The Other Family

by Joanna Trollope

‘I even have champagne flutes.’

  ‘Impressive—’

  ‘They came free with something.’

  Margaret put a finger lightly on a white key.

  ‘I’m getting the shivers—’

  ‘Good shivers?’ Scott said. He was almost laughing, twisting the cork out of the bottle and letting the champagne foam out and down the sides, over his hand.

  ‘Just shivers,’ Margaret said, ‘just echoes. Just the past jumping up again like it wasn’t over.’

  Scott poured champagne into his flutes. He carried them down the room to the piano.

  ‘Don’t put them down!’ Margaret said sharply.

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Scott said. He handed her a glass. ‘What shal we toast?’

  Margaret looked doubtful.

  ‘Dad?’ Scott said.

  ‘Don’t think so, pet.’

  ‘Us? Each other?’

  Margaret eyed him.

  ‘That wouldn’t suit us either, dear.’

  ‘OK,’ Scott said, ‘the piano itself, music, the future—’

  Margaret gave a little snort.

  ‘Don’t get carried away—’

  ‘I feel carried away. I am carried away. I want to be carried away.’

  Margaret looked up at him. She took a sip of her champagne without toasting anything.

  She said, ‘Talking of carried, who paid for the carriage? Who paid for this to come up here?’

  Scott hesitated. He looked fixedly at his drink. Then he said, ‘I did.’

  There was a silence. Margaret looked at him steadily. She took another sip of her drink.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I wanted to,’ Scott said. ‘I needed to.’

  ‘How did you arrange it?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Who did you speak to?’

  ‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘it doesn’t matter. It’s done, it’s sorted and I’ve got the piano. I couldn’t bear to be obliged to them.’

  ‘No,’ Margaret said, ‘I see that.’ She paused, and then she said quietly, ‘I wonder how it was, for her, when it went.’

  Scott moved round behind the piano and leaned against the windowsil , his back to the view.

  He said, ‘She wasn’t there.’

  Margaret looked up sharply.

  ‘What?’

  ‘ She wasn’t there. It went while she was out. They arranged it that way on purpose. She’d gone out with a friend.’

  ‘How do you know al this?’

  Scott took a big swal ow of champagne.

  ‘Amy told me.’

  ‘Amy—’

  ‘I rang her.’

  ‘Again? ’

  ‘Yes,’ Scott said, ‘I rang her to check she was OK about the piano, that she didn’t think I was party to some kind of plot. I rang her to say I wanted to pay for the carriage.’ He grinned at his drink. ‘She said she thought they’d expect me to do that anyway.’

  Margaret gave a second smal snort.

  ‘She said she hoped I’d real y play it,’ Scott said. ‘She said she hoped it’d bring me luck. She said—’ Scott stopped.

  Margaret waited, holding her glass, the finger of her other hand stil lightly poised on the piano key.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She said,’ Scott said with emphasis, ‘she said that one day she hoped she’d hear me play it. She wants, one day, to hear me play the piano.

  She said so.’

  Margaret’s finger went down on the middle C.

  ‘And,’ Scott said, ‘I told her I hoped so too. I told her I’d like her to hear me play. I’d like it.’

  ‘I see.’

  Scott put his champagne glass down on the windowsil .

  ‘Move over,’ he said to his mother.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Move over,’ Scott said. ‘Make room for me.’

  ‘What are you doing—’

  ‘I’m going to play,’ Scott said. ‘I’m going to play Dad’s piano and you’re going to listen to me.’

  Margaret moved to the right-hand edge of the piano stool. She felt as she used to feel at the beginning of one of Richie’s concerts.

  ‘What are you going to play?’

  Scott settled himself. She watched him flex his right foot above the pedals, settle his hands lightly on the keys.

  ‘Gershwin,’ he said, ‘“Rhapsody In Blue”. And you can cry if you want to.’

  Margaret’s throat was ful .

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ she said.

