The Other Family

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Give me a skinny rock god any day,’ she’d say to Chrissie, as if to reassure her that she, Sue, had no designs on a man whose fan mail stil arrived in sacks, rather than by e-mail. ‘Give me a real y bad boy, any day.’ Chrissie had laughed. It was easy, then, to laugh at the idea of not being helplessly susceptible to Richie Rossiter. She could laugh because she felt – you could see it – completely secure.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ she’d say sometimes. ‘It’s amazing watching him flirt with three thousand women from the stage, and then switch it off like a light the moment he’s back in the wings.’

  ‘Lucky for you—’

  ‘Very lucky for me,’ Chrissie would say soberly. ‘So lucky. He’s a family man.’

  ‘Rather than first a romantic?’

  A tiny shadow would flit across Chrissie’s face. She’d touch her earrings, or a bracelet, as if to indicate that these had been presents from Richie, sentimental offerings, and she’d say evasively, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that—’

  Sue pul ed the tray towards her across the duvet, and put her hand on the neck of the bottle of Prosecco.

  ‘I’m opening it!’ she cal ed.

  There was a pause. Sue wedged the bottle between her knees and began to peel off the foil and wire round the cork. The bathroom door opened.

  ‘Sorry,’ Chrissie said.

  Sue looked up.

  ‘Have you been crying?’

  ‘No,’ Chrissie said. ‘Wondering if I might be sick, but not crying.’

  ‘You need some time.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Chrissie said.

  Sue eased the cork out deftly, and fil ed a glass with care. She held it out to Chrissie.

  ‘Open those doors,’ Sue said.

  Holding the glass away from her as if to steady it that way, Chrissie crossed the room and, with her free hand, opened the two right-hand pairs of cupboard doors. On one side in two rows, one above the other, hung jackets and trousers, and on the other, a row of shirts on hangers above shelves of sweaters and T-shirts, al folded with precision.

  ‘Heavens,’ Sue said, ‘looks like the menswear floor in John Lewis.’ She averted her gaze from the pale-blue linen jackets and looked resolutely at the floor of the left-hand wardrobe. It contained brown and black shoes, al on shoe trees.

  ‘Who kept it like that?’ Sue said.

  Chrissie was standing to one side as if it was rude to stand directly in front of a shrine.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Blimey,’ Sue said, ‘care to come and blow fairy dust into my cupboards? You can’t see for chaos. I’m the original makeover mess-up.’

  ‘He liked clothes,’ Chrissie said. ‘But he liked me to buy them.’

  ‘Liked, or let you?’

  Chrissie took a tiny sip of her wine.

  ‘Liked. He’d never shop on his own. He said he didn’t trust his taste. We had a nickname for it, NC for Northern Circuit. He’d pick something up and hold it out to me and say, “Too NC?” Satin lapels and pointed shoes. That kind of thing.’

  Sue said, ‘There’s never been anything smarter than a T-shirt in my house—’

  Chrissie said abruptly, desperately, ‘I can’t touch these.’

  Sue slid off the bed. She went over to Chrissie and put an arm round her.

  ‘It’s OK, Chris—’

  ‘If I touch them,’ Chrissie said, ‘I’l smel his smel . Touching them wil sort of release that. I can’t—’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Sue said.

  ‘But I’ve got to—’

  ‘No,’ Sue said, ‘you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.’

  ‘Damn,’ Chrissie said, looking at the white carpet. ‘Look. I’ve spil ed it—’

  ‘White wine,’ Sue said. ‘Won’t show. Go and sit on the bed.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go and sit on the bed.’

  Chrissie was shaking.

  ‘You came here to help me sort his clothes—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I came here as your mate, not as a second-hand clothes dealer. Go and sit on that bed before I push you there.’

  She took her arm away from Chrissie’s shoulders.

  ‘I thought I could do it—’

  ‘Look,’ Sue said, ‘it doesn’t matter. This is a rite of passage. There’s no dress rehearsal for rites of passage, you can’t practise for widowhood.

  I’m going to shut these doors.’

