The flat was on the top two floors of a tall house close to Highgate School. The rooms were small, with thin walls and creaky floorboards, but there were spectacular views eastwards, over a dramatically sloping garden, and the rolling roofs cape of London all the way to the hazy blue lines of Essex. The owner of the house, a television producer, lived half his life in Los Angeles, and wanted a tenant who would be there permanently, paying the mortgage and justifying the investment in a building whose owner only occupied it for half the year. Sue had found the flat. Or rather, Sue’s Kevin had found it while commissioning a new boiler his firm had put in for the owner. The owner happened to be there, a tall, bespectacled man with long grey hair, in a black T-shirt, and they had fallen into conversation while contemplating the boiler – ‘These new systems mean you can control the therms on your rads from here,’ Kevin explained – and the owner had mentioned that the top floors of the house were empty, and self-contained, and that he was looking for a tenant. ‘As you’re local,’ he said to Kevin, making it sound like a social condition, rather than a category, ‘you might know of someone.’ The rooms, apart from a cooker and a fridge and two aggressively modern chairs upholstered in leather, were empty. They were painted white and carpeted with narrow grey-and-black stripes, like the stripes of an expensive carrier bag. Chrissie looked round with the apprehension born of being confronted with something completely alien. ‘I haven’t lived in a flat since I met Richie—’ ‘Look,’ Sue said, ‘it’s been weeks, months now. Richie didn’t die yesterday. You are still waiting for probate. You can’t do anything major till then but you can start moving yourself.’ She was not going to be roused. She had said to Kevin that morning, drinking tea in the kitchen while he packed his customary lunch of
88 carbohydrate and sugar, that she’d accompany Chrissie to the flat in the spirit of friendship but that she was not, not, going to in volve herself in anything emotional again. If Chrissie threw a fit and said she couldn’t contemplate living anywhere like that, Sue would just let her throw it. ‘I’ve done enough, and look where the last lot got me. I’ll show her and that’s that.’ Kevin came round the kitchen table, his canvas bag on his shoulder, and kissed her goodbye on the mouth. It was something she could always say for Kevin – he always kissed her hello and goodbye and he always kissed her on the mouth. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘D’you think I shouldn’t be bothering?’ He considered for a second, then he said, ‘A mate’s a mate,’ and kissed her again, and she felt the brief glow of being approved of. Now, standing watching Chrissie trying to imagine herself in the flat’s sitting room with its uncompromising decor and wonderful view, she tried to recall that sensation of doing the right – but still the sensible – thing. ‘It’s so different,’ Chrissie said. ‘Course it is.’ ‘I don’t know about renting—’ Sue leaned against a wall and folded her arms. She said patiently, ‘We discussed that.’ ‘I know—’ ‘We discussed releasing all the capital in the house, and using the interest from investing that, to rent for a year or so until you’ve got your breath back.’ ‘Tamsin says it’s such a bad time to sell—’ Sue looked at the ceiling. ‘It’s going to be a bad time for a while. Waiting isn’t going to help. And you can’t afford to stay.’ Chrissie said nothing and then Sue said, in the same voice but a little slower, ‘You can’t afford to stay.’ Chrissie crossed the room to look out of the window. The house was on the edge of such a precipitous slope that it felt like being in a tower, with the ground falling away so ste eply below her. It felt improbable, completely improbable, the idea of living here, coupled with the idea of not living in the house with her little office, and the sitting-room window that jammed no matter how often the cords and weights were adjusted, and her bedroom with its cupboards and adjacent bathroom, and intimate knowledge of the way the light came in round the curtains in the morning. The sense of alarming unreality that had possessed her, on and off but more on than off, since Richie died seemed to have found its physical embodiment in this flat, and the prospect of living here. ‘Suppose,’ she said, not turning, still gazing out eastwards, ‘suppose I take it and find I can’t stand it?’ Sue imagined Kevin listening to her. He’d be eating a cheese-and-pickle sandwich (white bread only) right now. She said levelly, ‘Then you move.’ ‘But—’ ‘You take it for six months, and if you can’t stand it, you move.’ ‘It would just be me and Dilly and Amy.’ ‘Would it?’ Chrissie turned. ‘Tamsin’s been talking about moving in with Robbie for ages. Now she’s going to do it. Robbie has a flat in Archway.’ She smiled weakly. ‘He’s going to build a cupboard for her clothes. Sweet, really.’ ‘Yeah,’ Sue said. Domestically considerate men, in her view, lacked sex appeal. She suppressed a small yawn. ‘Tam’s left before, though.’ ‘She came back—’ ‘As I recall it,’ Sue said, ‘Richie wanted her back and he got his way.’ ‘Maybe—’ ‘You didn’t want her back, Chris,’ Sue said. ‘You thought it was time one of them showed a bit of ind ependence. You thought Richie babied them.’ ‘He did,’ Chrissie said fondly. ‘And look what that’s landed you with. It’s good that Tamsin’s making a move. Even if it would be better that she was doing it for herself rather than exchanging one support system for another.’ Chrissie said, nettled, ‘And when did you last live on your own?’ Sue took her shoulder away from the wall, and hitched her bag higher. ‘I was on my own for eight years before Kev. But that’s not the point. The point is you and your future and what you can afford. You can’t stay in the house – bad – but you can stay in Highgate – good. You can’t
89 have all your children here – bad – but you can have two out of three – good. You can’t afford the house – bad – but you could afford this flat with ace views and a civilized landlord – good to very good. Shall we just start from there?’ Chrissie walked past her and began to climb the stairs to the top floor and the bedrooms. ‘Dilly won’t be with me long, she says—’ Sue sighed. She followed Chrissie up the stairs. ‘There’ll still be Amy—’ Chrissie was standing in the doorway of one of the bedrooms. ‘This is pretty small for Amy.’ ‘It’s as big as the bedroom she has now.’ ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘I’m not arguing,’ Sue said, ‘I’m saving my energy to argue exclusively about the big stuff.’ Chrissie ran a hand down one wall, as if it were an animal. ‘Amy’s been so sweet—’ ‘Has she?’ ‘That day,’ Chrissie said, ‘that day when I completely lost it and chucked all his clothes on the landing, she was so sweet. Poor Dilly didn’t know what to do, she just stood there, looking petrified, but Amy didn’t seem scared, which was amazing when you think how I’d managed to scare myself.’ Sue came into the room. ‘What did she do?’ ‘She gave me a hug,’ Chrissie said, ‘she hugged me. Then she pushed me back to the bed and told me just to stay there and then she picked up all the clothes, very calmly, hanger by hanger, and put them back in the cupboards, exactly where they’d been. And she made Dilly do it too. She sort of talked her through it and I just sat there and watched them until everything was back and the doors were shut. And then she took my hand and led me downstairs and made tea and toast and all the time she was just quietly talking, about nothing very much, as if I was a dog or something that had been frightened. It was amazing.’ ‘Well done Amy,’ Sue said. She looked round the room. ‘She’ll probably be the same about this, you know. She’ll probably be amazing about this too.’ Chrissie closed her eyes briefly. ‘I just wish I could be too.’ ‘Well,’ Sue said, ‘you’ll have to work at it.’ Chrissie turned to look at her. ‘What’s the matter with me?’ Sue shrugged. The morning had gone on long enough, as had going round in unproductive circles. ‘Shock,’ she said tiredly. ‘Grief. Disappointment. Anger. To name but a few.’ Chrissie came to stand close to her. ‘Sorry.’ ‘Please don’t—’ ‘I hate not being able to decide, I’m used to being able to decide—’ Sue leaned towards her and gave her cheek a quick kiss. ‘I’m going to leave you to do just that.’ ‘Please—’ She made for the door. ‘You’ll be better on your own. And I must run.’ Chrissie said nothing. She heard Sue’s booted feet going rapidly and resolutely down the stairs, and then the sound of the flat’s front door opening and shutting decisively. She went slowly over to the window and looked once more at the view. Their house had no view, only the prospect into the street one way and the garden – not of great interest to either her or Richie, ever – the other. She wasn’t used to views. She gazed out at the improbable distances. She wasn’t, she told herself, used to any of this. And that was the problem. * * * Amy had put flowers on the kitchen table. They weren’t much, just the ones the guy with a stall by the tube station let her have, as the last, slightly squashed bunches in the bucket, for fifty pence. They were those Peruvian lily things, with spotted throats to their petals, which made them look slightly exotic, and they were a gloomy purplish red and the flower guy said give them some warm water and a bit of sugar, or an aspirin, and they’ll perk up. Amy had dissolved a sugar cube in water in the blue jug with cream spots that she knew Chrissie liked, and stuck the lilies in there. They still looked sad, and sort of gawky, so she
90 took them out again, and chopped off a length of stalk and picked off all the floppy leaves, and put them back again. They looked better, but still not right. Maybe flower arranging was like hair plaiting, something that some people could make look really cool without even trying, and other people just couldn’t. Whatever, the table looked better for having flowers on it, and not just papers and jars of peanut butter and the cables for Dilly’s laptop. When Chrissie came in, she looked at the flowers, and the mugs Amy had put out, and the milk in a jug rather than in its carton and she said, ‘What’s all this about?’ Amy was filling the kettle. She said, without turning, ‘Just felt like it.’ Chrissie put her bag on the kitchen worktop. ‘How was today?’ ‘OK.’ ‘How was the exam?’ ‘Didn’t have one today,’ Amy said. She plugged in the kettle and switched it on. ‘Music theory tomorrow. Revision today. Revision, revision, revision.’ Chrissie was looking through her post. She said absently, ‘But worth it.’ Amy let a pause fall, and then she said, ‘You?’ Chrissie glanced up. ‘Me?’ ‘Your day OK?’ ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know—’ Amy took the Earl Grey tea caddy out of the cupboard. ‘Another interview?’ ‘No,’ Chrissie said. She put her letters down. ‘No. A flat.’ ‘Oh,’ Amy said. Chrissie came to stand close to her. She watched her detach a couple of tea bags from the clump in the box and drop them into the teapot. ‘I’m afraid,’ Chrissie said, ‘we can’t stay here.’ ‘I know.’ ‘And I don’t want to buy anything just now.’ ‘I know,’ Amy said, ‘I know all this. You’ve said so. We all know we can’t stay here, we’ve known for ages.’ ‘I’m finding it hard, deciding—’ The kettle gave a small scream as it came to the boil, and switched itself off. ‘Where’s the flat?’ ‘Almost in the Village. Up by the school.’ ‘Cool—’ ‘It’s a flat, Amy. A rented flat. The rooms are small and everything feels very thin and fragile. It’s the top two floors of a house. You can see practically to the sea.’ Amy poured water on top of the tea bags. ‘Did you take it?’ ‘Course not,’ Chrissie said. She sounded faintly shocked. ‘I wouldn’t take it without you seeing it. You and Dilly.’ Amy opened her mouth to say, ‘We’ll be fine, we won’t be there much anyway,’ and thought better of it. Instead, she said, ‘Did you like it?’ ‘Darling, at the moment, I don’t know what I like.’ Amy carried the teapot across to the table. Maybe the flowers were beginning to look a shade more energized by their sugar. She said, ‘Sit down.’ ‘Thank you, darling.’ ‘Is it cheap?’ ‘Is what cheap?’ ‘The flat.’ ‘Not particularly,’ Chrissie said, ‘but if we sell this even halfway reasonably, that’ll help.’ ‘Good, then.’ Chrissie looked at her. She was pouring tea. She had left her hair loose, and it had swung round her face, obscuring it. ‘Aren’t you interested?’ Chrissie said. Amy hooked one side of her hair behind an ear. ‘Kind of.’ ‘Don’t you care where we live? Doesn’t your home matter to you?’ ‘Course—’ ‘It doesn’t,’ Chrissie said, ‘sound much like it.’ ‘If you’re OK with where we live,’ Amy said, ‘I’ll be OK. So will Dill.’ ‘I’m not sure I can choose alone—’ ‘Why not?’ Amy said. ‘You always have.’ ‘Ouch—’ ‘Well, you have. You said, and then Dad and us did it.’ Chrissie picked up the milk jug. ‘Maybe,’ she said carefully, ‘I’m trying not to be so bossy.’ Amy pushed a mug towards her. ‘Does that mean we all get a bit of say-so?’ ‘Well, I’d like you to have an opinion about this flat—’ ‘I mean, about more than the flat. About what we want ourselves and stuff—’ ‘I – well, I suppose so.’ ‘Good,’ Amy said with emphasis. Chrissie looked sharply at her. ‘What is all this about? What are you asking?’ Amy bent over her tea mug, cradling it between her palms. ‘Well, I’m not exactly asking—’ She stopped. Chrissie waited. Then Amy said, ‘I’ve been asked to go up
91 to Newcastle when the exams are over. I’ve been invited. To see where Dad grew up. And things.’ There was a silence. Chrissie picked up her mug, drank, and put it down again. She looked at the flowers. Then she looked at Amy. ‘Who invited you?’ ‘Scott,’ Amy said. She was sitting up very straight now, her hair tucked behind her ears. ‘When did you speak to him?’ ‘He left a message,’ Amy said, ‘to wish me luck in the exams, and so I rang him back, and he was playing the piano and he said he’d send me the train ticket to come up to see the places Dad knew. And see the piano. Where it is now. And I said yes.’ ‘You said you would go—’ ‘Yes,’ Amy said, ‘I said yes, I’ll come.’ Chrissie took another swallow of tea. ‘This – is very hard.’ ‘I’m not going for ever. I’m going for a few days.’ ‘Where will you stay?’ Amy said, ‘In his flat, I should think.’ ‘I don’t think you can stay in his flat—’ ‘Where I stay,’ Amy said, ‘is a detail. The point is, I’m going. I’m going to Newcastle.’ ‘You realize—’ ‘Yes,’ Amy said. She sounded as if she was reining in considerable impatience. ‘Yes, I realize this is awful for you, but this has nothing to do with my loyalty to you, that’s a given, that’s there whatever happens, but I really, really want to see where Dad came from, where half of me comes from. Can’t you just try and understand that?’ Chrissie closed her eyes. ‘I am trying—’ ‘OK.’ ‘Those people—’ ‘Don’t call them that,’ Amy said sharply. ‘You might like it up there—’ Amy sighed. She put a hand out and squeezed Chrissie’s arm. ‘Yes, I might. But I’m your daughter and I grew up here.’ Chrissie gave herself a shake. ‘I know.’ She glanced at Amy. ‘I never thought you’d want to.’ ‘That’s unfair—’ ‘Is it?’ ‘Yes,’ Amy said, ‘you know it is.’ ‘Darling, it’s just that I—’ Amy put her hands over her ears. ‘Sorry, Mum, but don’t say it. Don’t say it again. We know how it is for you. It isn’t much of a picnic for us either.’ ‘No.’ ‘OK, then?’ ‘About Newcastle?’ ‘Yes.’ Chrissie said reluctantly, ‘I suppose so.’ ‘Good,’ Amy said. She picked up her tea mug. ‘Because I’m going, anyway.’ Sitting on the tube on the way back from college, Dilly read Craig’s text probably twenty-five times. ‘Sorry babe,’ it started, and then, without any punctuation, it went on, ‘sorry cant do friday sorry cant do have a nice life,’ and two kisses. Of course she knew, at about the second reading, what he was trying to say, trying to tell her, but it wasn’t until she read it ten more times, scrolling endlessly back to the beginning, that she allowed herself to realize that she was, unceremoniously, being dumped. That Craig, lazy, und ependable, fanciable Craig, was taking the ultimately cowardly way out of an unwanted situation and was telling her that their relationship, as far as he was concerned, was over – by text. Once she had permitted full recognition of both his message