The Other Family

had to be sought and acted upon before Dil y could, real y, either accept or decline the job offer.

But Chrissie wasn’t alone. Chrissie and Tamsin were in the sitting room and Tamsin had evidently been crying. She was sniffing stil , crouched in an armchair clutching a bal ed-up tissue. Chrissie was on the sofa, sitting rather upright, and not, to Dil y’s anxious eye, looking especial y sympathetic.

Dil y dropped her bag in the doorway.

‘What’s going on?’

Chrissie said to Tamsin, ‘Do you want to tel her, or shal I?’

Tamsin said unsteadily, teasing out shreds of her tissue bal , ‘It’s Robbie.’

Dil y came hurriedly round the sofa and sat down next to Chrissie. She said in a horrified voice, ‘He hasn’t dumped you?’

Tamsin shook her head.

‘Wel then—’

‘But he might!’ Tamsin said in a wail.

‘What d’you mean?’

Tamsin began to cry again.

‘He told Tamsin,’ Chrissie said, ‘that he was tired of waiting for her to move in with him, and that he could only suppose that her reluctance meant she didn’t real y want to, so he’s told her to go away and decide, and tel him final y in the morning.’

‘Wel ,’ Dil y said, abruptly conscious of her own currently single state, ‘that’s easy, isn’t it?’

‘No!’ Tamsin shouted.

Dil y glanced quickly at her mother.

‘I thought,’ Dil y said to Tamsin, ‘that you wanted to move in with Robbie?’

Tamsin howled, ‘I can’t, I can’t, can I?’

‘Why not?’ Dil y said.

‘Because of Mum,’ Tamsin wailed, ‘because of Mum and this flat and Amy – and Dad dying. And everything. I can’t.’

Dil y swal owed.

‘There’s stil me—’

‘You haven’t got a job—’

‘I might have!’

‘Oh God,’ Tamsin said, ‘ might this, might that. Why don’t you ever do something?’

‘Why don’t you?’ Dil y said crossly. ‘Why don’t you move in with Robbie?’

‘Exactly,’ Chrissie said.

They both turned to look at her. She had spread her hands out in her lap, and she was looking down at them.

‘I wasn’t sure,’ Chrissie said, ‘when or how I was going to say this to you. I certainly didn’t plan on saying it today, but here you both are, and now seems as good a time as any.’

She paused. Tamsin sat up a little straighter, and lifted her arms, in a characteristical y settling gesture, to pul her ponytail tighter through its black velvet band.

‘I think the house is sold,’ Chrissie said, ‘and I think I’m going to take the flat. And I’ve definitely accepted the job, for a trial period of three months, even though I don’t think of it as that, I think of it as something I’l do as wel as I can until I can do something better. I get the feeling Leverton’s understand that.’

The girls waited, watching her. She went on surveying her hands.

‘I haven’t thought what I’m going to say for very long,’ Chrissie said, ‘but the reason I’m talking to you is that, having had the thought, or, to be honest, having had it suggested to me, it strikes me as the right thing to do. The right way forward.’

She stopped and looked up. Tamsin and Dil y were sitting bolt upright, knees together, waiting.

‘What?’ Tamsin said.

‘There’l always be a home for you with me,’ Chrissie said, ‘always. And there’s one for Amy now, of course, if she wants it, which she doesn’t seem to. But it’s there for her, a bedroom, even if she isn’t in it. But – it’s different for you two, isn’t it? And it’s different for me now too, different in a way I never imagined, never pictured, and I can see that none of us are going to move forwards, move on from Dad dying, from life with Dad, if we just go on living round – round this kind of hol ow centre, if you see what I mean, living al clinging together because that’s al we know, even if it isn’t doing any of us any good.’

She paused. Dil y looked anxiously at Tamsin.

‘So?’ Tamsin said.

‘I think,’ Chrissie said careful y to Tamsin, ‘that you should go and live with Robbie. I think you should make Robbie your priority as you once appeared to want to because if you make me your priority you’l get stuck and then we won’t like each other at al . Wil we? And Dil y. I think you should take any job