It was the young couple’s third visit to the house. Chrissie had been wary of them at first, convinced that they were part of the dec eptive culture of debtfinanced outward prosperity, and that they would talk loudly about their enthusiasm and plans for the house, and then suddenly stare at her blankly and say they couldn’t possibly afford such an asking price, as if the fault lay with her. The asking price had been carefully engineered by Tamsin’s Mr Mundy. He had come to see the house in person, as Tamsin had assured Chrissie he would, and had been very measured and deliberate, and had told Chrissie, over coffee in the kitchen – he had d eprecatingly declined the sitting room as if to emphasize that he was merely a man of business – that they would advertise the house at fifty thousand pounds above the price that she should calculate on getting for it, in order to allow for the bargaining and inevitable reduction that were all part of the current house-buying-and-selling market. Chrissie had not liked Mr Mundy. She did not care for his heaviness, nor his slightly sweaty pallor, nor his patronage, and, most of all, she did not care for the way he was with Tamsin, like a seedily flirtatious uncle. Tamsin, she observed, did not respond to him in kind, but she certainly did nothing to discourage him, to the point where Chrissie made sure that, in going up the stairs to the top floor, it was she who preceded Mr Mundy, and not Tamsin. When he left, he held her hand fractionally too long in his large, soft grasp, and said that he was very sure he could just about promise her a sale. ‘Good,’ Chrissie said, ‘and soon, please.’ ‘As soon,’ Mr Mundy said, still smiling, ‘as it is humanly possible under current market conditions.’ Chrissie shut the door. ‘What a cre ep—’ Tamsin remembered catching Mr Mundy with the massage-ads page of the Ham & High newspaper, and thought she wouldn’t mention it. She said instead, ‘Well, he’s an estate agent, isn’t he? And if anyone can sell this house, he can.’ In the first weeks of the house being on the market, there were nine viewings. One of those viewings was by a young couple with a toddler, and after two days they came again. They stood about in the rooms, behaving, as Chrissie had come to realize, with amazement, in the way that people buying houses commonly behaved, remarking – as if Chrissie had not made this house her home for
120 the past fifteen years – on what was the matter with it, and what needed doing to make it even halfway acc eptable. On that second visit, there had been so much to find fault with – outdated decor, neglected garden, absence of garage, pokiness of existing office space, tired bathrooms – that Chrissie had seen them go with a mixture of relief that she need never see them again and regret that whatever had drawn them back was not strong enough to convince them. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said to Sue on the tel ephone. ‘I don’t want to have to sell this house but still I’m panicking that nobody will want to buy it. What’s going on?’ ‘You’re getting better.’ ‘I can’t be—’ ‘You are. And they’ll be back.’ ‘They won’t. They couldn’t find anything to like today—’ ‘They’ll be back.’ And they were. They turned up, entirely insouciant, as if they had never had any intention of doing anything else. ‘But,’ Chrissie said, ‘I really thought you didn’t like it, I thought you said —’ The wife stared at her. She was dressed in a grey linen tunic over a discreet pregnant bump, and she had the toddler on her hip, and an immense soft leather bag covered in pockets and buckles slung over her shoulder. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘we love it.’ She looked at the toddler. ‘Don’t we, Jamie? We’re going to make a playroom out of that room you said used to have a piano in it. For Jamie. Aren’t we, Jamie?’ They offered Chrissie fifty thousand less than the asking price. ‘Say no,’ Tamsin said. ‘I was going to. Anyway.’ ‘I would advise—’ Mr Mundy began. ‘No,’ Chrissie said, ‘I’ll take ten off.’ ‘Mrs Rossiter—’ ‘Ten,’ Chrissie said. The young couple offered forty thousand less than the asking price. ‘Fifteen,’ Chrissie said. The young couple said that they were no longer interested at that price. ‘I will leave in six weeks,’ Chrissie said, ‘and I will take twenty thousand off the asking price.’ ‘Oh God, Mum,’ Dilly said, ‘do you know what you’re doing?’ ‘Not really,’ Chrissie said, ‘but I’m going on instinct. I’m excited.’ ‘You’re overexcited—’ The young couple said that they would agree to exchange within two weeks and twenty-five thousand off, but that they were of course now looking at other properties. ‘Done,’ Chrissie said, ‘done. And I’ve taken the job at Leverton’s.’ ‘You can’t—’ ‘I can.’ ‘She can!’ ‘What do you know,’ Tamsin said to Dilly, ‘you’ve never earned a penny in all your life.’ ‘I will be,’ Dilly said. ‘I’m looking for work now. I will be.’ ‘Playing houses,’ Tamsin said scornfully, ‘in that poky flat.’ ‘It could be a pretty flat,’ Chrissie said. She was stirring Sunday-night scrambled eggs. ‘I’ll ring the owner in the morning. I’ll tell him that the minute I’ve exchanged contracts on this I’ll sign the lease.’ ‘Not before,’ Tamsin said. ‘I know not before,’ Chrissie said irritably. ‘Please do stop treating me like a halfwit.’ There was a fractional startled pause. ‘Sorree,’ Tamsin said in an offended voice. ‘I’ve bought and sold houses before,’ Chrissie said. ‘I’ve lived on my own and earned my own living, I’ll have you know. And you can’t even manage to move into a flat that’s being provided for you, complete with customized wardrobe.’ The landline tel ephone rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ Tamsin and Dilly said in unison. There was a small scuffle. Dilly was quicker. She twitched the handset out of its mooring and held it hard to her ear. ‘Hello? Oh, hi, Ames. How goes it? How’re you doing?’ There was a considerable silence. Chrissie took the egg pan off the cooker and continued to stir with elaborate concentration. Tamsin leaned against the nearest wall and folded her arms, fixing her gaze resolutely on some midpoint halfway down the kitchen. Dilly stayed where she was, listening. Then, after what seemed an unconscionable time, she said, ‘Oh wow,’ and, ‘Jesus, Amy,’ and then, ‘You’d better talk to Mum. Hadn’t you?’ Chrissie stopped stirring. Tamsin stood upright. Chrissie held her hand
121 out for the phone. ‘Big deal, Ames,’ Dilly said into the phone, taking no notice. Chrissie took a st ep closer. ‘Please—’ ‘Give it to her!’ Tamsin said sharply. ‘They’re going mad here,’ Dilly said. ‘Shall I pass you over?’ Then she laughed. ‘Countdown,’ she said. ‘Ready? Three, two, one, Mothah!’ She handed the tel ephone to Chrissie. ‘And?’ Tamsin demanded. Dilly ignored her. She was watching Chrissie. Chrissie was listening intently. Then she said, ‘But I want you home tomorrow. You promised you would be back tomorrow—’ ‘She’s not staying?’ Tamsin hissed. ‘She’s fallen in love with some music thing,’ Dilly said, still watching Chrissie. ‘Some folk-music degree, or something. Sounded a bit weird to me.’ ‘Folk-music degree?’ ‘She sounded completely mental about it. Newcastle University or something. Where is Newcastle?’ ‘Well, obviously I can’t force you,’ Chrissie said, ‘but it does seem very strange, very sudden. You’ve only been there ten minutes—’ ‘They’ve brainwashed her,’ Tamsin said. ‘I wish somebody’d wash your brain,’ Dilly said with spirit. ‘You mightn’t think you’re right all the time if they did.’ ‘You can be such a little cow—’ ‘All right,’ Chrissie said, ‘all right. Of course I’m not going to forbid you. I couldn’t forbid you, in any case. I suppose—’ She stopped. Then she said with difficulty, ‘I suppose I should wish you luck. Well, I do. I do wish you luck, darling. If this is what you want.’ ‘Oh my God,’ Tamsin said, uncrossing her arms and flinging them out dramatically. ‘This family is falling apart.’ Dilly went over to the cooker and prodded at the egg with a wooden spoon. ‘It’s all gone rubbery—’ ‘Yes,’ Chrissie said. She sounded tired, defeated. ‘Yes. Well, ring and tell me. Or text me. At least text me. Oh, and Amy? I sold the house. Yes. Yes, I think so, I think that too. OK, OK, darling. Night night.’ She took the phone away from her ear and held it, looking down at it. ‘What have they done to her?’ Tamsin said. When Amy woke, it was broad daylight and the uncurtained window by the bed was full of the wide, high, cloud-streaked Northern sky. She lay there for a while, so that her mind could swim slowly to the surface, past all the events of the day before, past the lunch and the conversation, past the discoveries and the phone call home, and past – much more savouringly – the marvellous unexpected midnight hours when Scott had at last sat down at the piano and played, and she had retrieved her flute from her rucksack and joined him, and it was better than talking, better than anything, better even than playing with Dad had been, because Scott played like an equal, played as if only the music mattered and who cared who was following or leading. It was past two in the morning before either of them thought of the time. And then Amy had discovered she was starving and they had eaten a bag of cashew nuts and some cheese slices Scott found in the fridge and shared a battered Kit Kat from the bottom of his work bag. Going into his bedroom, Amy had been almost overwhelmed by the need to thank him, to say that she felt rescued, guided, excited, but had not known how to do any of that without embarrassing both of them, so she had put her arms round his neck, awkwardly and in silence, and he had somehow understood, and had given her a quick, hard hug, and said, ‘You’re not the only one who’s had a good day,’ and let her go. Then he said, ‘I’ll be gone in the morning, remember. It’s Monday.’ ‘Oh—’ ‘I took a half-day off, Friday. Can’t do more right now.’ ‘No, I know, I knew—’ He was tossing a pillow and an unzipped sle eping bag on to the sofa. ‘Mr Harrison’ll look after you. He’ll show you the Sage. He knows his way round the music scene better than I do, in any case.’ Mr Harrison! Amy shot up in bed. Where was her watch? What was the time? What would
122 happen if she k ept Mr Harrison waiting? ‘It was opened in 2004,’ Bernie Harrison said. ‘It’s bigger than two football pitches and twice the height of The Angel of the North. And up there,’ he pointed to the vast curved roof soaring high above them, ‘there’s six hundred-some-odd panes of glass, and each one weighs more than two baby el ephants.’ Amy was turning slowly, head thrown back, gawping. ‘I’ve run out of things to say—’ ‘I’m old enough to remember the Northern Sinfonia being founded,’ Bernie said. ‘It was 1958. Michael Hall. I was sixteen, same age as your—’ He stopped. ‘No, I suppose she isn’t your anything, Margaret, is she?’ Amy retrieved her dazzled gaze from the immensity of the Sage’s roof. ‘Not really—’ ‘Your father’s first wife is just your father’s first wife.’ Amy swallowed. ‘She – she was his only wife. He and Mum never—’ Bernie Harrison cleared his throat. ‘Well, don’t let it trouble you. Doesn’t trouble me. You made your mark with Margaret, I can tell you.’ ‘I hope she wasn’t upset about me not staying—’ ‘She’s got a mind of her own and she likes to see one in other people. I’ve known her since she was a stroppy little object in pigtails. We grew up in a different world from now, Margaret and me. You wouldn’t believe, now, our world had ever been, sometimes. It was hard, though. You can’t really miss something that hard.’ Amy looked past him, along the immense shining spaces of floor, to the glass walls and the view of the river. She said a little hesitantly, ‘So, the Grand Hotel—’ ‘Yes,’ Bernie said firmly. ‘She’d deny it, but that’s why we like places like the Grand Hotel. We’ve made our mark and our brass and we like value for it. Quality.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘It may be different in London—’ ‘Please don’t talk about London.’ Bernie glanced at her. ‘Very well.’ ‘I’ve just fallen in love with all this—’ ‘It doesn’t take half an eye to see that.’ ‘Everyone,’ Amy said, ‘has been so lovely to me.’ Bernie indicated that Amy should follow him across to the stupendous windows, to lean on the steel balustrade and look down on the river and the bridges. He said, looking at the view, ‘We’ve all got something to give each other.’ ‘I haven’t,’ Amy said, ‘I haven’t got anything. I’ve only just left school. I couldn’t even buy my own train ticket up here.’ ‘You’re too sharp to take me literally. It’s not about the money.’ ‘Not having any makes you a bit helpless—’ ‘Are you going to let that stand in your way?’ ‘No,’ Amy said uncertainly. ‘There’s ways and means. There’s grants. There’s charities that like giving bursaries for music. There’ll be a way if you want it.’ ‘I want it so much—’ ‘Well,’ Bernie said, ‘we’ll see. You’d have to work hard for a year, you’d have to get some experience. But if something comes of it, it’ll cheer us all up, I can tell you. We’ve got in a bit of a rut.’ ‘Up here?’ Amy said, incredulous, gesturing at the slim white arc of the Millennium Bridge. ‘Up here? With all this?’ ‘We’ve grown up with all this,’ Bernie said. ‘We’ve watched this city come alive again. My mother worked in a sweet factory in North Shields, and I drive a Jaguar and I like a fancy place to eat. But for all that, you ke ep needing a new energy, you never stop looking for the next little push and shove. I’ll tell you something. I’ve got a good business here, a solid business. This place – well, this place means I can think of performers I couldn’t even consider ten years ago. But I still look to change, I look to improve all the time, and don’t ask me who for, because I’ve got no children and I don’t know who for, in the future, I only know it’s for me, right now. And what I want right now is for Margaret to come in with me, and manage the areas of the business that she manages better than anyone. She knows the North-East entertainment business like the back of her hand. And she won’t come. She goes fiddling on with that little tinpot business of hers, and she won’t come.’
