“Killing time” is Atkinson’s euphemism for a picnic.
When Tracy Waterhouse, a retired sixty-five-year-old police detective, inexplicably abducts Courtney, a child of five, she is unsure about entertaining her. In near desperation, she suggests, “How about a picnic?”
The offer works. They sit on the grass eating store-bought food: tuna rolls, orange and apple juice, crisps, a Cadbury’s chocolate bar, and a bag of carrot sticks that, in Waterhouse’s mind, “neutralized” the other junk. While Courtney eats, Waterhouse thinks about her family’s childhood picnics with distaste. She visualizes peeling the shells of hardboiled eggs until they reveal “solid greyish white flesh, which her brother would pop into his mouth whole.” It’s this negative image that lasts.
Featured Image: The TV series Case Histories replaces the picnic with a snack in a cafe. Tracy Waterhouse (Victoria Wood) buys the snacks.
See Kate Atkinson. Started Early, Took my Dog for a Walk. London: Doubleday, 2010; Kenneth Glenaan. “Started Early, Took My Dog,” Season 2, Episode 1, of Case Histories (2013). Screenplay by Peter Harness based on Kate Atkinson’s novel (2010)