The Other Family

by Joanna Trollope

  Chrissie swal owed. She pictured Dil y through that ceiling, asleep in her severe cotton pyjamas in the resolute order of her bedroom. Thank heavens, today, that she was there. And thank heavens for Amy, in her equal y determined chaos in the next room, and for Tamsin amid the ribbons and flowers and china-shoe col ections down the landing. Thank heavens she hadn’t prevailed, and achieved her aim of even attempted daughterly self-sufficiency before the girls reached the age of twenty. Richie had been right. He was wrong about a lot of things, but about his girls he had been right.

  Chrissie began to cry again. She pul ed her hand back in, under the duvet, and rol ed on her side, where Richie’s pil ow awaited her in al its glorious, intimate, agonizing familiarity.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Tamsin said.

  She was standing in the kitchen doorway clutching a pink cotton kimono round her as if her stomach hurt. Dil y was sitting at the table, staring out of the window in front of her, and the tabletop was littered with screwed-up bal s of tissue. Amy was down the far end of the kitchen by the sink, standing on one leg, her raised foot in her hand, apparently gazing out into the garden. Neither moved.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Tamsin said again.

  ‘Dunno,’ Dil y said.

  Amy said, without turning, ‘Did you look in her room?’

  ‘Door’s shut.’

  Amy let her foot go.

  ‘Wel then.’

  Tamsin padded down the kitchen in her pink slippers.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  She picked up the kettle and nudged Amy sideways so that she could fil it at the sink.

  ‘I don’t believe it’s happened.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  Cold water gushed into the kettle, bounced out and caught Amy’s sleeve.

  ‘Stupid cow!’

  Tamsin took no notice. She carried the kettle back to its mooring.

  ‘What are we gonna do?’ Dil y said.

  Tamsin switched the kettle on.

  ‘Go back to the hospital. Al the formalities—’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s what they said. Last night. They said it’s too late now, but come back in the morning.’

  ‘It’s the morning now,’ Amy said, stil gazing into the garden.

  Dil y half turned from the table.

  ‘Wil Mum know what to do?’

  Tamsin took one mug out of a cupboard.

  ‘Why should she?’

  ‘Can I have some tea?’ Amy said.

  ‘What d’you mean, why should she?’

  ‘Why should she,’ Tamsin said, her voice breaking, ‘know what you do when your husband dies?’

  Amy cried out, ‘Don’t say that!’

  Tamsin got out a second mug. Then, after a pause, a third.

  She said, not looking at Amy, ‘It’s true, babe.’

  ‘I don’t want it to be!’

  ‘None of us do,’ Dil y said. She gathered al the tissue bal s up in her hands and crushed them together. Then she stood up and crossed the kitchen and dumped them in the pedal bin. ‘Is not being able to take it in worse than when you’ve taken it in?’

  ‘It’s al awful,’ Amy said.

  ‘Wil Mum—’ Dil y said, and stopped.

  Tamsin was taking tea bags out of a caddy their father had brought down from Newcastle, a battered tin caddy with a crude portrait of Earl Grey stamped on al four sides. The caddy had always been an object of mild family derision, being so cosy, so evidently much used, so sturdily unsleek.

  Richie had loved it. He said it was like one he had grown up with, in the terraced house of his childhood in North Shields. He said it was honest, and he liked it fil ed with Yorkshire tea bags. Earl Grey tea – no disrespect to His Lordship – was for toffs and for women.

  Tamsin’s hand shook now, opening it.

  ‘Wil Mum what?’

  ‘Wel ,’ Dil y said. ‘Wel , manage.’

  Tamsin closed the caddy and shut it quickly away in its cupboard.

  ‘She’s very practical. She’l manage.’

  ‘But there’s the other stuff—’

  Amy turned from the sink.

  ‘Dad won’t be singing.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If Dad isn’t singing—’

  Tamsin poured boiling water into the mugs in a wavering stream.

  ‘Maybe she can manage other people—’

  ‘Who can?’ Chrissie asked from the doorway.

  She was wearing Richie’s navy-blue bathrobe and she had pul ed her hair back into a tight ponytail. Dil y got up from the table to hug her and Amy came running down the kitchen to join in.

  ‘We were just wondering,’ Tamsin said unsteadily.