and his conduct, Dilly waited to fall to pieces. After all, that is what she did when faced with something unwanted or unexpected, what she had always done, and even if this news was hardly unexpected, it was certainly not what she would have chosen. It was also outrageously humiliating. Dilly sat in her seat between a girl with her MP3 player plugged in and an old man in a fez reading an Arabic newspaper and waited for the full horror of what she had just read to sink right in and reduce her to tears. It didn’t happen. She reread the text a few more times and waited a bit longer. Still, nothing happened. She glanced around her and saw that the world she would have assumed to look entirely distorted and unfamiliar through her own shock appeared perfectly normal. She looked down at her phone again. Perhaps she really was in shock, and in a few minutes or hours the reality of what had happened would kick in, and she could react as she usually did with all the attendant panic
92 and sobbing. She reached Archway station still in one piece, and got off the train. On the way up to the street, she found she had put her phone in her pocket, as if it was a perfectly ordinary day in which she had received perfectly ordinary messages. Once outside, she resisted buying a gossip magazine and a packet of M&Ms – economy, economy – and started to walk up the hill, past the hospital, past the entrance to Waterlow Park, where, on a bench soon after Richie died, Craig had presented her with a pretty – but cheap – bead bracelet, which was, she reflected, about the only thing he had ever given her, towards the estate agent’s office where Tamsin worked. It did not cross her mind that Tamsin might not be there and so she was not in the least surprised to find her behind the rec eption desk, hair in a neat knot behind her head, being busy in a way peculiar to herself. Dilly put her forearms on the high rim of the desk and leaned forward. ‘Hi.’ Tamsin did not take off her tel ephone headphones. She flicked a glance sideways, towards the big modern clock on the wall. ‘Not till half past five—’ Dilly took her phone out of her pocket and held it for Tamsin to see. ‘Something to show you—’ ‘Not now.’ ‘Tam, it’s important. It’s Craig.’ Tamsin leaned forward. ‘I don’t care,’ she said in a loud whisper, ‘if it’s Brad Pitt. I am not talking to you till half past five. Ten minutes. Go and sit down.’ Dilly sighed, and put the phone back in her pocket. She trailed across to a pair of red upholstered chairs by a glass table bearing brochures featuring photographs of houses with ‘Sold! Sold!’ excitably printed across them in scarlet. She sat down and looked about her. There were eight desks that she could see, two occupied, the rest suspiciously tidy. At one of the occupied desks, a young man in a sober suit and an exuberant tie was talking earnestly to a middle-aged couple, who looked as if they were having trouble believing anything he said. Every so often, they looked at each other, as if for reassurance, and when they did that, the young man leaned a little bit further forward and redoubled his exertions. Dilly wondered if the couple were thinking of buying a house or trying to sell one, and then she thought how completely useless Craig would have been in any situation like that, which led to a renewal of her amazement that she hadn’t yet wanted to cry. She looked at the clock. Eight minutes left to go. Perhaps when she showed Craig’s text to Tamsin she’d want to cry then; perhaps that would be when reality kicked in. The middle-aged couple got up. The young man rose too and held out his hand to shake theirs in a way that forced them to take it in turn, whatever their inclination. Still talking, he escorted them across the room to the door, and ushered them out. On his way back to his desk, he said loudly to Tamsin, as he passed her, ‘Waste of bloody time,’ and Dilly heard her laugh. It was weird, hearing her laugh in a work situation. Or maybe it was just weird hearing her laugh at all. There hadn’t been much laughing at home lately. Breda, from south of Dublin, on Dilly’s