Dil y sighed, and put the phone back in her pocket. She trailed across to a pair of red upholstered chairs by a glass table bearing brochures featuring photographs of houses with ‘Sold! Sold!’ excitably printed across them in scarlet. She sat down and looked about her. There were eight desks that she could see, two occupied, the rest suspiciously tidy. At one of the occupied desks, a young man in a sober suit and an exuberant tie was talking earnestly to a middle-aged couple, who looked as if they were having trouble believing anything he said. Every so often, they looked at each other, as if for reassurance, and when they did that, the young man leaned a little bit further forward and redoubled his exertions. Dil y wondered if the couple were thinking of buying a house or trying to sel one, and then she thought how completely useless Craig would have been in any situation like that, which led to a renewal of her amazement that she hadn’t yet wanted to cry. She looked at the clock. Eight minutes left to go.

Perhaps when she showed Craig’s text to Tamsin she’d want to cry then; perhaps that would be when reality kicked in.

The middle-aged couple got up. The young man rose too and held out his hand to shake theirs in a way that forced them to take it in turn, whatever their inclination. Stil talking, he escorted them across the room to the door, and ushered them out. On his way back to his desk, he said loudly to Tamsin, as he passed her, ‘Waste of bloody time,’ and Dil y heard her laugh. It was weird, hearing her laugh in a work situation. Or maybe it was just weird hearing her laugh at al . There hadn’t been much laughing at home lately. Breda, from south of Dublin, on Dil y’s course at col ege, said that there’d been so many jokes after her father died that they’d almost forgotten he wasn’t there to share them. Dil y couldn’t picture that.

Richie had been the one for jokes in their house – too many jokes, Chrissie sometimes said – and when he died, the jokes seemed to die with him.

Dil y had managed to laugh a bit with Craig when he fooled about, but that was relief mostly, relief at being with someone not connected to Richie’s dying. Would it, she wondered, be a relief to cry now, or was it more of a relief not somehow seeming to want to?

At the two occupied desks, the computers were being shut down. Tamsin took her headphones off and began switching and stacking in a practised manner. A door to an office at the back opened to reveal a middle-aged man in rumpled shirtsleeves holding a mug in one hand and a mobile telephone to his ear with the other. He crossed the room, stil talking into his phone, paused by the reception desk to bend and say something to Tamsin and put his mug down, and then he retreated to his office at the back and closed the door. Dil y got up and went over to her sister.

‘Who was that?’

Tamsin said, with a hint of satisfaction, ‘Mr Mundy.’

‘Is he your boss?’

Tamsin looked round the room. The young man and a middle-aged woman from an adjoining desk were deep in conversation.

‘Tel you later,’ Tamsin said.

‘What?’

‘Shh,’ Tamsin said. ‘Good news.’

She stood up and smoothed her top down.

‘I’l get my jacket.’

Out in the street, Dil y produced her phone again.

‘Look at that!’

Tamsin stopped walking and took Dil y’s phone.

‘What’s up?’

A woman banged into them from behind.

‘Can’t you look where you’re bloody going?’

Tamsin took no notice. She stared at Dil y’s phone for several seconds and then she said, ‘What a complete jerk.’

‘He’s dumping me,’ Dil y said. ‘Isn’t he?’

Tamsin nodded slowly. Then she glanced up at Dil y.

‘You OK?’

‘Wel ,’ Dil y said, ‘I seem to be. I don’t get it, but I don’t feel anything much yet.’

Tamsin gave a sniff.

‘Of course, Robbie never liked him—’

‘Dad did.’

‘Dad liked anyone who was good company.’

She put an arm round Dil y.

‘Poor babe. Poor you. You don’t deserve this.’

Dil y said, her face awkwardly against her sister’s, ‘Should I do anything?’

‘Heavens, no,’ Tamsin said. ‘Good riddance, I’d say. Don’t you do a thing.’ She took her face and arm away.

Dil y said, ‘I don’t even know if I’l miss him—’

‘Good girl, Dil .’

‘But I’l miss having a boyfriend.’

‘There’l be others, Dil . There’l be real ones, like Robbie.’

Dil y gave her head a tiny toss.

‘I don’t want a boyfriend like Robbie.’

‘Even when you’re down,’

said sharply, ‘you can be such a little cow.’

Dil y took her phone out of Tamsin’s hand and began to walk away from her up the hil . Perhaps this was the time, the moment, for the tears to start. Perhaps now, with Tamsin’s self-absorption making her such a very unsatisfactory confidante, the usual wave of self-pity would come sweeping in, and she could give in to it, give herself up to it, and arrive home in the state that would at least ensure Chrissie’s ful attention for a while. She tried visualizing her own situation, her humiliation, her looming loneliness, even the appal ing prospect of inadvertently seeing Craig somewhere around, with someone else. She blinked. Her eyes were stil dry.

Tamsin caught up with her.

‘Dil —’

‘What?’

‘Sorry,’ Tamsin said, ‘this is so bad for you, so bad—’

‘Yes,’ Dil y said. They were negotiating the crossings at the top of Highgate vil age. ‘Yes, it is.’

Tamsin took her arm.

‘Wil you tel Mum?’

Dil y was amazed.

‘Of course!’

Tamsin held Dil y’s arm a little tighter.

‘I’ve got something to tel Mum too—’

Dil y tried to withdraw her arm.

‘About Robbie?’

‘Oh no,’ Tamsin said. She was smiling. ‘Not him. About my job. Mr Mundy told me my job is safe. Quite safe, he said. No more money just now, but more responsibility. He said the partners felt they were lucky to have me.’

Dil y twitched her arm free. She thought of her phone, and its message. She remembered Tamsin in her headphones, being al lah-di-dah and self-important.

