

After Rosemary died Victor employed a woman to cook and clean every day. She was called Mrs. Gordon and no one ever knew her first name. It was typical of Victor to employ someone who didn't like children and was a terrible cook. Sometimes Mrs. Gordon would make them the same tea every day for days on end – burned sausages, baked beans, and watery boiled potatoes were a particular favorite with her. Victor never seemed to notice. "Food is just fuel," he used to say. "It doesn't matter what it is." What an appalling childhood they'd had.