Joanna Trollope - The Other Family

‘You can’t be her knight in shining armour,’ Miriam said. ‘And you mustn’t patronize her. You’l just have to wait.’ She’d turned her wedding ring round on her finger. ‘Maybe one good thing to come out of al this is my not taking you so much for granted.’

In a roundabout way, it was his father who moved things forward. Apart from Andrew Carnegie’s dictum, the other saying dear to his father’s heart was ‘Fortune favours the prepared mind.’ Francis prided himself on having a mind open to al and any opportunity, and never to have missed a chance of being the son his father would have been proud of, the son who had been instrumental in taking the firm from its solid but smal beginnings to its present size. He also never missed a chance of impressing on Mark the need to have an alert mind, a mind primed and open, and because, just now, Mark’s mind was frequently preoccupied with Chrissie’s situation, and the numbers of modern women who must find themselves in a similar difficulty, it seemed quite easy to come, suddenly, to an idea for a solution, while exchanging his customary few words with the receptionist on his way into work.

‘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.