The Other Family

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.

‘And it wouldn’t do you any harm to feed off some of that blubber for once either.’

Dawson put out a broad paw, claws half extended, towards the carpet, where shreds of wool he had already raked up lay on the smoothly vacuumed surface.

‘Al right,’ Margaret said. ‘Al right.’

He preceded her downstairs at a stately pace, his thick tail held aloft in a gesture of quiet triumph. In the kitchen, he seated himself again, in his accustomed mealtime spot, and waited. He considered a reproachful meow, and decided that it was hardly necessary. She was shaking a generous, impatient amount of his special mixture into his bowl, and it was better not to deflect her. As the bowl descended to the floor, he got to his feet, arched his back and soundlessly opened his little pink mouth.

‘There,’ Margaret said, ‘there. You fat old menace.’

Dawson bent over his dish. He sniffed the contents and then, as if affronted by something quite out of the ordinary about the deeply familiar, turned and padded out of the kitchen. Margaret let out a little cry and kicked his bowl over. Cat biscuits scattered across the floor, far more of them than it seemed possible for one smal dish to hold. Dawson appeared briefly back in the doorway, surveyed the scene, and withdrew. Margaret, using words she remembered from the men who frequented the Cabbage Patch in her childhood, went to fetch a dustpan and brush.

It took twenty minutes to sweep every last tiny biscuit, replenish Dawson’s bowl and make and drink a steadying cup of tea. On occasions like this, Margaret was relieved to live alone, thankful that there were no witnesses to either her loss of self-possession or her subjection to a cat. Scott would, of course, have laughed at her, and his laughter would have aggravated the agitation she was feeling already on account of the fact that he, Scott, had taken it upon himself to ask this child of Richie’s to Newcastle, and to assume, with a casualness no doubt typical of his generation but deeply improper to Margaret, that she, Amy, should stay with him in that unsatisfactory flat in the Clavering Building. When it had been first mooted, Margaret had felt that the plan was bold, but attractively so, with an edge of novelty to it that was very appealing. But when she had had time to consider it, to visualize how it would be to have Amy, Richie’s last child, actual y, physical y there and requiring shelter and conversation and entertainment, she was inexorably overtaken by a profound inner turbulence, a feeling of extreme anxiety and uncertainty, made worse by the fact that Scott found her reaction only funny, and said so.

Attempts to analyse her feelings seemed to lead nowhere. It was as unreasonable to react as she was reacting as it was undeniable. If there was an analogy to her present state of mind, it was how she had felt in those early days of her relationship with Richie, when they were stil at school, and later, in the first phase of his fame, when she could not see how the amount of attention he was getting from other girls and women could fail to turn his head. It hadn’t, of course; miraculously he had seemed pleased and flattered but fundamental y unaffected for years and years, so that when Chrissie came on the scene Margaret had, for months, been able to dismiss her as yet another adorer who would eventual y bounce off Richie’s focused professional commitment like a moth off a hot lampshade. There’d been no blinding flash of realization that Chrissie was different, that Chrissie meant to stay, that there was steel inside that sugared-almond exterior. It was more that, as the weeks wore on, and Richie, ever pleasant, ever sliding evasively over anything that threatened to be problematical, grew equal y ever more distant, Margaret had gradual y realized she was up against something she had never needed to face before. She had, she remembered – and long before the energy of anger kicked in – been sick with fear, simply sick with it. And fear, in a less extreme form, was exactly what she was feeling now at the prospect of having Amy Rossiter to stay in Tynemouth.

Fear, of course, was best dealt with by doing something. Twenty-five years ago, she had confronted Richie and, by so doing, had exchanged the paralysis of fear for the vigour of fury. None of what had then fol owed had been what she wanted, but at least she had made sure that no one was going to see her as a sad little object of pity, an expendable and outgrown encumbrance tossed aside, as her mother would have said bitterly, like a shil ing glove. From the moment she had acknowledged that Richie was indeed going south, and that he meant to start a new life, a new career and, she assumed, a new marriage, in London, she had exerted herself to be robust in the face of this rejection, to assert her validity independent of Richie and al that was attached to him. If anyone felt sorry for Margaret Rossiter she would be obliged, thank you very much, if they kept their pity to themselves.

Which was presumably why, when Glenda had said of Amy’s visit, ‘Oh, that’s a lot to ask of you, isn’t it? These young people, they just don’t think, do they?’ Margaret had reacted by saying stonily, her eyes on the papers she was holding, ‘I can’t see a problem, Glenda, and I’l thank you not to invent one.’

Glenda had shrugged. Living with Barry had made her an expert reader of nuances of bad temper, and even if she felt it was unfair to be exploited because of it she was confident that she was in no way responsible. She waited an hour, and then she said, conversational y, putting Margaret’s coffee cup down on the desk beside her, ‘Wel , you could always have her to stay at yours.’

Margaret had grunted. She did not look at Glenda, and she did not acknowledge the coffee. If she confided in Glenda, she could not then expect Glenda not to respond in kind, and if the response was of exactly the right and practical sort that she should have thought of herself, then Glenda could hardly be blamed for it. But it was, somehow, difficult to admit to. It was easier, Margaret discovered, to put a box of cream cakes – Glenda’s passion – on her desk wordlessly, later in the day, and then go home to telephone Scott, in privacy, and tel him that Amy should stay in Percy Gardens.

‘Oh no, she doesn’t,’ Scott said pleasantly. He was at work stil , which always gave him a gratifying sense of being able to master his mother.

‘It’s not suitable,’ Margaret said. ‘You may be related but she’s only eighteen and you hardly know each other.’

‘We know each other better than you and she do—’

‘I’m not saying I’m comfortable,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m not saying I’m easy about her coming. But you’ve taken it into your head to ask her, and she’s said yes, so there we are. But it doesn’t look right, her staying with you.’

‘ Look?’ Scott said.

‘Very wel , it isn’t right. Not a man your age and a girl, like that.’

‘I’m sleeping on the sofa,’ Scott said. ‘There’s a bolt on the bathroom door. I’l sleep ful y dressed if that makes you feel better.’

‘I’m not arguing, Scott—’

‘No,’ he said, ‘nor am I,’ and then he said, ‘Sorry, Mam, got to go,’ and he’d rung off, leaving her standing in her sitting room, holding her phone while Dawson kept a barely discernible eye upon her from the back of the sofa.

Now, two hours later, tea drunk and any kind of supper a pointless prospect, Margaret felt no less wound up, an agitation increased by a strong and maddening sense that her own reactions were the cause, and also not immediately control able. She did not want Amy in Newcastle – and she was coming. She did not want Amy to stay with Scott – and she was staying there. Margaret put her teacup down with a clatter and, impel ed by a sudden impulse, went into the sitting room at speed to find the morocco-bound book in which she listed telephone numbers.

She dial ed the number in London rapidly, and then stood, eyes closed, holding her breath, waiting for someone to pick up.

‘Hel o?’ Chrissie said tiredly.

Margaret opened her mouth and paused. She wasn’t sure, in that instant, that she had ever, in al those long and complicated years, spoken directly to Chrissie.

‘Hel o?’ Chrissie said again, a little more warily.

‘It’s Margaret,’ Margaret said.

There was a short silence.

‘Margaret?’

‘Margaret Rossiter,’ Margaret said.

‘Oh—’

‘Am – am I disturbing you?’

‘No,’ Chrissie said.

‘I wanted,’ Margaret said, ‘I just wanted—’ She stopped.

‘I don’t think,’ Chrissie said, ‘that we have anything to say to one another. Do you?’

Margaret took a breath. She said, more firmly, ‘This is about Amy.’

‘Amy?’ Chrissie said, her tone sharpening. ‘What about Amy?’

