The Other Family (36 page)

She continued to feel uneasy, heading for the underground. She’d gone for the interview at her friend Breda’s insistence, and everything about the salon, and the people, had been really nice. It was just the hours. It was OK, wasn’t it, to decide for yourself about the hours? It wasn’t right, was it, to ask someone to work part-time, and then tell them that
half that part-time was going to be Saturdays and Sundays? That wasn’t fair. Dilly was sure that wasn’t fair. Dad had always told them that work would never satisfy them if their hearts weren’t in it, and how could your heart be in something where you felt you were in some way being exploited because you were only a junior therapist, and part-time at that?

Dilly argued with herself all the way home. She texted Breda, as promised, to tell her about the interview and that she wasn’t sure about the job, and Breda texted back ‘MISTAKE’ in capital letters, which wasn’t the reaction Dilly was expecting, so she deleted the message, but the word ‘mistake’ clung to her mind and seemed to echo there like an insistent drumbeat. Her discomfort was increased by not being sure how Chrissie would react to her story, because there was a danger – a definite danger – that her mother might look at her as the manager of the salon had done, and Dilly wasn’t at all sure that she could take that. Everything had got so unpredictable lately, and the whole Amy thing was just making it worse. The best thing to do, Dilly decided, was to hope that Chrissie would be at home alone, and that Dilly, instead of recounting the story as it had happened, could slightly readjust the narrative to conclude that Chrissie’s opinion had to be sought and acted upon before Dilly could, really, either accept or decline the job offer.

But Chrissie wasn’t alone. Chrissie and Tamsin were in the sitting room and Tamsin had evidently been crying. She was sniffing still, crouched in an armchair clutching a balled-up tissue. Chrissie was on the sofa, sitting rather upright, and not, to Dilly’s anxious eye, looking especially sympathetic.

Dilly dropped her bag in the doorway.

‘What’s going on?’

Chrissie said to Tamsin, ‘Do you want to tell her, or shall I?’

Tamsin said unsteadily, teasing out shreds of her tissue ball, ‘It’s Robbie.’

Dilly came hurriedly round the sofa and sat down next to Chrissie. She said in a horrified voice, ‘He hasn’t
dumped
you?’

Tamsin shook her head.

‘Well then—’

‘But he might!’ Tamsin said in a wail.

‘What d’you mean?’

Tamsin began to cry again.

‘He told Tamsin,’ Chrissie said, ‘that he was tired of waiting for her to move in with him, and that he could only suppose that her reluctance meant she didn’t really want to, so he’s told her to go away and decide, and tell him finally in the morning.’

‘Well,’ Dilly said, abruptly conscious of her own currently single state, ‘that’s easy, isn’t it?’

‘No!’ Tamsin shouted.

Dilly glanced quickly at her mother.

‘I thought,’ Dilly said to Tamsin, ‘that you
wanted
to move in with Robbie?’

Tamsin howled, ‘I
can’t
, I
can’t
, can I?’

‘Why not?’ Dilly said.

‘Because of
Mum
,’ Tamsin wailed, ‘because of Mum and this flat and Amy – and Dad dying. And everything. I
can’t
.’

Dilly swallowed.

‘There’s still me—’

‘You haven’t got a job—’

‘I might have!’

‘Oh God,’ Tamsin said, ‘
might
this,
might
that. Why don’t you ever
do
something?’

‘Why don’t
you
?’ Dilly said crossly. ‘Why don’t you move in with Robbie?’

‘Exactly,’ Chrissie said.

They both turned to look at her. She had spread her hands out in her lap, and she was looking down at them.

‘I wasn’t sure,’ Chrissie said, ‘when or how I was going to say this to you. I certainly didn’t plan on saying it today, but here you both are, and now seems as good a time as any.’

She paused. Tamsin sat up a little straighter, and lifted her arms, in a characteristically settling gesture, to pull her ponytail tighter through its black velvet band.

‘I think the house is sold,’ Chrissie said, ‘and I think I’m going to take the flat. And I’ve definitely accepted the job, for a trial period of three months, even though I don’t think of it as that, I think of it as something I’ll do as well as I can until I can do something better. I get the feeling Leverton’s understand that.’

The girls waited, watching her. She went on surveying her hands.

‘I haven’t thought what I’m going to say for very long,’ Chrissie said, ‘but the reason I’m talking to you is that, having had the thought, or, to be honest, having had it suggested to me, it strikes me as the right thing to do. The right way forward.’