  Chrissie said into Dil y’s shoulder, ‘Me too.’ She looked at Amy. ‘Did anyone sleep?’

  ‘Not real y.’

  ‘She played her flute,’ Dil y said between clenched teeth. ‘She played and played her flute. I couldn’t have slept even if I’d wanted to.’

  ‘I didn’t want to,’ Tamsin said, ‘because of having to wake up again.’

  Chrissie said, ‘Is that tea?’

  ‘I’l make another one—’

  Chrissie moved towards the table, stil holding her daughters. They felt to her, at that moment, like her only support and sympathy yet at the same time like a burden of redoubled emotional intensity that she knew neither how to manage nor to put down. She subsided into a chair, and Tamsin put a mug of tea in front of her. She glanced up.

  ‘Thank you. Toast?’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ Dil y said.

  ‘Could you try? Just a slice? It would help, it real y would.’

  Dil y shook her head. Amy opened the larder cupboard and rummaged about in it for a while. Then she took out a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits and put them on the table.

  ‘I’m trying,’ Dil y said tensely, ‘not to eat chocolate.’

  ‘You’re a pain—’

  ‘Shh,’ Chrissie said. She took Dil y’s nearest wrist. ‘Shh. Shh.’

  Dil y took her hand away and held it over her eyes.

  ‘Dad ate those—’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ Amy said. ‘No, he didn’t. He ate those putrid ones with chocolate-cream stuff in, he—’

  ‘Please,’ Chrissie said. She picked up her mug. ‘What were you saying when I came in?’

  Tamsin put the remaining mugs on the table. She looked at her sisters. They were looking at the table.

  She said, ‘We were talking about you.’

  Chrissie raised her head. ‘And?’ she said.

  Tamsin sat down, pul ing her kimono round her as if in the teeth of a gale.

  Dil y took her hand away from her face. She said, ‘It’s just, wel , wil you – wil we – be OK, wil we manage, wil we—’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I don’t think,’ Chrissie said, ‘that we’l be OK for quite a long time. Do you? I don’t think we can expect to be. There’s so much to get used to that we don’t real y want – to get used to. Isn’t there?’ She stopped. She looked round the table. Amy had broken a biscuit into several pieces and was jigsawing them back together again. Chrissie said, ‘But you know al that, don’t you? You know al that as wel as I do. You didn’t mean that, did you, you didn’t mean how are we going to manage emotional y, did you?’

  ‘It seems,’ Tamsin said, ‘so rubbish to even think of anything else—’

  ‘No,’ Chrissie said, ‘it’s practical. We have to be practical. We have to live. We have to go on living. That’s what Dad wanted. That’s what Dad worked for.’

  Amy began to cry quietly onto her broken biscuit.

  Chrissie retrieved Dil y’s hand and took Amy’s nearest one. She said, looking at Tamsin, gripping the others, ‘We’l be fine. Don’t worry. We have the house. And there’s more. And I’l go on working. You aren’t to worry. Anyway, it isn’t today’s problem. Today just has to be got through, however we can m
anage it.’

  Tamsin was moving her tea mug round in little circles with her right hand and pressing her left into her stomach. She said, ‘We ought to tel people.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘we should. We must make a list.’

  Tamsin looked up.

  ‘I might be moving in with Robbie.’

  Dil y gave a smal scream.

  ‘Not now, darling,’ Chrissie said tiredly.

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Shut it!’ Amy said suddenly.

  Tamsin shrugged.

  ‘I just thought if we were making plans, making lists—’

  Amy leaned across the table. She hissed, ‘We were going to make a list of who to tel that Dad died last night. Not lists of who we were planning to shack up with.’

  Chrissie got up from the table.

  ‘And the registrar,’ she said. She began to shuffle through the pile of papers by the telephone. ‘And the undertaker. And I suppose the newspapers. Always better to tel them than have them guess.’

  Tamsin sat up straighter. She said, ‘What about Margaret?’

  Chrissie stopped shuffling.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Margaret,’ Tamsin said.

  Amy and Dil y looked at her.

  ‘Tam—’

  ‘Wel ,’ Tamsin said, ‘she ought to be told. She’s got a right to know.’

