Kate Atkinson - Case Histories

She felt suddenly tearful. "My au pair's going to leave me," she said. Oh, how pathetic must that sound to him. On a scale of world peace and third-world poverty, how did an unhappy Spanish au pair rate? But he was kind, as she knew he would be, and he said, "I'm sorry," as if he really were, and then they sat in silence and stared at the altar and listened to the summer rain drumming on the ancient stone slates.

Julia hauled a scuttle full of coal into the sitting room, escorted by a limping Sammy. "I can't believe Victor never put in central heating," she gasped, dropping the scuttle to the floor so that coal dust and tiny pieces of coal, like polished, unworked jet, spilled on the carpet. Amelia frowned at her and said, "I've just cleaned in here," and Julia said, "That's what will be written on your gravestone," and Amelia said, "Oh, really, by you?" and Julia said, "God, I'm gagging for it, aren't you?" and Amelia said, "Apropos of what exactly?"

"Two weeks of enforced celibacy since we've been here," Julia said. "it's doing my head in, it really is. I'm having to wank every night."

"Oh, for God's sake, Julia, you're so crude. It's disgusting." Amelia hated that word, the slaters and brickies used it all the time, the hairdressers too – the girls were just like the boys. "You wanker!" – yelling at each other across the room.

"What would you call it then?" Julia asked, and Amelia said, "I don't know – pleasuring yourself," which made Julia fall about laughing and say, "God, don't tell me you don't do it, Milly. Everyone does it, it's normal. I'm sure you do it and think about Henry – oh, no, you don't think about Henry. I bet you think about Jackson !" Julia seemed particularly delighted with this idea. Amelia wanted to slap her. "You do it, don't you, Milly? You frig yourself and think about Jackson!"

"You are disgusting, Julia. Offensively disgusting." Amelia knew she had turned as red as her tights – donned especially in case Jackson dropped in today because he had seemed rather taken with them at Victor's funeral. She'd woken up that morning and felt a good feeling, as if the blood in her veins were warm honey, and she thought, He's going to visit this morning, and she had put on some of Julia's makeup and left her hair loose because it was more girlish and she'd made a pot of coffee and warmed up the stale croissants that Julia had bought the day before. And she'd picked some flowers from the garden (hard to find among the weeds) and put them in a vase so that Jackson would look at her and see that she was a woman. But he hadn't come, of course. She'd never had any intuition, womanly or otherwise. It had just been wishful thinking.

Julia sang out, "Milly's got a new boyfriend. Poor old Henry. Milly likes Jackson," as if she were eight years old again. Part of Julia would always be eight years old, just as part of Amelia would always be eleven years old – the age she was when the world stopped.

"How old are you, Julia?"

"Not as old as you."

"I'm leaving the room before I hit you."

Amelia splashed cold water from the kitchen tap on her cheeks. She could still hear Julia chortling away to herself in the living room. If she started up again she was going to yank her head off. Julia wouldn't let it go though, following her into the kitchen, saying, "Jesus, Milly, you're so uptight, I can't imagine what you and Henry are like in the bedroom." Neither could Amelia because, of course, Henry didn't exist. He was an invention, conjured out of nothing, born of an exasperation with Julias constant nagging about Amelia's celibate state and (horrors) her insistent offer to "set her up" with someone. "I have someone, thank you," she informed Julia irritably, after one-too-many intimate inquiries from her sister. "A colleague, in the department" – and, searching for the first male name she could think of, Amelia came up with "Henry," which was the name of her downstairs neighbor, Philip's, dog, a revolting little Pekingese whose eyes looked as if they were about to pop out of its head any minute. "If Henry was a dog, what kind of dog would he be?" Julia asked, predictably, and Amelia had, unthinkingly, answered, "Pekingese" so that Julia frowned and said, "Oh, poor Milly."

Since then, the fictional Henry had gradually acquired the accretions of a personality. He was a little on the bald and paunchy side, a beer drinker rather than a spirits man, and once, long ago, had a wife who died of cancer and whom he had nursed, devotedly, at home. Henry had no children but he had a tabby cat called Molly, who was a good mouser. Lying, Amelia discovered, was all about the details.

Henry and Amelia conducted a sedate fictitious relationship that revolved around theatergoing, art-house cinema, Italian restaurants, country pubs, and invigorating walks. They had spent two weekends away, one in the Mendips and one in North Devon, Amelia carefully researching both locations on the Internet in case Julia proved curious about the geography or the history, although, naturally, Julia only wanted to know about the food and the sex ("Oh, come on, Milly. Don't be coy"). It was important not to make Henry too interesting because then Julia might actually want to meet him, so sex was "a bit routine" but nonetheless "nice" – a word which repelled Julia. Recently, Amelia had revealed that Henry was a keen golfer, a pastime that was guaranteed to result in indifference on Julia's part.

Henry had proved such a success with Julia that Amelia had introduced him into the workplace as well. He served as a useful antidote to the looks of pity and amusement that always seemed to be her lot. She had heard the other lecturers call her "spinsterish" and she knew that a couple of people thought she was a lesbian. The idea of lesbianism made her feel slightly squeamish. Julia said she had had sex with women, dropped it into the conversation with the same casual air as if she were talking about which supermarket she preferred or the latest books she'd read. Amelia had made a point of not looking surprised because that was the kind of reaction Julia loved, of course. Was there no limit to the kind of thing Julia would do? Would she do it with a dog?

"Bestiality," Julia ruminated. "Well, only if I had to."

"Had to? For a part?"

"No, of course not. To save your life, for example."

Would Amelia have sex with a dog to save Julia's life? What an appalling test.

Henry was useful at college too. As far as the inmates of the staff room were concerned, he was someone that her sister had introduced her to. Because Julia was an actress they all believed she must live a glamorous life, which was usually annoying for Amelia but sometimes useful. This Henry lived in Edinburgh, making him inaccessible and giving her something to do on the weekends – "Oh, just flying up to Scotland, Henry's taking me fishing," which is the kind of thing she imagined people doing in Scotland – she always thought of the Queen Mother, incongruous in mackintosh and waders, standing in the middle of a shallow brown river (somewhere on the outskirts of Brigadoon, no doubt) and casting a line for trout. Amelia had never been farther north than York, and then only to see Julia in pantomime, playing Dick Whittington's cat in an interpretation that seemed to suggest that the animal was permanently on heat. Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorland, of course, vast tracts or brooding landscape under lowering skies, and across this heath strode brooding, lowering men intent on reaching their ancestral houses, where they were going to fling open doors and castigate orphaned, yet resolute, governesses. Or – preferably – the brooding, lowering men were on horseback, black horses with huge muscled haunches, glistening with sweat –