  Chrissie crept away from the cupboards and sat on her own side of the bed, facing away from the cupboards. Sue shut the doors decisively, and then she came to sit down next to Chrissie.

  ‘Drink.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Drink. Big swal ow.’

  Chrissie took an obedient gulp. She said, ‘I’m in such a mess.’

  ‘I don’t wonder.’

  ‘I don’t know what to think, now. I don’t know what he real y felt, any more. I don’t know what we’re going to do.’

  Sue put a hand on Chrissie’s, urging her glass towards her mouth.

  Chrissie said, ‘He had bookings up to May next year. I’ve had to cancel them. They would have brought in almost forty thousand. There’s fan mail like you can’t believe. I should think every middle-aged woman in the North of England has written to say they can’t believe he’s dead. I’m left with a house and not enough savings and three daughters and an inheritance tax bil and the realization that he’s left his piano and a good part of his creative output to the life he had before he even met me. And I can’t even ask him what the hel he thought he was playing at, I can’t ask him if he meant what he used to say to me, what he used to say to the girls, I can’t even ask him, Sue, if he actual y real y loved me.’

  Sue picked up the Prosecco bottle and refil ed Chrissie’s glass.

  ‘Course he loved you.’

  ‘But not enough to marry me.’

  ‘Love,’ Sue said firmly, ‘is not necessarily about marriage.’

  Chrissie took another gulp.

  ‘Where Richie came from, it is. Where Richie came from, you had to make love respectable. He was always tel ing me that. Why didn’t he get a divorce? Because where he came from, the way he was brought up, divorce was very difficult, divorce was frowned on, his fans would not have liked it if he had been divorced.’

  Sue waited a moment, and then she said, ‘None of that antediluvian claptrap means he didn’t love you.’

  Chrissie was staring straight ahead.

  ‘But not enough to leave me his piano. His piano and a tea caddy were about the only things he brought with him when he came south. He bought that piano when he was thirty-five, with the royalties from “Moonlight and Memory,” it was the absolutely most precious thing he had and, if any of us inadvertently put a glass or a mug down on it, he’d go berserk. Not leaving me the piano is like saying sorry, I tolerated you al these years because I fancied you once and then there were the girls so I was trapped and couldn’t get away, but actual y, al the time, my heart, my real heart, was somewhere else, where it had been al the time since I was a little kid at school, and I can’t pretend any more so I’m leaving her the piano and not you. You can have the things anyone could give you, like a house and a car and an inadequate life-insurance policy and a load of memories which turn out to be rubbish because I didn’t, I’m afraid, actual y mean any of it.’

  She stopped. Tears were pouring down her face. Sue moved closer, putting an arm round her again, holding out a clump of tissues.

  ‘That’s right, Chrissie, that’s right. You let it out, you let it right out—’

  ‘I don’t know whether I’m sadder or angrier,’ Chrissie said, taking the tissues but letting the tears run. ‘I don’t know if I’m so bloody furious or so bloody heart-broken that I can’t see straight. Maybe it’s both. I want him back, I want him back so badly I could scream. And I want to kill him.’

  Sue pul ed more tissues out of the box by the bed and mopped at Chrissie’s face.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ Chrissi
e said, her voice uneven now because of the crying. ‘I’m frightened of what’s going to happen, how I’m going to make a living, what I’m going to do about the girls. I’m frightened about the future and I’m frightened about the past because it looks like it wasn’t what I thought it was, that I’ve spent twenty years and more believing what I wanted to believe and not seeing the truth. I’m frightened that al the efficiency and competence and administration I thought was keeping us going and getting us somewhere was like just trying to mend a house with wal paper.

  I—’

  ‘Now stop it,’ Sue said kindly. ‘Time to stop.’ Chrissie gave an immense sniff and blotted her eyes with the tissues in her hand.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s understandable, but going on and on like this wil just make you feel like shit.’

  ‘I feel like shit anyway.’

  ‘There are degrees of shittiness—’

  ‘I just don’t,’ Chrissie said, ‘know what to do.’