‘She’s coming up to Newcastle—’

‘I know that.’

‘I wanted – wel , I wanted to set your mind at rest. About where she’l be staying.’

There was another pause. It was extremely awkward, and seemed to go on for a long time, so long in fact that Margaret said, ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, ‘I can imagine how you must be feeling—’

‘I doubt it.’

‘About Amy coming up here, and I just wanted to reassure you that she’l be staying with me.’

Chrissie gave a little bark of sardonic laughter. ‘ Reassure me?’

‘You’d rather that,’ Margaret said, ‘wouldn’t you, than that she stays with my son Scott?’

‘Oh my God,’ Chrissie said.

‘I think they were planning—’

‘I don’t want to know about it,’ Chrissie said. ‘I don’t want to know anything about it.’

‘I see,’ Margaret said. She was beginning to feel less disconcerted, less wrong-footed. ‘I see. But al the same, you’d like to know she’l be safe?’

Chrissie did not reply.

‘You’d like to know,’ Margaret said, ‘that’l she’l be safe in my guest bedroom while she’s in Newcastle?’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said stiffly.

Margaret smiled into the receiver.

‘That’s al I rang for.’

‘Yes.’

‘To reassure you. That’s al I rang for. I’l say goodbye now.’

There was a further silence.

‘Goodbye, then,’ Margaret said, and returned the phone to its charger.

She looked round the room. Dawson was back in place along the sofa, his eyes almost closed. She felt exhilarated, triumphant, slightly daring.

She had put herself back in a place of control, a place from which she could face and deal with things she had no wish to face and deal with. She glanced down at the phone again. Now to ring Scott.

Tamsin said that Mr Mundy himself was going to come and talk to Chrissie about the best way to market the house. She managed to say this in a way that made Chrissie feel both patronized and incompetent, and then she went on to say that she had found an agency cal ed Flying Starts, which specialized in quality second-hand clothes for people involved in performing, in clubs or the theatre or on television, whom she had booked to come and see what might be suitable for their stock in Richie’s wardrobe. Then, having delivered both these pieces of decisive information, she had retied her ponytail, picked up her handbag, and gone out to meet Robbie in order to choose doorknobs for the cupboard he was building for her clothes in his flat in Archway.

‘I’d quite like glass,’ Tamsin said, pul ing her hair tight through its black elasticated band, ‘as long as it isn’t that old-style faceted-crystal stuff.’

Then she’d kissed her mother with the businesslike air of one who has calmly arranged al that needs to be arranged, and swung out of the house, letting the front door slam decisively behind her.

Chrissie picked up her tea mug and walked slowly down the hal from the kitchen. She paused in the doorway to Richie’s practice room and surveyed the dented carpet and the crammed shelves and thought to herself that what had once looked like a wounded and violated place now looked merely lifeless and defeated. She went across to the shelves, and pul ed out a CD at random, a CD of Tony Bennett’s whose cover featured a photograph of him as quite a young man, a big-nosed, languid-looking young man in a suit and tie, sitting casual y on the floor of a recording booth, eyes half closed and a score held loosely in one hand. Perhaps he’d been in his thirties then. She’d never known Richie in his thirties. In the 1960s, when the young Tony Bennett was first recording ‘I Left My Heart In San Francisco’, Richie was in his twenties stil , and struggling. By the time Chrissie got to him, he was forty-two, and she was only twenty-three. The age gap had seemed so exciting then, so sexy, she had had such an awareness of herself as young and new and energizing. His being so much older had given her such a supreme sense of being alive. When he died, there were stil nineteen years between them, but they were shorter years, somehow. He would, if he’d lived, have been seventy in three years.

By which time she, Chrissie, would be fifty-one.

She sighed, and slid Tony Bennett back into his slot on the shelves. He’d been Richie’s hero, not just for his singing voice but for his air of easy geniality. Were there times, in the Bennett household in California or wherever it was, when his nonchalant, good-natured charm drove everyone completely insane with irritation and the air was rent with shrieks and screams instead of ‘Put On A Happy Face’? Were there times, too, when the very people who’d made the man the star, those thousands and thousands of devoted, emotional, possessive fans, were a scarcely bearable pressure on the man’s family, exacerbated by the knowledge that without them the man would be nowhere? Chrissie turned and moved slowly out of the practice room and along to the little room beside the front door that served as her office.

The fans. Her inbox was ful of them, hundreds and hundreds of e-mails commiserating and remembering and asking for some kind of memento, some little thing to establish a link, a significance. In the week or two after his death, she had faithful y answered a good many of them, impel ed by a brief feeling of sisterhood, united in shock and loss and longing. But as the weeks passed, those feelings of intense empathy had cooled, and become tinged with a distaste that had now blossomed into a ful -blown resentment. It was a resentment directed both at these pleading women and Richie, the cause of their neediness, who had whipped up this storm, and then conclusively removed himself, leaving her to confront and cope with what he had left behind.

She sat down in front of her screen. There were three hundred and seventy-four new e-mails from the website she had set up for Richie, and managed for Richie, and shielded Richie from. That was three hundred and seventy-four messages in the last two weeks, because she hadn’t checked for a fortnight, hadn’t felt she could bear to. Several, she noticed, were from the same person, the kind of people whose lives were lived almost entirely outside their own smal reality, and who had no shame in badgering on and on and on until they got a response.

Wel , Chrissie thought, there was no response. She’d mailed everyone whose address she had after he’d died, and again a few weeks later.

There was no more to say, and that was that. Their idol was dead and they would al have to find what solace they could from his music, from what he had left behind. She, Chrissie, was not going to let anyone appoint her keeper of the flame, and to make that perfectly plain she was going to delete the lot of them. She moved the computer mouse slightly on the mouse mat the girls had given her, bearing a picture of their father at the piano, head thrown back, eyes closed, singing, and three clicks later it was done. Al gone.

‘You do what you have to do,’ Sue had said exasperatedly to her the other day, fatigued by her indecisiveness. ‘Don’t keep asking me. Trust your instincts. You always have, so why change the habits of a lifetime at the very moment things are in free fal ?’

Chrissie stood up. She would leave the computer on, and clear more stuff out of it later. She would clear and clear until she could stop seeing Richie only through this thicket of complication and rancour, and could remember something, some smal thing, that was of consequence to her alone. Surely that was possible to do? Surely the last few months, and the disappointing years that had preceded them, couldn’t entirely obliterate everything of strength and value that had gone before?

She drifted into the sitting room. The girls had virtual y stopped using it, had taken to retreating to their rooms with their laptops, or, in Tamsin’s case, to the growing alternative domestic al ure of Robbie’s flat and his appreciation of what he insisted on cal ing a woman’s touch. Only her habitual chair looked inhabited, the cushions stil dented from last night’s television-watching, the magazines and files piled on the low table in front of it, a single empty wine glass balanced on a book. She would have to take it in hand, she would have to spruce and plump and polish, she would have to buy flowers and candles before the room could be shown to Mr Mundy. If she shrank from the idea of Mr Mundy’s appraising eye swivel ing round her sitting room, she shrank stil more from attempting to tel Tamsin that she would al ow it, but not yet. She couldn’t keep saying ‘Not yet’, Sue had told her. Not yet, taken to extremes, was what landed people in places where they had no choices any more. Was that what she wanted?

Was it? Did she real y want to be the kind of person, in fact, who was unable to stand up to her late husband’s first wife in a telephone cal , as she was very much afraid she had been?

