‘Two things.’ He grinned again. ‘And I won’t charge you for either.’
Chrissie tried a smile.
‘First,’ he said, ‘sel your house. Real y sel it. Don’t just play with the idea. Put it on the market and take whatever you can for it.’
She quivered very slightly.
‘Second,’ he said, ‘change your thinking. Put agenting, managing, whatever, behind you.’
‘But I—’
‘My father says,’ Mark said, reaching for his raincoat, ‘that there’s always work for those prepared to do it.’ He winked at her. ‘I mean, d’you think I’d
‘If you tel your mother,’ Sue said to the assembled Rossiter girls, ‘you are al three going to wish you had never been born.’
Tamsin was standing. She had been standing throughout this conversation in order to assert herself and to make it very plain to Sue that her interference – even if it was for everyone’s good, especial y Chrissie’s – was completely out of order, on principle. Dil y, looking mulish, was sitting by the kitchen table and Amy was staring out of the window at the slab of darkening sky between their house and the next one with an expression that indicated to Sue that her mind was absolutely somewhere else.
‘Did you hear me?’
Tamsin said nothing, elaborately.
Amy turned her head. She said, ‘Why would we?’
‘Because,’ Sue said mercilessly, ‘you’re al in the habit of running to Mummy about everything.’
‘No,’ Amy said, ‘we ran to Dad.’
Dil y put her hand over her eyes.
Tamsin said grandly, ‘I have no objection to being spared the sight of the piano al the time—’
‘Oh,
‘But I real y, real y object to its going to those people in Newcastle. I hate that.’
‘Me too,’ Dil y said.
Amy opened her mouth.
‘Shush,’ Sue said to her loudly. She folded her arms. ‘You have no choice. You know that.’
Dil y said, ‘Twenty-two thousand—’
‘Shut it, Dil . Never mind al those royalties on the music—’
‘The good news is,’ Sue said loudly, ‘that once the piano is gone you need have no further dealings with Newcastle ever again. You can put al that behind you. You need have no further contact. You can forget they even exist.’
‘Thank goodness—’
‘They’ve poisoned us,’ Dil y said.
There was a short, angry silence and then Amy said, ‘No, they haven’t.’
Tamsin glared at her.
‘You wouldn’t know loyalty if it bit you on the nose—’
‘And you—’ Amy began. There was the sound of a key in the lock of the front door, and then it opened, paused, and slammed shut.
They froze. Chrissie’s heels came down the hal and she opened the kitchen door. She looked terrible, weary and washed out. She blinked at the four of them.
‘What’s going on? What are you doing?’
Sue made an odd little gesture.
‘Plotting, babe.’
‘Plotting?’ Chrissie went over to the table and put her bag down. ‘What are you plotting?’
‘Wel ,’ Sue said slowly, fixing each girl’s gaze in turn, ‘we were plotting what to do about al those clothes upstairs. How to help you. How to find a suitable home for a cupboardful of terrible tuxedos.’ She paused. Then she said, ‘Weren’t we, girls?’
Amy lay on her bed, her phone with the dolphin tag in her hand. Nobody had rung her al evening. Nobody had rung her yesterday either. Her friends weren’t ringing because she, Amy, couldn’t join in the required hysteria about the imminent exams. She’d wanted to, she’d tried to, goodness knows she was nervous enough about them, but somehow they couldn’t get to her the way the other stuff did, they couldn’t seem, as they plainly seemed to al her friends as wel as to a lot of the staff at school, like the only thing in the world that mattered, or would ever matter. They loomed ahead of her in a menacing and unavoidable way that she real y hated, but they stil couldn’t compare with everything else, not least because, if she made her mind stop jumping about and settle down, she could tel herself that the exams would be over in four weeks and Richie’s death wouldn’t.
Ever.
Amy had tried explaining this to friends at school and they had nodded and been sweet and hugged her, but you could see that, in their heart of hearts, in their secret deep selves, they couldn’t imagine what it was like to