123 ‘Why?’ ‘Because,’ Bernie said, ‘she’s stuck in a rut of her own.’ Amy put both hands on the rail and leaned back, her feet braced. ‘I thought I was stuck.’ ‘You’re never stuck at eighteen.’ ‘But if it’s how you feel—’ Bernie Harrison glanced at her. ‘Exactly. And you being young and being struck with all this made us old fogeys feel a whole lot better. Why else am I here and not in my office?’ Amy straightened up. ‘Thank you very much for that.’ ‘I’m not doing it for you, young lady.’ ‘Aren’t you?’ He shrugged. He was laughing. ‘I never do anything without a motive. And I’ve got two motives this morning. One, I promised Margaret we’d all have lunch together.’ ‘Oh,’ Amy said. ‘Oh good or oh bad?’ ‘Oh fine,’ Amy said. ‘And the second thing, before we go any further, is I need to have an idea of you.’ ‘An idea—’ ‘As a musician,’ Bernie said. ‘How—’ Bernie turned. He gestured across the concourse. ‘Down there,’ he said, ‘down one level, is the music education centre. Workshops, practice rooms, teaching rooms, recording studios. We’re going down there now. I’ve set it up. There’s a flute down there, waiting for you, and I’m going to hear you play.’ The owner of the Highgate flat was in Los Angeles. ‘Oh my God,’ Chrissie said, ‘did I wake you?’ He did not sound quite sure. ‘Not really—’ ‘I forgot the time difference. I’m so sorry but I quite forgot about Pacific time. I just wanted—’ ‘Yes?’ ‘I just wondered if you’d let the flat—’ ‘Oh no,’ he said. He sounded as if he was lying down. ‘No, I haven’t. I was kinda waiting for you—’ ‘Well,’ Chrissie said, ‘I think it will be OK. I think – I think I’ve sold my house.’ ‘Good,’ he said, ‘good news—’ ‘Could you possibly wait a bit more? Could you wait two more weeks?’ ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I can wait two weeks.’ He yawned. ‘I’ll even be over, I think, in two weeks. I’m not sure.’ ‘That’s so kind of you—’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s business. My accountant says I should let it and you seem the right kind of person to let it to. That’s fine by me.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Call me when you know—’ ‘I will. I’ll call you straight away—’ ‘And go round there. Go and see it again. The houseke eper has the keys. Help yourself.’ ‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘thank you—’ ‘See you,’ he said. He yawned again. ‘From sunny California, and a view of the freeway, I send greetings and say see you in Highgate.’ Chrissie put the phone down. The call had been, despite the yawns, strangely elating. As was, to her surprise, the presence of the young couple’s surveyor in the house, tapping walls and peering into cupboards in a manner that suggested he would be very, very disappointed if he found nothing amiss. Chrissie had made him tea – he’d been very specific, asking for only enough milk to cloud the tea, and one sugar – which he had left to get cold in the kitchen, but even that didn’t irritate her. She was beginning, cautiously, to believe that she was feeling better. Not all the time, and not reliably, dramatically so, but she was distinctly aware that instead of believing she was at the mercy of Richie’s decisions, Richie’s erratic earning power and enthusiasm, Richie’s fans, Richie’s particular brand of sweetly expressed utter stubbornness, she was instead sensing the first stirrings of the luxury of being free to choose. She might have much – much – less money, and she would no longer own a property, but then she would no longer be in a position of d ependency either, reliant upon another person for livelihood, for emotional reassurance. The surveyor was coming down the stairs, slowly, still making notes. He’d been in the house for hours, which suggested to Chrissie not so much that he was being exhaustively, dangerously thorough, as that he had, these days, far less work coming in. ‘I’m afraid your tea is cold,’ Chrissie said. In