She put her tea mug down beside the wine glass and made a half-hearted attempt to straighten the cushions in her chair. Once, she’d have done it briskly, late at night, before they went up to bed, so that the sitting room – the whole house, in fact – looked alert and ready to wake up to. Now, although she was trying very hard not to let any standards actual y slip, they were muted, they took more effort, there seemed less point in keeping the motor running. She wondered, vaguely, and apropos of nothing she had been preoccupied with before, if losing the business of running Richie had left as disorientating a blank in her life as his death itself had. Who was it, some government minister or someone, who’d said, ‘Work is good for you’?

‘Mum?’ Dil y said from the doorway.

Chrissie gave a little jump.

‘Heavens, I thought you were al out—’

‘I was upstairs,’ Dil y said. ‘D’you want a coffee?’

‘I’ve just had tea—’

Dil y looked around the room, as if she was remembering how it was.

‘Bit sad in here—’

‘I know. Where’s Amy?’

Dil y shrugged.

‘Dunno.’

‘Tamsin’s gone to Robbie’s.’

‘No change there, then—’

‘Dil y—’ Chrissie said.

Dil y stopped gazing round the room and looked at her mother.

‘Dil y,’ Chrissie said, ‘wil you come and look at the flat with me?’

Dil y said reluctantly, ‘Why me?’

‘Tamsin’s usual y at Robbie’s. Amy’s going – wel , you know where Amy’s going. And I don’t want to do this alone, I don’t, I real y don’t.’

She paused. Dil y had bent her head so that her pale hair had fal en forward to obscure her face.

‘Please,’ Chrissie said, ‘please come with me. Please – help me?’

There was a long silence. Then Dil y tossed her hair back and began to smooth it into a bunch. She smiled at her mother wanly.

‘Why not?’

Scott was humming. He’d put one volume of Rod Stewart’s American Songbook into his CD player and he was singing along to it. He’d opened the windows in his flat and hung his stripped-off duvet over the sil , as he’d once seen done in a Swiss vil age, on the only school trip he’d ever been on, when they’d been supposed to ski, but he and his gang had gone tobogganing instead, on plastic sledges, on snow packed as hard as stone.

The vil age had been half modern blocks of flats and half little chalets varnished the colour of caramel, with shutters and incredibly regimented log piles, and over the balconies of these chalets, in the bright, cold morning air, people hung quilts and bolsters, creating nursery-rhyme images of tidy housewifery and goose-feather beds. So now, in honour of Amy’s coming, Scott was airing his own duvet in ful optimistic view of the trains trundling over the Tyne Bridge.

Also in her honour, he had bought new bedlinen. It had taken him a whole Saturday morning to choose, wanting to make some effort but not too much, and he had come away with a set in grey-and-white striped cotton, which, he hoped, looked androgynous enough not to embarrass either of them. He had also bought new towels, and a bottle of pale-green liquid handwash and a raft of cans of Diet Coke. Al the girls in his office drank Diet Coke when they were having a brief respite from coffee and alcohol. If Amy didn’t drink it, the girls in the office would, after she’d gone, but at this moment Scott wasn’t dwel ing on after she’d gone. He was revel ing instead in her coming.

His high spirits had even carried him clean through a potential y enraging cal from his mother. She’d rung the evening after his bedlinen expedition to say, with undisguised triumph, that she had spoken to Amy’s mother – ‘ What?’ Scott had shouted – and it was agreed that Amy should stay, in perfect propriety, in Percy Gardens.

‘You spoke to her?’

‘I did,’ Margaret said. Her voice was ful of satisfaction.

‘Wel ,’ Scott said, ‘I have to hand it to you. I real y do, Mother.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So, it’s al arranged—’

‘Yes,’ Margaret said. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, pet, but I’m sure you’l see it’s for the best.’

‘Wel ,’ Scott said casual y, ‘it’s not for long—’

‘Four nights.’

‘Oh no,’ Scott said, ‘just three.’

‘You said four nights—’

‘Did I? I don’t think so. Don’t want to overdo it, the first time.’

‘Four nights,’ Margaret said firmly. ‘Thursday to Monday. Four nights.’

‘We changed it,’ Scott said.

‘You changed it?’

‘Yup,’ he said. ‘We changed it. I’ve sent her the tickets.’

‘It’s hardly,’ Margaret said, ‘worth her coming for three nights—’

‘It’s what she wanted.’

‘I’m not at al sure—’

‘It’s arranged. It’s done. It’s sorted. You’l see her on Sunday. I’l bring her out to Tynemouth on Sunday.’

‘Scott,’ Margaret said. Her tone was suspicious. ‘Scott. Are you tel ing me the truth?’

He looked down at the new bedlinen, lying pristine in its shining packets, on his black sofa. He smiled into the telephone.

‘Course I am,’ he said to Margaret. ‘Course I am! Why would I lie to you about a thing like that?’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Francis Leverton approved of his daughter-in-law. Miriam was not only good-looking, and had produced two little boys in five years, but she was a woman of competence and flair who shared Francis’s view that a great deal more might be made out of Mark than he might manage if left entirely to his own devices. They had never gone so far as to discuss Mark and his possibilities – and failings – openly, but a tacit understanding existed between them that sometimes the way forward for Mark had to be – tactful y, of course – pointed out to him; especial y if it was a situation in which his natural warmth of heart might influence matters in a way not beneficial to either the firm or the family.

Such a situation had arisen over Chrissie Rossiter – or, as Francis Leverton firmly cal ed her, Chrissie Kelsey. Richie Rossiter had been a fixture in Francis’s household for years, on account of his wife and her sisters being ardent fans, and ful of a proprietorial pride that he had lived in the same London postcode as they did. When Richie died, the Leverton family had been shocked and ful of sympathy for the widow and her daughters, and then the subsequent revelation that Chrissie was in fact the mother of Richie’s second family had slightly tempered the sympathy.

So when Mark arrived home, a little late, for Friday-night dinner and found his parents as wel as his wife and her brother and his wife waiting for him, and explained why he had been delayed, his father had reacted by saying, in his measured, paternalistic way, that lawyers were not counsel ors and that he, Mark, must endeavour not to confuse a natural human compassion with such professional help as was appropriate to give, and duly recompensed for. Francis then glanced at Miriam for support. Miriam, however, was not in the mood for complicity. She was preoccupied with the chicken she had prepared being up to her mother-in-law’s exacting standards, and also, in this case, aware that one of the elements that made Mark, in her view, a much more satisfactory husband than her father-in-law would have been was both his warmth of heart and his preparedness to blur boundaries and chal enge codes of conduct if the habits of a lifetime seemed to him to have become no more than habits. So she picked up her fork, and smiled at her father-in-law and said she was sure he was right but that there wasn’t, was there, a universal solution to al the arbitrary human problems that Mark had to deal with every day.

Mark had been amazed. He was used to confronting Miriam and his father together, and to acknowledging, often reluctantly, that he might have –

yet again – al owed his heart to rule his head. But here she was, at his own dining table, standing up for him, and to his own father. He shot her a look of pure gratitude, and adjusted his shirt cuffs so that she could see he was wearing the Tiffany links she had given him. She, in turn, smiled steadily at his father.

It was a long evening. Francis had needed to dominate the proceedings by way of recompense for Miriam’s defection, and had prolonged the prayers and rituals to a stately degree. He had also talked at length – at great length – about the value of professional distance from personal dilemma, and Miriam’s sister-in-law, who had grown up in a very liberal household where Friday nights were casual y observed, if at al , grew visibly restive and began, with increasing obviousness, to attract her husband’s attention.

‘It’s the babysitter—’

Miriam kissed her father-in-law very warmly as he was leaving, and squeezed his arm.

‘Lovely dinner, dear,’ her mother-in-law said, ‘but I prefer not to put thyme with the chicken.’

In the kitchen, among the dirty plates and glasses, Mark put his arms round his wife.

‘What was al that about?’ he murmured into her hair.

She gave a little shrug.

