Amy finished playing her piece. Dil y counted to ten. Then she knocked on Amy’s door.

‘Yes?’ Amy said. She did not sound helpful.

Dil y opened the door and stooped to pick up the tray.

‘What’s that?’ Amy said.

‘Supper. Kind of.’

‘Did Mum send you?’

‘No,’ Dil y said. ‘Would she have sent al this?’

Amy looked at the tray.

‘Thanks, Dil .’

‘I couldn’t stand it down there,’ Dil y said. She peered at Amy. ‘How’s your face?’

‘The ice did it. Mostly. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Nor me,’ Dil y said.

‘I keep thinking,’ Amy said, ‘that it can’t get worse, and then it does.’

Dil y put the tray down on the floor.

‘Craig says—’

‘Craig says—’ Amy mimicked.

‘If you’re going to be a bitch,’ Dil y said, ‘I’m leaving.’

‘Sorry—’

‘Don’t take it out on me. I brought you supper.’

‘Sorry, Dil .’

Dil y knelt down beside the tray.

‘I didn’t bring any plates. I don’t real y want to go back down. And I forgot knives and stuff.’

Amy knelt too.

‘Doesn’t matter. What does Craig say?’

Dil y looked obstinate.

‘Dil ,’ Amy said, ‘please. What does Craig say?’

‘That when people do your head in, mostly you can’t do anything about it except put yourself out of their reach.’

Amy took a slice of bread out of the packet.

‘What if you live in the same house as them?’

‘He does,’ Dil y said. ‘He lives with his mum’s boyfriend. He can’t stand him. That’s why he’s out al the time.’

Amy sighed. She tore a strip off the bread slice and dipped it into a pot of salsa.

‘It isn’t that I can’t stand Mum. It’s that I can’t get her to see that not everyone thinks like her.’

Dil y picked up a banana, and put it down again.

‘I suppose no one else is in her position. I mean, I suppose she’s responsible for us now. I can’t wait for this course to be over so I can get a job.’

Amy said, with her mouth ful , ‘You are so lucky.’

‘I’m scared,’ Dil y said. She put a grape in her mouth. ‘I want it to happen, but I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t know how you do it, jobs and flats and things.’

‘Won’t Craig help?’

There was a short pause and then Dil y said, ‘No.’

‘Dil —’

‘I’m trying,’ Dil y said, ‘not to need him. Not to – lean on him.’

‘Dil , has he—’

‘No,’ Dil y said, ‘he’s stil my boyfriend. But I know him better than I did. You can’t make people what they aren’t.’

‘Oh God,’ Amy said. She put her bread down and reached to take Dil y’s arm. ‘Are you OK?’

‘No,’ Dil y said, ‘not about anything. But at least I’m not pretending.’ She looked at Amy. ‘I want Dad back.’

‘Don’t—’

‘He’d know what to do.’

‘No,’ Amy said quietly, ‘he wouldn’t.’ She removed her arm and picked up her bread. ‘He’d know how to cheer us up, but he wouldn’t know what to do. He relied on Mum for that, and now she doesn’t know what to do. At least you know what you’re going to do, even if it scares you.’

‘Yes,’ Dil y said. She picked up the banana again and a slice of bread and climbed off the floor and onto Amy’s bed. She settled herself against the pil ows. Amy watched while she careful y peeled the banana and rol ed the slice of bread round it.

‘Banana sandwich,’ Dil y said.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Amy said.

Dil y took a bite.

‘About what? ’

‘I’m not doing these frigging exams.’

‘Amy! ’

‘I’m not. It’s pointless. Music and Spanish and English lit. What’s the use of any of it? It’s just playing. I can’t bear to be playing. I’m going to leave school and get a job and stop feeling so helpless.’

Dil y put her banana rol down.

‘Amy, you can’t. Mum’l flip.’

‘She’s flipped already.’

‘No, I mean, seriously flip. It’l finish her. You’re the cleverest. Dad always said so. Anyway, what about uni? You’ve always wanted to go to uni.