She stopped and looked up. Tamsin and Dilly were sitting bolt upright, knees together, waiting.

‘What?’ Tamsin said.

‘There’ll always be a home for you with me,’ Chrissie said, ‘always. And there’s one for Amy now, of course, if she wants it, which she doesn’t seem to. But it’s there for her, a bedroom, even if she isn’t in it. But – it’s different for you two, isn’t it? And it’s different for me now too, different in a way I never imagined, never pictured, and I can see that none of us are going to move forwards, move on from Dad dying, from life with Dad, if we just go on living round – round this kind of hollow centre, if you see what I mean, living all
clinging together because that’s all we know, even if it isn’t doing any of us any good.’

She paused. Dilly looked anxiously at Tamsin.

‘So?’ Tamsin said.

‘I think,’ Chrissie said carefully to Tamsin, ‘that you should go and live with Robbie. I think you should make Robbie your priority as you once appeared to want to because if you make
me
your priority you’ll get stuck and then we won’t like each other at all. Will we? And Dilly. I think you should take any job you are offered and ask about among your friends for a room in someone’s flat—’

Dilly gave a little gasp.

‘And discover,’ Chrissie said firmly, ‘the satisfaction of standing on your own two feet. I’ll help you as much as I can, but I’m not suggesting you live with me for exactly the reasons I gave Tamsin. It won’t be easy, but we won’t get trapped in resentment, in the past, either. We are all going to try and make something of our lives and of our relationship. I don’t actually think our relationship would survive living together. Do you?’ She stopped again, and looked at them. She seemed suddenly to be on the edge of tears. The girls were gazing back at her, but neither of them was crying.

‘And so,’ Chrissie said, not at all steadily, ‘I intend to live in that flat on my own after the house is sold. You’ll be so welcome there, any time, but you won’t be living there. You’ll be living your own lives, lives where you can begin to put the past behind you, where it belongs. Elsewhere.’

M
argaret had done what Scott called getting them in. She was at one of the low tables with armchairs, in the first-floor bar of the hotel overlooking the river, and she had ordered a gin and tonic for herself, and a bottle of Belgian beer for Scott, and it was very pleasant sitting there, with the early-evening sun shining on the river and the great bulk of the Baltic on the further shore with some daft modern-art slogan on a huge banner plastered to its side. Amazing what people thought they could get away with, amazing what people put up with, amazing to think of the contrasts. There was the pretentious nonsense all over the Baltic – it had just been a flour mill when Margaret was growing up – and then, at the other end of the scale, there was the old Baptist church in Tynemouth, now deconsecrated and a warren of gimcrack little shops with Mr Lee’s Tattooing Parlour right under the old church window which said ‘God is love’ in red-and-white glass. Just thinking about it made Margaret want to snort.

‘Penny for them, Mam,’ Scott said, dropping into the chair opposite her.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t want to know.’ She waved a hand at the Baltic. ‘That rubbish, for starters—’

‘He’s a serious artist,’ Scott said, ‘and if you don’t behave, I’ll take you to see his video installation.’

‘You will not—’

‘Amy liked it,’ Scott said.

Margaret’s expression gentled.

‘Amy — ’

Scott grinned.

‘She’s texting, all the time.’

Margaret said, ‘Dawson liked her. Even Dawson. He won’t sit on just anyone’s lap.’

‘We’ve all gone a bit soft on Amy—’

‘Well,’ Margaret said more briskly, ‘she’s got work to do.’

‘She’ll do it.’

‘She’s not very practised. She’s been sheltered. Over-sheltered. She thinks money’s just pocket money. She doesn’t know anything about money—’

‘She knows enough to get Mr Harrison to give her a job.’

‘Nonsense,’ Margaret said.

Scott pulled out his phone, and pressed a few buttons. Then he held the phone out to his mother.

‘Read that.’

Margaret leaned forward, putting on her reading glasses. She peered at the screen. She said, ‘So he says there’s work for her. I doubt it. He’ll only have her fetching coffee.’

‘She won’t mind that. She’ll be learning. She’ll get to see his acts. She’ll be performing. She can sing.’

Margaret leaned back.

‘I know she can sing. It’s not much of a voice yet but it’s in tune—’

‘Bang on the note.’

‘Don’t make a fool of yourself over her, pet,’ Margaret said.

