The Other Family

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Good morning, Teresa.’

  She flashed him her automatic smile.

  ‘Morning, Mr Mark.’

  ‘Everything al right, Teresa?’

  She gave a little shrug.

  ‘As it wil ever be, Mr Mark. You know how it is.’

  Mark waited a moment, standing quite stil , his laptop case in his hand.

  ‘How is it?’

  Teresa had pushed her spectacles up on her severely coiffed dark head. She moved them down, now, on to her nose, and gave a little whinny of laughter.

  ‘You don’t want to bother with my troubles, Mr Mark—’

  Mark put his case down.

  ‘I do. What’s the matter?’

  Teresa sighed. Then she looked directly at Mark through her uncompromising modern spectacles and said, ‘It’s my partner. He’s bought a business in Canada.’

  ‘Canada?’

  ‘Edmonton,’ Teresa said. She looked down at her desk. ‘He wants us to go and live in Edmonton. Edmonton. I ask you.’

  The kitchen table was almost covered with bottles and jars and ripped-open packets. Chrissie, wearing a plastic apron patterned with huge and improbably shiny fruit over her clothes, was methodical y emptying the enormous fridge-freezer that Richie had persuaded her into buying, only eight months ago, because he said that the girls would be so thril ed to have a dispenser in the door of a fridge that would, at the touch of a button, produce ice cubes, crushed ice or chil ed water.

  At this moment, the fridge-freezer represented a bitter condensation of everything that Chrissie feared about the present and resented about the past. Monumental and gleaming, disgorging an apparently endless amount of parteaten things, extravagantly inessential things, outdated things and plain rubbish – how did a packet of strawberry-flavoured jel y shoelaces ever get in there? – the fridge seemed to Chrissie nothing but a stern reproach for years of rampant fol y, which in retrospect looked both repel ent and inexcusable. The jars of American-imported dil pickles, of French artisan mayonnaise, of Swiss jam made from organical y grown black cherries, made her feel like weeping with rage and regret. Especial y as Richie, who never drank chil ed water and disliked ice in his whisky, would have ignored everything in the fridge except basics like milk and butter.

  She looked, with a kind of disgusted despair, at the outdated jar of black-truffle sauce in her hand. What had she been doing? Richie and the girls only ever ate ketchup. Who had it al been for?

  ‘Yikes,’ Amy said.

  She stood in the kitchen doorway, an untidy sheaf of notes on A4 paper held against her with one arm, a mug in her other hand.

  Chrissie put the jar down with a bang, beside a box of eggs and a smal irregular lump of something in a tired plastic wrapper.

  ‘We are eating everything I can salvage out of this, everything, before I buy one more slice of bread.’

  Amy advanced to the table and surveyed everything on it. She put her mug down in the chaos and picked up the lump.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Cheese?’

  Amy gave a tentative squeeze.

  ‘Too squashy.’

  ‘Old cheese,’ Chrissie said.

  Amy raised her arm and threw the lump in the direction of the bin.

  ‘Chuck.’

  ‘Don’t chuck anything,’ Chrissie said, ‘without showing me first.’

  Amy glanced back at the table.

  ‘This is gross—’

  ‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘I agree. It is gross. The possession of it, especial y in current circumstances, is gross. But we are not wasting it. We can’t.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Amy said unwisely, ‘when I get back, it’l al be gone.’

  There was an abrupt and eloquent silence. Chrissie stood by the fridge, staring inside. Amy went across the kitchen, with as much insouciance as she could manage, and switched the kettle on.

  Chrissie said, ‘Did you check it had water in it?’

  Amy sighed. She switched the kettle off, put her papers down, carried the kettle to the sink, fil ed it, brought it back and switched it on again. Then she said, ‘It’s no good pretending I’m not going.’

  Chrissie put a sliding pile of opened packets of delicatessen meats on the table.

  ‘No danger of that.’

  Amy waited. She looked down at her notes. Spanish quotations, her favourites underlined in red. Revision was hateful, but Spanish was, al the same, a satisfactory language to declaim out loud.

  ‘She rang me,’ Chrissie said.