course at college, said that there’d been so many jokes after her father died that they’d almost forgotten he wasn’t there to share them. Dilly couldn’t picture that. Richie had been the one for jokes in their house – too many jokes, Chrissie sometimes said – and when he died, the jokes seemed to die with him. Dilly had managed to laugh a bit with Craig when he fooled about, but that was relief mostly, relief at being with someone not connected to Richie’s dying. Would it, she wondered, be a relief to cry now, or was it more of a relief not somehow seeming to want to? At the two occupied desks, the computers were being shut down. Tamsin took her headphones off and began switching and stacking in a practised manner. A door to an office at the back opened to reveal a middle-aged man in rumpled
93 shirtsleeves holding a mug in one hand and a mobile tel ephone to his ear with the other. He crossed the room, still talking into his phone, paused by the rec eption desk to bend and say something to Tamsin and put his mug down, and then he retreated to his office at the back and closed the door. Dilly got up and went over to her sister. ‘Who was that?’ Tamsin said, with a hint of satisfaction, ‘Mr Mundy.’ ‘Is he your boss?’ Tamsin looked round the room. The young man and a middle-aged woman from an adjoining desk were de ep in conversation. ‘Tell you later,’ Tamsin said. ‘What?’ ‘Shh,’ Tamsin said. ‘Good news.’ She stood up and smoothed her top down. ‘I’ll get my jacket.’ Out in the street, Dilly produced her phone again. ‘Look at that!’ Tamsin stopped walking and took Dilly’s phone. ‘What’s up?’ A woman banged into them from behind. ‘Can’t you look where you’re bloody going?’ Tamsin took no notice. She stared at Dilly’s phone for several seconds and then she said, ‘What a complete jerk.’ ‘He’s dumping me,’ Dilly said. ‘Isn’t he?’ Tamsin nodded slowly. Then she glanced up at Dilly. ‘You OK?’ ‘Well,’ Dilly said, ‘I seem to be. I don’t get it, but I don’t feel anything much yet.’ Tamsin gave a sniff. ‘Of course, Robbie never liked him—’ ‘Dad did.’ ‘Dad liked anyone who was good company.’ She put an arm round Dilly. ‘Poor babe. Poor you. You don’t deserve this.’ Dilly said, her face awkwardly against her sister’s, ‘Should I do anything?’ ‘Heavens, no,’ Tamsin said. ‘Good riddance, I’d say. Don’t you do a thing.’ She took her face and arm away. Dilly said, ‘I don’t even know if I’ll miss him—’ ‘Good girl, Dill.’ ‘But I’ll miss having a boyfriend.’ ‘There’ll be others, Dill. There’ll be real ones, like Robbie.’ Dilly gave her head a tiny toss. ‘I don’t want a boyfriend like Robbie.’ ‘Even when you’re down,’ said sharply, ‘you can be such a little cow.’ Dilly took her phone out of Tamsin’s hand and began to walk away from her up the hill. Perhaps this was the time, the moment, for the tears to start. Perhaps now, with Tamsin’s self-absorption making her such a very unsatisfactory confidante, the usual wave of self-pity would come swe eping in, and she could give in to it, give herself up to it, and arrive home in the state that would at least ensure Chrissie’s full attention for a while. She tried visualizing her own situation, her humiliation, her looming loneliness, even the appalling prospect of inadvertently seeing Craig somewhere around, with someone else. She blinked. Her eyes were still dry. Tamsin caught up with her. ‘Dill—’ ‘What?’ ‘Sorry,’ Tamsin said, ‘this is so bad for you, so bad—’ ‘Yes,’ Dilly said. They were negotiating the crossings at the top of Highgate village. ‘Yes, it is.’ Tamsin took her arm. ‘Will you tell Mum?’ Dilly was amazed. ‘Of course!’ Tamsin held Dilly’s arm a little tighter. ‘I’ve got something to tell Mum too—’ Dilly tried to withdraw her arm. ‘About Robbie?’ ‘Oh no,’ Tamsin said. She was smiling. ‘Not him. About my job. Mr Mundy told me my job is safe. Quite safe, he said. No more money just now, but more responsibility. He said the partners felt they were lucky to have me.’ Dilly twitched her arm free. She thought of her phone, and its message. She remembered Tamsin in her headphones, being all lah-di-dah and selfimportant. She said nastily, ‘He just meant cheap at the price,’ and then she broke into a run, to get down the hill ahead of Tamsin, to get home first. She found Chrissie and Amy in the kitchen, looking at pictures on Chrissie’s digital camera. The atmosphere was a bit weird and there was a teapot on the table and a jug of sad purple flowers. They both glanced up when she came in, and she was conscious of being breathless and interestingly redolent of drama. She flung her bag on the floor and her sunglasses on the table. ‘We were just,’ Chrissie said, trying to avoid a reaction to Dilly’s