  Amy turned to look across the kitchen at Chrissie. Chrissie was holding a notebook and an absurd pen with a plume of shocking-pink marabou frothing out of the top.

  ‘Mum?’

  Chrissie nodded slowly.

  ‘I know—’

  ‘But Dad wouldn’t want that!’ Dil y said. ‘Dad never spoke to her, right? She wasn’t part of his life, was she, he wouldn’t have wanted her to be part of – of—’ She stopped. Then she said angrily, ‘It’s nothing to do with her.’

  Amy stood up and drifted down the kitchen again. Chrissie watched her, dark hair down her back, Richie’s dark hair, Richie’s dark Northern hair, only girl-version.

  ‘Amy? ’

  Amy didn’t turn.

  ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned her,’ Tamsin said, ‘I shouldn’t. She’s no part of this.’

  ‘I hate her,’ Dil y said.

  Chrissie said, making an effort, ‘You shouldn’t. She couldn’t help being part of his life before and she’s never made any claim, any trouble.’

  ‘But she’s there,’ Dil y said.

  ‘And,’ Amy said from the other end of the kitchen, ‘she was his wife.’

  ‘Was,’ Tamsin said.

  Chrissie held the notebook and the feathered pen hard against her. She said, ‘I’m not sure I can quite ring her—’

  ‘Nor me,’ Dil y said.

  Tamsin took a tiny mobile phone out of her kimono pocket and put it on the table.

  ‘You can’t real y just text her—’

  Chrissie made a sudden little fluttering gesture with the hand not holding the notebook. She said, ‘I don’t think I can quite do this, I can’t manage

  —’ She stopped, and put her hand over her mouth.

  Tamsin jumped up.

  ‘Mum—’

  ‘I’m OK,’ Chrissie said. ‘Real y I am. I’m fine. But I know you’re right. I know we should tel Margaret—’

  ‘And Scott,’ Amy said.

  Chrissie glanced at her.

  ‘Of course. Scott. I forgot him, I forgot—’

  Tamsin moved to put her arms round her mother.

  ‘Damn,’ Chrissie whispered against Tamsin. ‘Damn. I don’t—’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Tamsin said.

  ‘I do. I do. I do have to tel Margaret and Scott that Dad has died.’

  Nobody said anything. Dil y got up and col ected the mugs on the table and put them in the dishwasher. Then she swept the biscuit crumbs and bits into her hand and put them in the bin, and the remaining packet in the cupboard. They watched her, al of them. They were used to watching Dil y, so orderly in her person and her habits, so chaotic in her reactions and responses. They waited while she found a cloth, wiped the table with it, rinsed it and hung it, neatly folded, over the mixer tap on the sink.

  Chrissie said absently, approvingly, ‘Thank you, darling.’

  Dil y said furiously, ‘It doesn’t matter if bloody Margaret knows!’

  Chrissie sighed. She withdrew a little from Tamsin.

  ‘It does matter.’

  ‘Dad wouldn’t want it!’

  ‘He would.’

  ‘Wel , do it then!’ Dil y shouted.

  Chrissie gave a little shiver.

  ‘I’d give anything—’

  ‘I’l stand beside you,’ Tamsin said, ‘while you ring.’

  Chrissie gave her a smal smile.

  ‘Thank you—’

  ‘Mum?’

  Chrissie turned. Amy was leaning against the cupboard where the biscuits lived. She had her arms folded.

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘I’l do it.’

  ‘What—’

  ‘I’l ring her,’ Amy said. ‘I’l ring Margaret.’

  Chrissie put her arms out.

  ‘You’re lovely. You’re a dol . But you don’t have to, you don’t know her—’

  Amy shifted slightly.

  ‘Makes it easier then, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Look,’ Amy said, ‘I don’t mind phones. I’m not scared of phones, me. I’l just dial her number and tel her who I am and what’s happened and then I’l say goodbye.’

  ‘What if she wants to come to the funeral?’ Dil y said. ‘What if she wants to come and make out he was—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Tamsin said.

  She looked at her mother.

  ‘Let her,’ Tamsin said. ‘Let her ring.’

  ‘Real y?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tamsin said. ‘Let her do it like she said and then it’l be done. Two minutes and it’l be done.’

  ‘And then? ’

  ‘There won’t be an “and then”.’

