Even though it was July and hot, Victor’s house had its own damp, chilly climate that seemed unconnected to the outside world. Every evening since their arrival they had lit a fire and sat in front of the sitting-room hearth with the same kind of devotion that prehistoric people must have afforded flames, except that prehistoric people didn’t have Victor’s extensive cable package to entertain themselves with. During the daytime it was startling to wander out into the weed-choked garden to get some fresh air and discover a hot, white Mediterranean sun beating down on them.
* * *
Amelia was sleeping in Sylvia’s old room, the one Sylvia had slept in until she discovered her absurd, inexplicable vocation. She had already converted to Catholicism, of course, which drove Victor to apoplexy, but when she gave up her place at Girton, where she was due to start a maths degree, to enter the convent it seemed as if Victor might actually kill her. Julia and Amelia, still at school, thought that renouncing the world and entering an enclosed order was an unnecessarily dramatic way of getting away from Victor. (Were they really going to cremate him tomorrow, burn him into ashes? How extraordinary that you could be given the licence to do that to another human being. Just get rid of them, as if they were rubbish.)
And, of course, Sylvia didn’t have to deal with any of the aftermath of their father’s death. What a fantastic form of avoidance being a bride of Christ was. Julia enjoyed telling people that her sister was a nun because they were always so astonished (‘Your sister?’) but Amelia felt embarrassed by it. God spoke to Sylvia on a regular basis but she was always coy about the content of these conversations, just smiling her holy smile (enigmatic and infuriating). Anyone would think God was an intimate acquaintance, someone with whom Sylvia discussed existential philosophy over bottles of cheap wine in the snug of a quaint riverside pub. God and Sylvia had been on speaking terms for almost as long as Amelia could remember. Did she really think he spoke to her? She was delusional, surely? At the very least a hysteric. Hearing voices, like Joan of Arc. In fact, it was Joan of Arc she used to speak to, wasn’t it? Even before Rosemary died or Olivia disappeared. Had anyone ever entertained the possibility that Sylvia was schizophrenic? If God spoke to Amelia she would presume she had gone insane. Someone should have paid attention to Sylvia’s oddness, they really should have.
Sammy, sprawled full length at the foot of Amelia’s too-small single bed, began to whimper in his sleep. His tail thumped excitedly on the eiderdown, and his paws made ghostly scrabbling motions as if he was chasing the rabbits of his younger days. Amelia would have left him to this happy dream but then the thought struck her that, rather than chasing something, perhaps he himself was being chased, and that the noises he was making were the sounds of fear rather than excitement (how could two things so opposite seem so similar?), so she hauled herself into a sitting position and stroked his flank until he was soothed back into a calmer sleep. His body felt hollow with age. Sammy was the only living creature that Amelia could remember Victor treating as an equal.
She supposed she would have to take Sammy back to Oxford with her. Julia would say she wanted Sammy but she would never manage with a dog in London. Amelia had a garden in Oxford. She owned the upper half of a small semi-detached Edwardian villa, just the right size for one person, and shared a garden with her downstairs neighbour, a quiet geometrician at New College called Philip who seemed to have a complete lack of sexual interest in either gender but who had a dog (albeit a noisy Pekinese) and was handy at fixing things and therefore constituted the perfect neighbour. (‘Or serial killer,’ Julia said.) He wasn’t a gardener, to Amelia’s relief, and allowed her to get on with as much mulching and digging and planting as she liked. Amelia believed in gardening in the way that Sylvia believed in God. Like Sylvia she had been converted. She didn’t know she was a gardener until she was thirty when she had planted a Queen of Denmark rose one November and the following June had watched as blossom after blossom burst forth. It was a revelation – you plant something, it grows. ‘Well, duh,’ Julia said (like a moronic teenager) when Amelia attempted to explain this miracle.
