Dil y said flatly, ‘You mean the piano.’
‘Yes.’
‘She hasn’t said much. But you can see.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Dil y said. ‘I don’t get why he’d do a thing like that.’
‘I don’t think you should read too much into it.’
Dil y turned to look directly at her. Her skin, at these close quarters, Sue observed, was absolutely flawless, almost like a baby’s.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘What I mean,’ Sue said, ‘is that you shouldn’t let yourselves think that just because he left the piano to her he was in love with her al along.’
Dil y made a smal grimace.
‘You should see her—’
‘I did, briefly. At the funeral.’
‘Wel —’
‘No competition for your mum.’
‘But then he goes and leaves her the piano!’
Sue said careful y, ‘That may have nothing whatsoever to do with love.’
‘What then?’
‘Wel , it could be nostalgia. Or Northern solidarity. Or guilt. Or al three.’
Dil y leaned her elbows on the table and balanced her forehead in the palms of her hands.
‘None of that means anything to us.’
‘Wel , think about it. Think about it and try and see it as something other than just a bloody great rejection. And while you’re at it, stop behaving as if it’s al the fault of that poor cow in Newcastle. What did she do, except get left to bring a child up on her own? She’s never made trouble, never asked for anything. Has she? You’re al letting yourselves down if you blame her for what your father did. You hear me?’
Dil y’s phone began to play the theme tune from The Magic Roundabout. She pounced on it at once and peered at the screen. And then, without looking at Sue, she got up, saying, ‘Hi, big guy,’ happily into it, and walked away down the kitchen to the far window.
‘You’re a rude little cow,’ Sue said equably, to her back.
In the doorway, Chrissie said, ‘Do I look as grim as I feel?’
Sue turned.
‘No,’ she said, ‘you just look as if you’ve been crying because you’re extremely sad.’
‘And mad,’ Chrissie said.
Sue got up to find clean wine glasses.
‘Mad’s OK. Mad gives you energy. It’s hate you want to avoid.’
Chrissie said nothing. She glanced at Dil y, smiling into her phone at the far end of the kitchen. Then she sat down in the chair Dil y had vacated, and picked up an olive. Sue put a fresh glass of Prosecco down in front of her.
‘Drink up.’
‘Thing is,’ Chrissie said, staring at the olive in her hand, ‘thing is, Sue, that I do hate her. I’ve never met her, and I hate her. I know it wasn’t her that prevented Richie from marrying me but I can’t seem to leave her out of it. Maybe it’s easy to hate her. Maybe I’m just doing what’s easy. Al I know is that I hate her.’ She put the olive in her mouth. ‘I do.’
In her office in Front Street, Tynemouth, Margaret was alone. Useful and faithful though Glenda was, there was always a smal relief in Margaret when five o’clock came and she could say, ‘Now come on, Glenda, you’ve done al I’ve asked you and more, and Barry’s been on his own long enough, don’t you think?’ and Glenda would gather up her jacket and scarf and inevitable col ection of supermarket bags and, always with a look of regret at the comforting anonymity of the computer screen, say a complicated goodnight and disappear down the steep stairs to the street. When the outside door slammed behind her, Margaret would let out a breath and feel the office relax around her, as if it was taking its shoes off. Then, she would sit down in Glenda’s swivel chair, bought especial y to support her back, whose condition was an abiding consideration in their relationship, and go through everything, on screen and on paper, that Glenda had done that day.
On the top of Glenda’s in-tray lay the estimates she had obtained for the transport of Richie’s piano from North London to Newcastle. It was going to be a very expensive business, in view of the quality and the weight and the distance. Margaret looked at the top sheet, on which Glenda had pencil ed, ‘This firm specializes in the moving of concert pianos.’ It was the highest estimate, of course, but probably the one she would accept, and pay, in order that Scott could benefit from something that represented a joint parental concern after over twenty years of only having hers.
She had discovered, over the last week or so, that her initial euphoria at being left the piano had subsided into something both more manageable and more familiar to her, a state of quiet satisfaction and comfortable relief. It was a relief and satisfaction to know Richie had remembered her, and so meaningful y; and it was a relief she didn’t have to house the piano and look at it every day. It was a satisfaction that Scott wanted it and would play it and a relief that he would not be haunted by the memory of its purchase and arrival, more than thirty years ago, when Margaret had had every reason to believe that a shining future awaited her in every area of her life – a rising husband, a smal son, the increasing exercise of her own managerial skil s.
As it turned out, it had been the last two that had saved her. Scott, though he had inherited more of her unobtrusive competence than his father’s flair, had been a good son to her. She wished he were more ambitious, just as she wished he was married, with a family, and a decent house near her and the sea, rather than living his indeterminate bachelor existence in that uncomfortable flat in the city, but that didn’t make him other than a good son to her, affectionate and mostly conscientious, with a respect for her and her achievements that she often saw lacking in her friends’
children.
And of course, those achievements had been a life saver. It wasn’t a big business, Margaret Rossiter Entertainment, never would be, she didn’t want it to be, but it was enough to maintain her and Glenda, to provide moderate holidays and to keep her involved in a world in which she had a smal but distinct significance, the world of singers and musicians, of stand-up comics and performance poets, who stil managed to make a living in the clubs and hotels and pubs and concert hal s of the circuit she had known al her life. There was, she sometimes reflected with satisfaction, not a venue or a person connected with the minor entertainment industry in the North-East whom she did not know. By the same token, there was hardly anyone who did not know who Margaret Rossiter was.
She looked again at the estimate. She would probably, she told herself again, accept it. Then she would ask Scott to telephone the family in Highgate to make arrangements for the piano’s packing up, and removal. It was not that she shrank from ringing herself, she told herself firmly, but rather that if Scott were to ring one of the girls, it would be lower-key, less of a drama. She closed her eyes for a moment. A drama. Watching the Steinway being loaded into a crate, swaddled in blankets or bubble wrap or whatever, and taken away couldn’t possibly be other than a drama. If she were Chrissie, Margaret thought, she’d be sure to be out of the house.
She had sometimes tried to visualize that house. There had been years – long years – when she had studiously avoided pictures in minor celebrity columns and magazines of Richie and Chrissie together, he so dark, she so blonde, so very blonde, and young, and dressed in clothes that appeared to have needed her to be sewn into them. But the house was another matter. The house was where Richie lived, and Margaret was occasional y tormented by the need to know how much it resembled – or differed from – that first house in Tynemouth of which they had been so proud, and from which Scott had been able to walk when – an even greater source of pride – he had gained a place at the King’s School. She thought the North London house must be quite a big one, to house three children and a grand piano, and she knew that part of London was famed for its hil s, so perhaps the garden sloped, and there were views from the top windows, views to the City perhaps, or out to Essex, unlike the view she had now, the view she had chosen almost as proof of her own achievements, out to sea.