Joanna Trollope - The Other Family

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.