The Other Family

Which was presumably why, when Glenda had said of Amy’s visit, ‘Oh, that’s a lot to ask of you, isn’t it? These young people, they just don’t think, do they?’ Margaret had reacted by saying stonily, her eyes on the papers she was holding, ‘I can’t see a problem, Glenda, and I’l thank you not to invent one.’

Glenda had shrugged. Living with Barry had made her an expert reader of nuances of bad temper, and even if she felt it was unfair to be exploited because of it she was confident that she was in no way responsible. She waited an hour, and then she said, conversational y, putting Margaret’s coffee cup down on the desk beside her, ‘Wel , you could always have her to stay at yours.’

Margaret had grunted. She did not look at Glenda, and she did not acknowledge the coffee. If she confided in Glenda, she could not then expect Glenda not to respond in kind, and if the response was of exactly the right and practical sort that she should have thought of herself, then Glenda could hardly be blamed for it. But it was, somehow, difficult to admit to. It was easier, Margaret discovered, to put a box of cream cakes – Glenda’s passion – on her desk wordlessly, later in the day, and then go home to telephone Scott, in privacy, and tel him that Amy should stay in Percy Gardens.

‘Oh no, she doesn’t,’ Scott said pleasantly. He was at work stil , which always gave him a gratifying sense of being able to master his mother.

‘It’s not suitable,’ Margaret said. ‘You may be related but she’s only eighteen and you hardly know each other.’

‘We know each other better than you and she do—’

‘I’m not saying I’m comfortable,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m not saying I’m easy about her coming. But you’ve taken it into your head to ask her, and she’s said yes, so there we are. But it doesn’t look right, her staying with you.’

‘ Look?’ Scott said.

‘Very wel , it isn’t right. Not a man your age and a girl, like that.’

‘I’m sleeping on the sofa,’ Scott said. ‘There’s a bolt on the bathroom door. I’l sleep ful y dressed if that makes you feel better.’

‘I’m not arguing, Scott—’

‘No,’ he said, ‘nor am I,’ and then he said, ‘Sorry, Mam, got to go,’ and he’d rung off, leaving her standing in her sitting room, holding her phone while Dawson kept a barely discernible eye upon her from the back of the sofa.

Now, two hours later, tea drunk and any kind of supper a pointless prospect, Margaret felt no less wound up, an agitation increased by a strong and maddening sense that her own reactions were the cause, and also not immediately control able. She did not want Amy in Newcastle – and she was coming. She did not want Amy to stay with Scott – and she was staying there. Margaret put her teacup down with a clatter and, impel ed by a sudden impulse, went into the sitting room at speed to find the morocco-bound book in which she listed telephone numbers.

She dial ed the number in London rapidly, and then stood, eyes closed, holding her breath, waiting for someone to pick up.

‘Hel o?’ Chrissie said tiredly.

Margaret opened her mouth and paused. She wasn’t sure, in that instant, that she had ever, in al those long and complicated years, spoken directly to Chrissie.

‘Hel o?’ Chrissie said again, a little more warily.

‘It’s Margaret,’ Margaret said.

There was a short silence.

‘Margaret?’

‘Margaret Rossiter,’ Margaret said.

‘Oh—’

‘Am – am I disturbing you?’

‘No,’ Chrissie said.

‘I wanted,’ Margaret said, ‘I just wanted—’ She stopped.

‘I don’t think,’ Chrissie said, ‘that we have anything to say to one another. Do you?’

Margaret took a breath. She said, more firmly, ‘This is about Amy.’

‘Amy?’ Chrissie said, her tone sharpening. ‘What about Amy?’

‘She’s coming up to Newcastle—’

‘I know that.’

‘I wanted – wel , I wanted to set your mind at rest. About where she’l be staying.’

There was another pause. It was extremely awkward, and seemed to go on for a long time, so long in fact that Margaret said, ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, ‘I can imagine how you must be feeling—’

‘I doubt it.’

‘About Amy coming up here, and I just wanted to reassure you that she’l be staying with me.’

Chrissie gave a little bark of sardonic laughter. ‘ Reassure me?’

‘You’d rather that,’ Margaret said, ‘wouldn’t you, than that she stays with my son Scott?’