stay there and then she picked up al the clothes, very calmly, hanger by hanger, and put them back in the cupboards, exactly where they’d been. And she made Dil y do it too. She sort of talked her through it and I just sat there and watched them until everything was back and the doors were shut. And then she took my hand and led me downstairs and made tea and toast and al the time she was just quietly talking, about nothing very much, as if I was a dog or something that had been frightened. It was amazing.’
‘Wel done Amy,’ Sue said. She looked round the room. ‘She’l probably be the same about this, you know. She’l probably be amazing about this too.’
Chrissie closed her eyes briefly.
‘I just wish I could be too.’
‘Wel ,’ Sue said, ‘you’l have to work at it.’
Chrissie turned to look at her.
‘What’s the
Sue shrugged. The morning had gone on long enough, as had going round in unproductive circles.
‘Shock,’ she said tiredly. ‘Grief. Disappointment. Anger. To name but a few.’
Chrissie came to stand close to her.
‘Sorry.’
‘Please don’t—’
‘I hate not being able to decide, I’m used to being able to decide—’
Sue leaned towards her and gave her cheek a quick kiss.
‘I’m going to leave you to do just that.’
‘Please—’
She made for the door.
‘You’l be better on your own. And I must run.’
Chrissie said nothing. She heard Sue’s booted feet going rapidly and resolutely down the stairs, and then the sound of the flat’s front door opening and shutting decisively. She went slowly over to the window and looked once more at the view. Their house had no view, only the prospect into the street one way and the garden – not of great interest to either her or Richie, ever – the other. She wasn’t used to views. She gazed out at the improbable distances. She wasn’t, she told herself, used to any of this. And that was the problem.
* * *
Amy had put flowers on the kitchen table. They weren’t much, just the ones the guy with a stal by the tube station let her have, as the last, slightly squashed bunches in the bucket, for fifty pence. They were those Peruvian lily things, with spotted throats to their petals, which made them look slightly exotic, and they were a gloomy purplish red and the flower guy said give them some warm water and a bit of sugar, or an aspirin, and they’l perk up. Amy had dissolved a sugar cube in water in the blue jug with cream spots that she knew Chrissie liked, and stuck the lilies in there. They stil looked sad, and sort of gawky, so she took them out again, and chopped off a length of stalk and picked off al the floppy leaves, and put them back again. They looked better, but stil not right. Maybe flower arranging was like hair plaiting, something that some people could make look real y cool without even trying, and other people just couldn’t. Whatever, the table looked better for having flowers on it, and not just papers and jars of peanut butter and the cables for Dil y’s laptop.
When Chrissie came in, she looked at the flowers, and the mugs Amy had put out, and the milk in a jug rather than in its carton and she said,
‘What’s al this about?’
Amy was fil ing the kettle. She said, without turning, ‘Just felt like it.’
Chrissie put her bag on the kitchen worktop.
‘How was today?’
‘OK.’
‘How was the exam?’
‘Didn’t have one today,’ Amy said. She plugged in the kettle and switched it on. ‘Music theory tomorrow. Revision today. Revision, revision, revision.’
Chrissie was looking through her post. She said absently, ‘But worth it.’
Amy let a pause fal , and then she said, ‘You?’
Chrissie glanced up.
‘Me?’
‘Your day OK?’
‘I don’t know. I real y don’t know—’
Amy took the Earl Grey tea caddy out of the cupboard.
‘Another interview?’
‘No,’ Chrissie said. She put her letters down. ‘No. A flat.’
‘Oh,’ Amy said.
Chrissie came to stand close to her. She watched her detach a couple of tea bags from the clump in the box
