Free The Other Family by Joanna Trollope

think, Mrs Rossiter, how simple it is. Mr Rossiter’s will 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.
    ‘In fact,’ Mark said, ‘there are only a couple of small alterations since we revised the will together three years ago, as I’m sure you will remember.’
    Chrissie’s head snapped up.
    ‘Alterations? ’
    Mark smiled at her. This was the moment he had been rehearsing, the moment when he had to reveal to her that Richie had been to see him the previous spring and had indicated – but not actually specified – that the visit was private.
    ‘I don’t believe in secrets,’ Richie had said, ‘but I do believe in privacy. We’re all allowed our privacy, aren’t we?’
    ‘There were just two small matters,’ Mark said now, in as gentle a voice as he could muster, ‘that represented what you might call wishes. Mr Rossiter’s wishes. Two little gifts he found he wanted to make, and he came here about a year ago to tell me about them. They don’t affect the bulk of the estate. That will be yours, of course, the house and so on, after probate.’
    Tamsin said faintly, ‘What’s probate?’
    Mark smiled at her.
    ‘It’s the legal proving that someone’s will actually is their will.’
    Tamsin nodded. She looked at her mother. Chrissie was staring straight past Mark at a picture on the wall, a picture Mark’s wife had chosen, a sub-Mondrian arrangement of black lines and squares of colour. Tamsin twisted in her chair, gripping her mother’s wrist.
    ‘Mum—’
    ‘What
gifts
?’ Chrissie said, almost with her teeth clenched.
    Mark glanced at Tamsin. She was concentrating wholly on her mother.
    He said, ‘Please be assured, Mrs Rossiter, that you and your daughters remain the main and major beneficiaries in every respect.’
    ‘What gifts?’ Chrissie said again.
    There was a small silence. Mark took up the folder, andheld it for a few seconds, as if assessing whether to open it and, as it were, release some genie, and then he put it down again, and said quietly, ‘Mr Rossiter wished to leave two items to his first family in Newcastle.’
    Chrissie gave a violent involuntary shudder. Tamsin shot out of her chair, and knelt on the carpet next to her mother.
    ‘Mum, it’s OK, it’s OK—’
    Chrissie took her wrist out of Tamsin’s grip, and put her hand on Tamsin’s shoulder.
    ‘I’m fine.’ She looked at Mark. ‘What items?’
    Mark put his elbows on his knees, linked his hands loosely and leaned forward.
    ‘The piano,’ he said, ‘and his musical estate up to 1985.’
    ‘The piano—’
    ‘He wished,’ Mark said, his voice full of the sympathy he truly felt and of which his father would doubtless have disapproved, ‘to leave the piano to his former wife and his musical estate up to 1985 to his son.’
    Chrissie said, ‘The Steinway—’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Oh my God,’ Tamsin said. She crumpled against her mother’s chair. ‘Oh my God—’
    ‘I gather,’ Mark said, ‘that 1985 was the year in which Mr Rossiter came south to London. His son was then fourteen. I believe the current value of the Steinway is about twenty-two thousand pounds. And, of course, there’s value to those early songs, the rights in those. I haven’t established more than an estimate—’ He stopped.
    Tamsin began to cry. She leaned forward until her forehead was resting against Chrissie’s thigh.
    ‘Not the piano,’ she said indistinctly. ‘Not the piano. Not that—’
    Chrissie stroked her hair. She looked down at her, almostabsently, as if she was thinking about something quite different. Then she looked back at Mark.
    She said, quite steadily, ‘Are you sure?’
    He put his hand on the folder again, drew it towards him, opened it and held out the top sheet inside for her to see.
    ‘Quite sure,’ he said.
    She stared at the piece of paper, but didn’t seem to take it in. She was simply gazing,