Before her interview she imagined walking through those selfsame gardens, admiring the beautiful herbaceous border, discussing
Middlemarch
and
War and Peace
with an earnest new friend or being punted along the river by some handsome, no-good medical student, being someone that people wanted to know—“Oh, look, there’s Amelia Land. Let’s go and talk to her. She’s so interesting” (or “such good fun,” or “very pretty,” or even “absolutely outrageous”), but it hadn’t worked out like that at all. Her interview at Newnham was mortifying—they were kind, concerned even, treating her like she was slightly sick, or suffering a disability, but they asked her questions about works and authors she had never heard of. Worse than Spenser and Pope, now it was
Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
and Ruskin’s
Unto This Last.
It wasn’t what Amelia thought of as literature. Literature was big books (
Middlemarch
and
War and Peace
) that you could fall in love with and lose yourself in forever. And so she’d ended up at a far-flung, mediocre redbrick with no intellectual cachet but where at least they let you write long essays about your love affair with
Middlemarch
and
War and Peace.
Julia came back into the kitchen and poured more gin. She was getting on Amelia’s nerves. “I thought you were having a bath,” she said irritably.
“I am. Who rattled your cage?”
“No one.”
A
melia took her tea through to the living room and turned the television on. Sammy joined her on the sofa. There was some kind of celebrity reality show on. She didn’t know who any of the “celebrities” were and there didn’t seem to be anything real about the predicaments they found themselves in. She didn’t want to go to bed, didn’t want to sleep in Sylvia’s cold bedroom that caught the light from the street lamp outside and had damp creeping down the walls from the roof. Maybe she could move into the guest bedroom? To Amelia’s knowledge no one had ever slept in it. Would it call down a curse on her head from their mother? If their mother was a ghost, not that Amelia believed in ghosts, she thought the guest bedroom would be where she would take up residence. She imagined her lying on the narrow bed, its white coverlet now spotted with mold, lazing away her days with magazines and boxes of chocolates, discarding the wrappers on the floor now that she was no longer in thrall to housework. And what about Olivia’s room, could Amelia bear to sleep in there? Could she lie in that small bed and stare at the peeling nursery-rhyme wallpaper and not feel her heart break?
Who took Olivia? Did Victor come creeping across the grass in the night and dig her out of the tent with his big shovel hands while Amelia slept? Her own father? Why not? It happened all the time, didn’t it? And did he keep Blue Mouse as some terrible souvenir? Or was there a more innocent explanation (but what?).
They had always found refuge in thinking of Olivia living a different life somewhere else, rather than being dead. For years and years the three of them had woven a story for Olivia—snatched in the night by a figure very like the Snow Queen, only kind and loving and coming from a more temperate kingdom. This empyreal creature had been desperate for a little girl of her own and had chosen Olivia because she was perfect in every way. The fictional Olivia was brought up in the most luxurious paradise their girlish imaginations could conceive of—wrapped in silks and furs, fed on cakes and sweets, surrounded by dogs and kittens and (for some reason) peacocks, bathing in golden baths and sleeping in silver beds. And although they knew Olivia was happy in her new life they believed that one day she would be allowed to return home—which was always the unquestionable consummation of this wishful narrative.
As they grew, so did Olivia, and it was only when Julia reached adolescence (her hormones releasing enough energy to power a small town) that Olivia’s other, fabulous life faded away. Yet it was so strongly embedded in Amelia’s consciousness that even now she found it difficult to believe that Olivia might actually be dead and not a thirty-seven-year-old woman living in an Arcadian bower somewhere.
Julia came into the living room and squashed herself onto the sofa between Amelia and Sammy, where there was clearly no room for her. “Go away,” Amelia said to her. Julia produced a bar of chocolate and broke a piece off for Amelia and a piece for the dog.
“I mean, it’s not
impossible
that Olivia’s still alive,” Julia said, as if she had been listening to Amelia’s thoughts (what a horrible idea). “Perhaps she was kidnapped by someone who wanted a child, and they brought her up as their own, so she forgot about us, forgot she was Olivia, just thought she was someone else, say . . . Charlotte —”
“Charlotte?”
