She said, ‘Doesn’t matter—’
‘It does matter,’ Chrissie said. ‘What do you mean, that hearing what’s in the wil is grotesque?’
‘Wel ,’ Amy said, shuffling, ‘sort of wrong, then.’
‘
‘Yes,’ Amy said, ‘because it isn’t just us. Is it?’
Chrissie put her head in her hands.
‘What isn’t just us?’
‘Wel ,’ Amy said, ‘this wil . It’s for us. It’s what Dad wanted for us. But – wel , he had a whole sort of life before us and what – what about them?’
Tamsin threw her head back and stared at the ceiling.
‘I do not believe this.’
‘Amy,’ Chrissie said, ‘are you saying that – that the – people in Newcastle should be included too?’
Amy nodded.
‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘Maybe not included but kind of, wel , kind of remembered?’ There was a short pause, then Amy said firmly, ‘Anyway, she doesn’t live in Newcastle, she lives in Tynemouth.’
‘Amy,’ Chrissie said again. She looked directly at her. ‘Amy.
It doesn’t matter where she lives, what matters is that she’s out of the picture. Al that was sorted long ago. A house, a sum of money, everything.
It was a clean break, no coming back for more, no questioning of decisions made. It was conclusively agreed and it was absolutely fair. Do you hear me? Absolutely fair.’
Amy pul ed out a long strand of hair and examined the ends.
‘OK.’
‘Do you understand me?’
‘Yup.’
‘And believe me?’
‘Yup,’ Amy said.
‘Good.’
Chrissie got up briskly and crossed the kitchen to assemble the components for making coffee. With her back to her daughters, she said,
‘However, Amy, I’m not sure I want you to come now. You may say you believe me, but what you said just now, the implied accusation in what you said just now, has made me feel that I’d rather you didn’t come with me to see Mr Leverton. You may al be thinking how much you’ve suffered in the last couple of weeks, but perhaps it wouldn’t do you any harm to think about me, not just what I’ve been through, but what I’ve got to go through in the future, without Dad.’ Her voice shook. She stopped, and spooned coffee, slightly unsteadily, into the cafetiere. ‘If you can’t support me wholeheartedly,’ Chrissie said, ‘I’d real y rather go on my own.’
There was silence. It was broken after a few seconds by Dil y dropping her phone. Tamsin bent to pick it up, and tossed it at her sister.
She said to Chrissie’s back, ‘I’d like to come with you, Mum, please.’
Chrissie turned round. Dil y was looking at her phone and Amy was staring out of the window.
‘Thank you, Tamsin,’ Chrissie said with dignity. ‘Thank you. Then it wil just be you and me.’
Mark Leverton had arranged his office so that, when occasion demanded, he could sit beside his desk, rather than behind it, in order not to create too formal a distance between himself and those he was talking to. He seated Chrissie and Tamsin in padded upright chairs with wooden arms –
upholstered easy chairs did not seem suitable for discussion about, or after, death – put the papers on one side of his desk, and then positioned himself on a chair next to them. He usual y worked in his shirt sleeves, but he had put his jacket back on for the meeting, shooting his cuffs just enough to show off the silver Tiffany cufflinks that his wife had given him for their seventh wedding anniversary.
‘Just to remind you,’ she’d said, ‘that an itch is not on your agenda.’
Chrissie hardly took him in, except to notice that he was neat and dark and vaguely familiar, and was wearing a wedding ring. She too was wearing a wedding ring, but with an unwelcome self-consciousness, which she was sure never needed to cross Mr Leverton’s mind. There was nothing il egal in sitting in his office being cal ed Mrs Rossiter and wearing a wedding ring, because she and Richie had agreed, and signed, everything together, and she wasn’t doing anything furtive, or anything that Richie had not been party to; or anything that deprived someone of something they ought to have had, had she not been there. But sitting in that office, apparently composed and confident, in her wel -cut trouser suit, with her wel -cut hair tied back, and her expensive bag on the floor beside her wel -shod feet, she felt, to her surprise and dismay, knocked almost sideways by an unexpected spurt of pure fury at Richie, for refusing to marry her and thus landing her in a situation where the unlovely choice was between pretence and potential humiliation.
Mark Leverton smiled at Tamsin. She was very pretty, with her mother’s features and a smooth curtain of brown hair held off her face with a tortoiseshel clip. He smiled at her, not so much because she was young and pretty but more because she looked so much less tense than her mother and not as if she’d rather be anywhere else in the world than sitting in his office.
‘I am so sorry,’ Mark said. ‘So very sorry, about Mr Rossiter.’
His uncles, he knew, in the same situation, were stil apt to say, ‘May I offer my sincere condolences on your