  Amy went back to the table to find her mug.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes. Tea?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Chrissie said. ‘She rang me to tel me that I wasn’t to worry about your staying improperly in her son’s flat, because you won’t be, you’l be staying with her.’

  Amy got a box of tea bags out of the cupboard.

  ‘She’s cal ed Margaret. He’s cal ed Scott.’

  Chrissie was silent.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with her,’ Amy said.

  ‘She thinks it is.’

  ‘Wel ,’ Amy said, pouring boiling water into her mug, ‘don’t worry, anyway. I’l do what suits me.’

  ‘You may wel not have a choice. Just as I don’t seem to have.’

  Amy carried her mug down the kitchen to the sink. She said, staring out into the neglected garden, ‘I’m not going for them, Mum. I told you. I’m going to see where Dad grew up, I’m going to see where half of me comes from.’

  ‘I know, Amy, I know it’s what you think wil —’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it!’ Amy shouted. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more! I’ve got an exam tomorrow, and one on Thursday, and then I’m free and I’m going to Newcastle, and nothing is going to change that!’

  Chrissie folded her arms and stared at the ceiling.

  ‘Just be grateful,’ Amy said, angrily but less loudly, ‘just be thankful I’m not partying after, like everyone I know. Partying and talking to anyone and everyone.’

  ‘Talking? What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Amy said witheringly. ‘Oh please. D’you real y think that party means party and talk means talk?’

  Chrissie transferred her gaze to Amy’s face.

  ‘What does it mean then?’

  Amy walked past her, carrying her mug of tea. In the doorway, she paused and said, with emphasis, ‘Kissing.’

  Chrissie gave a little jump. Amy said dangerously, ‘So I’l be better off in Newcastle, don’t you think?’ and then the telephone rang. Amy waited, holding her quotations and her tea.

  ‘Hel o?’ Chrissie said and then, with a smile of sudden relief, ‘Mr Leverton. Mark. How—’

  She paused, and then she turned her back on Amy as if the cal was private, and walked slowly down the kitchen, away from her.

  Amy watched. Mr Leverton only ever meant bad news, surprises of an unexpected and upsetting kind. Why was Chrissie’s voice so warm, speaking to him, her body language so weirdly relieved, holding the phone as if it was a lifeline?

  ‘Oh,’ Chrissie said, her voice startled, but not displeased. ‘Oh. Wel , it’s real y kind—’

  She stopped. Then, with her free hand, she untied the tapes of the plastic apron and pul ed it off over her head.

  ‘Of course I wil . Yes, I’l talk to them. I’l think—’

  She dropped the apron over the nearest chair back.

  ‘I don’t want,’ she said, ‘you to think I’m ungrateful. I’m not. I’m real y grateful. It’s very kind—’

  She stopped again and pul ed the band off her hair and shook it free.

  ‘Thank you,’ Chrissie said. ‘Thank you very much. Yes, I’l think about it. I’l get back to you. Thank you.’

  She took the phone away from her ear and stood there, her back to Amy, staring down the kitchen.

  Amy took a hot swal ow of tea, and coughed.

  ‘ What?’ Amy said.

 
Robbie had built Tamsin a clothes cupboard precisely to her specifications. It fil ed in the space between the chimney breast (defunct) in his bedroom and the outside wal of the building, and it was fitted with sliding shelves, hanging rails and ingenious shoe trees which occupied the floor space like a row of regimented lol ipops. Robbie, who preferred dark colours and matt surfaces, would have liked to paint it in a colour that blended with the brown-leather headboard of which he was so proud, but Tamsin wanted something more feminine, just as she wanted new fabrics which would ameliorate, rather than accentuate, the brown-leather headboard. The new clothes cupboard had, accordingly, been painted a pale peppermint green, and the door handles were smal glass globes patterned with raised green spots. On the bed, spread out, was a set of new curtains in white, with a delicate floral design in pink and cream with green leaves.

