The Other Family (23 page)

‘I don’t want any arnica,’ Amy said. ‘And I don’t want you to say anything else.’

‘I’ll make some tea,’ Dilly said.

Chrissie nodded slowly. She put out a hand to detain Amy, but Amy ducked round it and went down the kitchen, and through the hall, and then they could hear her feet thudding on the stairs.

‘What
have
I done?’ Chrissie said.

There was another silence. Dilly picked up the kettle, preparatory to filling it. Tamsin took her phone out of her pocket.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘I’ll just ring Robbie.’

Later, Dilly took a tray up to Amy’s room. She had been in the kitchen on her own for what felt like a lifetime, since Tamsin had gone to meet Robbie and Chrissie had shut
herself in the sitting room with her phone and the television. Dilly had heard her on the phone for quite a long time, going on and on about something, probably to Sue, and then she’d come out and made a cup of coffee, and dropped a kiss on Dilly’s head, and gone back to the sitting room without speaking. Dilly hadn’t dared to speak herself. All the time Chrissie was making coffee she had stared at her laptop screen, stared and stared without really seeing anything, and when Chrissie had kissed her, she hadn’t known what to do and had heard herself give a little startled bleat that could have meant anything. And then the sitting-room door had closed again, very firmly, and she could hear the
EastEnders
theme tune, and she thought that she simply had to be with someone else, and not alone in the kitchen with Chrissie shut away and the practice room shut away and this terrible sense that everything was now in free fall.

So she put random things on a tray, pieces of fruit, and pots of this and that, and some sliced bread still in its bag, and added a carton of juice and some glasses, and tiptoed stealthily past the sitting-room door and up the stairs to the top floor.

Amy was playing her flute. It was something Dilly recognized and couldn’t name, something she knew Amy had learned from her James Galway CD. Amy was playing it well, Dilly could tell that, playing it with absorption and concentration. Dilly put the tray down on the landing and opened her own door. In a drawer in her desk was a box of chocolate-covered almonds a girl on her course had given her in order to stop her eating them herself. Dilly took them out of the drawer and added them to the tray. The addition went a little way towards Dilly’s incoherent but definite feeling that she wanted to do something to assuage the slap.

Amy finished playing her piece. Dilly counted to ten. Then she knocked on Amy’s door.

‘Yes?’ Amy said. She did not sound helpful.

Dilly opened the door and stooped to pick up the tray.

‘What’s that?’ Amy said.

‘Supper. Kind of.’

‘Did Mum send you?’

‘No,’ Dilly said. ‘Would she have sent all this?’

Amy looked at the tray.

‘Thanks, Dill.’

‘I couldn’t stand it down there,’ Dilly said. She peered at Amy. ‘How’s your face?’

‘The ice did it. Mostly. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Nor me,’ Dilly said.

‘I keep thinking,’ Amy said, ‘that it can’t get worse, and then it does.’

Dilly put the tray down on the floor.

‘Craig says—’

‘Craig says—’ Amy mimicked.

‘If you’re going to be a bitch,’ Dilly said, ‘I’m leaving.’

‘Sorry—’

‘Don’t take it out on me. I brought you supper.’

‘Sorry, Dill.’

Dilly knelt down beside the tray.

‘I didn’t bring any plates. I don’t really want to go back down. And I forgot knives and stuff.’

Amy knelt too.

‘Doesn’t matter. What does Craig say?’

Dilly looked obstinate.

‘Dill,’ Amy said, ‘please. What does Craig say?’

‘That when people do your head in, mostly you can’t do anything about it except put yourself out of their reach.’

Amy took a slice of bread out of the packet.

‘What if you live in the same house as them?’

‘He does,’ Dilly said. ‘He lives with his mum’s boyfriend. He can’t stand him. That’s why he’s out all the time.’

Amy sighed. She tore a strip off the bread slice and dipped it into a pot of salsa.

‘It isn’t that I can’t stand Mum. It’s that I can’t get her to see that not everyone thinks like her.’

Dilly picked up a banana, and put it down again.

‘I suppose no one else is in her position. I mean, I suppose she’s responsible for us now. I can’t wait for this course to be over so I can get a job.’

Amy said, with her mouth full, ‘You are so lucky.’

‘I’m scared,’ Dilly said. She put a grape in her mouth. ‘I want it to happen, but I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t know how you do it, jobs and flats and things.’