  Sue prised the damp tissues out of her hands.

  ‘Get up and go into that bathroom and wash your face and have a good scream and come downstairs. You’ve said it al , you’ve got it al out, but it doesn’t help getting it al out over and over. I’m going downstairs. I’l be waiting for you downstairs.’ She stood up, and bent for the tray. ‘It’s murder when people die while you’ve stil got stuff to say to them, murder. Drives you crazy. But you mustn’t let it. See you downstairs.’

  In the kitchen, Dil y was sitting at the table with her laptop and a notebook and a large volume on anatomy open beside them. Sue put the tray down on the table next to her and glanced at it.

  ‘What on earth’s that?’

  ‘The lymphatic system,’ Dil y said.

  She was wearing spotless white jeans and a pale-grey T-shirt and her fair hair hung down her back in a tidy pigtail, fastened with a cluster of crystals on an elasticized loop.

  ‘Why,’ Sue said, ‘do you need to know about the lymphatic system for Brazilian waxes?’

  Dil y frowned at the screen.

  ‘It’s for facials. You have to know how the lymphatic system drains, for facials.’

  ‘Yuck,’ Sue said. She began taking things off the tray and putting them on the table. She had known Dil y since she was a tiny girl, since Amy was a baby, and Tamsin was going to nursery school at a termly price, Richie used to say, that would have covered a whole education in the North when he was a boy; Tamsin had a tabard for her nursery school, pink cotton with a flower appliqué. Sue Bennett’s children had gone to nursery school in whichever T-shirt was cleanest. She sat down beside Dil y.

  ‘You know what your mum and I’ve been doing—’

  Dil y stared harder at the screen.

  ‘Didn’t real y want to think about it.’

  ‘No. You wouldn’t.’

  ‘It’s too soon,’ Dil y said.

  ‘Wel ,’ Sue said, ‘that’s exactly how Mum felt. When it came to it.’

  Dil y turned to look at her.

  ‘So it’s – it’s al stil there?’

  ‘Not a sock moved.’

  ‘What a relief,’ Dil y said. She looked back at the screen. ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘I was going to ask you that.’

  ‘None of us are,’ Dil y said. ‘You’re OK for a bit and then it suddenly hits you. And it’s awful.’

  ‘Has she,’ Sue said casual y, moving the olives and salami about on the table, ‘has she talked to you?’

  Dil y stopped swivel ing the mouse panel on her laptop.

  ‘About what? ’

  ‘About what’s on her mind. About what’s happened, since your dad died.’

  Dil y said flatly, ‘You mean the piano.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She hasn’t said much. But you can see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Dil y said. ‘I don’t get why he’d do a thing like that.’

  ‘I don’t think you should read too much into it.’

  Dil y turned to look directly at her. Her skin, at these close quarters, Sue observed, was absolutely flawless, almost like a baby’s.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘What I mean,’ Sue said, ‘is that you shouldn’t let yourselves think that just because he left the piano to her he was in love with her al along.’

  Dil y made a smal grimace.

  ‘You should see her—’

  ‘I did, briefly. At the funeral.’

  ‘Wel —’

  ‘No competition for your mum.’

  ‘But then he goes and leaves her the piano!’

  Sue said careful y, ‘That may have nothing whatsoever to do with love.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Wel , it could be nostalgia. Or Northern solidarity. Or guilt. Or al three.’

  Dil y leaned her elbows on the table and balanced her forehead in the palms of her hands.

  ‘None of that means anything to us.’

  ‘Wel , think about it. Think about it and try and see it as something other than just a bloody great rejection. And while you’re at it, stop behaving as if it’s al the fault of that poor cow in Newcastle. What did she do, except get left to bring a child up on her own? She’s never made trouble, never asked for anything. Has she? You’re al letting yourselves down if you blame her for what your father did. You hear me?’

  Dil y’s phone began to play the theme tune from The Magic Roundabout. She pounced on it at once and peered at the screen. And then, without looking at Sue, she got up, saying, ‘Hi, big guy,’ happily into it, and walked away down the kitchen to the far window.