‘I just felt sorry for her. For Chrissie whatsit.’

‘Not for me?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m on your side anyway, aren’t I? Who’s she got on her side, I wonder?’

Mark took his arms away. He said, ‘Mum’s hard on her, I think. Imagine Mum, who’s got a mind and a temper of her own, ever getting my father to do one single thing he didn’t want to do.’

‘Exactly.’

‘She was so pathetic,’ Mark said, ‘sitting there with her coffee. I mean she’s a successful woman, she’s a good-looking, capable woman, she kept that man making money for them al , al these years, and now the whole house of cards has just fal en in, and he even made sure she didn’t get the piano. How can you not feel sorry for her?’

Miriam was stacking plates in the dishwasher.

‘Nobody’s asking you not to. I’m certainly not.’

‘I told her to sel the house and get a job. Any job. Not necessarily anything to do with what she did before.’

‘Wel ,’ Miriam said, straightening up, ‘that seems sensible. Not hearts and flowers, just sensible.’ Then she looked at him directly. ‘And I don’t see why you shouldn’t help her, if anything comes your way with a job, I mean.’

‘Real y?’

‘This is the modern world,’ Miriam said. ‘We do things differently now.’ She leaned across and gave him a quick kiss. ‘No disrespect to your father. Of course.’

Since that dinner, there’d been no word from Chrissie Kelsey. By making discreet enquiries, Mark learned that the house in Highgate was on the market, but that the proceeds which would remain after the mortgage was paid off would probably not be sufficient to buy anything else of any size, and that Chrissie was looking at flats to rent. She had not, as far as he could gather, found any work, and he conjectured that she must be living on whatever meagre bits and pieces of income and royalties remained from Richie’s career, supplemented by credit. Mark did not like credit. In that, he was completely at one with his father.

He supposed that Chrissie’s plight had caught his attention – as, to a lesser degree, it had caught Miriam’s – because it was such a peculiarly modern dilemma. A working woman, a professional y working woman of over two decades’ worth of experience, was the victim of a law that stil required people to be married if the maximum amount of tax exemption was to be granted to them. As a lawyer, he saw the anomaly. As a man, he felt it keenly. It was no good talking darkly, as his mother and aunts now did, about Chrissie as some sort of sexual predator who had snatched Richie from a happy and satisfying marriage in the North, causing grief al round and gratification to no one but herself. Richie had been a middle-aged man, not an impressionable boy, and was, therefore, in Mark’s view, even more responsible than the girl he’d left his wife for. And that girl had, up to a point, achieved a large measure of what she’d promised him. He’d sung on national television, he’d sung at the London Pal adium, he’d sung in front of (minor) royalty. But he’d held back somewhere. He’d elected to come south, to set up house with her, to father babies by her, but he’d never quite completed the journey, he’d never stopped occasional y looking back over his shoulder. And because of that reluctance to commit ful y, because of his always keeping the chink of an option open, Chrissie now found herself more helpless than she had probably ever been, even as a teenager, and strangely, given her experience, unqualified to find a place any longer in the only world she knew.

‘You can’t be her knight in shining armour,’ Miriam said. ‘And you mustn’t patronize her. You’l just have to wait.’ She’d turned her wedding ring round on her finger. ‘Maybe one good thing to come out of al this is my not taking you so much for granted.’

In a roundabout way, it was his father who moved things forward. Apart from Andrew Carnegie’s dictum, the other saying dear to his father’s heart was ‘Fortune favours the prepared mind.’ Francis prided himself on having a mind open to al and any opportunity, and never to have missed a chance of being the son his father would have been proud of, the son who had been instrumental in taking the firm from its solid but smal beginnings to its present size. He also never missed a chance of impressing on Mark the need to have an alert mind, a mind primed and open, and because, just now, Mark’s mind was frequently preoccupied with Chrissie’s situation, and the numbers of modern women who must find themselves in a similar difficulty, it seemed quite easy to come, suddenly, to an idea for a solution, while exchanging his customary few words with the receptionist on his way into work.

‘Good morning, Teresa.’

She flashed him her automatic smile.

‘Morning, Mr Mark.’

‘Everything al right, Teresa?’

She gave a little shrug.

‘As it wil ever be, Mr Mark. You know how it is.’

Mark waited a moment, standing quite stil , his laptop case in his hand.

‘How is it?’

Teresa had pushed her spectacles up on her severely coiffed dark head. She moved them down, now, on to her nose, and gave a little whinny of laughter.

‘You don’t want to bother with my troubles, Mr Mark—’

Mark put his case down.

‘I do. What’s the matter?’

Teresa sighed. Then she looked directly at Mark through her uncompromising modern spectacles and said, ‘It’s my partner. He’s bought a business in Canada.’

‘Canada?’

‘Edmonton,’ Teresa said. She looked down at her desk. ‘He wants us to go and live in Edmonton. Edmonton. I ask you.’

The kitchen table was almost covered with bottles and jars and ripped-open packets. Chrissie, wearing a plastic apron patterned with huge and improbably shiny fruit over her clothes, was methodical y emptying the enormous fridge-freezer that Richie had persuaded her into buying, only eight months ago, because he said that the girls would be so thril ed to have a dispenser in the door of a fridge that would, at the touch of a button, produce ice cubes, crushed ice or chil ed water.

At this moment, the fridge-freezer represented a bitter condensation of everything that Chrissie feared about the present and resented about the past. Monumental and gleaming, disgorging an apparently endless amount of parteaten things, extravagantly inessential things, outdated things and plain rubbish – how did a packet of strawberry-flavoured jel y shoelaces ever get in there? – the fridge seemed to Chrissie nothing but a stern reproach for years of rampant fol y, which in retrospect looked both repel ent and inexcusable. The jars of American-imported dil pickles, of French artisan mayonnaise, of Swiss jam made from organical y grown black cherries, made her feel like weeping with rage and regret. Especial y as Richie, who never drank chil ed water and disliked ice in his whisky, would have ignored everything in the fridge except basics like milk and butter.

She looked, with a kind of disgusted despair, at the outdated jar of black-truffle sauce in her hand. What had she been doing? Richie and the girls only ever ate ketchup. Who had it al been for?

‘Yikes,’ Amy said.

She stood in the kitchen doorway, an untidy sheaf of notes on A4 paper held against her with one arm, a mug in her other hand.

Chrissie put the jar down with a bang, beside a box of eggs and a smal irregular lump of something in a tired plastic wrapper.

‘We are eating everything I can salvage out of this, everything, before I buy one more slice of bread.’

Amy advanced to the table and surveyed everything on it. She put her mug down in the chaos and picked up the lump.

‘What’s this?’

‘Cheese?’

Amy gave a tentative squeeze.

‘Too squashy.’

‘Old cheese,’ Chrissie said.

Amy raised her arm and threw the lump in the direction of the bin.

‘Chuck.’

‘Don’t chuck anything,’ Chrissie said, ‘without showing me first.’

Amy glanced back at the table.

‘This is gross—’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘I agree. It is gross. The possession of it, especial y in current circumstances, is gross. But we are not wasting it. We can’t.’

‘Maybe,’ Amy said unwisely, ‘when I get back, it’l al be gone.’

There was an abrupt and eloquent silence. Chrissie stood by the fridge, staring inside. Amy went across the kitchen, with as much insouciance as she could manage, and switched the kettle on.

Chrissie said, ‘Did you check it had water in it?’

Amy sighed. She switched the kettle off, put her papers down, carried the kettle to the sink, fil ed it, brought it back and switched it on again. Then she said, ‘It’s no good pretending I’m not going.’

Chrissie put a sliding pile of opened packets of delicatessen meats on the table.

‘No danger of that.’