  The door of Richie’s practice room was shut. While he was alive, it had never been completely closed except on very rare occasions, because he liked to feel that his playing belonged to al of them, to the whole house; so much so that Chrissie had had to organize insulation for the party wal with the neighbouring house, and have ugly soundproofing tiles fixed to the ceiling. But now the door was firmly shut so that none of them, Chrissie said, would have to see the sharp dents in the carpet where the little wheels on the piano’s legs had dug almost through to the canvas.

  ‘It’s worse than his shoes,’ Chrissie said.

  There was a silence when she said this. Al the girls felt a different kind of relief once the piano had gone, but it wasn’t, plainly, going to be possible to admit to it. Tamsin felt relieved because she might now be able to implement a few plans for the future; Dil y felt relieved because her own part in an alarming plot was over, and Amy felt relieved that justice had been done, and the piano was at last where it was supposed to be.

  ‘I wouldn’t expect,’ Chrissie said, ‘any of you to feel like I do.’

  When she had come home, after her expedition with Sue, which had produced nothing except an abortive conversation about what work avenues Chrissie might explore next, she had found Tamsin and Dil y waiting tensely in the kitchen with the kettle on, and the corkscrew ready (which would she be in the mood for?) and Amy sitting cross-legged on the empty space of dented carpet where the piano had once been.

  ‘I didn’t want,’ Amy had said unhappily, ‘for there to be nothing here when you came back.’

  Chrissie had been quite silent. She stood in the doorway of the practice room holding her bag and her keys, and she looked at Amy, and then she looked al round the room, very slowly, as if she was checking to see what else was missing, and then she said, ‘Did Sue know too?’

  Amy nodded.

  ‘Get up,’ Chrissie said.

  Amy got to her feet. Chrissie stepped forward and took her arm and pul ed her out into the hal . Then she closed the door of the practice room, and propel ed Amy down the hal to the kitchen.

  Tamsin and Dil y were both there, both standing. Even Tamsin looked slightly scared. She opened her mouth to say, ‘Glass of wine, Mum?’ but nothing happened.

  Chrissie let go of Amy and put her bag and her keys on the table. Then she said, ‘I suppose this is the same impulse that makes you want me to clear out his clothes.’

  ‘We want to help,’ Tamsin said bravely.

  ‘Yourselves, maybe,’ Chrissie said. She sounded bitter.

  Dil y said, on a wail, ‘I didn’t want it to go!’

  ‘You can’t do someone’s grieving for them,’ Chrissie said. ‘You can’t move someone on at the pace that suits you, not them.’

  Amy cleared her throat. She said, ‘But if we’re going to live together, we count as much as you do. We can’t be held back just because you won’t move on.’

  Tamsin gave a little gasp. Chrissie looked at Amy.

  ‘Is that how you see it?’

  ‘It’s how it is,’ Amy said. ‘I knew you’d take it hard, that’s why I sat there. But you could think why we did it, you could try and think sometimes.’

  ‘You have a nerve,’ Chrissie said.

  Amy said rudely, ‘Someone needs nerve round here.’

  Chrissie stepped forward with sudden speed, reached out, and slapped her. She used her right hand, and the big ring she was wearing on her third finger caught Amy’s chee
kbone and left an instant smal welt, a little scarlet bar under Amy’s left eye. Then Chrissie burst into tears.

  Nobody moved. There was a singing silence except for Chrissie’s crying. Then Tamsin darted forward and pushed Amy down the kitchen to the sink and turned the cold tap on.

  ‘Ice is better,’ Dil y said faintly. She moved towards the fridge and then Chrissie sprang after her, pushing her out of the way, and clawing to get ice cubes. She ran unsteadily, stil sobbing and sniffing, down the kitchen, bundling ice cubes clumsily into a disposable cloth. She held it unsteadily against Amy’s face.

  ‘Sorry, oh sorry, so sorry, darling, so—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Amy said. She stared ahead, not at her mother.

  ‘It’s a big deal, the piano,’ Tamsin said. She stil had an arm round Amy. Amy took the bundle of ice cubes in her own hand, and pressed it to her cheekbone.

  ‘I should never—’ Chrissie said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m—’

  ‘We shouldn’t have done it!’ Dil y cried.

  Tamsin glared at her.

  ‘Sue—’ Dil y said.

