Mark did remember it. He remembered too a study on happiness he’d read which concluded that Masai herdsmen and people on the Fortune 400 list were about as happy as each other. He remembered it when Richie Rossiter – whom his mother thought the world of – came to see him out of the blue and was very clear about making a wil that superseded any wil that he, or he and Mrs Rossiter, had previously made. He did not think that Richie Rossiter was in the habit of precision about any area of life that didn’t concern music, but on that occasion he had been both decided and wel prepared. The wil had been drawn up as he had requested, he had come into the office to sign it, and the document had then been filed, along with twenty years of Rossiter papers, against such time – ‘Shan’t need this for decades, Mark’ – as Richie should die.

And now, only a year later, he was dead. Suddenly, unexpectedly, fel ed by a heart attack that rumour was saying was probably genetical y accountable. Richie Rossiter was dead, the Rossiter files had been opened, and Mark Leverton had, in his diary for that Wednesday, an eleven o’clock appointment with Richie Rossiter’s widow.

Tamsin said that she would go with her mother to see Mr Leverton.

Chrissie looked round the table. You couldn’t real y cal it a breakfast table since there was no social coherence to it, and everybody was eating and drinking different things, some of them – like the pizza crusts on Amy’s plate – not conventional y appropriate to breakfast.

Chrissie said, ‘I hoped you’d al come.’

‘To the solicitor’s?’ Amy said, as if an outing to a slaughterhouse was being suggested.

‘Actual y,’ Dil y said, ‘I’m a bit busy—’

Chrissie leaned forward.

‘We should do this together. We should do al these things that concern Dad together.’

Dil y’s mobile was lying on the table next to a banana skin. She gave it a little spin.

‘Actual y—’

‘She’s seeing Craig,’ Amy announced to the table.

‘Not til tonight,’ Tamsin said.

Amy leaned forward too.

‘But there’s so much to do before tonight,’ Amy said with exaggerated breathlessness. ‘Isn’t there, Dil ? Al the waxing and stuff. Al the hair straightening. Al the—’

Dil y picked up the banana skin and threw it at her sister.

‘Shut up!’

Amy ducked.

‘We don’t say shut up in this house—’

The banana skin hit the wal and slid down to lodge limply in the radiator.

‘Be quiet!’ Chrissie said loudly.

They al looked at her.

‘It won’t take long,’ Chrissie said. ‘It’s merely a formality. I know exactly what’s in that wil because Dad and I agreed it together. But it would be nice if we could al four go together to see Mr Leverton and hear him tel us, even if I know what he’l say.’

Amy squirmed.

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s a kind of little ceremony,’ Chrissie said. ‘Because it’s a formal ritual thing we do together for Dad.’

Dil y picked up her phone and peered closely at it.

‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘You’re pathetic,’ Tamsin said.

‘I just can’t,’ Dil y said, her hair fal ing in curtains round her face and phone. ‘I just can’t do any more.’

‘Usual y you can’t bear to be left out,’ Chrissie said.

‘Craig isn’t usual y,’ Amy said.

Chrissie looked at her.

‘What about you?’

‘Sorry,’ Amy said.

‘It’l take half an hour—’

Amy put her hands flat on the table and pushed herself to her feet.

‘Sorry,’ she said again, ‘but I don’t want to think about wil s. I don’t want to think about money and stuff. It just seems – kind of grotesque.’

‘ Grotesque?’ Tamsin said.

Amy picked the banana skin off the radiator and dropped it on the table.

She said, ‘Doesn’t matter—’

‘It does matter,’ Chrissie said. ‘What do you mean, that hearing what’s in the wil is grotesque?’

‘Wel ,’ Amy said, shuffling, ‘sort of wrong, then.’

‘ Wrong?’ Tamsin said, with the same emphasis.

‘Yes,’ Amy said, ‘because it isn’t just us. Is it?’

Chrissie put her head in her hands.

‘What isn’t just us?’

‘Wel ,’ Amy said, ‘this wil . It’s for us. It’s what Dad wanted for us. But – wel , he had a whole sort of life before us and what – what about them?’

Tamsin threw her head back and stared at the ceiling.

‘I do not believe this.’

‘Amy,’ Chrissie said, ‘are you saying that – that the – people in Newcastle should be included too?’

Amy nodded.

‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘Maybe not included but kind of, wel , kind of remembered?’ There was a short pause, then Amy said firmly, ‘Anyway, she doesn’t live in Newcastle, she lives in Tynemouth.’