  Amy peeled herself off the cupboard and stood up. She looked as she looked, Chrissie remembered, when she learned to dive, standing on the end of the springboard, ful of excited, anxious tension. She winked at her mother, and she actual y smiled.

  ‘Watch me,’ Amy said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  More than six decades of living by the sea had trained Margaret to know what the weather was doing, each morning, before she even drew back the curtains. Sometimes there was the subdued roaring that indicated wind and rain; sometimes there was a scattering of little sequins of light reflected across the ceiling from bright air and water, and sometimes there was the muffled stil ness that meant fog.

  There was fog today. When she looked out, she would see that the sea mist had rol ed up the shal ow cliffs, and fil ed the wide grassy oval in front of the crescent of houses in Percy Gardens, bumping itself softly against the buildings. There would be shreds and wisps of mist caught in the fancy ironwork of the narrow balcony outside her bedroom window, and in the crooked cherry tree in the front garden. There would be salty smears on the window glass and the cars parked along the crescent and on the front-door brass that needed, real y, daily polishing. And there would be this eerie silence, a muted quality to al the usual morning noise of slammed front doors and car engines starting and the woman two doors down shouting at her dogs, who liked to start the day with a good bark.

  Margaret got out of bed slowly and felt for her slippers with her feet. They were good slippers: sheepskin, of enduring construction, as was her padded cotton dressing gown patterned with roses and fastened with covered buttons, and although the sight of herself as she passed the mirror on her bedroom wal caused her to pul a face, she knew she looked appropriate. Appropriate for a professional woman – not yet retired – of sixty-six living in a house in Percy Gardens, Tynemouth, with a double front door and a cat and a large stand of plumed ornamental grasses outside the sitting-room window.

  She opened the cur
tains and surveyed the mist. It was ragged and uneven, indicating that a rising wind or strengthening sun would disperse it quite quickly. A seagul – an immense seagul – was standing just below her, on the roof of her car, no doubt intending, as seagul s seemed to enjoy doing, to relieve itself copiously down the windscreen. Margaret banged on the window. The seagul adjusted its head to indicate that it had observed her and intended to ignore her. Then it walked stiffly down the length of her car roof, and turned its back.

  Margaret went down the stairs to her kitchen. On the table, wearing much the same expression of insolent indifference as the seagul , sat a huge cat. Scott had brought him home as a tiny, scrawny tabby kitten some eight years before, having rescued him from a group of tormenting children on the North Shields quayside, and he had grown, steadily and inexorably, into a great square striped cat, with disproportionately smal ears and a tail as fat as a cushion.

  ‘I don’t particularly like cats,’ Margaret had said to Scott.

  ‘Nor me,’ he said.

  They looked at the kitten. The kitten turned its head away and began to wash. Margaret said, ‘And I don’t like surprises either.’

  ‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘this’l stop being a surprise soon. You’l get used to it.’

  She had. Just as she had got used to a lot of other things, she got used to the kitten. Indeed, she realized how used to the kitten she had become when she found herself explaining to him that one of the main things about life that he should realize was that it consisted of, in fact, getting used to a great many things that were the result of other people’s choices, rather than one’s own. For the first year, the kitten was simply cal ed the kitten.

  Then, as his bulk and solidity began to take shape as he grew, Scott christened him Dawson, after the comedian.

  Dawson put out a huge paw now, as Margaret passed him on her way to the kettle, and snagged her dressing gown with a deliberate claw.

  ‘In a minute,’ Margaret said.

  Outside the kitchen window, the sea mist had been diluted by having to slide up over the roofs, and the air here merely had a vague bleary look.

  The little paved yard – a patio, her neighbours preferred to cal it – that passed for a back garden simply gave up in this kind of weather. Everything hung damply and dankly, and blackened leaves plastered themselves against surfaces, like flattened slugs. Margaret’s neighbour, on her left-hand side, had been infected by holidays in Spain, and had painted her patio white, inset with mosaic pictures made with chips of coloured glass and mirror, and hung wrought-iron baskets on the wal s which were intended to spil avalanches of pink and orange bougainvil ea. But bringing abroad back to Tynemouth was not Margaret’s way. Abroad was abroad and the English North was the English North. What was unhappy growing beside the North Sea shouldn’t, in her view, be required to try.