She said nastily, ‘He just meant cheap at the price,’ and then she broke into a run, to get down the hil ahead of Tamsin, to get home first.

She found Chrissie and Amy in the kitchen, looking at pictures on Chrissie’s digital camera. The atmosphere was a bit weird and there was a teapot on the table and a jug of sad purple flowers. They both glanced up when she came in, and she was conscious of being breathless and interestingly redolent of drama. She flung her bag on the floor and her sunglasses on the table.

‘We were just,’ Chrissie said, trying to avoid a reaction to Dil y’s entrance, ‘looking at pictures of a flat I saw.’

Dil y glanced at the camera. The room it showed could have been anywhere, white and empty with a dark carpet. She said, in a rush, ‘You won’t believe—’

‘What?’

Dil y plunged her hand into her pocket and pul ed out her phone, thrusting it at her mother. Chrissie peered at it.

‘What does this mean?’

‘You look!’ Dil y shouted at Amy.

Amy bent over the phone.

‘Oh my God—’

‘ What?’ Chrissie said.

‘Oh my God,’ Amy said, ‘the shit, the shit, how could he?’ She launched herself at Dil y, wrapping her arms round her shoulders. Dil y closed her eyes.

‘Please,’ Chrissie said, ‘ what is happening?’

‘He’s dumped me!’ Dil y cried.

‘He’s—’

‘Craig has dumped Dil y!’ Amy said. ‘He hasn’t the nerve to do it to her face so he’s sent her this pathetic text!’

Chrissie stood up. She moved to put her arms round Dil y too.

‘Oh, darling—’

The front door slammed, and Tamsin appeared in the doorway.

‘Don’t you want to kil him?’ Amy demanded.

‘He’s not worth it.’

‘No, Dil , he’s not worth it, he’s not worth crying over, not for a second—’

‘I’m not crying,’ Dil y said.

Chrissie stepped back.

‘Nor you are—’

‘I want to,’ Dil y said, ‘I’m waiting to. But I’m not.’ She glanced at Tamsin. ‘Maybe it’s having such a fantastically supportive sister.’

Tamsin put her handbag down on the table. It was a habit that had driven Richie wild – ‘Put the bloody thing on the floor, where it belongs!’ – but Tamsin had always insisted that her bag sat on the table or hung on a chair.

She said, with the air of being the one person, yet again, in ful possession of themselves, ‘I am entirely supportive, Dil y, in fact I think you are wel rid of him. It’s just that, in the present circumstances, it’s more useful to focus on the positive and I had, actual y, some positive news today because my job is safe. Mr Mundy has confirmed that I’m staying.’

‘Oh good,’ Chrissie said faintly.

Amy said nothing. She let go of Dil y, just retaining her nearest hand.

Chrissie said, with slightly more energy, ‘Wel done, darling.’

Tamsin inclined her head.

Dil y glanced at Amy. She said, ‘Nothing to worry about any more, then.’

Amy gave her the smal est of winks.

Chrissie picked up the camera. She held it out. She said, half-laughing, ‘What a day!’

They al three regarded her in silence.

‘First, I may have found a flat!’

Silence.

‘Two, Tamsin has her job confirmed!’

Silence.

‘Three,’ Chrissie said, subduing her artificial y affirmative tone, ‘Dil y is freed from someone who in no way deserves her—’

The silence was more awkward this time. Chrissie glanced quickly at Amy.

‘And four—’ She paused, and then she said to Amy, ‘You tel them.’

Amy cleared her throat. She let go of Dil y’s hand. She said, ‘I’m going up to Newcastle for a few days,’ and then she stopped, abruptly, as if she had intended to say more, but had thought better of it.

Dil y caught her breath. She looked from her mother to Tamsin and back again, waiting for the explosion. Chrissie was looking at her camera.

Tamsin was looking at the floor. She turned her head slowly so that she could see Amy. Amy looked excited. Amy was excited about going to Newcastle, Chrissie was excited about a flat and Tamsin was excited about her job. As far as her family was concerned, Craig’s cowardice and betrayal registered right, right down on the scale of things that mattered just now. Out of pure unadulterated temper at her family’s failure to pay her the attention that was unquestionably her due, Dil y began to cry.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

If Margaret was restless, Dawson reacted to her by being particularly inert. He would lengthen himself along the back of the sofa in the bay window of the sitting room and sink into an especial y profound languor, only the minuscule movements of his little ears registering that he was aware of her fidgeting round him, endlessly going up and down the stairs, opening and shutting drawers in the kitchen, talking to herself as if she was the only living creature in the house. Only if it got past seven o’clock, and she seemed temporarily absorbed in some area of the house unrelated to his supper, would he lumber down from the cushions to the floor, and position himself somewhere that could not fail to remind her that she had forgotten to feed him. He was even prepared for her to fal over him, literal y, if it served his purpose.

This particular evening, seven o’clock had come and gone – gone, it seemed to Dawson, a very long time ago. Margaret had been in the sitting room, then her bedroom, then back in the sitting room, then at her computer, but nowhere near the place where Dawson’s box of special cat mix lived, alongside the little square tins of meat that Dawson would have liked every night, but which were only opened occasional y by some arbitrary timetable quite unfathomable to him. He had placed himself in her path at least three times, to no effect, and was now deciding that the last resort had been reached, the completely forbidden resort of vigorously clawing up the new carpet at a particularly vulnerable place where the top step of the stairs met the landing. Margaret shrieked. Dawson stopped clawing. He sat back on his huge haunches and regarded her with his enigmatic yel ow gaze.

‘You wretched cat!’

Dawson stared on, unblinking.

‘I’ve a lot on my mind,’ Margaret said furiously. ‘Which I realize means nothing to you, since you have so little mind to have anything on in the first place.’

Unoffended, Dawson yawned slightly, but did not move.