‘Amy,’ Chrissie said again. She looked directly at her. ‘Amy.

It doesn’t matter where she lives, what matters is that she’s out of the picture. Al that was sorted long ago. A house, a sum of money, everything.

It was a clean break, no coming back for more, no questioning of decisions made. It was conclusively agreed and it was absolutely fair. Do you hear me? Absolutely fair.’

Amy pul ed out a long strand of hair and examined the ends.

‘OK.’

‘Do you understand me?’

‘Yup.’

‘And believe me?’

‘Yup,’ Amy said.

‘Good.’

Chrissie got up briskly and crossed the kitchen to assemble the components for making coffee. With her back to her daughters, she said,

‘However, Amy, I’m not sure I want you to come now. You may say you believe me, but what you said just now, the implied accusation in what you said just now, has made me feel that I’d rather you didn’t come with me to see Mr Leverton. You may al be thinking how much you’ve suffered in the last couple of weeks, but perhaps it wouldn’t do you any harm to think about me, not just what I’ve been through, but what I’ve got to go through in the future, without Dad.’ Her voice shook. She stopped, and spooned coffee, slightly unsteadily, into the cafetière. ‘If you can’t support me wholeheartedly,’ Chrissie said, ‘I’d real y rather go on my own.’

There was silence. It was broken after a few seconds by Dil y dropping her phone. Tamsin bent to pick it up, and tossed it at her sister.

She said to Chrissie’s back, ‘I’d like to come with you, Mum, please.’

Chrissie turned round. Dil y was looking at her phone and Amy was staring out of the window.

‘Thank you, Tamsin,’ Chrissie said with dignity. ‘Thank you. Then it wil just be you and me.’

Mark Leverton had arranged his office so that, when occasion demanded, he could sit beside his desk, rather than behind it, in order not to create too formal a distance between himself and those he was talking to. He seated Chrissie and Tamsin in padded upright chairs with wooden arms –

upholstered easy chairs did not seem suitable for discussion about, or after, death – put the papers on one side of his desk, and then positioned himself on a chair next to them. He usual y worked in his shirt sleeves, but he had put his jacket back on for the meeting, shooting his cuffs just enough to show off the silver Tiffany cufflinks that his wife had given him for their seventh wedding anniversary.

‘Just to remind you,’ she’d said, ‘that an itch is not on your agenda.’

Chrissie hardly took him in, except to notice that he was neat and dark and vaguely familiar, and was wearing a wedding ring. She too was wearing a wedding ring, but with an unwelcome self-consciousness, which she was sure never needed to cross Mr Leverton’s mind. There was nothing il egal in sitting in his office being cal ed Mrs Rossiter and wearing a wedding ring, because she and Richie had agreed, and signed, everything together, and she wasn’t doing anything furtive, or anything that Richie had not been party to; or anything that deprived someone of something they ought to have had, had she not been there. But sitting in that office, apparently composed and confident, in her wel -cut trouser suit, with her wel -cut hair tied back, and her expensive bag on the floor beside her wel -shod feet, she felt, to her surprise and dismay, knocked almost sideways by an unexpected spurt of pure fury at Richie, for refusing to marry her and thus landing her in a situation where the unlovely choice was between pretence and potential humiliation.

Mark Leverton smiled at Tamsin. She was very pretty, with her mother’s features and a smooth curtain of brown hair held off her face with a tortoiseshel clip. He smiled at her, not so much because she was young and pretty but more because she looked so much less tense than her mother and not as if she’d rather be anywhere else in the world than sitting in his office.

‘I am so sorry,’ Mark said. ‘So very sorry, about Mr Rossiter.’

His uncles, he knew, in the same situation, were stil apt to say, ‘May I offer my sincere condolences on your loss,’ but that sounded ridiculous to Mark. It also sounded insincere, and Mark was sincere for the very simple reason that, now he had a family of his own as wel as the one he had been born into, he could empathize – often painful y wel – with what the bereaved people sitting in front of him were going through.

‘Thank you,’ Chrissie said. She looked down at her lap. Tamsin reached across and held her nearest wrist.

‘OK, Mum?’

Chrissie nodded.

‘I won’t keep you long,’ Mark said. ‘It’s very simple.’ He bent forward slightly towards Chrissie, in order to be encouraging. ‘You know, I think, Mrs Rossiter, how simple it is. Mr Rossiter’s wil is very familiar to you.’

Chrissie nodded again.

Mark drew the neat folder of papers close to him across his desk, and laid his hand flat on it.