“Yes. And then when the kidnappers were on their deathbed they told her who she was. ‘Charlotte, you are really Olivia Land. You lived on Owlstone Road in Cambridge. You have three sisters—Sylvia, Amelia, and Julia.’”
“How likely is that, Julia?”
Amelia changed the channel until she came across
Now, Voyager,
and Julia said, “Oh, leave that on.”
“Your bath will overflow.”
“Milly?”
“What?”
“You know what you were saying about Victor?”
“What?”
“If he ever
interfered
with me. That’s such a stupid term, such a euphemism. What it means is did Daddy ever make you suck his cock or did he ever stick his fingers inside you while he jerked himself off —” Amelia couldn’t bear this. She concentrated on Bette Davis looking tragic and tried to block out the obscenities Julia was spouting.
“Whichever way you look at it, it’s rape,” Julia concluded. “And no, since you ask, he didn’t. He tried though.” Amelia wanted to put her hands over her ears. She wanted to be deaf.
“He
tried?
What do you mean he tried?”
“He tried to stick his hands down my knickers once but I just screamed the place down. He was trying to explain fractions,” she added as if that were somehow relevant.
That would be Julia, she would scream. Amelia would simply have let him do it. Only he didn’t, he’d never tried to do anything with her. He’d never
interfered.
“What did he do to you, Milly?” Julia asked gently, putting her hand on Amelia’s forearm as if she were sick or bereaved. Amelia had caught him once with Sylvia. She had walked into the study without knocking, which was absolutely forbidden, so she must have been in one of her dreamy moods, and there had been Daddy with Sylvia and ever since she had tried to forget what she had seen. Sylvia facedown on Victor’s desk like a half-crucified martyr, her skinny white buttocks exposed, and Victor
preparing
himself —
Amelia shook Julia off and said harshly, “Nothing. He never did anything, I would never have let him. Go and get your bath, Julia.”
A
melia woke up with a start. It was dark and silent in the house, no ghosts walking, only the slight electrical buzz of the street lamp outside. Amelia couldn’t remember if Julia had got out of the bath and had to get up to check that she hadn’t drowned silently. The bath was empty, the bathroom dripping with cold condensation. There were towels thrown around everywhere. Julia was safely in her bed, her bedclothes in the usual disorder and her poodle hair still damp. Her breathing was heavy and regular, although Amelia could hear a gurgling in her chest. Julia’s lungs always sounded as if they needed wringing out, like dishcloths. What would she do if Julia died before her? If she was the last one left? (Sylvia didn’t count.) Sammy, asleep on Julia’s bed, woke up and wagged his tail when Amelia came in the room. Amelia straightened Julia’s covers and the dog slipped clumsily off the bed and followed her out of the room.
On the way back to her own room Amelia paused outside Olivia’s closed door. Sammy looked at her inquiringly and she turned the doorknob and walked into the room. Moonlight shone diffusely through the filthy window. She lay down on her back on the small bed. Sammy flopped to the floor. The effort made him groan.
On the last day of her life, Olivia had woken in this bed, looked at these walls. Would she have died if she’d slept here and not in the tent? If only Amelia could go back, take Olivia’s place that night, fight off whatever evil it was that had taken her. If only Amelia could have been chosen instead.
Theo
T
he girl had a tube of sweets clutched in her hand—garish-colored things that were probably made entirely of chemicals and E-numbers. She offered one to Theo and he took it out of a sense of politeness. It tasted vaguely of petrol or lighter fluid. It didn’t taste as if it could do any good to growing bones and minds. Theo never bought sweets, and although he loved chocolate he didn’t like buying it in shops because of the disapprobation this always attracted. Fat people weren’t supposed to eat anything, but they were especially not supposed to eat confectionery, so instead he belonged to an online “tasting club,” which meant that every month a chocolate company sent him a new selection to try and in return he sent back a review (“creamy and delicious, the hazelnut praline gives just the right amount of contrast”) that felt oddly onerous, like doing bizarre homework. That was how he rationed his chocolate consumption, just the one box of something creamy and delicious every month.