  Tamsin said she was thril ed with the cupboard. She was standing in front of it, a hand holding either open door, admiring the automatic light, the pristine interior, the long mirror Robbie had fixed inside the right-hand door. He waited for a moment, watching her reaction, al owing himself to revel in having both satisfied himself and her, and then he moved behind her, put his arms around her waist, and tucked his chin into the angle of her neck.

  ‘No excuses now,’ Robbie said.

  Tamsin stiffened, very slightly. She had been planning, in a sudden, abstract kind of way, where she might put her handbags.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got your cupboard,’ Robbie said. ‘You can move your stuff in. No reason not to.’

  Tamsin put one hand up against his face, and then took it away again.

  ‘I love my cupboard.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s a real Sex and the City closet.’

  ‘Good.’

  Tamsin put her hands on Robbie’s linked arms and freed herself.

  ‘I am going to—’

  Robbie caught her arm.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon.’

  Robbie let go of her, and sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Tam, you’ve said that for months. Months. Now your house is on the market, you’ve got your cupboard, you’re redesigning my life. What are you waiting for?’

  Tamsin turned round. She looked out of the window, and then back at Robbie. She said, ‘Mum’s been offered a job.’

  ‘Great!’

  Tamsin began to pul her hair tighter into its ponytail.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What don’t you know?’

  ‘It’s not a very good job—’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a receptionist.’

  Robbie waited a moment. He tried not to be distracted by the implications of having her standing there, in his bedroom, in front of the cupboard he had designed and made for her.

  He said, ‘But you’re a receptionist.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tamsin said.

  ‘But—’

  ‘What would Dad think?’ Tamsin said. ‘What would Dad think to have Mum working for less than she’s worth, as a receptionist?’

  Robbie thought. His memory of Richie was of a genial, hospitable man who lived for his girls and his particular kind of music. His mother had been a fan of Richie Rossiter, and that had meant he was pretty daunted when he first went round to meet him. But in the flesh, Richie wasn’t daunting. Richie was easy, unaffected and friendly. He was, if Robbie had to admit it, one of the least snobbish people Robbie had ever met, and a great deal less snobbish than his own parents, who stil took an embarrassing pride in the fact that he went to work in a suit.

  ‘It’s a chain-store suit,’ he’d say to his mother. ‘It’s not exactly Savile Row.’

  ‘I think,’ he said now to Tamsin, ‘that he wouldn’t give a toss.’

  Tamsin folded her arms. Then she unfolded them and smoothed down her immaculate cotton sweater.

  ‘What?’ Robbie said.

  Tamsin shook her head mutely.

  ‘It may not be worth much,’ Robbie said, ‘but with you here, and Dil y working, it’s better money than nothing. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tamsin said.

  ‘Don’t you want her to work?’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Tamsin?’

  ‘What—’

  ‘Don’t you want her to do what you do?’

  ‘It upsets things,’ Tamsin said. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

  Robbie reached out and took her nearest hand. He adopted the tone his father used when his mother was being unreasonable, an affectionate but slightly teasing tone.

  ‘Hey, Tam, you’re the practical one, you’re the one trying to move things on—’

  She didn’t look at him.

  ‘Only in the right way.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Something managerial. Like she’s always had. I mean, this isn’t exactly aspirational, is it? She says it’s al she can get right now, and any job is to be welcomed at the moment, but I think she should go on looking. I mean, is she taking this just because Mr Leverton’s been kind to her?’

  Robbie stood up. He took her other hand as wel .

  ‘What do your sisters think?’

  Tamsin gave a little snort.

  ‘What suits them, of course.’

  Robbie waited a moment, then he dropped Tamsin’s hands and put his arms around her once more. He rested his cheek against the side of her head, and his gaze on the peppermint-green cupboard, mental y fil ing it with Tamsin’s clothes.

  ‘Why don’t you,’ he said softly, ‘just let them get on with it then, and come and live with me?’

  Nobody had asked her about her exam. Nobody in the family spoke Spanish, she knew that, nobody in the family probably knew or cared who Lorca was, or Galdós, or Alas. When she had come back from school, in that wired, exhausted, strung-up and wrung-out state that three hours’

  relentless concentrating and striving causes, there’d been no one at home because Tamsin had gone straight to Robbie’s from work, and Chrissie and Dil y weren’t back from looking at this flat.

