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 away from her face, "you have some kind of oral fixation, you do know that, don't you?" Julia smoked in a theatrical fashion, making a performance of it, as she did of everything. She used to practice in the mirror when she was a teenager (as Amelia remembered it, a lot of Julia's younger life had been practiced in the mirror). The way Julia was holding her hand up to the morning light revealed the ghostly silver thread of the scar where her little finger had been sewn back onto her hand.

Why had they had so many accidents when they were young? Were they trying to get Rosemary (or indeed anyone) to notice them, to single them out from the melee of Amelia-Julia-Sylvia? Even now, Julia and Amelia were clumsy, always covered in bruises from bumping into furniture or tripping over carpets. Last year alone, Amelia had dropped a heavy pan on her foot and trapped her hand in a car door while Julia had sustained a whiplash in a taxi and sprained her ankle falling off a stepladder. Amelia didn't think there was much point in seeking attention once you were over forty, especially if there was no one to give it. "Do you remember the way Sylvia used to faint?" she asked Julia.

"No. Sort of."

Every time she remembered Victor was dead, Amelia felt giddy. It was as if someone had lifted a great stone off her body and now she might be about to rise up, like a kite, like a balloon. Victor's corpse was still tucked up in bed upstairs, and although they knew they should do something, phone someone, react in an urgent way to death, they were overcome with a kind of indolence.

In fact it wasn't until the next day that they journeyed to the Poor Clares' convent and, after an interminable wait, spoke to "Sister Mary Luke" – the ridiculous name that, even after nearly thirty years, neither of them could get used to. When they told her that Victor was dead, Sylvia looked astonished and said, "Daddy? Dead?" And just for once her saintly composure slipped and she burst out laughing.

As a nun in an enclosed order, Sylvia was so excluded from normal life that it never occurred to them to consult with her about the funeral. By then they had already decided what to do with him anyway. After the undertaker had eventually removed Victor's body, Julia had produced the gin and they proceeded to get horribly drunk. Amelia couldn't remember when she had been so drunk, possibly never. The afternoon gin, sitting on top of the morning brandy, made them almost hysterical, and somewhere in the midst of this alcoholic orgy they tossed a coin to determine Victor's final fate.

Julia, histrionic as usual, was cross-legged and clutching onto her crotch, saying, "Oh God, stop it, I'm going to wet myself!" and Amelia had to run outside and be sick on the lawn. The damp night air almost brought her back to sobriety but by then it was nearly dawn and Amelia had claimed heads but the coin had come down tails (which was a one-in-two probability, thank you, Daddy) and Julia declared that "the old fucker was going to be burned."

Amelia was awake early, too early. She wouldn't have minded if she'd been at home – her real home, in Oxford – but she didn't want to rattle around on her own in this place and Julia wouldn't be up for ages – Amelia sometimes wondered if her sister's genes hadn't been spliced with a cat's. Julia scoffed at the "provincial hours" that Amelia kept -Julia hadn't been in her bed before two in the morning since they arrived, emerging bleary-eyed at midday, begging hoarsely for coffee ("Sweetie, please,") as if she had been on some great nighttime quest that had tested her nerves and spirit, rather than having spent the time slumped on the sofa with a bottle of red wine, watching long-forgotten films on cable.

It had amazed them when they discovered that Victor – who neither of them could remember ever having watched television – not only owned a huge wide-screen set but also subscribed to cable – and to everything, not just sport and films but all of the X-rated channels. Amelia had been shocked, not so much by the "adult" content of these (although it was disgusting enough) but by the idea of their own father sitting there, night after night, in his old armchair watching Red Hot Girls and God knows what other filth. She was relieved that Julia – usually so airily tolerant of the shortcomings of the male sex – was as horrified as she was. One of the first things they did was to get rid of the armchair.

Amelia only watched the news and documentaries on television, occasionally the Antiques Roadshow on a Sunday, and was astonished at the absolute crud on offer twenty-four hours a day. Did this supply some sort of narrative in people's lives? Did they honestly think that this kind of balderdash was a high point of evolution? "Oh, lighten up, Milly," Julia (predictably) said. "What does it matter what people do? At the end of the day we're all dead."

"Well, obviously," Amelia said.

As soon as they cleared the house of Victor and his worldly goods they would be able to put it on the market and be done with it. Or at least, get it ready to put on the market, as Victor's solicitor had muttered "probate" with a kind of Dickensian gloom. Nonetheless, the will was entirely straightforward, everything divided down the middle, with nothing going to Sylvia because (apparently) she had expressly asked for nothing. "Like Cordelia," Julia said, and Amelia said, "Not really," but, surprisingly, they had left it at that. They were fighting less since Victor's death three days ago. A new air of camaraderie had been fostered between them as they raked Through Victor's clothes (fit only for garbage) and dumped pitted old aluminium cooking pans and maths books that disintegrated at their touch. Everything in the house seemed unsavory somehow, and in the kitchen and bathroom Amelia wore rubber gloves and cleaned constantly with antibacterial spray. "He didn't have the plague," Julia said, but without conviction because she had already boiled all the sheets and towels that they were using.

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 chat prehistoric people must have afforded flames, except that pre-historic 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 license 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 after-math 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.