Case Histories

And really Jackson had been the last person she had wanted to see. Why was he sitting on the riverbank? Why him of all people? It wasn't fair. (Nothing was fair.) The gods were taunting her with him. She hadn't wanted to go to Grantchester, not at all, it was Julia who had persuaded her to go punting on the river, coaxing her as if she were a frail invalid or an agoraphobic. "Come on, Milly, you can't sit moping in front of the television all day." She wasn't moping. She was depressed, for God's sake. And she could be depressed if she wanted to be, she could sit and watch Dogs with Jobs on the National Geographic Channel and eat her way through a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits if she felt like it because nobody cared about her. In fact, she could sit there all day, from Barney and Friends to Porn Babes Laid Bare, with hours of the Landscape Channel in between, and eat the contents of an entire biscuit factory until she was an obese, earthbound balloon whose dead and bloated body would have to be hydraulically lifted from the house by a fire crew because nobody cared. "I care, Milly." Yeah, right, as the slaters would say.

If Julia cared so much she wouldn't flirt with Jackson in front of her. She imagined them in the water together, Julia swimming like an otter around Jackson 's naked body, her red lips closing around his – no! Don't think that, don't think that, don't think that.

One evening Amelia found the God Channel between Discov-ery Health and the Fashion Channel and discovered that there was a program called A Word from God that went on at midnight and she had actually watched it! To see if God had anything to say to her. But he didn't. Obviously.

Milly, do you want honey on your scones? And now she was talking about Rupert Brooke being naked. Couldn't she just shut up about naked people? Because actually it was quite nice being here, sitting in a deck chair in the orchard, soaking in the warmth of summer – why couldn't she be here on her own with Jackson, without Julia, why couldn't he be pouring her tea and buttering her scones, why did Julia have to be here with her breasts almost popping out of her bra when she leaned over him, drooling honey onto his scones.

And it was such a pretty bra, all white and lacy. Why had Amelia never had underwear like that? It wasn't fair.

She had made an utter fool of herself the other night ("Are you married, Mr. Brodie?"), like some ruined girl in a sentimental Victorian novel. She could tell by the way he looked at her that he thought she was delusional. (Was she?) She was so embarrassed that she couldn't look at him. Thank goodness she was wearing sun-glasses and a hat. (Did they make her look even the slightest bit mysterious and enigmatic?) And his lovely face was all beaten up (because, of course, she had looked at him), and she would have liked to comfort him, to take his face and hold it between her own breasts (which were just as big as Julia's, even if they didn't occupy the same horizontal plane). But that was never going to happen, was it?

She had seen them though. The others. Jackson and Julia thought it was just the man who was reading Principia Mathematica but she had seen the others, seven or eight them, all as equally naked as the Principia Mathematica man. A couple of them dived into the water. but the rest chatted to one another, reclining on the bank in various positions of repose as if they were enacting an ideal pastoral scene. Were they naturalists? Amelia had a sudden, unexpected memory of swimming in the river, her sun-warmed body moving smoothly through the cool, lucent water. She felt a sudden physical craving, like hunger. Why was she trapped in her clumsy, baggy body? Why couldn't she have the body of her childhood back? Why couldn't she have her childhood back?

Maybe they were situationists, creating their own bizarre piece of art, indifferent as to whether anyone viewed it or not. Or some kind of cult? A nudist coven? Most of them looked as if they were more than forty, and they had imperfect bodies – jodhpur thighs and drooping bottoms, gray pubic hair and moles and freckles and old operation scars and some of them were as wrinkled as a Neapolitan mastiff. They were tanned all over, so whatever it was they were doing they must be doing it frequently. And then they were gone, beyond a bend in the river, vanishing like a dream.