He tugged at the ivy and discovered a gate in the wall, the spit of Binky's. He thought of The Secret Garden, a film he had watched on video with Marlee and that had enraptured her. No one would have had to climb anything – he or she could have just walked into the garden. Or perhaps no one walked in and then out with Olivia – perhaps someone walked out with her and then walked back in again. Victor? Rosemary Land?

Marlee was almost asleep by the time they reached David Last-ingham's house. Would he ever call it David and Josie's house? (No.) The sugar high Marlee had been riding had long since turned into irritability. She was covered in grass seeds and cat fur, which would undoubtedly cause a row with Josie. Jackson suggested that she sleep at his house tonight, at least that way he could get her cleaned up, but she declined because "We're going berry picking in the morning."

" Berry picking?" Jackson said as he rang David Lastingham's doorbell. He thought of hunter-gatherers and peasants.

"So Mummy can make jam."

"Jam? Your mother?" The born-again wife, the jam-making peasant mother, came out of the kitchen, licking something off her fingers. The woman who was previously too busy to cook – the queen of Iceland – who now spent her evenings making cozy casseroles and carelessly tossing together salads for her new, recon-stituted family. It was hard to believe that this was the same woman who used to give him blow jobs while he was driving, who would pin him up against any available surface and groan, "Now, Jackson. Hurry," who fitted her body against his in sleep, who used to wake up every morning and turn sleepily to him and say, "I still love you," as if relieved that the night hadn't stolen her feelings for him. Until one morning, three years after Marlee was born, she woke up and didn't say anything.

"You're late," she said to him now, "Where have you been?"

"We went to see a witch," Marlee said.

Le chat noir. Les chats noirs. Did chats have a gender? Was there a chatte?

"Bonsoir,Jackson." Joan Dodds greeted him with the stress on the soir rather than the bon. She despised tardiness in people.

"Bonsoir, Jackson," the whole class chorused as Jackson made his sheepishly late entrance.

"Vous etes en retard, comme toutes les semaines," Joan Dodds said. She was a retired schoolteacher who had the kind of character that would have made her an excellent dominatrix. Jackson remembered a time when the women in his life actually seemed to want to make him happy. Now they all just seemed to be angry all the time. Jackson felt rather like a small, rather naughty, boy. "Je suis de-sole," he said. You had to wonder about the French, how they could make a simple "sorry" sound so extreme and forlorn.

In Bliss, Jackson had shown Milanda his license and asked if he could see the place where Laura Wyre was killed. "Morbid" was her only comment. The boardroom, as Theo had reported, was now used as a storeroom. The nail-varnish trolley had been moved and was no longer acting as her cenotaph. Laura's blood was in plain sight, a washed-out (but not washed-out enough) stain on the bare floorboards. "Christ," Milanda said, finally roused out of her torpor, "I thought that was paint or something. That's disgusting."

When he was on his way out the door, Milanda said, "She's not haunting the place. I'd know if she were here. I've got second sight, I'd feel her if she were here."

"Really?" Jackson said – Milanda seemed like an unlikely recipient of second sight – and she said, "Oh, yes, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter," and Jackson thought, Inbred, rural, and Milanda fixed him with her baby blue eyes – an unnatural, star-tling color that he realized must be contacts – and said, "You, for example," and Jackson said, "Yes?"

"Yeah," Milanda said. "Black cats are very lucky for you." And Jackson felt an unexpected disappointment because for one weird, unnerving moment he thought she was actually going to say something portentous.

Don't be a cross-patch, Mr. Brodie," Amelia mimicked. "What are you like, Julia?" (And she had kissed him! She had actually kissed him!) "Why not just take your clothes off in the street?"

"Oh, I do believe you're jealous, Milly!" Julia laughed with (cruel) delight. "What would Henry say if he found out?"

"Shut up, Julia." Amelia could feel herself heating up and she walked faster to get away from Julia. Julia had to run to keep up. She sounded wheezy and Amelia thought it was insane for someone with hay fever to smoke so much. Amelia had absolutely no sympathy for her.

"Do we have to go so fast? Your legs are much longer than mine."

They were on Regent Street, approaching a girl who was sitting on the ground, on an old sheet, a dog – some kind of lurcher – stretched out at her side.

Jackson hadn't given two hoots that she'd thought he was an English pointer, but he looked downright pleased to know that Julia thought he was a German shepherd. And Julia would choose that because it was exactly the right dog, not a Doberman, not a rottweiler, and certainly not a pointer – he was German shepherd through and through. She had lied to Jackson, well not exactly lied, but she had led him to understand that she was an Oxford don when in fact she was just a lecturer at the poly, teaching "communication skills" (as it was so laughably called) to day-release slaters and apprentice bricklayers and other assorted riffraff. She wanted to like those boys, to think they were good – perhaps a little too rumbustious but at heart decent human beings – but they weren't. They were little shits who never listened to a word she said.

Julia was immediately attracted to the homeless girl's dog, of course, which meant that one or the other of them would have to give the girl money because you could hardly make a fuss of the dog and not give something in return, could you? Julia was on her knees on the pavement, letting the dog lick her face. Amelia wished she wouldn't do that, you didn't know where that dog's tongue had been – well, you did, that's why you didn't want it washing your face.

The girl had yellow hair, an odd canary color, and her face was sallow, almost jaundiced. Amelia used to give money to beggars and Big Issue sellers, but these days she was more circumspect. She had once come across one of her own students begging on Oxford High Street. Amelia knew for a fact that the girl – Lisa, a day-release hairdresser – was living comfortably at home with her parents, and the dog she had with her (because they all had dogs, of course) was the family pet. Plus, it was a well-known fact that a lot of beggars actually had homes, and some of them even had cars. Was it a well-known fact? How did she know it? From the Sun probably. The slaters were always leaving copies of the Sun strewn around in their wake. What an extraordinary image that suddenly conjured up in her mind – copies of the sun broadcast carelessly around the universe like gold coins. She laughed, and the girl looked at her and asked, "Can you help me?" and Amelia said, "No." "Oh, Milly, for heaven's sake," Julia said, abandoning her puppy talk and raking through her bag for her purse. "There but for for-tune and all that." Julia came up with a five-pound note – five pounds that she actually owed to Amelia – and handed it to the girl, who took it as if she were doing Julia a favor. It hadn't been the money, the girl hadn't wanted money, not really. She had asked Amelia if she could help her and Amelia had told the truth. She couldn't help her, she couldn't help anyone. Least of all herself.

"She'll spend it on drugs," she said to Julia as they walked away from the girl.