124 the old days, she might have added, ‘Shall I make you another?’ Now, however, she merely smiled. He didn’t look up. ‘I always drink it cold,’ he said. * * * Tamsin, despite being at work, had been on the phone to Amy. She had rung her to tell her that they were all very upset by her behaviour, and that it was really hurtful and disloyal to behave like this, especially for Chrissie. Perhaps, Tamsin said, Amy hadn’t realized what it was like for Chrissie to have to sell the house and take a pretty menial job – Chrissie, after all, Tamsin reminded Amy, was used to a professional managerial role – and it was absolutely out of order for Amy to add to all this pain by behaving with such callous disregard for anybody’s feelings but her own. In fact, Amy should know that she, Tamsin, was thinking of going to live with Chrissie in the Highgate flat because it was going to be so hard, so very hard, for her to adjust without help and support. ‘Have you done?’ Amy demanded, when her sister paused for breath. ‘For the moment. Where are you?’ ‘I’m sitting,’ Amy said, ‘with a cat on my knee.’ Tamsin gave a little snort. ‘Maybe,’ Amy went on, not sounding anything like as ruffled as Tamsin thought she ought to be, ‘maybe Mum is doing better than you give her credit for. Maybe she quite likes choosing her life again.’ ‘It’s not a choice,’ Tamsin said, ‘she has to do all this. And we have to help her.’ ‘Well,’ Amy said, ‘I might be helping. I might not be a burden on her. I might not be living there. More space for you—’ ‘You are unbelievable—’ ‘They take twenty-five people a year on this course. I need three Bs and grade eight, and I’ve got grade eight.’ ‘You’re obsessed,’ Tamsin said. ‘No more than you are,’ Amy said. ‘It’s just about something different.’ ‘When are you deigning to come back?’ ‘On Friday,’ Amy said, ‘I told Mum. God, this cat is heavy, it’s like sitting under a furry hippo or something. I’ve got to do the application through UCAS and all that, but I’m going into the d epartment at the university to have a look.’ She paused and then she said proudly, ‘I’ve got an introduction.’ ‘I’m not asking,’ Tamsin said. ‘I don’t want to know.’ ‘OK,’ Amy said. ‘No change there, then.’ ‘I want you to think about what I said—’ Amy was silent. ‘Amy? ’ Silence. ‘Amy?’ Tamsin took the phone from her ear and looked at the screen. ‘Call ended’, it said. She gave a furious little exclamation. ‘Tamsin?’ Robbie said. She looked up from her seat behind the rec eption desk, still frowning. She had not been expecting him. ‘Robbie, not till six, you know not till six.’ He was not, to her slight surprise, smiling. He was in his work suit and looked absolutely as he usually did, but instead of regarding her with his customary expression of being alert to accommodate to her precisely current mood, he was looking, well, stern was the word that came to mind. She said, ‘Is everything OK?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, it isn’t. I wouldn’t interrupt you at work if it was.’ She half rose. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘You probably haven’t noticed,’ Robbie said. He leaned over the desk a little and Tamsin felt a small clutch of real apprehension. ‘In fact, if you had noticed, I wouldn’t be here. I could have waited till tonight, but for once I didn’t think I would. If you want to know, I’m sick of waiting.’ He leaned a little further. ‘Tamsin,’ Robbie said, ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’ A small beauty salon in Marylebone, just off the High Street, offered Dilly a job as a junior therapist for four days a week, with the expectation that she would work every other weekend. Dilly said she would think about it. She liked the look of the salon and the other girls seemed perfectly friendly, but she wasn’t sure about the commitment of working at weekends, which would mean, if she only had
125 three days a week when she wasn’t working, but all her friends were, she’d be stuck in that top-floor flat alone with no one to hang out with. The manageress of the salon had seen quite a lot of girls like Dilly. In fact she was rather tired of girls like Dilly and wasn’t going to waste her breath, yet again, explaining that the current employment market was not a pick-and-choose, plenty-more-where-that-came-from scenario any more. So she looked at Dilly – pretty girl, and a deft worker – and said she should of course make up her own mind, but that the salon needed an extra girl, on the terms she had specified, immediately, and that the job would be given to the next suitable candidate who came through the door, which might be that very afternoon. She then turned away to talk to a client in a very different, animated manner, and Dilly went out into the street feeling, aggrievedly, that she hadn’t in any way merited being treated like that. 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 acc ept 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
126 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 acc epted 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.’