The Other Family

restructuring within the company, but that for the sake of al those concerned the partners requested that al members of staff should behave with as much discretion as possible. Which meant, Tamsin knew, that none of them were supposed to gossip when people were got rid of.

And people were being. People were going out of the building by the back door, carrying boxes and bin bags, with the contents of their desks in them, and a lot of company cars were beginning to sit idle, day after day, in the company car park.

Tamsin had said to Robbie that the fact that she wasn’t paid much more than the minimum wage might work either way. The partners might think she was extremely expendable, or they might think that she was very good value. Robbie said he thought the latter would be the case and that she should work on that assumption anyway, so Tamsin was going into work having made an extra effort with her appearance every day, and was conducting herself with increased alertness and alacrity as wel as a wide and confident smile every time she encountered a partner. If she was made redundant, she reckoned, she’d make sure she left with a glowing recommendation.

The reception desk, Tamsin decided, was where she was going to make her mark. It didn’t take much to realize that the first face of a business that a customer saw was also the one that made the significant first impression. So Tamsin was making an extra effort to greet everyone, including the least prepossessing of the courier delivery boys, with a wide smile and an air of being completely impervious to any possibility of suffering in the current crisis. It was annoying, therefore, to turn from a switchboard complication to greet a new arrival and find that she was wasting warmth and charm on her sister Amy.

‘What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in school?’

‘Revision period,’ Amy said. She was wearing jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt and chequerboard sneakers.

‘I’m working,’ Tamsin said. ‘Can’t you see?’

Amy leaned forward.

‘I’ve got to talk to you—’

‘About what?’

Amy glanced round. The office was open-plan, and several people were plainly not as absorbed by what was on their screens as they were pretending to be.

‘Can’t tel you here.’

‘Amy,’ Tamsin said again, ‘I’m working. You shouldn’t be here.’

‘Ten minutes,’ Amy said. ‘Tel them it’s family stuff. It is family stuff.’

Tamsin hesitated. There was her natural curiosity and, in addition, there was the aggravation of not knowing something that, by rights, she should both have known and have known first.

She said, ‘I’l ask Denise.’

Amy nodded. She watched Tamsin go across to talk to a girl with dark hair in a short glossy bob. The girl was typing. She neither looked up nor stopped typing when Tamsin bent over her, but she nodded, and then she stood up and fol owed Tamsin back to the reception desk.

‘This is my sister Amy,’ Tamsin said.

‘Hi,’ Amy said.

Denise looked at Amy. Then she said to Tamsin, ‘Fifteen minutes, max. I’ve got a client at twelve and he’s my only client al bloody day.’

On the pavement outside, Amy said, ‘Is she always like that?’

‘Everyone’s worried,’ Tamsin said. ‘Everyone’s wondering who’s next.’

‘Are you? ’

‘No,’ Tamsin said.

‘Real y?’

‘I’m cheap,’ Tamsin said, ‘I’m good. It’d be a false economy to lose me. Now, what is al this?’

There was a sharp wind blowing up the hil . Amy pul ed her sleeves down over her knuckles and hunched her shoulders.

‘Can we get a coffee?’

‘No,’ Tamsin said. ‘Tel me whatever it is and go back to school.’

Amy said unhappily, ‘You won’t like this—’

‘What won’t I like?’

‘I thought I wouldn’t tel you. I thought I wouldn’t say. But I think not tel ing you is worse than tel ing you. I don’t know—’

‘What, Amy?’

Amy looked at the pavement.

‘The piano’s going.’

‘It—’

‘Next Thursday. It’s booked.’

‘Does Mum—’