Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

‘I know,’ Jackson interrupted. ‘I know what she did.’

‘People have a need to find the truth,’ Julia said. ‘Human nature can’t abide a mystery.’

In Jackson ’s experience, finding the truth – whatever that was – only deepened the mystery of what had really happened in the past. And perhaps Hope’s little Aaron and the squid would discover a family history that they would rather had stayed securely locked away, well out of pesky Pandora’s reach.

‘Yes, but it’s not about liking what you find out, it’s about knowing ,’ Julia said.

Any time he spent with Julia always degenerated in the end into a mixture of comforting familiarity and irritable argument. Rather like marriage but without the divorce. Or the wedding for that matter.

Nathan had run himself into oblivion on the Terraces and one sandwich and a dish of ice cream later he was asleep in Jackson ’s arms, leaving Julia free to tackle her afternoon tea untrammelled. The soft, sandbag weight of his boy in his arms was disturbing. Jackson wasn’t sure that he wanted his heart stirred by unbreakable, sacrificial bonds.

He had been surprised to find himself daunted rather than happy when Nathan proved to be his son. It just went to show, you never knew what you were going to feel until you felt it.

Recently, Julia had begun to imply that Jackson should be ‘more of a father’ to Nathan and they should spend time ‘as a family’. ‘But we’re not,’ Jackson protested. ‘You’re married to someone else.’When Jackson had been forced into deciding which of his offspring to spend Christmas Day with he had opted for his moody daughter (a disastrous decision). Julia saw it, perhaps rightly, as a clear case of favouritism.

‘ Jackson ’s choice,’ she said.

‘I can’t be in two places at once,’ Jackson complained.

‘An atom can be in several places at once, according to quantum physics,’ Julia said.

‘I’m not an atom.’

‘You’re nothing but atoms, Jackson.’

‘Maybe, but I still can’t be in two places at once. There’s only one Jackson.’

‘How true. Well, have a very Merry Christmas. God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son, et cetera. Jackson couldn’t even manage to give his a present on Christmas Day.’

‘Bah, humbug,’ Jackson said.

In the Black Swan, Julia licked cream off her fingers in a way that would have once looked provocative to Jackson. She used to wear scarlet lipstick but these days her lips were unpainted. In the same way, her unruly hair was scraped back and bundled into a restraining clip. Motherhood had in some ways made her into a paler version of the woman she used to be. Jackson was surprised at how much he sometimes missed the old Julia. Or maybe she was the same Julia and what he missed was being with her. He hoped not. There wasn’t room in his heart anyway. The (rather small) space available these days for a woman in the cupboard of Jackson ’s heart was almost entirely occupied by the candle burning for his Scottish nemesis, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe. An old flame flickering weakly rather than burning brightly, denied oxygen by their absence from each other. They had never had sex, he hadn’t seen her for two years, she was married to someone else and had a child by him. It was not what most people thought of as a relationship. Someone should put out the light.

‘The heart is infinite,’ Julia said. ‘Plenty of room.’ In Julia’s heart maybe, not Jackson ’s, contracted and growing smaller with every blow it suffered. A poor torn heart, a tattered heart .

‘Poppycock,’ Julia said.

The thing was, John and Angela Costello, the purported parents of little Sharon, soon to be transformed into Hope Winfield, had never become dust. Never been totalled in a car crash, never walked the dark streets of Donny. They hadn’t died, because they had never lived.

No car crash, no death certificates, no record of a couple by that name ever having lived in Doncaster. There was no birth certificate for a ‘Sharon Costello’ with parents of that name. Just to be sure Jackson had chased up another Sharon Costello, born on Hope McMaster’s birthday – 15 October 1972 – who lived in Truro. She turned out to be a wild goose, puzzled by his interest in her.

Of course the Winfields might have changed Hope’s birth date as well as her name. Jackson would have done if he’d been trying to disguise a child.

The Winfields themselves checked out. They had definitely lived in Harrogate, home of the Betty’s mother ship, and an excuse – not that he needed one – for Jackson to spend a pleasant twenty-four hours in that town, possibly one of the most civilized places he had ever visited. But then, of course, everyone knew, Jackson in particular, that civilization was a thin veneer.

Ian Winfield was definitely a paediatrician at St James’s from 1969 to 1975, when he left to take up a post in Christchurch. And he was certainly married to Kitty, who really had been a model. Hope McMaster had emailed some of her professional photographs – Kitty Gillespie, all sixties fringe and eye make-up, a type Jackson felt a strangely instinctive attraction to. Jackson had a vague recollection in his head – ‘Kitty Gillespie, the poor man’s Jean Shrimpton’. Not such a poor man by the look of her. The sixties didn’t look like history to Jackson, maybe they never would.

Mum was quite the thing, wasn’t she? Hope McMaster wrote. Nothing like dumpy little me – proof positive I was adopted! Hope had emailed him many little thumbnails of her family – of herself, of Dave, of Aaron, of their dog (a golden retriever, what else), of the Winfields and of Hope as a child ( Dave has scanned everything! ).

The Winfields seemed indeed to have gone out of their way to adopt a child who looked nothing like them. They had been tall, dark and elegant, Hope was a blonde, sturdy, old-fashioned-looking child who had turned into a blonde, sturdy, old-fashioned-looking woman, if her photographs were anything to go by. First known photograph of me! she had tagged a picture taken on the Winfields’ arrival in New Zealand. The newly formed family were at some kind of tourist attraction, and Hope – freckled podgy face and a spiky urchin cut – was grinning for the camera, the epitome of happiness. The camera can lie, Jackson reminded himself. All those abused kids who only got noticed when they died. The papers always ran a photograph of them, smiling happily. Some kids automatically turned it on for the camera. Smile!

What had started off as an innocuous request ( I wondered if you could find out some information about my biological parents? ) had taken Jackson into a maze that had led to dead ends at every turn. Hope McMaster was an existential conundrum. She might exist in the antipodean here and now, wife to Dave, mother to little Aaron. She might be attending ante-natal classes in the invisible company of the squid ( and Pilates – it’s a miracle! ) but any previous incarnation of her seemed to be a figment of the imagination. Although just whose imagination, Jackson wasn’t sure.

Pandora advanced towards the box, the curious cat looked to be in mortal danger. ‘Perhaps there’s a cat in the box,’ Julia mused, ‘like Schrödinger’s.’

‘Who?’ Jackson asked before he could prevent himself.

‘You know, Schrödinger’s cat. In the box. Both alive and dead at the same time.’

‘That’s a ridiculous idea.’

‘In practice maybe, but theoretically…’

‘Is this related to atoms by chance?’

‘ Verschränkung ,’ Julia said with relish. Luckily the arrival of a fresh pot of tea at that moment distracted her from these mysteries.