‘Won’t Craig help?’

There was a short pause and then Dilly said, ‘No.’

‘Dill—’

‘I’m trying,’ Dilly said, ‘not to need him. Not to – lean on him.’

‘Dill, has he—’

‘No,’ Dilly said, ‘he’s still my boyfriend. But I know him better than I did. You can’t make people what they aren’t.’

‘Oh God,’ Amy said. She put her bread down and reached to take Dilly’s arm. ‘Are you OK?’

‘No,’ Dilly said, ‘not about anything. But at least I’m not pretending.’ She looked at Amy. ‘I want Dad back.’

‘Don’t—’

‘He’d know what to do.’

‘No,’ Amy said quietly, ‘he wouldn’t.’ She removed her arm and picked up her bread. ‘He’d know how to cheer us up, but he wouldn’t know what to
do
. He relied on Mum for that, and now she doesn’t know what to do. At least you know what you’re going to do, even if it scares you.’

‘Yes,’ Dilly said. She picked up the banana again and a slice of bread and climbed off the floor and onto Amy’s bed. She settled herself against the pillows. Amy watched while
she carefully peeled the banana and rolled the slice of bread round it.

‘Banana sandwich,’ Dilly said.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Amy said.

Dilly took a bite.

‘About what? ’

‘I’m not doing these frigging exams.’

‘Amy! ’

‘I’m not. It’s pointless. Music and Spanish and English lit. What’s the use of any of it? It’s just playing. I can’t bear to be playing. I’m going to leave school and get a job and stop feeling so helpless.’

Dilly put her banana roll down.

‘Amy, you
can’t
. Mum’ll
flip
.’

‘She’s flipped already.’

‘No, I mean, seriously flip. It’ll finish her. You’re the cleverest. Dad always said so. Anyway, what about uni? You’ve always wanted to go to uni. Dad was thrilled you wanted to, he was really chuffed, wasn’t he? He kept saying, over and over, that at least one of us took after Mum in the brains department.’

‘Well,’ Amy said, ‘I’ll use my brain differently. I’ll get a job where they’ll train me. I’ll work for Marks & Spencer.’

‘You are eighteen years old.’

‘Loads of people leave school at sixteen. I don’t want to go to uni.’

Dilly said severely, ‘You don’t know what you want.’

‘I do!’ Amy said fiercely. ‘I do! I want all this to stop, I want all this drifting and not deciding and crying and being upset all the time to stop. I want to stop being treated like a child, I want to be in charge of my own life and make my own decisions. There is no use in doing A levels. A levels are for people who can afford to do them, and I can’t any more.’

‘You’re overreacting,’ Dilly said.

‘
You’re
a fine one to talk—’

‘We haven’t run out of money, we aren’t desperate—’

‘We soon will be,’ Amy said.

Dilly looked up at the ceiling.

‘Mum’s going to sell the house.’

‘I know.’

‘There’ll be some money when she sells the house.’

‘She’ll have to buy something else,’ Amy said. ‘She hasn’t found a job yet. I don’t think she’s in a fit state to find a job.’

Dilly rolled on her side and looked at her sister.

‘How will you tell her?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. Don’t say anything.’

‘I won’t—’

‘Don’t say anything to Tam, either.’

‘Amy,’ Dilly said, ‘just think about it. Grade eight music. A level music. All that Spanish. Just throw it all over to wipe tables in a coffee place?’

Amy looked defiant. She reached out to pick up Dilly’s banana roll, and took a bite. Round it, she said carelessly, ‘Sounds OK to me.’

There was a muffled thud from downstairs, and then another. Dilly sat bolt upright.

‘What’s that?’

Amy put the banana down.

‘Mum—’

They struggled to their feet and made for the door.

‘Oh God—’

‘I’ll go first,’ Amy said. ‘Follow me. Come with me.’

It was quiet on the landing. Amy called, ‘Mum?’

There was another thud, more muted. And then a small clatter.

‘Mum?’

‘I’m here,’ Chrissie called.

They started down the stairs.

‘Where—’

‘Here,’ she said. She sounded exhausted.

They reached the first-floor landing. Chrissie’s bedroom door was open, and out of it spilled heaps and piles of clothes, still on their hangers, jackets and trousers and suits. Richie’s clothes.

The girls stared.

‘Mum, what are you doing?’