He didn’t really care about his cholesterol and his blood pressure. He would be happy to die of a stroke or a heart attack. “Strokes don’t necessarily kill, Dad,” Jennifer e-mailed crossly from Toronto. “They’re more likely to leave you incapacitated. Is that what you want?” Perhaps she was afraid she would have to look after him, but he would never do that to her. As far as Theo was concerned the parent-child relationship was one way, you gave them all your love and they were under no obligation to pay a penny back. Of course, if they did love you then that was the icing on the cake with cherries on top. And chocolate shavings and those little silver balls that cracked your fillings. Laura used to love those. He always decorated the cakes he made. Cakes, pastry, scones—he’d learned how to make everything after Valerie died. He turned out to be a much better cook than his wife.
He hired a woman to come in and clean twice a week and a girl, a student, to pick them up from school and look after them until he got home from work. Otherwise he did everything himself—housework, child care. He went to PTA meetings, parents’ evenings, took the girls to birthday parties, threw birthday parties in return. The other children’s mothers treated him as an honorary woman and said he would make someone a wonderful wife, which he took as a compliment.
The girl said she was eight but she was dressed more like a teenager. But that was how it was nowadays. In the past, children used to be dressed as small adults so there was nothing new in that. When Laura was eight she wore dungarees and jeans and nice dresses for best—“frocks,” Valerie would have called them, if she’d been around. White ankle socks, sandals, T-shirts, and shorts. He bought Laura her own clothes and didn’t make her wear Jennifer’s castoffs. A lot of people thought Theo spoiled his girls, but how could you spoil a child—by neglect, yes, but not by love. You had to give them all the love you could, even though giving that much love could cause you pain and anguish and horror and, in the end, love could destroy you. Because they left, they went to university and husbands, they went to Canada and they went to the grave.
Theo declined a second sweet. “It’s polite to offer one to everyone,” Deborah Arnold said to the girl. Rather reluctantly, Theo thought, the girl slid off her seat and went over to Deborah’s desk and without a word offered the tube of sweets to her. Deborah took three. There was something oddly admirable about the woman. Terrifying but admirable.
“What’s your job?” the girl asked him.
“I’m retired,” Theo said, wondering if she knew what that meant.
“Because you’re old,” she said, nodding sagely. Theo agreed with her, “Yes, because I’m old.”
“My daddy’s going to retire,” the girl said. “He’s going to live in France.” Deborah Arnold laughed derisively.
“France?” Theo said. He couldn’t imagine Jackson in France somehow. “Have you been to France?”
“Yes, on holiday. Some people ate thrushes.”
“Oh my God,” Deborah Arnold said. “Neither of you are supposed to be here,” she added as if they were jointly responsible for the French dining on innocent songbirds.
“I just wanted a quick chat with Mr. Brodie—to see how things were going,” Theo said apologetically. Deborah Arnold seemed extraordinarily busy—typing, filing, and copying like a woman possessed. Did Jackson Brodie really generate this much business? He seemed a little too laid-back to keep an assistant so fully occupied. She’d called herself his assistant; he’d called her his secretary.
“So, Mr. Brodie’s out on a case?” Theo asked, to make conversation more than anything. Deborah gave him a pitying look over the top of her spectacles as if she couldn’t believe he could be duped into thinking that Jackson actually worked. After five minutes, she said, “He’s at the dentist. Again.”
“Dad fancies the dentist,” the girl said, popping another sweet into an already overloaded mouth. It seemed sad that such little girls knew about “fancying,” knew anything at all about sex. Perhaps they didn’t, perhaps they just knew the words. The girl, Marlee, did seem very precocious though, more like an eighteen-year-old than an eight-year-old. Not like his eighteen-year-old (because Laura would always be eighteen). Laura had had a freshness about her, an innocence, like a light shining from within. Jackson had never mentioned having a daughter, but then you didn’t, did you? Bank managers, bus drivers, they didn’t spend their time saying, “I have a daughter, by the way.”
