Joanna Trollope - The Other Family

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 tal , bespectacled man with long grey hair, in a black T-shirt, and they had fal en 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 stil waiting for probate. You can’t do anything major til 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 carbohydrate and sugar, that she’d accompany Chrissie to the flat in the spirit of friendship but that she was not, not , going to involve 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’l 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 hel o 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 recal that sensation of doing the right – but stil the sensible – thing.

‘It’s so different,’ Chrissie said.

‘Course it is.’

‘I don’t know about renting—’

Sue leaned against a wal and folded her arms. She said patiently, ‘We discussed that.’

‘I know—’

‘We discussed releasing al 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 sel —’

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 fal ing away so steeply 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, stil 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 level y, ‘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 Dil y 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, real y.’

‘Yeah,’ Sue said. Domestical y considerate men, in her view, lacked sex appeal. She suppressed a smal yawn. ‘Tam’s left before, though.’

‘She came back—’

‘As I recal 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 independence. 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 wal , 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 have al 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. Shal we just start from there?’

Chrissie walked past her and began to climb the stairs to the top floor and the bedrooms.

‘Dil y won’t be with me long, she says—’

Sue sighed. She fol owed Chrissie up the stairs.

‘There’l stil be Amy—’

Chrissie was standing in the doorway of one of the bedrooms.

‘This is pretty smal 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 wal , 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 al his clothes on the landing, she was so sweet. Poor Dil y 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 al the clothes, very calmly, hanger by hanger, and put them back in the cupboards, exactly where they’d been. And she made Dil y 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 al 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.’

‘Wel done Amy,’ Sue said. She looked round the room. ‘She’l probably be the same about this, you know. She’l probably be amazing about this too.’

Chrissie closed her eyes briefly.