Dad was thril ed you wanted to, he was real y chuffed, wasn’t he? He kept saying, over and over, that at least one of us took after Mum in the brains department.’

‘Wel ,’ Amy said, ‘I’l use my brain differently. I’l get a job where they’l train me. I’l work for Marks & Spencer.’

‘You are eighteen years old.’

‘Loads of people leave school at sixteen. I don’t want to go to uni.’

Dil y said severely, ‘You don’t know what you want.’

‘I do!’ Amy said fiercely. ‘I do! I want al this to stop, I want al this drifting and not deciding and crying and being upset al the time to stop. I want to stop being treated like a child, I want to be in charge of my own life and make my own decisions. There is no use in doing A levels. A levels are for people who can afford to do them, and I can’t any more.’

‘You’re overreacting,’ Dil y said.

‘ You’re a fine one to talk—’

‘We haven’t run out of money, we aren’t desperate—’

‘We soon wil be,’ Amy said.

Dil y looked up at the ceiling.

‘Mum’s going to sel the house.’

‘I know.’

‘There’l be some money when she sel s the house.’

‘She’l have to buy something else,’ Amy said. ‘She hasn’t found a job yet. I don’t think she’s in a fit state to find a job.’

Dil y rol ed on her side and looked at her sister.

‘How wil you tel her?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. Don’t say anything.’

‘I won’t—’

‘Don’t say anything to Tam, either.’

‘Amy,’ Dil y said, ‘just think about it. Grade eight music. A level music. Al that Spanish. Just throw it al over to wipe tables in a coffee place?’

Amy looked defiant. She reached out to pick up Dil y’s banana rol , and took a bite. Round it, she said carelessly, ‘Sounds OK to me.’

There was a muffled thud from downstairs, and then another. Dil y sat bolt upright.

‘What’s that?’

Amy put the banana down.

‘Mum—’

They struggled to their feet and made for the door.

‘Oh God—’

‘I’l go first,’ Amy said. ‘Fol ow me. Come with me.’

It was quiet on the landing. Amy cal ed, ‘Mum?’

There was another thud, more muted. And then a smal clatter.

‘Mum?’

‘I’m here,’ Chrissie cal ed.

They started down the stairs.

‘Where—’

‘Here,’ she said. She sounded exhausted.

They reached the first-floor landing. Chrissie’s bedroom door was open, and out of it spil ed heaps and piles of clothes, stil on their hangers, jackets and trousers and suits. Richie’s clothes.

The girls stared.

‘Mum, what are you doing?’

Chrissie was stil in the clothes she had been wearing when she went out with Sue, stil in her gold necklaces, stil in her high-heeled boots. She had scraped her hair back into a ponytail and there were dark shadows under her eyes.

‘What do you think I’m doing?’

‘But—’

‘I’m moving Dad’s clothes out. I’m emptying the cupboards in my bedroom of Dad’s clothes.’

‘But not now, Mum, not tonight—’

‘Why not tonight?’

‘Because it’s late, because you’re tired, because we’l help you—’

Chrissie waved an arm towards the sliding heaps of clothes.

‘I’ve done it. Can’t you see? I’ve done it. You can help me take it al downstairs if you want to, but I’ve done it.’

They were silent. They stood, Dil y slightly behind Amy, and looked at the chaos of garments and hangers. Amy said brokenly, ‘Oh Mum—’

Chrissie turned sharply to look at her.

‘Wel ,’ she demanded. ‘Wel ? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s what you wanted me to do?’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Beside the street-door release button in Margaret Rossiter’s office in Front Street was a smal screen which showed, in fish-eye distortion, the face of the person speaking into the intercom. Margaret had had the screen instal ed to reassure Glenda, who, in the early days of her employment at the agency, had been convinced that she might, inadvertently, let someone into the premises whom she did not recognize, and who had no business to be there. Even with the screen, Glenda was inclined, when alone in the office, to go down to the street door to let visitors in in person, rather than risk them coming in unsupervised, and failing to secure the door behind them. It also seemed to Glenda that the casualness of buzzing someone into a building electronical y from the first floor was rude, especial y when, to her considerable alarm, she saw that the face on the screen, his mouth looming cartoon-large, belonged to Bernie Harrison.

