Kate Atkinson: Started Early, Took My Dog

Lime-green Capri – same car as the Ripper was driving in ’75. She should have phoned him in for that as well. Tracy had never seriously considered him for it. He was too self-obsessed to be bothered to kill anyone. Still, she notched up her first broken heart. She was, slowly but surely, passing the landmarks of life.

Linda Pallister hooked up with some bloke from the Labour Party and moved to a house near Roundhay, a traditional between-the wars semi, not Linda’s style at all. She gave birth to Chloe in the same year that Barry’s Amy was born. In lieu of a christening, Barry and Barbara threw ‘a little party’ to welcome the baby. Sausage rolls, pork pie, cake made by Barbara’s mother and a crate of Asti Spumante. Tracy wasn’t invited.

Linda Pallister threw a party for her new baby as well. Tracy not invited to that one either. No pork pie for Linda. Rumour had it that she dished up the baby’s placenta. Raw or cooked? Tracy wondered.

Ray Strickland was never promoted above the rank of DCI. Said he was happy with that, didn’t want to spend his time driving a desk. Lomax, on the other hand, went to the top of the tree, took all the laurels going.

Life went on. Before Tracy knew it she had clocked up thirty years and was getting pissed at her own leaving do.

June

‘And you saw it happen? You saw poor old Tilly go under the train? What on earth were you doing there?’

‘It had nothing to do with me,’ Jackson said.

‘The inquest ruled it was an accident,’ Julia said. ‘Which I was glad about because I really don’t think Tilly was the suicidal type. She was in the early stages of dementia though, poor old thing, so I suppose you don’t know what was going through her mind, do you? I went to the funeral, in St Paul’s in Covent Garden. It was a lovely service actually, lots of people saying nice things about dear old Till. Her friend Dame Phoebe March gave the eulogy, chewed up the scenery, of course, but it was good, really moving – all sorts of anecdotes about Tilly when she was young.’

You just had to wind Julia up and let her go.

Jackson was picking her up from the set of Collier and giving her a lift to the airport. She had a couple of weeks off. Her pathologist character, Beatrice Butler, was spending the time in a coma after being attacked by the crazed relative of a – oh, as if Jackson cared.

Julia was amusing herself with the dog, crouching down and running her hand along its spine, like a masseuse. ‘Roll over and die for queen and country,’ she commanded and the dog spun over on to its back with its legs in the air.

To look at it, anyone would think the dog had a crush on Julia. Julia herself, of course, was in love with every dog on the planet. Unfortunately every dog on the planet made her sneeze.

‘This used to be a woman’s dog,’ Julia said.

‘Well, he’s a man’s dog now,’ Jackson said defiantly.

He was in the middle of fitting the booster seat that he had finally bought for Nathan. (‘About time,’ Julia said.) Jackson had managed to rescue a grateful Saab – mysteriously denuded of the light-up Virgin Mary – from a police pound just before it was sent to auction, thanks to Brian Jackson’s tracker. It had been found abandoned in the grounds of Fountains Abbey, a location that baffled Jackson. It was as if Jane had known where he wanted to go and had tried to make her way there ahead of him. ‘That’s ludicrous,’ Julia said.

Nathan was following him around, telling him about dinosaurs, barely stumbling over the names, ‘Velociraptor, Avaceratops, Diplodocus.’ Jackson wasn’t sure if his son knew they were extinct, didn’t want to ask him in case he spoiled some kind of mystery, like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Jackson didn’t know that four-year-old boys could pronounce words like ‘Avaceratops’. He could barely remember Marlee at that age, her current sullen incarnation had begun to dominate earlier, sunnier versions of his daughter. Of course, there were a lot of things he didn’t know about four-year-old boys. He thought of his son as a baby and it was disturbing to see how far along the road to manhood he had already walked. One day that boy would outrun him, overtake him in the relay race of existence. And so it would go on and on until the sun cooled, or the meteor hit, or that bloody great volcano beneath Yellowstone grumbled its way back into life.

‘Well, everything dies,’ Julia said, absorbed in scratching the dog’s belly and staving off a sneeze. ‘That’s the way it goes. Omnia mors aequat . The great leveller.’

‘From darkness we come and to darkness shall we return,’ Jackson said. Darkly.

‘I think it’s dust, not darkness,’ Julia said. ‘And I choose to think that we come from the light and return to the light.’

‘What a glass-half-full kind of person you are.’

‘One of us has to be,’ Julia said. ‘Or the glass would be entirely empty.’ One of us , as if they were a couple. Yet she was going to Italy on holiday, ‘with a friend’.

‘Who?’ Jackson asked and she shrugged and said, ‘Just a friend.’

‘Could you be any vaguer?’

This despite the fact that Jackson had suggested to her that perhaps the three of them might take a holiday together during her time off. A step towards reconciliation, perhaps towards reunion.

‘Like a family holiday?’ she said and Jackson thought about it and said, ‘Yes, I suppose that is what I mean.’ Julia wrinkled her nose and said, ‘No, sweetie, I don’t think so.’

He was surprised at how disappointed he felt. But then women were full of surprises. Every one of them, every which way, every day.

‘Where is Jonathan anyway?’ he asked.

Julia put up a hand as if stopping traffic, as if stopping an enormous towering truck. ‘I’m not speaking about Jonathan. OK?’

‘Happy never to mention his name again, I’m sure.’

‘That poor boy,’ she said, putting her arms protectively around her own boy. Their boy.

‘Michael?’

‘He went through so much.’

‘He’s OK now.’

‘In the same way that you and I are?’ Julia said. ‘After what happened to us when we were children?’

‘Yeah. That way.’

Michael Braithwaite was on his way to New Zealand even as they were speaking. A brother and sister reunion. He was a nice bloke, top-to-toe denim, overweight, unhealthy, cheerful. He liked nothing more than a barbecue with his wife and kids next to his swimming pool. He’d made a fortune in scrap. Some people lived their life against all the odds.

‘You and me too, sweetie,’ Julia said, patting him on the hand.

Linda Pallister had returned to Leeds and was set to appear before a tribunal and be made to answer for her actions. (‘Ah, the whirligig of time,’ Julia said.) She had helped a four-year-old witness to disappear. Put him in a care home in Roundhay run by nuns, changed his name. And never mentioned his sister to anyone. Told the nuns he was a liar, lied all the time, about having a sister, about his dad killing his mum. When Michael was eighteen he was handed his birth certificate and found out his name, but Linda Pallister never came forward and told him the truth about his mother, or his sister. ‘She was coerced,’ Michael Braithwaite said, ‘her own kid threatened.’

‘Not an excuse,’ the two Jacksons said in unison. Brian Jackson, Michael Braithwaite and Jackson were eating lunch in the bistro in 42 The Calls. Jackson, still shaken by the scene on Leeds station, drank a double malt instead of lunch.

Michael Braithwaite’s memories faded until the slate was wiped clean, but he realized there was an emptiness that would destroy him eventually. ‘Therapy in rehab,’ he shrugged. ‘My name is Michael Braithwaite and I’m an alcoholic, all that stuff.’ Guiltily, Jackson put his whisky down. ‘Decided to go looking,’ Michael Braithwaite said.