So she put random things on a tray, pieces of fruit, and pots of this and that, and some sliced bread stil in its bag, and added a carton of juice and some glasses, and tiptoed stealthily past the sitting-room door and up the stairs to the top floor.

Amy was playing her flute. It was something Dil y recognized and couldn’t name, something she knew Amy had learned from her James Galway CD. Amy was playing it wel , Dil y could tel that, playing it with absorption and concentration. Dil y put the tray down on the landing and opened her own door. In a drawer in her desk was a box of chocolate-covered almonds a girl on her course had given her in order to stop her eating them herself. Dil y took them out of the drawer and added them to the tray. The addition went a little way towards Dil y’s incoherent but definite feeling that she wanted to do something to assuage the slap.

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.