The Other Family

Dil y knelt down beside the tray.

‘I didn’t bring any plates. I don’t real y want to go back down. And I forgot knives and stuff.’

Amy knelt too.

‘Doesn’t matter. What does Craig say?’

Dil y looked obstinate.

‘Dil ,’ Amy said, ‘please. What does Craig say?’

‘That when people do your head in, mostly you can’t do anything about it except put yourself out of their reach.’

Amy took a slice of bread out of the packet.

‘What if you live in the same house as them?’

‘He does,’ Dil y said. ‘He lives with his mum’s boyfriend. He can’t stand him. That’s why he’s out al the time.’

Amy sighed. She tore a strip off the bread slice and dipped it into a pot of salsa.

‘It isn’t that I can’t stand Mum. It’s that I can’t get her to see that not everyone thinks like her.’

Dil y picked up a banana, and put it down again.

‘I suppose no one else is in her position. I mean, I suppose she’s responsible for us now. I can’t wait for this course to be over so I can get a job.’

Amy said, with her mouth ful , ‘You are so lucky.’

‘I’m scared,’ Dil y said. She put a grape in her mouth. ‘I want it to happen, but I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t know how you do it, jobs and flats and things.’

‘Won’t Craig help?’

There was a short pause and then Dil y said, ‘No.’

‘Dil —’

‘I’m trying,’ Dil y said, ‘not to need him. Not to – lean on him.’

‘Dil , has he—’

‘No,’ Dil y said, ‘he’s stil my boyfriend. But I know him better than I did. You can’t make people what they aren’t.’

‘Oh God,’ Amy said. She put her bread down and reached to take Dil y’s arm. ‘Are you OK?’

‘No,’ Dil y said, ‘not about anything. But at least I’m not pretending.’ She looked at Amy. ‘I want Dad back.’

‘Don’t—’

‘He’d know what to do.’

‘No,’ Amy said quietly, ‘he wouldn’t.’ She removed her arm and picked up her bread. ‘He’d know how to cheer us up, but he wouldn’t know what to do. He relied on Mum for that, and now she doesn’t know what to do. At least you know what you’re going to do, even if it scares you.’

‘Yes,’ Dil y said. She picked up the banana again and a slice of bread and climbed off the floor and onto Amy’s bed. She settled herself against the pil ows. Amy watched while she careful y peeled the banana and rol ed the slice of bread round it.

‘Banana sandwich,’ Dil y said.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Amy said.

Dil y took a bite.

‘About what? ’

‘I’m not doing these frigging exams.’

‘Amy! ’

‘I’m not. It’s pointless. Music and Spanish and English lit. What’s the use of any of it? It’s just playing. I can’t bear to be playing. I’m going to leave school and get a job and stop feeling so helpless.’

Dil y put her banana rol down.

‘Amy, you can’t. Mum’l flip.’

‘She’s flipped already.’

‘No, I mean, seriously flip. It’l finish her. You’re the cleverest. Dad always said so. Anyway, what about uni? You’ve always wanted to go to uni.

Dad was thril ed you wanted to, he was real y chuffed, wasn’t he? He kept saying, over and over, that at least one of us took after Mum in the brains department.’

‘Wel ,’ Amy said, ‘I’l use my brain differently. I’l get a job where they’l train me. I’l work for Marks & Spencer.’

‘You are eighteen years old.’

‘Loads of people leave school at sixteen. I don’t want to go to uni.’