Scott took a swallow of his beer. He grinned at his mother.

‘She’s on a mission to find me a girlfriend.’

‘Good luck to her.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t mind if she manages it—’

‘What’s got into you?’

Scott raised his beer bottle towards his mother.

‘Same as you.’

‘I’m just as I was,’ Margaret said.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘I’m—’

‘Look at you,’ Scott said, ‘look at you. You’ve had something done to your hair, and that’s new.’

‘What’s new?’

‘That dress.’

‘Oh,’ Margaret said airily, ‘this.’ She looked out at the river. ‘Everything I’d got suddenly looked so tired.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you say yes as if you know something I don’t know?’

‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t know anything you don’t know. The difference between us is just that I admit it.’

‘Admit what? ’

‘That I feel better. That you feel better. That we all feel better.’

‘All?’

‘Yes,’ Scott said firmly, ‘Mr Harrison too.’

Margaret took a sip of her drink.

‘What has Bernie Harrison got to do with it?’

‘You tell me,’ Scott said.

Margaret smiled privately down into her gin and tonic.

‘Why’d you ask me here?’ Scott said. ‘Why’re you all tarted up?’

‘Don’t use that word to me—’

‘Why, Mam?’

Margaret looked up.

‘Are you in a hurry, pet?’

‘No,’ Scott said. ‘Well, yes, actually. I’m meeting some of the lads from work.’

‘And the lasses, too?’ Margaret said.

Scott said, smiling, ‘There’s always the lasses too.’

‘Ah ’

‘Never mind ah. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why you asked me here.’

Margaret looked round the bar in a leisurely way, as if she was savouring something. Then she said, ‘Bernie’ll be here in ten minutes.’

‘And?
And
?’

‘I just thought,’ Margaret said, ‘that I’d like to tell you before I told him. That’s all.’

It was late when she got home, but the night sky over the sea was dim rather than dark, and the sea was washing peacefully up against the shore below Percy Gardens. Margaret liked the sea in its summer mood, when even if it lost its temper it was only briefly, unlike the sustained furious rages of winter when she could stand at her sitting-room window and see the spray flung angrily upwards in great dramatic plumes. But in the summer, there was less sense of frustration, less of a feeling that the sea was outraged to find its wild energies curtailed by a shoreline, by the upsettingly domestic barriers of a coast road and a crescent of houses inhabited by people who thought they had the capacity to control and contain whatever was inconvenient about nature.

Margaret paid off the taxi, and walked, in her new summer shoes, to the edge of the grassy oval of grass in front of Percy Gardens, so that she could see the sea, heaving and gleaming and spilling itself, over and over, on to the stones below her. Bernie Harrison had wanted to take her
somewhere impressive to celebrate, but she’d said no, they could eat there, in the brasserie of the hotel, and when he said wasn’t that meant for much younger people than they were she said speak for yourself, Bernie Harrison, but I feel years younger than I did only a week ago.

Their steaks had come on rectangular wooden platters, like superior bread boards, and Bernie had found a very respectable burgundy on the wine list to drink with them, and Margaret had to hand it to him, he hadn’t crowed over her once, he hadn’t said, ‘What kept you?’ or, ‘About time too,’ he’d just said, over and over, that he was so pleased, so pleased, and, if he was honest, relieved too.

‘Have you told Glenda?’

‘Of course not. Would I tell Glenda before I told you?’

‘I think,’ Bernie said, reflecting on how nice it was to have chips with his steak, how nice it was to be with a woman who didn’t think chips were common, ‘she’ll like the plan, don’t you?’

‘She’s been on at me ever since you first suggested it.’

‘Margaret,’ Bernie said, putting down his knife and fork, ‘Margaret. How do
you
feel?’

She glanced up at him.

‘If you can’t see that for yourself, Bernie Harrison,’ she said, ‘you need your eyes seeing to.’

He put her into a taxi in a way she found entirely acceptable, no challenges, no fake gallantry, no showing off. He’d just kissed her cheek, thanked her and said, ‘We’ll both sleep happier tonight,’ and then slapped the roof of the taxi as if to wish her Godspeed on the journey home and somehow more than that, on a journey into something that was, of course, more of the same, but with a twist, with a new injection of vitality, a new optimism. She took several deep breaths of the sea, and then she turned and went carefully back over the rough grass to her front door, and put the key in the lock.