Joanna Trollope: The Other Family

Chrissie said, ‘Is that tea?’

‘I’l make another one—’

Chrissie moved towards the table, stil holding her daughters. They felt to her, at that moment, like her only support and sympathy yet at the same time like a burden of redoubled emotional intensity that she knew neither how to manage nor to put down. She subsided into a chair, and Tamsin put a mug of tea in front of her. She glanced up.

‘Thank you. Toast?’

‘Couldn’t,’ Dil y said.

‘Could you try? Just a slice? It would help, it real y would.’

Dil y shook her head. Amy opened the larder cupboard and rummaged about in it for a while. Then she took out a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits and put them on the table.

‘I’m trying,’ Dil y said tensely, ‘not to eat chocolate.’

‘You’re a pain—’

‘Shh,’ Chrissie said. She took Dil y’s nearest wrist. ‘Shh. Shh.’

Dil y took her hand away and held it over her eyes.

‘Dad ate those—’

‘No, he didn’t,’ Amy said. ‘No, he didn’t. He ate those putrid ones with chocolate-cream stuff in, he—’

‘Please,’ Chrissie said. She picked up her mug. ‘What were you saying when I came in?’

Tamsin put the remaining mugs on the table. She looked at her sisters. They were looking at the table.

She said, ‘We were talking about you.’

Chrissie raised her head. ‘And?’ she said.

Tamsin sat down, pul ing her kimono round her as if in the teeth of a gale.

Dil y took her hand away from her face. She said, ‘It’s just, wel , wil you – wil we – be OK, wil we manage, wil we—’

There was a pause.

‘I don’t think,’ Chrissie said, ‘that we’l be OK for quite a long time. Do you? I don’t think we can expect to be. There’s so much to get used to that we don’t real y want – to get used to. Isn’t there?’ She stopped. She looked round the table. Amy had broken a biscuit into several pieces and was jigsawing them back together again. Chrissie said, ‘But you know al that, don’t you? You know al that as wel as I do. You didn’t mean that, did you, you didn’t mean how are we going to manage emotional y, did you?’

‘It seems,’ Tamsin said, ‘so rubbish to even think of anything else—’

‘No,’ Chrissie said, ‘it’s practical. We have to be practical. We have to live. We have to go on living. That’s what Dad wanted. That’s what Dad worked for.’

Amy began to cry quietly onto her broken biscuit.

Chrissie retrieved Dil y’s hand and took Amy’s nearest one. She said, looking at Tamsin, gripping the others, ‘We’l be fine. Don’t worry. We have the house. And there’s more. And I’l go on working. You aren’t to worry. Anyway, it isn’t today’s problem. Today just has to be got through, however we can manage it.’

Tamsin was moving her tea mug round in little circles with her right hand and pressing her left into her stomach. She said, ‘We ought to tel people.’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘we should. We must make a list.’

Tamsin looked up.

‘I might be moving in with Robbie.’

Dil y gave a smal scream.

‘Not now, darling,’ Chrissie said tiredly.

‘But I—’

‘Shut it!’ Amy said suddenly.

Tamsin shrugged.

‘I just thought if we were making plans, making lists—’

Amy leaned across the table. She hissed, ‘We were going to make a list of who to tel that Dad died last night. Not lists of who we were planning to shack up with.’

Chrissie got up from the table.

‘And the registrar,’ she said. She began to shuffle through the pile of papers by the telephone. ‘And the undertaker. And I suppose the newspapers. Always better to tel them than have them guess.’

Tamsin sat up straighter. She said, ‘What about Margaret?’

Chrissie stopped shuffling.

‘Who?’

‘Margaret,’ Tamsin said.

Amy and Dil y looked at her.

‘Tam—’

‘Wel ,’ Tamsin said, ‘she ought to be told. She’s got a right to know.’

Amy turned to look across the kitchen at Chrissie. Chrissie was holding a notebook and an absurd pen with a plume of shocking-pink marabou frothing out of the top.

‘Mum?’

Chrissie nodded slowly.

‘I know—’

‘But Dad wouldn’t want that!’ Dil y said. ‘Dad never spoke to her, right? She wasn’t part of his life, was she, he wouldn’t have wanted her to be part of – of—’ She stopped. Then she said angrily, ‘It’s nothing to do with her.’

Amy stood up and drifted down the kitchen again. Chrissie watched her, dark hair down her back, Richie’s dark hair, Richie’s dark Northern hair, only girl-version.

‘Amy? ’

Amy didn’t turn.

‘I shouldn’t have mentioned her,’ Tamsin said, ‘I shouldn’t. She’s no part of this.’

‘I hate her,’ Dil y said.

Chrissie said, making an effort, ‘You shouldn’t. She couldn’t help being part of his life before and she’s never made any claim, any trouble.’

‘But she’s there ,’ Dil y said.

‘And,’ Amy said from the other end of the kitchen, ‘she was his wife.’

‘Was,’ Tamsin said.

Chrissie held the notebook and the feathered pen hard against her. She said, ‘I’m not sure I can quite ring her—’

‘Nor me,’ Dil y said.

Tamsin took a tiny mobile phone out of her kimono pocket and put it on the table.

‘You can’t real y just text her—’

Chrissie made a sudden little fluttering gesture with the hand not holding the notebook. She said, ‘I don’t think I can quite do this, I can’t manage

—’ She stopped, and put her hand over her mouth.

Tamsin jumped up.

‘Mum—’

‘I’m OK,’ Chrissie said. ‘Real y I am. I’m fine. But I know you’re right. I know we should tel Margaret—’

‘And Scott,’ Amy said.

Chrissie glanced at her.

‘Of course. Scott. I forgot him, I forgot—’

Tamsin moved to put her arms round her mother.

‘Damn,’ Chrissie whispered against Tamsin. ‘Damn. I don’t—’

‘You don’t have to,’ Tamsin said.

‘I do. I do. I do have to tel Margaret and Scott that Dad has died.’

Nobody said anything. Dil y got up and col ected the mugs on the table and put them in the dishwasher. Then she swept the biscuit crumbs and bits into her hand and put them in the bin, and the remaining packet in the cupboard. They watched her, al of them. They were used to watching Dil y, so orderly in her person and her habits, so chaotic in her reactions and responses. They waited while she found a cloth, wiped the table with it, rinsed it and hung it, neatly folded, over the mixer tap on the sink.

Chrissie said absently, approvingly, ‘Thank you, darling.’

Dil y said furiously, ‘It doesn’t matter if bloody Margaret knows!’

Chrissie sighed. She withdrew a little from Tamsin.

‘It does matter.’

‘Dad wouldn’t want it!’

‘He would.’

‘Wel , do it then!’ Dil y shouted.

Chrissie gave a little shiver.

‘I’d give anything—’

‘I’l stand beside you,’ Tamsin said, ‘while you ring.’

Chrissie gave her a smal smile.

‘Thank you—’

‘Mum?’

Chrissie turned. Amy was leaning against the cupboard where the biscuits lived. She had her arms folded.

‘Yes, darling.’

‘I’l do it.’

‘What—’

‘I’l ring her,’ Amy said. ‘I’l ring Margaret.’

Chrissie put her arms out.

‘You’re lovely. You’re a dol . But you don’t have to, you don’t know her—’

Amy shifted slightly.

‘Makes it easier then, doesn’t it?’

‘But—’

‘Look,’ Amy said, ‘I don’t mind phones. I’m not scared of phones, me. I’l just dial her number and tel her who I am and what’s happened and then I’l say goodbye.’