“Have you got children?” Marlee asked him.
“Yes,” Theo said. “I have a daughter called Jenny. She lives in Canada. She’s grown-up.” Of course, he felt like he was denying Laura, expected to hear a cock crow every time he made this answer, but people didn’t want to hear him say, “Yes, I have two, one alive and well and living in Toronto and one dead and in the earth.”
“Grandchildren?” Marlee asked.
“No,” Theo said. Jennifer and her husband, Alan—New York, Jewish, avuncular, heart surgeon—had decided not to have children and it had seemed to Theo to be indelicate to ask why. Jennifer had a career, of course. She was an orthopedic consultant, and they had a good life, a nice house in the suburbs, a place on Lake Ontario, a “cottage” as the Torontonians quaintly called their huge lakeshore houses. Theo had gone to stay one summer. The house was surrounded on three sides by trees and at night it was the quietest, darkest place he had ever been, the only illumination coming from the fireflies that danced outside his bedroom window all night long. It was a great place. They had a canoe that they took out on the lake, there were hiking trails through the ancient woods, they had a barbecue every day on their lakeside terrace—it would have been a paradise for kids. Of course, you never missed what you never had. And once you’d had it you missed it all the time. Perhaps Jennifer was being sensible. If she didn’t have a child she couldn’t lose it.
“Are you sad?”
“No. Yes. A little, sometimes.” (A lot, all the time.)
“Have another sweet.”
“Thanks.”
A
fter ten years Theo had suddenly become impatient. Ten years of garnering evidence, of doggedly accumulating every last scrap of anything, and now he wanted to know. Jackson had removed all his client files, loading up the backseat and the boot of his car with box after box of other people’s life histories—their divorces, their house purchases, their last wills and testaments. Had Jackson discerned something yet from all this information, like a soothsayer, like those clairvoyants they brought in, that Theo himself had brought in. Even the police had brought a clairvoyant in, but they hadn’t briefed him properly and he had thought they were looking for a body when, of course, they already had one. The clairvoyant said the girl’s body was “in a garden, within walking distance of a river,” which pretty much narrowed it down to half of Cambridge, if anyone was going to go and look for her, which they weren’t. How many girls were out there, unturned by the plow, unseen by the passerby? If only you could lock girls away, in towers, in dungeons, in convents, in their bedrooms, anywhere that would keep them safe.
There was a girl he passed all the time. Sometimes she was on Regent Street, she was often on Sydney Street, and he’d seen her at the Grafton Centre, sitting on an old sheet, a blanket around her shoulders. A “beggar girl.” It was like something from history, from the eighteenth century. This morning she was on St. Andrews Street and Theo gave her five pounds, which was all the change he had on him.
The girl looked ill but the dog with her always looked well cared for, a nice glossy black lurcher, still young. The beggar girl had custard-yellow hair, cut raggedly short, and no one ever seemed to give her money, perhaps because she never asked for it, never made eye contact or said something cheery to make people feel good about themselves, good about her being a beggar. Or perhaps because she looked as if she might spend it all on drugs. Theo thought she would probably buy dog food before drugs. Theo always gave her money but he felt there must be something better he could do—buy her a good meal, find her a room, ask her name, anything, before she slipped through the cracks, but he always felt too shy, too worried that any interest might be misconstrued, that she would turn on him and snarl, “Fuck off, Granddad, you old pervert.”
“D
oes your father know you’re here?” Deborah Arnold asked Marlee.
“Mum left him a message on his mobile.”