  ‘You’re a rude little cow,’ Sue said equably, to her back.

  In the doorway, Chrissie said, ‘Do I look as grim as I feel?’

  Sue turned.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you just look as if you’ve been crying because you’re extremely sad.’

  ‘And mad,’ Chrissie said.

  Sue got up to find clean wine glasses.

  ‘Mad’s OK. Mad gives you energy. It’s hate you want to avoid.’

  Chrissie said nothing. She glanced at Dil y, smiling into her phone at the far end of the kitchen. Then she sat down in the chair Dil y had vacated, and picked up an olive. Sue put a fresh glass of Prosecco down in front of her.

  ‘Drink up.’

  ‘Thing is,’ Chrissie said, staring at the olive in her hand, ‘thing is, Sue, that I do hate her. I’ve never met her, and I hate her. I know it wasn’t her that prevented Richie from marrying me but I can’t seem to leave her out of it. Maybe it’s easy to hate her. Maybe I’m just doing what’s easy. Al I know is that I hate her.’ She put the olive in her mouth. ‘I do.’

  In her office in Front Street, Tynemouth, Margaret was alone. Useful and faithful though Glenda was, there was always a smal relief in Margaret when five o’clock came and she could say, ‘Now come on, Glenda, you’ve done al I’ve asked you and more, and Barry’s been on his own long enough, don’t you think?’ and Glenda would gather up her jacket and scarf and inevitable col ection of supermarket bags and, always with a look of regret at the comforting anonymity of the computer screen, say a complicated goodnight and disappear down the steep stairs to the street. When the outside door slammed behind her, Margaret would let out a breath and feel the office relax around her, as if it was taking its shoes off. Then, she would sit down in Glenda’s swivel chair, bought especial y to support her back, whose condition was an abiding consideration in their relationship, and go through everything, on screen and on paper, that Glenda had done that day.

  On the top of Glenda’s in-tray lay the estimates she had obtained for the transport of Richie’s piano from North London to Newcastle. It was going to be a very expensive business, in view of the quality and the weight and the distance. Margaret looked at the top sheet, on which Glenda had pencil ed, ‘This firm specializes in the moving of concert pianos.’ It was the highest estimate, of course, but probably the one she would accept, and pay, in order that Scot
t could benefit from something that represented a joint parental concern after over twenty years of only having hers.

  She had discovered, over the last week or so, that her initial euphoria at being left the piano had subsided into something both more manageable and more familiar to her, a state of quiet satisfaction and comfortable relief. It was a relief and satisfaction to know Richie had remembered her, and so meaningful y; and it was a relief she didn’t have to house the piano and look at it every day. It was a satisfaction that Scott wanted it and would play it and a relief that he would not be haunted by the memory of its purchase and arrival, more than thirty years ago, when Margaret had had every reason to believe that a shining future awaited her in every area of her life – a rising husband, a smal son, the increasing exercise of her own managerial skil s.

  As it turned out, it had been the last two that had saved her. Scott, though he had inherited more of her unobtrusive competence than his father’s flair, had been a good son to her. She wished he were more ambitious, just as she wished he was married, with a family, and a decent house near her and the sea, rather than living his indeterminate bachelor existence in that uncomfortable flat in the city, but that didn’t make him other than a good son to her, affectionate and mostly conscientious, with a respect for her and her achievements that she often saw lacking in her friends’

  children.

  And of course, those achievements had been a life saver. It wasn’t a big business, Margaret Rossiter Entertainment, never would be, she didn’t want it to be, but it was enough to maintain her and Glenda, to provide moderate holidays and to keep her involved in a world in which she had a smal but distinct significance, the world of singers and musicians, of stand-up comics and performance poets, who stil managed to make a living in the clubs and hotels and pubs and concert hal s of the circuit she had known al her life. There was, she sometimes reflected with satisfaction, not a venue or a person connected with the minor entertainment industry in the North-East whom she did not know. By the same token, there was hardly anyone who did not know who Margaret Rossiter was.