Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

give her a final benediction. Had he ever touched them in a kind way? A kiss, a hug? A tender caress on the cheek? If he had, Amelia couldn’t recall it. “Wake me if anything happens,” Julia mumbled. “If he dies or something.” Julia was still a heavyweight sleeper, and she was as dead to the world as Victor within minutes. Amelia looked at the dark curls on her sister’s head and felt a rush of affection for her that was more like a pang of grief.
    Julia hadn’t had much work recently. She used to work all the time, provincial theater, archly modern plays in tiny London studios and bit parts in television—underclass victims in
The Bill
and terminal patients in
Casualty
(she’d died twice in ten years), but now she never even seemed to be called to auditions. She had done some kind of corporate training video last year but it was for an oil company subsidiary and Amelia had been annoyed with her for doing it, saying that she “should have considered the politics of it,” and Julia had said that it was easy to have “the luxury of politics when you had enough food to eat,” and Amelia said, “That’s a ridiculous exaggeration. When did you ever starve?” but now she was sorry because Julia had been happy when she told her about the job and she’d spoiled it for her.
    Amelia had seen almost all of Julia’s work, and although she always told her how “wonderful” she was, because that was theatrical protocol, she often found herself thinking that Julia wasn’t really very special at all when she was onstage. The best thing she’d seen her in was a pantomime in Bristol, a generic kind of piece, probably
Cinderella,
where Julia had been cast as a dog—a black poodle with a lion cut and a French accent. Julia’s shape, short and busty, had somehow been perfectly suited to the costume and she had caught a certain kind of Parisian arrogance that the audience loved. She hadn’t needed a wig—her own untamed hair had been piled up in a topknot with a bow in it. Amelia had never thought of Julia as a poodle before then—she always imagined her as a Jack Russell. It seemed suddenly very sad to Amelia that the best role of Julia’s career was as a dog. And that she didn’t need a wig to play a poodle.
    W as he dead? He looked very much like he did when he was asleep—lying on his back with his eyes closed and his beaky mouth open—but there was no sign of the rise and fall of his troubled breathing and his skin was an odd putty color that suddenly brought back the memory of a dead Rosemary in a hospital bed, so unexpected that Amelia couldn’t move for a moment. She must have fallen asleep as well. The bad daughters of the king who couldn’t even sustain a deathbed vigil.
    Sammy got up awkwardly from the rug by the side of the bed and hobbled over to Amelia, thrusting his dry nose into her hand inquiringly. “Poor old boy,” Amelia said to the dog. She gently shook Julia awake and told her Victor was dead. “How do you know he’s dead?” Julia asked, foggy with sleep. She had a livid red mark on her cheek where her watch had dug into her.
    “Because he’s not breathing,” Amelia said.
    A n almost festive air had been created between them by Victor’s departure, and although it was only six o’clock in the morning, Julia, as if following some prescribed postmortem procedure, poured them a large brandy each. Amelia thought she would be sick if she drank it and surprised herself by enjoying it. Later, they walked, quite drunk at eight in the morning, to the local Spar to buy provisions, filling their basket with things that Amelia would never normally have bought—bacon, sausages, floury white rolls, chocolate, and gin—giggling like the little girls they had forgotten they ever were.
    Back at the house they made bacon-and-egg rolls, Julia eating three for the one that Amelia had. Julia lit up a cigarette the moment she had finished eating. “For God’s sake,” Amelia said, waving the smoke