She had been in Cambridge only a few days and yet her other life, her real life, already seemed a world away and she had occasionally to remind herself that it existed. Part of her wanted to stay here for ever and blunder on into an argumentative old age with Julia. Together, perhaps they could keep all the dread and loneliness of life at bay. And she could get to grips with Victor’s garden, where there were years of neglect to make up for. She would have liked to lie there for hours, planning out beds (delphiniums, campanula, coreopsis, veronica) and redesigning the lawn (A water feature? Something Japanese perhaps?) but she climbed reluctantly out of bed, followed loyally by Sammy, and went down to the cold kitchen, where she filled the kettle and then slammed it on the hob to show how annoyed she was that Julia was still asleep.
Amelia was in the dining room, boxing up an endless parade of crockery and ornaments. Julia was in the study where she was supposed to be. She had been in there since they started clearing out Victor’s goods and chattels and she said (melodramatic as ever) that she thought she might be under a spell that condemned her to be trapped in there for ever. Victor’s dank, airless lair had remained a black hole throughout the years and was now piled high with all kinds of dusty papers, files and folders. It was like a bonfire waiting for a match. They had pulled the curtains down and Julia said, ‘Let there be light!’ and Amelia said, ‘It’s quite a nice room really.’
Julia was so badly affected by the dust in the house that, as well as all the medication she took (she treated it like sweets), she had started to wear a face mask and goggles that she’d bought in a do-it-yourself place. You could still hear her chesty cough from half a mile away.
Amelia was surprised that by midday Julia hadn’t come looking for food. When she went looking for her she found her leaning against Victor’s desk, a troubled look on her face. ‘What?’ Amelia said, and Julia indicated one of the drawers to Victor’s desk. ‘I broke the lock,’ she said.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ Amelia said. ‘We have to go through everything. And technically it all belongs to us now.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that. I found something,’ Julia said, opening the drawer and removing an object, handling it delicately like an archaeologist removing an artefact that might disintegrate in the air. She handed it to Amelia. For a moment Amelia was puzzled and then suddenly she was stepping into space, as if she’d walked through a door that opened on to nothing. And as she fell all she could think of was Olivia’s Blue Mouse, clutched in her hand.
‘You like him.’
‘No, I don’t.’ They were making supper together, Amelia poaching eggs, Julia warming baked beans in a saucepan. They were both at the frontier of their culinary capabilities.
‘Yes, you do,’ Julia said. ‘That’s why you were so antagonistic towards him.’
‘I’m antagonistic towards everyone.’ Amelia could feel herself blushing and concentrated on the bread in the toaster as if it needed psychic assistance to pop up. ‘You like him too,’ she muttered.
‘I do, there’s something very attractive about Mr Brodie. He has his own teeth, he isn’t even going bald yet,’ she said. ‘I bags him,’ and Amelia said, ‘Why you?’ and Julia said, ‘Why not? And anyway, you already have a boyfriend, you have Henry.’
Amelia thought the word ‘boyfriend’ sounded ridiculous when it was applied to a forty-five-year-old woman. When it was applied to herself.
It was a shame Julia hadn’t encountered Jackson Brodie when she was wearing her goggles and face mask, he wouldn’t have found her so attractive then. Because he had found her attractive, there was no doubt about it. Of course some men were into things like that, masks and bondage and God only knows what else. (Rubber! Why?)
‘Oh, you’re such a prude, Milly,’ Julia said. ‘You should try something adventurous with Henry. Spice things up between you. It took you long enough to find a boyfriend, it
would be a shame to lose him because you can’t get out of the missionary position.’
Amelia buttered the toast and laid it on plates. Julia tipped the beans on top. Amelia had begun to enjoy sharing domestic tasks with Julia, basic though they were. She’d lived on her own since her second year at university: that was a long time, more than two decades. Solitary life hadn’t been a choice, no one had ever wanted to live with her. She mustn’t get used to being with Julia. She mustn’t get used to waking up in a house where someone knew her, inside out.
‘Handcuffs,’ Julia continued airily, as if she was discussing seasonal accessories, ‘a little bit of leather or a whip.’