  Nobody, either, had asked Amy if she wanted to look at the flat. She didn’t, much – it was a necessary evil, she supposed, but one that could be postponed – but she would have liked to have been invited, she would have liked Chrissie to have said, ‘Oh, we can easily put off going until you have finished the exams and can come with us.’ But she hadn’t. Instead, she had asked Dil y when her next free afternoon from col ege was, and had made an appointment to view accordingly, and Amy had thought, in a far-off but significant part of her mind, that a three o’clock appointment would mean that they intended to be back before she was, so that there’d be a welcome, and a commiseration or a congratulation, depending on how the exam had gone.

  But there was no one. The house was empty and silent. There were no messages on the answering machine, and no contacts on Facebook that merited any attention at al . As she was ravenously hungry, Amy made too many pieces of toast, and ate them too fast, and drank an outdated bottle of 7 Up, which Chrissie said had to be consumed before she bought one other drop of any liquid but milk, and then she felt terrible and slightly sick, and dizzy with the extremes of the day, and lay across the kitchen table in a sprawl, her face against the fruit bowl.

  Nobody seemed in the least surprised to find her like that when they final y came in. Chrissie and Dil y were peculiarly elated by the flat – Dil y had loved it, had seen possibilities of living in a different way entirely – and had breezed past Amy, chattering – ‘Oh poor babe, was it grim, never mind, only one more to go!’ – and Tamsin had come in later, looking elaborately preoccupied, and had indicated to Amy that she was extremely fortunate only to be faced by something as transitory and trivial as public examinations.

  There was nothing for it, Amy decided, but her bedroom. Her flute case lay on her bed, where she had left it, but there was no urge in her to open it. There was no urge, either, to look at her laptop, or her Duffy poster, or the phot
ograph of her father as a baby. There was no urge, oddly enough, to cry.

  Amy bent and lifted her flute case to the floor. Then she lay down on her bed, and kicked her feet out until her shoes fel off on to the carpet. She stared upwards at the sloping ceiling, and instructed herself not to think about her mother, her sisters or her father.

  ‘The future,’ she said aloud. She raised her arms and twisted her fingers together. ‘Think about the future.’ She stopped, and held her breath for a moment.

  ‘Newcastle,’ Amy said quietly to her bedroom. ‘Newcastle!’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Scott was on the platform almost thirty minutes before Amy’s train was due in. He had decided that he would make no move to kiss her on greeting, unless she instigated it, but al the same he had shaved, and brushed his teeth scrupulously, and buffed up the bathroom with the towel he had used after showering, and general y reassured himself that there was nothing about the flat or his person that could in any way disconcert her.

  At the station, he bought himself a newspaper and a bottle of water, both being entirely neutral things to occupy and accessorize himself with, and then he paced up and down the length of the platform until the London train came in suddenly, taking him by surprise, and he had to run down the length of the train to get to the standard-class section before Amy got out and had even a second to feel bewildered.

  At first, he couldn’t see her. There was the usual mil ing mass of people and bags and buggies and children, and in it no sign of Amy, and he was beginning to panic instead of searching, to ask himself what on earth he would do if she had funked it at the last minute, had got to the station and felt a wave of instinctive loyalty to and anxiety about her mother, and had simply turned and bolted back down the underground, when he saw her, standing quite stil and looking about her in a way that made him ashamed he had doubted her.

  She was tal er than he’d remembered. She was wearing jeans and a hooded top over a T-shirt and her hair, which he’d last seen down her back, was twisted up behind her head with a cotton scarf. She had a rucksack hanging off one shoulder, and she was holding a pair of sunglasses, the earpiece of one side in her mouth, and she was standing close to the train, close to the door she’d just come out of, and was surveying the curve of the platform from side to side, looking for him, but not with any anxiety. And when she saw him, she took the sunglasses out of her mouth, and waved them, and smiled, and Scott felt an abrupt rush of pleasure and relief and shyness that almost stopped him in his tracks.