The Other Family (37 page)

Dawson, with his strange, rare and precise intuition, was sitting eight feet inside the door, waiting for her. When she came in, he lifted himself to his feet and arched his back slightly and made a small, interrogatory remark.

Margaret looked at him. She remembered him as that small, battered kitten with a bloody eye and patchy fur and felt a rush of affection for him, not only for what he was and what he had overcome, but because he had by now walked so much of her path with her, had seen her out of some considerable shadows into, if not blazing sunlight, at least light-dappled shade.

‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t,’ Margaret said. ‘Just this once.’

She followed him into the kitchen. He paced ahead of her, not hurrying, confident of his small victory, and, as ever, blessedly, uncomplicatedly detached.

He sat down with dignity beside his food bowl and watched her while she found a small square tin of his special-treat cat food in the cupboard and peeled back the lid, releasing a rich, savoury aroma that made him run his curling pink tongue round his whiskers.

‘There,’ Margaret said. ‘There. You fat old bully.’

She straightened up. Dawson folded his front paws under himself, in order to bring his chin down to the level of his dish. He was purring triumphantly.

‘Night-night,’ Margaret said. ‘Enjoy. See you in the morning.’

And then she turned to close the door and switch off the light.

Upstairs she put on the lamp by her bed, and opened the window, and drew the curtains halfway across so that there was enough space for a slice of summer dawn to fall through in the morning. Then she took off her new dress, and hung
it up on a corner of her wardrobe, and put on her padded dressing gown and sat down at her dressing table to begin the rituals of the end of the day.

In front of her lay the Minton dish, waiting to receive her pearls and her earrings. It wasn’t quite empty, already containing two safety pins, a pearl button, and the wedding ring she had taken off those months before and allowed, subsequently, just to lie there until it became out of familiarity no more significant than the safety pins. She picked it up now, and looked at it. It had meant so much, once, had symbolized something when the marriage was happening, and even more when it was over. It had been, for years, a talisman, a token of validation, of justification, proof that she had been, in some way that had mattered very much at the time, more than just herself.

She examined it. What a dull thing it looked now. How gladly at that moment would she have given it to Amy’s mother, to that woman who’d had so many reasons, so much time, to believe that she was entitled to it. She wasn’t going to think ill of Richie now, she wasn’t going to waste precious energies on stacking up the case against him, nor was she going to do the same for Chrissie. Amy hadn’t talked much about Chrissie except to say that she hoped she really would take this job and this flat, and start to lead her own life at last, but Margaret had had the strong sense that when Richie died he’d left his castle in London and the people it contained grievously undefended. Amy, of course, was in no place to see that yet, might not see it for years, but already she seemed to want a freedom for her mother, a wish Margaret much approved of, a wish that suggested, at the very least, that life with Richie, for all its beguiling charms, had not made allowances for much liberty in the lives around him.

She slipped the ring on to her wedding finger. It lodged itself on her second knuckle and, although it could be
persuaded, with difficulty, to slide all the way down, there seemed no point in its doing so. She took it off and laid it on the dressing table. In the morning, she thought, on her way to work – she would walk to work, whatever the weather – and to tell Glenda the news about the future, she would cross the grass as she had just done, and then the road, and she would scramble down the shallow cliff slope, holding the ring, and when she got to the bottom, as a mark of respect to the past and all it represented, but also as a gesture of finality, a signal that the past was now over, she would throw the ring into the sea.