years: he was a traitor, they said loudly, glass in hand, jocular arm round Chrissie’s shoulders, to the noble cause of unreconstructed Northern manhood. But none of them, however they might covertly stare at Chrissie’s legs and breasts or overtly admire her cooking or her ability to get Richie gigs in legendarily impossible venues, ever urged him to marry her.
Perhaps, Chrissie thought now, staring at the ceiling through which she hoped Dil y stil slept, they thought he had.
After al , the girls did. Or, to put it another way, the girls had no reason to believe that he hadn’t. They were al Rossiters, Chrissie signed herself Rossiter on al family-concerned occasions, and they knew her professional name was Kelsey just as they knew she was their father’s manager. It wouldn’t have occurred to them that their parents weren’t married because the subject had simply never arisen. The disputes that arose between Richie and Chrissie were – it was the stuff of their family chronicle – because their father wanted to work less and play and sing more just for playing and singing’s sake, and their mother, an acknowledged businesswoman, wanted to keep up the momentum. The girls, Chrissie knew, were inclined to side with their father. That was no surprise – he had traded, for decades, on getting women audiences to side with him. But – perhaps because of this, at least in part – the girls had found it hard to leave home. Tamsin had tried, and had come back again, and when she came home it was to her father that she had instinctively turned and it was her father who had made it plain that she was more than welcome.
Chrissie swal owed. She pictured Dil y through that ceiling, asleep in her severe cotton pyjamas in the resolute order of her bedroom. Thank heavens, today, that she was there. And thank heavens for Amy, in her equal y determined chaos in the next room, and for Tamsin amid the ribbons and flowers and china-shoe col ections down the landing. Thank heavens she hadn’t prevailed, and achieved her aim of even attempted daughterly self- sufficiency before the girls reached the age of twenty. Richie had been right. He was wrong about a lot of things, but about his girls he had been right.
Chrissie began to cry again. She pul ed her hand back in, under the duvet, and rol ed on her side, where Richie’s pil ow awaited her in al its glorious, intimate, agonizing familiarity.
‘Where’s Mum?’ Tamsin said.
She was standing in the kitchen doorway clutching a pink cotton kimono round her as if her stomach hurt. Dil y was sitting at the table, staring out of the window in front of her, and the tabletop was littered with screwed-up bal s of tissue. Amy was down the far end of the kitchen by the sink, standing on one leg, her raised foot in her hand, apparently gazing out into the garden. Neither moved.
‘Where’s Mum?’ Tamsin said again.
‘Dunno,’ Dil y said.
Amy said, without turning, ‘Did you look in her room?’
‘Door’s shut.’
Amy let her foot go.
‘Wel then.’
Tamsin padded down the kitchen in her pink slippers.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Nor me.’
She picked up the kettle and nudged Amy sideways so that she could fil it at the sink.
‘I don’t believe it’s happened.’
‘Nor me.’
‘I can’t—’
Cold water gushed into the kettle, bounced out and caught Amy’s sleeve.
‘Stupid cow!’
Tamsin took no notice. She carried the kettle back to its mooring.
‘What are we gonna do?’ Dil y said.
Tamsin switched the kettle on.
‘Go back to the hospital. Al the formalities—’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s what they said. Last night. They said it’s too late now, but come back in the morning.’
‘It’s the morning now,’ Amy said, stil gazing into the garden.
Dil y half turned from the table.
‘Wil Mum know what to do?’
Tamsin took one mug out of a cupboard.
‘Why should she?’
‘Can I have some tea?’ Amy said.
‘What d’you mean, why should she?’
‘Why should she,’ Tamsin said, her voice breaking, ‘know what you do when your husband dies?’
Amy cried out, ‘Don’t say that!’
Tamsin got out a second mug. Then, after a pause, a third.