‘Henry’s not a horse,’ Amelia said irritably. Were accessories still seasonal? They were when their mother was around. Rosemary had worn white shoes and carried a white handbag in the summer. A little straw hat. Zip-up suede boots for winter and – was she imagining this? – a woollen tammy. If only she’d taken more notice of Rosemary when she was alive.
‘There’s nothing wrong with a little light bondage,’ Julia said. ‘I imagine Henry would like it. Men love anything filthy.’ She said the word ‘filthy’ with relish. Amelia had once, completely unintentionally, accompanied Julia into a sex shop in Soho. Upmarket, aimed at women only, as if it was a proud emblem of the triumph of feminism, when in fact it was just full of pornographic smut. Amelia had followed Julia inside under the misapprehension that it sold bath products and was stunned when Julia picked up an object that looked like a pink horse’s tail and declared admiringly, ‘Oh look, a butt plug – how cute!’ Sometimes Amelia wondered if women hadn’t been better off darning and sewing and baking bread. Not that she could do any of those things herself.
‘Are accessories still seasonal?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Julia said decisively, and then, less certain, ‘aren’t they? You know, you’re very lucky to have a steady boyfriend, Milly,’ and Amelia said, ‘Why, because I’m so unattractive?’ and Julia said, ‘Don’t be a silly-Milly.’ ‘Silly-Milly’ was what Sylvia called her when they were young. Sylvia always made fun of people. She could be very cruel.
‘At your age,’ Julia said (would she just shut up?), ‘women are usually either on their own or stuck in tedious marriages.’
Amelia slipped the poached eggs on top of the beans. ‘Our age,’ she corrected her. ‘And you’re being patronizing. “Steady boyfriend” and “Julia” aren’t words that have ever occurred in the same sentence. If it’s not a good thing for you, why is it a good thing for me?’ There was something about eating eggs that seemed wrong – swallowing something, annihilating something that contained new life. Banishing it into the inner darkness.
Julia put on a great show of being hurt. ‘No, really, what I mean is your Henry seems just the ticket, you’re lucky to have found someone who suits you. If I found someone who suited me I would settle down, believe me.’
‘I don’t.’ Amelia looked at the eggs, like sickly, jaundiced eyes, and thought of her own eggs, a handful left, old and shrivelled like musty dried fruit where once they must have been bursting towards the light—
‘Come on, Milly, the food’s getting cold. Milly?’
Amelia fled the room, running awkwardly up the stairs before throwing up in the bathroom toilet. They had scrubbed and bleached the toilet but it still bore the stains of years of careless use by Victor and the very thought of him in here made her retch all over again.
‘Milly, are you all right?’ Julia’s voice drifted up the stairs.
Amelia came out of the bathroom. She paused on the threshold of Olivia’s room. It was the same as it had always been – the bed, stripped of all bedding, the small wardrobe and chest of drawers, all empty of clothing. All of the past seemed concentrated in this one little room. There was a ghost lived in this house, Amelia thought, but it wasn’t Olivia, it was her own self. The Amelia she would have been – should have been – if her family hadn’t imploded.
And then suddenly, standing there in Olivia’s decrepit bedroom, Amelia had what she could only term an epiphany. She thought this must be how people felt who received mystical visions, those who, like Sylvia, thought they heard the voice of God or felt grace falling on them (although she knew it was actually evidence of an unstable temporal lobe). Amelia simply knew – and the knowledge was like a warm wave that passed through her body – Olivia was coming back. She might be coming back as no more than a shadow of grease and ash, but she was coming back. And someone had to be here to welcome her.
‘Milly?’
6
Theo
2004
EVERY YEAR HE WALKED TO THE OFFICE IN PARKSIDE AND then walked the two miles home again. The same pilgrimage for ten years now. A four-mile round trip, each year a little more tiring because he was carrying more weight, but there was nothing any doctor could say that could scare Theo now.
When he arrived in Parkside he was out of breath and stood around on the pavement for a while before attempting the stairs. He rested with his hands on his thighs, inhaling and exhaling in slow, determined breaths, like an athlete who had just run a hard race. Passers-by gave him covert (and not so covert) looks indicating varying degrees of distaste, as if they were trying to imagine what terrible flaw in a person’s character could allow them to become so fat.