Amy waited. She looked down at her notes. Spanish quotations, her favourites underlined in red. Revision was hateful, but Spanish was, al the same, a satisfactory language to declaim out loud.

‘She rang me,’ Chrissie said.

Amy went back to the table to find her mug.

‘Tea?’

‘Did you hear me?’

‘Yes. Tea?’

‘No, thank you,’ Chrissie said. ‘She rang me to tel me that I wasn’t to worry about your staying improperly in her son’s flat, because you won’t be, you’l be staying with her.’

Amy got a box of tea bags out of the cupboard.

‘She’s cal ed Margaret. He’s cal ed Scott.’

Chrissie was silent.

‘It’s nothing to do with her,’ Amy said.

‘She thinks it is.’

‘Wel ,’ Amy said, pouring boiling water into her mug, ‘don’t worry, anyway. I’l do what suits me.’

‘You may wel not have a choice. Just as I don’t seem to have.’

Amy carried her mug down the kitchen to the sink. She said, staring out into the neglected garden, ‘I’m not going for them, Mum. I told you. I’m going to see where Dad grew up, I’m going to see where half of me comes from.’

‘I know, Amy, I know it’s what you think wil —’

‘I don’t want to discuss it!’ Amy shouted. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more! I’ve got an exam tomorrow, and one on Thursday, and then I’m free and I’m going to Newcastle, and nothing is going to change that!’

Chrissie folded her arms and stared at the ceiling.

‘Just be grateful,’ Amy said, angrily but less loudly, ‘just be thankful I’m not partying after, like everyone I know. Partying and talking to anyone and everyone.’

‘Talking? What’s wrong with that?’

‘Oh my God,’ Amy said witheringly. ‘Oh please. D’you real y think that party means party and talk means talk?’

Chrissie transferred her gaze to Amy’s face.

‘What does it mean then?’

Amy walked past her, carrying her mug of tea. In the doorway, she paused and said, with emphasis, ‘Kissing.’

Chrissie gave a little jump. Amy said dangerously, ‘So I’l be better off in Newcastle, don’t you think?’ and then the telephone rang. Amy waited, holding her quotations and her tea.

‘Hel o?’ Chrissie said and then, with a smile of sudden relief, ‘Mr Leverton. Mark. How—’

She paused, and then she turned her back on Amy as if the cal was private, and walked slowly down the kitchen, away from her.

Amy watched. Mr Leverton only ever meant bad news, surprises of an unexpected and upsetting kind. Why was Chrissie’s voice so warm, speaking to him, her body language so weirdly relieved, holding the phone as if it was a lifeline?

‘Oh,’ Chrissie said, her voice startled, but not displeased. ‘Oh. Wel , it’s real y kind—’

She stopped. Then, with her free hand, she untied the tapes of the plastic apron and pul ed it off over her head.

‘Of course I wil . Yes, I’l talk to them. I’l think—’

She dropped the apron over the nearest chair back.

‘I don’t want,’ she said, ‘you to think I’m ungrateful. I’m not. I’m real y grateful. It’s very kind—’

She stopped again and pul ed the band off her hair and shook it free.

‘Thank you,’ Chrissie said. ‘Thank you very much. Yes, I’l think about it. I’l get back to you. Thank you.’

She took the phone away from her ear and stood there, her back to Amy, staring down the kitchen.

Amy took a hot swal ow of tea, and coughed.

‘ What?’ Amy said.

Robbie had built Tamsin a clothes cupboard precisely to her specifications. It fil ed in the space between the chimney breast (defunct) in his bedroom and the outside wal of the building, and it was fitted with sliding shelves, hanging rails and ingenious shoe trees which occupied the floor space like a row of regimented lol ipops. Robbie, who preferred dark colours and matt surfaces, would have liked to paint it in a colour that blended with the brown-leather headboard of which he was so proud, but Tamsin wanted something more feminine, just as she wanted new fabrics which would ameliorate, rather than accentuate, the brown-leather headboard. The new clothes cupboard had, accordingly, been painted a pale peppermint green, and the door handles were smal glass globes patterned with raised green spots. On the bed, spread out, was a set of new curtains in white, with a delicate floral design in pink and cream with green leaves.

Tamsin said she was thril ed with the cupboard. She was standing in front of it, a hand holding either open door, admiring the automatic light, the pristine interior, the long mirror Robbie had fixed inside the right-hand door. He waited for a moment, watching her reaction, al owing himself to revel in having both satisfied himself and her, and then he moved behind her, put his arms around her waist, and tucked his chin into the angle of her neck.

‘No excuses now,’ Robbie said.

Tamsin stiffened, very slightly. She had been planning, in a sudden, abstract kind of way, where she might put her handbags.

‘What?’

‘You’ve got your cupboard,’ Robbie said. ‘You can move your stuff in. No reason not to.’

Tamsin put one hand up against his face, and then took it away again.

‘I love my cupboard.’

‘Good.’

‘It’s a real Sex and the City closet.’

‘Good.’

Tamsin put her hands on Robbie’s linked arms and freed herself.

‘I am going to—’

Robbie caught her arm.

‘When?’

‘Soon.’

Robbie let go of her, and sat on the edge of the bed.

‘Tam, you’ve said that for months. Months. Now your house is on the market, you’ve got your cupboard, you’re redesigning my life. What are you waiting for?’

Tamsin turned round. She looked out of the window, and then back at Robbie. She said, ‘Mum’s been offered a job.’

‘Great!’

Tamsin began to pul her hair tighter into its ponytail.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What don’t you know?’

‘It’s not a very good job—’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a receptionist.’

Robbie waited a moment. He tried not to be distracted by the implications of having her standing there, in his bedroom, in front of the cupboard he had designed and made for her.

He said, ‘But you’re a receptionist.’

‘Yes,’ Tamsin said.

‘But—’

‘What would Dad think?’ Tamsin said. ‘What would Dad think to have Mum working for less than she’s worth, as a receptionist?’

Robbie thought. His memory of Richie was of a genial, hospitable man who lived for his girls and his particular kind of music. His mother had been a fan of Richie Rossiter, and that had meant he was pretty daunted when he first went round to meet him. But in the flesh, Richie wasn’t daunting. Richie was easy, unaffected and friendly. He was, if Robbie had to admit it, one of the least snobbish people Robbie had ever met, and a great deal less snobbish than his own parents, who stil took an embarrassing pride in the fact that he went to work in a suit.

‘It’s a chain-store suit,’ he’d say to his mother. ‘It’s not exactly Savile Row.’

‘I think,’ he said now to Tamsin, ‘that he wouldn’t give a toss.’

Tamsin folded her arms. Then she unfolded them and smoothed down her immaculate cotton sweater.

‘What?’ Robbie said.

Tamsin shook her head mutely.

‘It may not be worth much,’ Robbie said, ‘but with you here, and Dil y working, it’s better money than nothing. Isn’t it?’

‘Maybe,’ Tamsin said.

‘Don’t you want her to work?’

‘Yes—’

‘Tamsin?’

‘What—’

‘Don’t you want her to do what you do?’

‘It upsets things,’ Tamsin said. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

Robbie reached out and took her nearest hand. He adopted the tone his father used when his mother was being unreasonable, an affectionate but slightly teasing tone.

‘Hey, Tam, you’re the practical one, you’re the one trying to move things on—’

She didn’t look at him.

‘Only in the right way.’

‘Which is?’

‘Something managerial. Like she’s always had. I mean, this isn’t exactly aspirational, is it? She says it’s al she can get right now, and any job is to be welcomed at the moment, but I think she should go on looking. I mean, is she taking this just because Mr Leverton’s been kind to her?’

Robbie stood up. He took her other hand as wel .

‘What do your sisters think?’