‘One moment, Mr Harrison,’ Glenda said, and fled downstairs to the street door, wishing that she had, at six-thirty that morning, obeyed a frivolous impulse to put on her new cardigan.

Bernie Harrison was smiling. He looked entirely unsurprised to see Glenda.

‘Bet you didn’t expect to see me?’

Glenda held the door a little wider. Bernie Harrison wore grey flannels and a soft tweed jacket and a tie. When she left home that morning, Barry was engaged in his usual angry independent battle to get dressed, in tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt and a fleece gilet, none of them in coordinating colours.

‘No, Mr Harrison,’ Glenda said.

‘May I come in?’

Glenda stood back against the wal of the narrow hal way to let him pass.

‘Mrs Rossiter isn’t here—’

Bernie began to climb the stairs with a purposeful tread.

‘Glenda, I know Mrs Rossiter isn’t here. I know Mrs Rossiter has a meeting in the city this morning. I have come to see you.’

Glenda closed the street door in silence. Then she fol owed Bernie Harrison up the stairs and into the main office, where he was already standing, and looking about him with an air that Glenda felt was improperly assessing. She folded her hands in front of her.

‘Can I get you anything, Mr Harrison? Tea? Or coffee?’

‘Nothing, thank you.’ He beamed at her. ‘You don’t think I should be here, Glenda, do you?’

She raised her chin a little. She said primly, ‘I’m not in the habit of doing anything behind Mrs Rossiter’s back.’

He laughed. Glenda did not join in. He crossed the room and sat down in the chair by the window that Margaret used when she had papers to read for a meeting, because the light was good.

‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘No, thank you, Mr Harrison.’

‘I shan’t stay long,’ Bernie said. ‘I can see you won’t let me stay long, anyway.’ He leaned forward. ‘I think you know pretty much everything that goes on in this office.’

Glenda said nothing. She stood where she had halted, a few feet inside the door, with her hands clasped in front of her.

‘You wil therefore know,’ Bernie Harrison said, ‘that I made Mrs Rossiter an offer recently.’

Glenda gave the most imperceptible of nods.

‘Which she turned down.’

Glenda raised her chin a little further, so that she could look past Bernie Harrison and out through the venetian blinds to paral el slits of cloud-streaked sky above the roofs of the buildings opposite.

‘Have you,’ Bernie said, ‘any idea why she turned me down?’

Glenda took a breath. Margaret would expect her to be discreet, but she would not expect her to be either dumb or insolent.

‘I think it didn’t suit her, Mr Harrison. I think what she has here suits her very wel .’

‘And does it suit you?’

Glenda said in a rush, ‘I couldn’t wish for better.’

‘Are you sure?’

Glenda nodded vehemently.

‘So you’d turn down more money and better working conditions and more variety and responsibility in your job?’

‘I’d turn anything down,’ Glenda said fiercely, ‘that didn’t involve working for Mrs Rossiter.’

Bernie spread his hands and put on an expression of mock amazement.

‘Who said anything about not working for Mrs Rossiter?’

‘Mr Harrison, you were hinting—’

‘Glenda, whatever I was suggesting to you was in the context of stil working for Mrs Rossiter.’

Glenda found that her hands had unclasped themselves and were now gripping her elbows, crossed over her body.

‘I don’t fol ow you—’

‘Mrs Rossiter turned me down,’ Bernie said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I accepted her refusal. I didn’t. I don’t. It makes every bit of sense for me to buy up this agency, making Mrs Rossiter my partner with you remaining as her assistant. I’m not giving up. I’m not a man to give up, especial y when what I want happens to be good for al concerned into the bargain.’

‘So—’

‘So I came here to tel you that your job is safe as long as you want it. That your pay would go up – something of a rarity in these dark days, wouldn’t you say? – and you’d work in proper offices in Eldon Square with enough col eagues to give you a better social working life.’