94 entrance, ‘looking at pictures of a flat I saw.’ Dilly glanced at the camera. The room it showed could have been anywhere, white and empty with a dark carpet. She said, in a rush, ‘You won’t believe—’ ‘What?’ Dilly plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out her phone, thrusting it at her mother. Chrissie peered at it. ‘What does this mean?’ ‘You look!’ Dilly shouted at Amy. Amy bent over the phone. ‘Oh my God—’ ‘What?’ Chrissie said. ‘Oh my God,’ Amy said, ‘the shit, the shit, how could he?’ She launched herself at Dilly, wrapping her arms round her shoulders. Dilly closed her eyes. ‘Please,’ Chrissie said, ‘what is happening?’ ‘He’s dumped me!’ Dilly cried. ‘He’s—’ ‘Craig has dumped Dilly!’ Amy said. ‘He hasn’t the nerve to do it to her face so he’s sent her this pathetic text!’ Chrissie stood up. She moved to put her arms round Dilly too. ‘Oh, darling—’ The front door slammed, and Tamsin appeared in the doorway. ‘Don’t you want to kill him?’ Amy demanded. ‘He’s not worth it.’ ‘No, Dill, he’s not worth it, he’s not worth crying over, not for a second —’ ‘I’m not crying,’ Dilly said. Chrissie st epped back. ‘Nor you are—’ ‘I want to,’ Dilly said, ‘I’m waiting to. But I’m not.’ She glanced at Tamsin. ‘Maybe it’s having such a fantastically supportive sister.’ Tamsin put her handbag down on the table. It was a habit that had driven Richie wild – ‘Put the bloody thing on the floor, where it belongs!’ – but Tamsin had always insisted that her bag sat on the table or hung on a chair. She said, with the air of being the one person, yet again, in full possession of themselves, ‘I am entirely supportive, Dilly, in fact I think you are well rid of him. It’s just that, in the present circumstances, it’s more useful to focus on the positive and I had, actually, some positive news today because my job is safe. Mr Mundy has confirmed that I’m staying.’ ‘Oh good,’ Chrissie said faintly. Amy said nothing. She let go of Dilly, just retaining her nearest hand. Chrissie said, with slightly more energy, ‘Well done, darling.’ Tamsin inclined her head. Dilly glanced at Amy. She said, ‘Nothing to worry about any more, then.’ Amy gave her the smallest of winks. Chrissie picked up the camera. She held it out. She said, half-laughing, ‘What a day!’ They all three regarded her in silence. ‘First, I may have found a flat!’ Silence. ‘Two, Tamsin has her job confirmed!’ Silence. ‘Three,’ Chrissie said, subduing her artificially affirmative tone, ‘Dilly is freed from someone who in no way deserves her—’ The silence was more awkward this time. Chrissie glanced quickly at Amy. ‘And four—’ She paused, and then she said to Amy, ‘You tell them.’ Amy cleared her throat. She let go of Dilly’s hand. She said, ‘I’m going up to Newcastle for a few days,’ and then she stopped, abruptly, as if she had intended to say more, but had thought better of it. Dilly caught her breath. She looked from her mother to Tamsin and back again, waiting for the explosion. Chrissie was looking at her camera. Tamsin was looking at the floor. She turned her head slowly so that she could see Amy. Amy looked excited. Amy was excited about going to Newcastle, Chrissie was excited about a flat and Tamsin was excited about her job. As far as her family was concerned, Craig’s cowardice and betrayal registered right, right down on the scale of things that mattered just now. Out of pure unadulterated temper at her family’s failure to pay her the attention that was unquestionably her due, Dilly began to cry.