Tamsin gave a little snort.

‘What suits them, of course.’

Robbie waited a moment, then he dropped Tamsin’s hands and put his arms around her once more. He rested his cheek against the side of her head, and his gaze on the peppermint-green cupboard, mental y fil ing it with Tamsin’s clothes.

‘Why don’t you,’ he said softly, ‘just let them get on with it then, and come and live with me?’

Nobody had asked her about her exam. Nobody in the family spoke Spanish, she knew that, nobody in the family probably knew or cared who Lorca was, or Galdós, or Alas. When she had come back from school, in that wired, exhausted, strung-up and wrung-out state that three hours’

relentless concentrating and striving causes, there’d been no one at home because Tamsin had gone straight to Robbie’s from work, and Chrissie and Dil y weren’t back from looking at this flat.

Nobody, either, had asked Amy if she wanted to look at the flat. She didn’t, much – it was a necessary evil, she supposed, but one that could be postponed – but she would have liked to have been invited, she would have liked Chrissie to have said, ‘Oh, we can easily put off going until you have finished the exams and can come with us.’ But she hadn’t. Instead, she had asked Dil y when her next free afternoon from col ege was, and had made an appointment to view accordingly, and Amy had thought, in a far-off but significant part of her mind, that a three o’clock appointment would mean that they intended to be back before she was, so that there’d be a welcome, and a commiseration or a congratulation, depending on how the exam had gone.

But there was no one. The house was empty and silent. There were no messages on the answering machine, and no contacts on Facebook that merited any attention at al . As she was ravenously hungry, Amy made too many pieces of toast, and ate them too fast, and drank an outdated bottle of 7 Up, which Chrissie said had to be consumed before she bought one other drop of any liquid but milk, and then she felt terrible and slightly sick, and dizzy with the extremes of the day, and lay across the kitchen table in a sprawl, her face against the fruit bowl.

Nobody seemed in the least surprised to find her like that when they final y came in. Chrissie and Dil y were peculiarly elated by the flat – Dil y had loved it, had seen possibilities of living in a different way entirely – and had breezed past Amy, chattering – ‘Oh poor babe, was it grim, never mind, only one more to go!’ – and Tamsin had come in later, looking elaborately preoccupied, and had indicated to Amy that she was extremely fortunate only to be faced by something as transitory and trivial as public examinations.

There was nothing for it, Amy decided, but her bedroom. Her flute case lay on her bed, where she had left it, but there was no urge in her to open it. There was no urge, either, to look at her laptop, or her Duffy poster, or the photograph of her father as a baby. There was no urge, oddly enough, to cry.

Amy bent and lifted her flute case to the floor. Then she lay down on her bed, and kicked her feet out until her shoes fel off on to the carpet. She stared upwards at the sloping ceiling, and instructed herself not to think about her mother, her sisters or her father.

‘The future,’ she said aloud. She raised her arms and twisted her fingers together. ‘Think about the future.’ She stopped, and held her breath for a moment.

‘Newcastle,’ Amy said quietly to her bedroom. ‘Newcastle!’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Scott was on the platform almost thirty minutes before Amy’s train was due in. He had decided that he would make no move to kiss her on greeting, unless she instigated it, but al the same he had shaved, and brushed his teeth scrupulously, and buffed up the bathroom with the towel he had used after showering, and general y reassured himself that there was nothing about the flat or his person that could in any way disconcert her.

At the station, he bought himself a newspaper and a bottle of water, both being entirely neutral things to occupy and accessorize himself with, and then he paced up and down the length of the platform until the London train came in suddenly, taking him by surprise, and he had to run down the length of the train to get to the standard-class section before Amy got out and had even a second to feel bewildered.

At first, he couldn’t see her. There was the usual mil ing mass of people and bags and buggies and children, and in it no sign of Amy, and he was beginning to panic instead of searching, to ask himself what on earth he would do if she had funked it at the last minute, had got to the station and felt a wave of instinctive loyalty to and anxiety about her mother, and had simply turned and bolted back down the underground, when he saw her, standing quite stil and looking about her in a way that made him ashamed he had doubted her.

She was tal er than he’d remembered. She was wearing jeans and a hooded top over a T-shirt and her hair, which he’d last seen down her back, was twisted up behind her head with a cotton scarf. She had a rucksack hanging off one shoulder, and she was holding a pair of sunglasses, the earpiece of one side in her mouth, and she was standing close to the train, close to the door she’d just come out of, and was surveying the curve of the platform from side to side, looking for him, but not with any anxiety. And when she saw him, she took the sunglasses out of her mouth, and waved them, and smiled, and Scott felt an abrupt rush of pleasure and relief and shyness that almost stopped him in his tracks.

‘Hel o,’ Amy said. She was stil smiling.

‘You made it—’

She didn’t put out a hand or offer to kiss him. But she was definitely smiling.

‘Course I did.’

‘I wondered—’

‘If I’d chicken?’

‘Wel , it’s a long way—’

‘No, it’s not. I said I’d come, didn’t I?’

‘You did.’ He felt he was staring.

She gestured with her sunglasses.

‘Great station.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re very proud of it.’

She stepped closer.

‘I’m here,’ she said.

‘Yes—’

‘I’m actual y here!’

He relaxed suddenly. He put his hands out and took her shoulders.

‘You are. And you did your exams. They’re over.’

She looked right at him.

‘Thanks to you, big brother—’

Then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek fleetingly. He squeezed her shoulders and let go.

‘You’re not official y here til Sunday—’

‘OK.’ She was grinning.

‘You arrive Sunday morning. Can you remember that?’

‘Yup.’

‘Wel ,’ he said, taking her rucksack, ‘what now? Want a coffee?’

She took his arm, the one not holding her rucksack.

‘Actual y,’ Amy said, ‘just the bathroom. And mind my flute. I’ve got my flute in there.’

Almost the only person who’d ever slept in the guest bedroom in Percy Gardens was Scott. When she first moved in, Margaret had entertained an undefined but pleasurable idea that there would be occasional guests to enjoy the sea view from the top floor, to appreciate the carpeted en-suite bathroom with its solid heated towel rail, and the tiny room next door with its writing desk and al Scott’s teenage books arranged alphabetical y on cream-painted shelves. Quite who these mythical guests would be was never quite clear to her, and after she had decorated it, and hung linen-union interlined curtains at the windows, it struck her that the room would probably only ever be occupied – and infrequently at that – by Scott, who would have no taste for single beds with padded headboards, and good-quality cel ular blankets and a kettle on a tray for early-morning tea. He put up with it, however, even if he left the bedclothes kicked out at the end on account of his height, and used towels on the floor, and the curtains undrawn. When he was staying, she could hear him moving about from her bedroom directly below, and she would think of the absolute contrast her guest bedroom provided with his own room in the Clavering Building, which just had a black iron bed in a room of exposed brickwork with a slate floor and a metal-framed window and steel girders across the ceiling. There weren’t even, Margaret remembered, any curtains.

Her guestroom, she thought now, might be an unlikely setting for her son, but it certainly wasn’t any more suitable for a teenage girl. Amy would be used to modern settings, to fresh, young surroundings, to colours and contemporary lighting and a shower. She could do her best, of course, she could put out pale towels and new soap and remove the heavy fringed bedspread from the bed she intended Amy to sleep in, but nothing could make the room look appropriate to a girl of eighteen. A modern girl of eighteen, that is. When Margaret was eighteen, she had shared a bed and a bedroom with her sister and their clothes had been hung on a row of pegs on the wal . She didn’t have a wardrobe til she got married, never mind a carpet. She glanced down at Dawson, who had climbed with surprising nimbleness up to the top floor, and was now surveying the room in an assessing kind of way.