He had been inside the building only three times in the last ten years. The other times he had simply made a lurking kind of obeisance on the pavement.
David Holroyd didn’t die. He was still alive when the paramedics arrived and was taken to hospital, where he was sewn up and the blood of several strangers was pumped into him. Nowadays he worked three days a week and the rest of the time he tended to the garden of his cottage in rural Norfolk.
The boardroom had been repainted and a new carpet laid over the indelible stain of Laura’s blood but no one who had been there that day was comfortable with the idea of going back, and within the year Holroyd, Wyre and Stanton moved to an ugly 1960s office building near the Grafton Centre, reincarnated as simply ‘Holroyd and Stanton’ because Theo gave up his partnership after Laura’s death and never returned to work. He had enough in stocks and bonds and savings to finance his rather frugal life. The money he received from the criminal injuries compensation scheme he donated to the dogs’ home where they had obtained Poppy.
The front door, once a handsome bottle-green, was now painted white and no one had polished the brass for a long time. There was no security on the door – no locks or entryphone or surveillance camera; anyone could still walk in unchallenged.
The brass plaque on the door that had once read ‘Holroyd, Wyre and Stanton – Solicitors and Attorneys-at-Law’ had been replaced by a plastic one that announced ‘Bliss – Beauty Therapy’. Before Bliss it was the mysterious ‘Hellier plc’ who came and went between the third and fourth anniversaries. After Hellier plc disappeared, the offices had lain empty for a long time before ‘JM Business Consultants’ moved in. Theo went up there, on the sixth anniversary, on the pretext of asking about IT training, but the girl on reception frowned and said, ‘That’s not what we do,’ although she didn’t elucidate what it was that they did do, which looked to Theo to be not very much at all, unless it was acting as a depot for the large cardboard boxes that were stacked everywhere. He’d only wanted to have a look, see the place – the spot – but as well as the boxes blocking the hallway there were flimsy partition screens everywhere and he didn’t want to make a fuss and frighten the girl.
The stairs took it out of him and he had to rest at the top before going through the new glass door that was etched with the word ‘Bliss’ in a swooping, romantic script, like a promise, as if he might be about to enter Elysium or the land of Cockayne.
The receptionist, dressed in a clinical white uniform, was called ‘Milanda’, according to her name badge, which sounded to Theo more like a brand of low-cholesterol margarine than a name. She regarded Theo with horror and he was tempted to reassure her that fat wasn’t inf
ectious, but instead he said that he would like to surprise his wife for her birthday, with ‘a bit of pampering’. It was a lie but it wasn’t a lie that harmed anyone. He wished now that he had given Valerie more ‘pampering’ but it was much too late for that now.
Once Milanda had managed to get over her initial fright at the size of him, she suggested a ‘Half-Day Spa’ package – pedicure, manicure, and a ‘seaweed wrap’ – and Theo said that sounded ‘just the ticket’ but could he leaf through the brochure and see what else there was? And Milanda said, ‘Of course,’ with a fixed smile on her face because you could see she was worried that Theo would be a very bad advertisement for a beauty salon, sitting there in reception on the (possibly too flimsy) cane-work sofa next to the fibreglass fountain whose waters competed with the ‘soothing sounds’ of the Meditation CD – an odd mix of pan pipes, whale song and crashing surf.
The offices had been completely refitted since his last abortive visit. The walls were lilac now and the doors painted in a palette of purples and pinks and blues. The whole shape of the place had been changed by interior plasterboard walls, creating open spaces as well as smaller rooms – ‘therapy suites’, according to the signs on the doors.
Was the boardroom still there, untouched, or had it been transformed into – what? A steam room, a sauna? Or divided into cubicle-sized rooms for ‘Thai massage’ or ‘Brazilian waxing’? (The brochure offered extraordinary services.) A woman arrived for an appointment and Milanda escorted her into one of the therapy suites. Theo stood up – casually, as if stretching his legs – and made a pretence of sauntering down the hallway.