“Well, I have to go out,” Deborah said. “I have to catch the post”—this last remark addressed to Theo, who wondered what he was supposed to do about it. “Can you keep an eye on her?” Deborah said, nodding in the direction of Marlee, and Theo wanted to say, “But I’m an almost complete stranger. How do you know I’m not going to do something dreadful to her?” Misinterpreting his hesitation, Deborah said, “It’s just for fifteen minutes, or until his nibs comes back.” Marlee clambered on his knee and put her arms around his neck, and said, “Please, please, nice man, say yes,” and Theo thought, Dear God, hadn’t anyone told her to be cautious around strangers? Just because he looked like Father Christmas didn’t make him benign, although he was, of course. But Deborah Arnold was out the door and down the stairs before Theo could protest.
“My daddy’ll be back soon,” Marlee reassured him. “My daddy.” The very words brought a lump to his throat. Laura’s second-favorite film, after
Dirty Dancing,
was
The Railway Children,
and he’d bought a copy on video a couple years before she died. They had watched it together several times and they both always cried at the end when the train stops and the steam and smoke slowly clear around the figure of Bobbie’s father and Jenny Agutter (who always reminded him a little of Laura) cries out, “Daddy, my daddy,” and it was odd because it was such a happy moment for Bobbie and yet it always seemed unbearably sad. Of course, he’d never watched the film since Laura’s death. It would kill him to watch it. Theo never doubted for a moment that when he died he would be reunited with Laura, and, in his mind, it was just like
The Railway Children
—he would walk out of a fog and Laura would be there and she would say, “Daddy, my daddy.” It wasn’t that Theo believed in religion, or a God, or an afterlife. He just knew it was impossible to feel this much love and for it to end.
M
arlee was bored. She had finished the sweets and they had played a game of tic-tac-toe—which she was already familiar with—and hangman, which she wasn’t, so Theo taught her, but now she was getting whiny with hunger. From the first-floor window of Jackson’s office they had a tantalizing view of a sandwich shop. “I’m starving,” she declared melodramatically, doubling up to demonstrate her hunger pains.
Perhaps Deborah Arnold wasn’t coming back. Perhaps Jackson wasn’t coming back, perhaps he never got the message about his daughter. Perhaps he had reacted badly to a dental anesthetic, perhaps he had died under the anesthetic, or been run over on the way back from the dentist.
Theo supposed he could leave Marlee alone while he slipped across the street to buy them both something to eat. It would take, at the most, what—ten minutes? What harm could happen to her in ten minutes? It was an absurd question to ask himself because Theo knew exactly what could happen in ten minutes—a plane could explode over a town or fly into a building, a train could derail, a maniac in a yellow golfing sweater could run into an office, wielding a knife. Leaving her in an office—what was he thinking! Offices ranked higher than planes, mountains, or schools on Theo’s list of dangerous places.
“Come on then,” he said to her. “We’ll pop across the road and bring a sandwich back.”
“What if Daddy comes and can’t find us?”
Theo felt touched by the “us.” “Well, we’ll put a notice on the door,” he said.
“Back in ten minutes,” Marlee said. “That’s what Daddy puts.”
O
f course it wasn’t as simple as that. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and the sandwich shop was about to close and had hardly any sandwiches left and the ones on offer—egg mayonnaise or roast beef and horseradish—prompted Marlee to act out a vivid pantomime of vomiting. As they came out of the sandwich shop she slipped one small, dry hand into his and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. She got suddenly excited when she spotted a burger bar across the street and almost dragged Theo into it. The letters “CJD” came into his mind but he tried to suppress them and anyway she wanted something called a “chickinlickin burger,” which Theo hoped had chicken in it rather than mad cow, but then what part of the chicken and how old? And what had the chicken in turn been fed on? Mad cow probably.
He bought her a chickinlickin burger (“with fries,” she begged) and a Coke. For fast food it seemed very slow and Theo wondered if anyone monitored the service in these places. Most of the people working here seemed to be children—Australian children at that.
They had been gone a lot longer than ten minutes. If Jackson was back he would be sending out search parties by now. As if the very thought of his name conjured him up, Jackson suddenly appeared out of a crowd of jostling foreign students. He looked slightly wild and grabbed hold of Marlee’s arm so that she squealed in protest, “
Daddy,
mind my Coke.”