‘She might be al ergic to cats,’ Margaret said. ‘If you make her sneeze, you’l have to be shut in the kitchen.’

Dawson moved slowly across the carpet and sprang on to the bed Margaret had just made up. He sniffed the pil ows. Then he turned and trampled round in a circle for a while and lowered himself into a comfortable heap of cat in the middle of the paisley quilt, closing his eyes and flattening his ears in anticipation of Margaret’s tel ing him that he was to get up and get off that bed at once.

She didn’t. She went across the room and fiddled with some china ornaments on top of the chest of drawers, and then she opened the wardrobe and looked at the padded hangers inside and then she went to the window and looked out at the early-summer sea, which was blue-grey under a grey-blue sky. Dawson opened his eyes cautiously and al owed his ears to rise discreetly again.

‘D’you know,’ Margaret said, and stopped.

She picked up the wooden acorn attached to the window blind, and examined it.

‘D’you know,’ Margaret said again, her back stil to Dawson, ‘I am real y very nervous.’

Scott opened the door of his flat and stood back so that Amy could see right down the room.

She gazed for a while in silence, and then she took a step inside and said softly, ‘Oh wow.’

Scott fol owed her and shut the door. He slid her rucksack off his shoulder and lowered it gently to the floor.

‘This is amazing,’ Amy said.

She began to walk down the length of the room very deliberately, step after step, silent in her canvas basebal boots. Scott stayed where he was, and watched her. She was looking from side to side, at the kitchen area, at the black sofa, at the bare bricks of the wal s, at Scott’s col ection of reproduction Cartier-Bresson photographs. When she got to the piano, she stopped and put her hands on it lightly.

‘This looks so cool here.’

Scott swal owed.

‘D’you real y think so?’

Amy nodded.

‘It used to stand on a carpet. Dad hated it being on a carpet, but Mum said it had to, to insulate the noise, because of the neighbours. It looks much better on a floor.’

Scott began to move towards her.

‘D’you like my view?’

Amy glanced up.

‘Oh my God—’

‘D’you remember asking me about the Tyne Bridge? That’s the Tyne Bridge.’

Amy raised an arm and pointed.

‘And what’s that? The silver thing.’

‘It’s the Sage,’ Scott said.

‘The Sage—’

‘Two concert hal s, a music education centre, a children’s concert hal , the home of the Northern Sinfonia. Peggy Seeger came last year.’

Amy said, ‘It’s like being abroad, it’s so different—’

‘Yes.’

She looked down at the piano.

‘I suppose—’

‘What?’

‘I suppose this has sort of come home?’

‘Except that it was probably made in America.’

She shot him a quick smile.

‘You don’t want me to get sentimental—’

‘No, I don’t.’

She looked back along the flat.

‘This is so great.’

‘I like it,’ Scott said. ‘My mother doesn’t get it. Can’t get it. She thinks it’s barbaric to live in a place like this.’

‘Let’s – not talk about mothers.’

‘Fine.’

‘While I’m here,’ Amy said, ‘I don’t want to wonder if I shouldn’t be here.’

‘I shan’t remind you.’

‘Where’m I sleeping?’

Scott moved behind the piano and opened his bedroom door.

‘Here.’

Amy took in the sparseness, and the size of the window, and the Yamaha keyboard at the end of the bed.

She said, ‘ Wicked—’

‘I’m sleeping on the sofa.’

‘D’you – d’you mind?’

‘I like the sofa. I’ve often slept, unintentional y if you get me, on the sofa.’

Amy sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned backwards, spreading her hands out on the new bedlinen, stil marked by the sharp creases of its packaging.

‘What are we going to do?’

Scott leaned against the door jamb. He folded his arms. He had a sudden, exhilarating sense of freedom, a sense that the next few days were not, actual y, going to be crippled by either the distant past or the recent past, that Amy had come north not so much for family reasons as for reasons of her own, which in turn, and wonderful y, liberated him.

‘Wel , he said, ‘when I’ve shown you around a bit, I’m going to take you to a folk club.’

Amy sat up.

‘A folk club?’

‘You’re in Newcastle. You’re in the birthplace of the living tradition. I’m taking you to hear a girl who plays jazz, who plays folk. On her flute.’

‘Oh!’ Amy said, and then, again, ‘ Wow.’

‘Mr Harrison cal ed,’ Glenda said. She did not say that Mr Harrison’s secretary had cal ed, wanting to speak to Margaret, and when Margaret didn’t ring back Mr Harrison had rung himself, as if his presence on the other end of a telephone line might conjure Margaret up by its very power.

‘Oh yes,’ Margaret said.

‘Would you like to know why?’

‘Not particularly,’ Margaret said.

Glenda went on typing. There was a difference, in her view, between being rather admirably strong-minded and resistant to cajolery and, on the other hand, taking that resistance so far that you looked like a sulky adolescent. She had learned, too, that if she ignored both Margaret and Barry –

two very different personalities who shared a singular capacity for pig-headedness – they would capitulate to being ignored long before she gave in out of pity. She kept an eye on Margaret, using her peripheral vision, but continued to look steadily and straight ahead at her screen.

‘I can’t concentrate today,’ Margaret said abruptly.

Glenda let a beat fal , and then she said, ‘It’s that girl coming.’

‘I haven’t had anyone of eighteen in the house since Scott was that age. Twenty years or more. What do they eat, for heaven’s sake?’

‘What you give them,’ Glenda said.

‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, ‘it’l be Sunday lunch at the Grand Hotel. I’ve fixed that, with Scott. I told him, Sunday lunch and don’t you wear trainers.’

‘I’ve never been to the Grand Hotel—’

‘Haven’t you, dear? I’l take you on your fiftieth.’

‘I had my fiftieth four years ago.’

‘Sixtieth, then.’

‘I may be dead by then—’

Margaret looked up.

‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

‘She’s a lucky girl,’ Glenda said, ‘sleeping in your guestroom, having lunch at the Grand Hotel.’

‘ She’s Richie’s daughter — ’

‘She can’t help that.’

‘Glenda,’ Margaret said, ‘what did Bernie Harrison want?’

Without hurry, Glenda sifted through the papers on her desk to find the note she had made of his message.

‘He said he has two people he’d like you to hear, just for your opinion, one a singer, one a pianist, and he would like to invite you for dinner or cocktails or cocktails and dinner and he’s given you a choice of five dates.’

‘ Five?’

‘He said you couldn’t go to the dentist on five occasions and get away with it.’

‘I don’t see my dentist in the evenings—’

Glenda held out the note.

‘If we spoke like that, trying to be funny, to our mam, she’d say, “Get along with you, Mrs Teapot,” and I never understood why.’

Margaret took the note.

‘He doesn’t give up, does he?’

‘No.’

‘On and on and on—’

‘He means it.’

‘Glenda,’ Margaret said, ‘I have nothing to offer him.’

Glenda gave a smal snort.

Margaret said, ‘Nothing new.’

‘New isn’t what he’s after.’

‘But I need it. I’m in a rut—’

Glenda said, ‘Don’t start that again.’

‘I’l ring him tomorrow.’

‘I said you’d cal by close of business today.’

‘And what, precisely, do you suggest that I say?’

Glenda typed a few more words. Then she said, without turning to look at Margaret, ‘Why don’t you ask him to lunch, too? At the Grand Hotel.

Wouldn’t it be easier, four of you, rather than just the three, with you fussing about Scott’s footwear?’

* * *

They drove to the folk club in a taxi. Amy had assumed that Scott would have a car, but he said that there was no need for one, living in the city as he did, and the way he said it made her wonder if he could drive, and for the first time since she had arrived in Newcastle she felt shy, too shy to ask him something so personal. It was, in a way, like asking someone if they could read, especial y a man, so she said nothing and climbed into the taxi with him, quel ing an instinct to remark that they never used taxis at home, that either Chrissie or her sisters drove – she hated being driven by Dil y

– or they used public transport.