  ‘Don’t blame Sue,’ Chrissie said. She drooped against the kitchen unit. ‘Don’t blame anyone.’

  ‘It was Kevin’s idea,’ Tamsin said.

  ‘What would he know—’

  Nobody reacted. Chrissie gave a huge sigh and tore off a length of kitchen paper to blow her nose.

  ‘So it’l be another bil —’

  ‘No,’ Amy said. She was stil staring ahead, holding the ice cubes to her face. ‘No, no bil . He paid for it.’

  Chrissie didn’t look at her.

  ‘I won’t ask how you know.’

  Amy removed herself from Tamsin’s arm.

  ‘I’m going up to my room.’

  Chrissie said, ‘I’l find you some arnica.’

  ‘I don’t want any arnica.’

  ‘Amy, please, let me—’

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

  ‘I’l make some tea,’ Dil y 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 hal , and then they could hear her feet thudding on the stairs.

  ‘What have I done?’ Chrissie said.

  There was another silence. Dil y picked up the kettle, preparatory to fil ing it. Tamsin took her phone out of her pocket.

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

  Later, Dil y 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. Dil y 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 Dil y’s head, and gone back to the sitting room without speaking. Dil y hadn’t dared to speak herself. Al the time Chrissie was making coffee she had stared at her laptop screen, stared and stared without real y 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 fal .

  So she put random things on a tray, pieces of fruit, and pots of this and that, and some sliced bread stil 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 Dil y recognized and couldn’t name, something she knew Amy had learned from her James Galway CD. Amy was playing it wel , Dil y could tel that, playing it with absorption and concentration. Dil y 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. Dil y took them out of the drawer and added them to the tray. The addition went a little way towards Dil y’s incoherent but definite feeling that she wanted to do something to assuage the slap.

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

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

  Dil y opened the door and stooped to pick up the tray.

  ‘What’s that?’ Amy said.

  ‘Supper. Kind of.’

  ‘Did Mum send you?’

  ‘No,’ Dil y said. ‘Would she have sent al this?’

  Amy looked at the tray.

  ‘Thanks, Dil .’

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

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

  ‘Nor me,’ Dil y said.

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

  Dil y put the tray down on the floor.

  ‘Craig says—’

  ‘Craig says—’ Amy mimicked.

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

  ‘Sorry—’

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

  ‘Sorry, Dil .’

  Dil y knelt down beside the tray.

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

  Amy knelt too.

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

  Dil y looked obstinate.

  ‘Dil ,’ 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,’ Dil y said. ‘He lives with his mum’s boyfriend. He can’t stand him. That’s why he’s out al 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.’

  Dil y 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 ful , ‘You are so lucky.’

  ‘I’m scared,’ Dil y 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 Dil y said, ‘No.’

  ‘Dil —’

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

  ‘Dil , has he—’

  ‘No,’ Dil y said, ‘he’s stil 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 Dil y’s arm. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No,’ Dil y 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,’ Dil y 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 pi
l ows. Amy watched while she careful y peeled the banana and rol ed the slice of bread round it.

  ‘Banana sandwich,’ Dil y said.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Amy said.

  Dil y 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.’

  Dil y put her banana rol down.

  ‘Amy, you can’t. Mum’l flip.’

  ‘She’s flipped already.’

  ‘No, I mean, seriously flip. It’l finish her. You’re the cleverest. Dad always said so. Anyway, what about uni? You’ve always wanted to go to uni.

  Dad was thril ed you wanted to, he was real y chuffed, wasn’t he? He kept saying, over and over, that at least one of us took after Mum in the brains department.’

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

  ‘You are eighteen years old.’

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

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

  ‘I do!’ Amy said fiercely. ‘I do! I want al this to stop, I want al this drifting and not deciding and crying and being upset al 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,’ Dil y said.

  ‘ You’re a fine one to talk—’

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

  ‘We soon wil be,’ Amy said.

  Dil y looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Mum’s going to sel the house.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘There’l be some money when she sel s the house.’

  ‘She’l 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.’

  Dil y rol ed on her side and looked at her sister.

  ‘How wil you tel her?’

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