The Other Family by Joanna Trollope

to take in, Amy. Such a lot that’s different, that – that’s not what I thought it was, believed it was—’ She stopped again.
    Amy pushed her hair back over her shoulders. She said, as a statement, ‘The piano.’
    Chrissie looked down at her keyboard.
    ‘It was his voice,’ she said. ‘It – the piano – was everything, really, not just his stage name but how he thought of himself, how he was. I can’t believe he did that, I can’t believe he wanted to do that and didn’t tell me, left me to find out like that, just left me to find out. Too late, like everything else. And I’m picking up the pieces.’ She glanced up at Amy and put her hand out again, to take Amy’s this time. ‘Sorry, darling. I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. I shouldn’t be thinking like this. It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to you. Or me. It’s classic three-in-the-morning thinking. Sorry. So sorry.’
    Amy said slowly, ‘Perhaps she won’t want it—’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Perhaps she won’t want the piano. Perhaps,’ Amy said a little faster, ‘perhaps she’s angry with him too.’
    Chrissie gave another sigh.
    ‘I don’t really want to know. I don’t care what she feels, I don’t want to have to consider her.’
    ‘OK,’ Amy said. She took her hand out of her mother’s and folded her arms. ‘OK. But I’m angry.’
    Chrissie looked down at her keyboard.
    ‘Are you listening?’ Amy demanded.
    ‘Of course—’
    ‘I’m angry,’ Amy said, almost shouting. ‘I’m angry at you and I’m even angrier at him. How
could
he? Why did he treat me like a little kid, why did you both play your make-believe and think it wouldn’t affect me? What were you thinking of?’
    ‘I suppose we weren’t really thinking—’
    ‘How
dare
you,’ Amy said, suddenly not shouting, but almost whispering. ‘How
dare
you. How dare
he
.’
    ‘Well,’ Chrissie said slowly, ‘if it’s any consolation, I’mpaying for it now. Aren’t I? No income from Dad, this tax, everything frozen till after probate—’
    ‘This isn’t about you.’
    ‘No,’ Chrissie said. ‘Sorry. Sorry, darling. It’s just that—’
    ‘It’s about me,’ Amy said. ‘And Tamsin, and Dilly. And him.’
    ‘Dad?’
    ‘No,’ Amy said. She sighed. ‘No. Not Dad. Not you or Dad. Not parents. It’s about the children, isn’t it? The three of us, and him. In Newcastle.’ She bent towards her mother and hissed at her. ‘Isn’t it?’

CHAPTER FIVE
    ‘W here will you put it?’ Scott said.
    Margaret was standing by the sofa in the bay window of her sitting room, gazing out across the undulating grass of Percy Gardens, towards the sea. The sea was dark today, despite a blue sky, dark and shiny, and from this distance, calm enough only to shimmer. A few hefty North Sea gulls were picking their way around the grass, and there was an old man going past, very slowly, with a stick in one hand and a plastic shopper in the other. Apart from them, there was no sign of life, no people, no shipping. Dawson, stretched along the back of the sofa, was sleeping the sleep of one who knows there is nothing worth staying awake for. ‘Put what?’ Margaret asked absently. She was in some kind of mild reverie. She’d been in it, Scott thought, all weekend, abstracted and peculiar, with a groove on her left hand where her wedding ring had been. When he’d asked her where it was, she’d looked at her hand as if it was nothing to do with her and said, ‘Oh, that’s nothing, pet. It was just time. Time to take it off.’
    Scott said loudly, ‘Where will you put the piano?’ Margaret turned round, without hurry. She looked at the room, at her sofa and chairs covered in linen union printedwith peonies, at her occasional tables and lamps, at her brass fire irons hanging on their little tripod in the fireplace, at the glass-fronted display cabinet full of the porcelain figures she used to collect, shepherdesses dreaming on picturesque tree stumps, Artful Dodger