Chrissie was still in the clothes she had been wearing when she went out with Sue, still in her gold necklaces, still in her high-heeled boots. She had scraped her hair back into a ponytail and there were dark shadows under her eyes.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’

‘But—’

‘I’m moving Dad’s clothes out. I’m emptying the cupboards in my bedroom of Dad’s clothes.’

‘But not now, Mum, not tonight—’

‘Why not tonight?’

‘Because it’s late, because you’re tired, because we’ll help you—’

Chrissie waved an arm towards the sliding heaps of clothes.

‘I’ve done it. Can’t you see? I’ve done it. You can help me take it all downstairs if you want to, but I’ve done it.’

They were silent. They stood, Dilly slightly behind Amy, and looked at the chaos of garments and hangers. Amy said brokenly, ‘Oh Mum—’

Chrissie turned sharply to look at her.

‘Well,’ she demanded. ‘Well? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s what you wanted me to do?’

B
eside the street-door release button in Margaret Rossiter’s office in Front Street was a small screen which showed, in fish-eye distortion, the face of the person speaking into the intercom. Margaret had had the screen installed to reassure Glenda, who, in the early days of her employment at the agency, had been convinced that she might, inadvertently, let someone into the premises whom she did not recognize, and who had no business to be there. Even with the screen, Glenda was inclined, when alone in the office, to go down to the street door to let visitors in in person, rather than risk them coming in unsupervised, and failing to secure the door behind them. It also seemed to Glenda that the casualness of buzzing someone into a building electronically from the first floor was rude, especially when, to her considerable alarm, she saw that the face on the screen, his mouth looming cartoon-large, belonged to Bernie Harrison.

‘One moment, Mr Harrison,’ Glenda said, and fled downstairs to the street door, wishing that she had, at six-thirty that morning, obeyed a frivolous impulse to put on her new cardigan.

Bernie Harrison was smiling. He looked entirely unsurprised to see Glenda.

‘Bet you didn’t expect to see
me
?’

Glenda held the door a little wider. Bernie Harrison wore grey flannels and a soft tweed jacket and a tie. When she left home that morning, Barry was engaged in his usual angry independent battle to get dressed, in tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt and a fleece gilet, none of them in coordinating colours.

‘No, Mr Harrison,’ Glenda said.

‘May I come in?’

Glenda stood back against the wall of the narrow hallway to let him pass.

‘Mrs Rossiter isn’t here—’

Bernie began to climb the stairs with a purposeful tread.

‘Glenda, I know Mrs Rossiter isn’t here. I know Mrs Rossiter has a meeting in the city this morning. I have come to see
you
.’

Glenda closed the street door in silence. Then she followed Bernie Harrison up the stairs and into the main office, where he was already standing, and looking about him with an air that Glenda felt was improperly assessing. She folded her hands in front of her.

‘Can I get you anything, Mr Harrison? Tea? Or coffee?’

‘Nothing, thank you.’ He beamed at her. ‘You don’t think I should be here, Glenda, do you?’

She raised her chin a little. She said primly, ‘I’m not in the habit of doing anything behind Mrs Rossiter’s back.’

He laughed. Glenda did not join in. He crossed the room and sat down in the chair by the window that Margaret used when she had papers to read for a meeting, because the light was good.

‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘No, thank you, Mr Harrison.’

‘I shan’t stay long,’ Bernie said. ‘I can see you won’t let me stay long, anyway.’ He leaned forward. ‘I think you
know pretty much everything that goes on in this office.’

Glenda said nothing. She stood where she had halted, a few feet inside the door, with her hands clasped in front of her.

‘You will therefore know,’ Bernie Harrison said, ‘that I made Mrs Rossiter an offer recently.’

Glenda gave the most imperceptible of nods.

‘Which she turned down.’

Glenda raised her chin a little further, so that she could look past Bernie Harrison and out through the venetian blinds to parallel slits of cloud-streaked sky above the roofs of the buildings opposite.

‘Have you,’ Bernie said, ‘any idea why she turned me down?’

Glenda took a breath. Margaret would expect her to be discreet, but she would not expect her to be either dumb or insolent.

‘I think it didn’t suit her, Mr Harrison. I think what she has here suits her very well.’

‘And does it suit you?’

Glenda said in a rush, ‘I couldn’t wish for better.’

‘Are you sure?’

Glenda nodded vehemently.

‘So you’d turn down more money and better working conditions and more variety and responsibility in your job?’