Kate Atkinson - Case Histories

"You're supposed to be the grown-up."

"They're all little prick teasers, they're screwing all the time, they open their legs for anyone at that age. Don't tell me you'd act differently. If it was offered to you on a plate, what would you do?"

"I'd refuse."

"Oh, don't give me that holier-than-thou crap. At the end of the day you're just a man." (What had Shirley said, What are you, Jackson, the last good man standing? Was he? He hoped not.) "Put any man in that position and they'd be tempted. You would."

"I would refuse," Jackson said, "because I've got a daughter. As you do."

Stan Jessop got up from the sofa as if he were about to punch Jackson (Why not? Everyone else did), but his wife came into the room at that moment and glared at both of them suspiciously. She didn't conform to Emma Drake's description of "blond and tarty"

("common"). She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and had short dark hair. Emma said that she and Laura got on well together, yet no one had ever interviewed Kim Jessop. (Why not?) Jackson held out his hand and said, "How d'you do, Mrs. Jessop, my name's Jackson Brodie. I'm looking into some aspects of the death of Laura Wyre," and she looked at him blankly and said, "Who?"

From the car Jackson phoned Deborah Arnold at home and said, "Can you write a standard kind of letter to Miss Morrison and tell her that we're unable to act for her anymore?"

"Have you ever heard of office hours?"

''Have you?"

Was he being petty? Okay, so she was married, and she'd slept with him, adultery happened all the time (look at his own wife). Did that explain the bad feeling he'd had about her? Did that explain why there was something wrong with her story about Michelle? Perhaps if Tanya wanted to find Shirley she would already have done so? Jackson didn't want to help Shirley. He didn't want to see Shirley. He rooted around in the glove compartment for a Lee Ann Womack CD and jumped to the "Little Past Little Rock" track. Every other country song was about women leaving – leaving town, leaving the past, but mostly leaving men. After his own woman left Jackson made a compilation tape of all the women in pain, the Lucindas and Emmylous and Trishas, singing their sad songs about departing on trains and planes and buses, but mainly driving off in cars, of course. Another hejira.

When he got home Jackson heated up something tasteless in the microwave. It was only nine o'clock but he was dog tired. There was only one message on his answering machine; it was from Binky. He'd meant to swing by her house to check on her, but now he didn't think he had the energy. He played the message. "Mr. Brodie, Mr. Brodie, I really need to see you. It's urgent," and then nothing, not even good-bye. He phoned her back but there was no answer. The second he replaced the receiver the phone rang and he snatched it up.

It was Amelia. A hysterical Amelia. Again.

"Who's dead now, Amelia?" he asked when she paused for breath. "Because if it's anything smaller than a large horse I'd appreciate it if you took care of it yourself." Unfortunately, this response had the effect of making her twice as hysterical. Jackson cut her off, counted to ten, and then hit the "caller redial" button and watched as Binky Rain's number came up. He had a bad feeling. (Did he ever have good ones?) "What is it?" he said when Amelia

answered, and she managed to calm herself long enough to say, "She's dead. The old witch is dead."

It was one in the morning when Jackson got home. He felt like he'd gone beyond sleep into some other place, a gray, foggy place where all his energy was being used to keep his automatic nervous system ricking over and the rest of his brain and body had shut down long ago. He actually went up the stairs on his hands and knees. His bed hadn't been made since the night he'd spent with Shirley Morrison. He wasn't sure whether he'd actually slept since that night. She'd been wearing that Celtic ring on her wedding finger. It was his own fault for not asking. "Are you married?" – it would have been a straightforward enough question. Would she have lied? Probably. The woman who loved babies who couldn't have any of her own, is that why she'd slept with him, to get pregnant? God forbid. Did her husband know? The woman who loved babies who'd lost touch with the one baby above all others that she was supposed to look after. Tanya. Something scratched at the edge of his memory, but he was so tired he could hardly remember his own name.

He opened a window. There was no air in the bedroom. Heavy weather. If a thunderstorm didn't break the heat soon, people would start to go mad. The weather had broken after Olivia disappeared. Amelia reported that Sylvia had said it was "God crying for his little lost lamb." Amelia had been behaving even more oddly than usual, blethering about Olivia even though it was Binky's body she had found. Blethering. That was one of his father's words. It was nearly a year now since the old man had died. Lonely and alone in his hospital bed. He was seventy-five and had everything possible, silicosis, emphysema, cirrhosis of the liver. Jackson didn't want to become the man his father had been.

What had Binky wanted to tell him? He was never going to find out now, was he? He thought of Binky's small featherweight body lying in the remains of her orchard, the long grass damp with dew, although not the grass beneath her body, which had remained as dry as her old bones. "She's been lying here for hours," the pathologist said, and Jackson felt his heart lurch. He had driven by her house. Maybe he could have helped her. He should have broken in, he should have climbed the wall. He should have helped her.

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?

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 memory 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.