The Other Family

original makeover mess-up.’

‘He liked clothes,’ Chrissie said. ‘But he liked me to buy them.’

‘Liked, or let you?’

Chrissie took a tiny sip of her wine.

‘Liked. He’d never shop on his own. He said he didn’t trust his taste. We had a nickname for it, NC for Northern Circuit. He’d pick something up and hold it out to me and say, “Too NC?” Satin lapels and pointed shoes. That kind of thing.’

Sue said, ‘There’s never been anything smarter than a T-shirt in my house—’

Chrissie said abruptly, desperately, ‘I can’t touch these.’

Sue slid off the bed. She went over to Chrissie and put an arm round her.

‘It’s OK, Chris—’

‘If I touch them,’ Chrissie said, ‘I’l smel his smel . Touching them wil sort of release that. I can’t—’

‘You don’t have to,’ Sue said.

‘But I’ve got to—’

‘No,’ Sue said, ‘you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.’

‘Damn,’ Chrissie said, looking at the white carpet. ‘Look. I’ve spil ed it—’

‘White wine,’ Sue said. ‘Won’t show. Go and sit on the bed.’

‘But—’

‘Go and sit on the bed.’

Chrissie was shaking.

‘You came here to help me sort his clothes—’

‘It doesn’t matter. I came here as your mate, not as a second-hand clothes dealer. Go and sit on that bed before I push you there.’

She took her arm away from Chrissie’s shoulders.

‘I thought I could do it—’

‘Look,’ Sue said, ‘it doesn’t matter. This is a rite of passage. There’s no dress rehearsal for rites of passage, you can’t practise for widowhood.

I’m going to shut these doors.’

Chrissie crept away from the cupboards and sat on her own side of the bed, facing away from the cupboards. Sue shut the doors decisively, and then she came to sit down next to Chrissie.

‘Drink.’

‘I—’

‘Drink. Big swal ow.’

Chrissie took an obedient gulp. She said, ‘I’m in such a mess.’

‘I don’t wonder.’

‘I don’t know what to think, now. I don’t know what he real y felt, any more. I don’t know what we’re going to do.’

Sue put a hand on Chrissie’s, urging her glass towards her mouth.

Chrissie said, ‘He had bookings up to May next year. I’ve had to cancel them. They would have brought in almost forty thousand. There’s fan mail like you can’t believe. I should think every middle-aged woman in the North of England has written to say they can’t believe he’s dead. I’m left with a house and not enough savings and three daughters and an inheritance tax bil and the realization that he’s left his piano and a good part of his creative output to the life he had before he even met me. And I can’t even ask him what the hel he thought he was playing at, I can’t ask him if he meant what he used to say to me, what he used to say to the girls, I can’t even ask him, Sue, if he actual y real y loved me.’

Sue picked up the Prosecco bottle and refil ed Chrissie’s glass.

‘Course he loved you.’

‘But not enough to marry me.’

‘Love,’ Sue said firmly, ‘is not necessarily about marriage.’

Chrissie took another gulp.

‘Where Richie came from, it is. Where Richie came from, you had to make love respectable. He was always tel ing me that. Why didn’t he get a divorce? Because where he came from, the way he was brought up, divorce was very difficult, divorce was frowned on, his fans would not have liked it if he had been divorced.’

Sue waited a moment, and then she said, ‘None of that antediluvian claptrap means he didn’t love you.’

Chrissie was staring straight ahead.

‘But not enough to leave me his piano. His piano and a tea caddy were about the only things he brought with him when he came south. He bought that piano when he was thirty-five, with the royalties from “Moonlight and