‘We’re going over the river,’ Scott said, ‘we’re going south. We’re heading for Washington.’

Amy looked out of the taxi window. Newcastle looked to her as it had looked al afternoon, dramatical y foreign. She hadn’t expected the hil s, or the grandeur of the architecture, or the size of the river, or the romance of al those bridges. Nor had she expected the energy, or the numbers of people on the streets of her own age. She felt she had been plucked out of the familiar and set down again in an extraordinary and fantastical version of the familiar – it was stil England, after al , and a remarkable kind of English was stil spoken – which was giving her a powerful and energizing feeling of discovery. Scott had walked her al through the centre that afternoon, up and down those steep, almost theatrical streets, past churches and St Mary’s Cathedral, through Charlotte Square and Black Friars, round the Castle Keep and the Moot Hal , past Bessie Surtees House, with its innumerable medieval windows, and Earl Grey, with a lightning conductor inserted up his spine, poised on his column a hundred and thirty-five feet above the kids lounging and smoking on the sandstone steps below him. She felt dazed and thril ingly very far from home, and she was grateful to Scott for not talking to her, for just sitting beside her in the taxi and saying whatever he did say to the driver, while she looked at the river, and the sky, and then they were on a huge road heading south and she felt as she used to feel when she was a child in the back of the car, like a human parcel that had no power to do anything other than be carried somewhere and put down, at someone else’s whim, precisely where she was taken and told.

The taxi pul ed up outside a large modern building set in an asphalt car park. Amy had been expecting, at the least, a cel ar.

‘It’s here?’

‘Every Friday,’ Scott said. He paid the driver with the lack of performance Amy remembered from her father. Why did men make so much less of handing over money, somehow, than women did? ‘Home of the Keel Row Folk Club. It’s an arts centre. Al the folk stars come here on their tours.’

Inside, it reminded Amy of nothing so much as school. There were green wal s and noticeboards and lines of upright chairs outside closed doors.

Scott put a hand under her elbow and guided her out of the entrance hal into a barn-like room ful of tables and chairs and noise, with a smal dais at one end in front of a row of microphones on stands.

Amy looked round the room. ‘I’m the youngest person here!’

‘Yes,’ Scott said, ‘but look how many of them there are. Just look. They come every Friday.’

‘They’re older than you—’

‘They know their music,’ Scott said, ‘just you wait. Just you wait til it gets going.’

‘OK. I’l believe you.’

He smiled at her.

‘Believe me.’

He threaded his way between the tables and indicated that Amy should take a chair next to an ample woman in a patchwork waistcoat with long grey hair down her back, held off her face with Chinese combs.

The woman smiled at Amy. ‘Hel o, dear.’

She didn’t sound Newcastle to Amy. She indicated the bottle of red wine in front of her and her companions.

‘Drink, dear?’

Amy shook her head. ‘I’m OK. Thank you.’

The woman glanced at Scott.

‘Friday night with the boyfriend—’

‘Actual y,’ Amy said, her voice sounding strangely distant to her, ‘he’s my brother.’

‘Oh yes,’ the woman said, laughing, ‘oh yes. And would your brother like a drink?’

Scott said, ‘I’l get myself a beer, thanks. And this one drinks Diet Coke.’

‘No vodka?’

Scott leaned forward. He said, smilingly, ‘She hasn’t come for that. She’s come for the same reason you’ve come. She’s come for the music.’

The woman turned and looked straight at Amy, holding out her hand.

‘Sorry, dear.’

Amy took her hand. It was big and warm and supple.

‘It’s OK.’

‘D’you play?’

‘The flute,’ Amy said.

‘The flute? The flute. The art of playing the flute is to make it sound like the human voice—’

‘She knows that,’ Scott said.

The woman let go of Amy’s hand. Amy turned to look grateful y at Scott. He said, across her, to the woman, his voice stil level and friendly, ‘We shared a very musical father.’

There was a pause. Then the woman picked up her wine glass and held it up towards them.

‘I think I’l just stop and start again. Good luck to you both.’ She took a swal ow. ‘Enjoy.’ Then she turned back to the man on her left.

Scott looked at Amy.

‘I’l get you that Coke.’

When he had gone, Amy glanced sideways. Beyond the woman in the patchwork waistcoat was a thin man with a goatee beard, and another couple, the woman with her hair in braids threaded with coloured yarns. They were al laughing. Beyond them, at the next table, most people were laughing too, and when she looked round, from table to table across the room, the laughter seemed to be echoed. Amy thought, with amazement, that she had never seen such strange people, nor had she ever seen people having such easy fun. She touched the woman in the patchwork waistcoat nervously on one arm. The woman turned.

‘I didn’t,’ Amy said, ‘I didn’t mean to be stand-offish—’

The woman smiled broadly. The man with the goatee beard leaned across her and said, in the same accent as Scott’s, ‘She needs keeping in her place, believe me!’

‘You weren’t,’ the woman said. ‘You were just finding your feet.’ She nodded towards the stage. ‘Just wait til the music starts.’

‘Glad to be here,’ the guitarist said.

He stood on stage in a halo of red and green lights, a lanky man in black, his hair tied back with a bandanna.

‘Always glad to be here. Radio 2’s Folk Club of the Year – when was it? Can’t remember. Anyone here old enough to remember? Forget it.

Today’s my birthday. It’s also my guitar’s birthday. It’s everyone’s birthday. It’s even our resident shanty man’s birthday and he’s planning to sing a song about a strike with al the bairns dying, just to cheer you al up. But before that I’m going to play you something. When the lads are ready, that is. Wil you wait while Malc puts more gaffer tape on his accordion? Now, I wrote this tune on the ferry from Mul . Such a beautiful journey. I was on deck, the boys were in the bar. I wrote it for a friend’s wedding and if it makes you want to dance I suggest you keep it to yourselves. Ready now?

Ready, boys? Two, three—’

And then it began. Amy had been to concerts and gigs al her life, to Wembley and Brixton Academy and the Wigmore Hal , to jam sessions in pubs and people’s back bedrooms, to theatres and hotel bal rooms to hear her father perform in his polished, relaxed, almost casual way. She had heard music of every kind, she had heard it in the company of her family, her friends and alone in her bedroom, picking over melodies as her father had urged her to do until, he said, the flute could say something for her in a better way than she could say it in words. But for al that, sitting here in an institutional arts centre surrounded by people older than her own mother, people of tastes and habits that had never, ever occurred to her before, she felt a sense of something enormous flooding through her: not exactly excitement or an exhilaration, but more a sense of relief, of recognition, of comprehension, a sense of coming home to something that she had never been able to acknowledge before as there.

The group with the guitarist played a forty-minute set. Several times, the guitarist slung his guitar sideways, and leaned into the microphone and sang. Then they left the stage and the shanty man appeared, holding a harmonica.

‘It’s one hundred and thirty-three years since Joe Wilson died. I’m going to sing one of his songs, in his memory. And then I’l give you Tommy Armstrong’s “Durham Jail” because my father was a miner, though he never was nicked for stealing a pair of stockings, as Tommy was.’

Scott leaned towards Amy.

‘OK?’

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the stage.

‘Next act,’ Scott whispered. ‘Wait for the next act—’

‘“Oh, lass, don’t clash the door so,”’ the shanty man sang.

‘“You’re young and as thoughtless as can be.

‘“But your mother’s turning old

‘“And you know she’s very bad

‘“And she doesn’t like to hear you clash the door.”’

Scott watched Amy covertly. He’d thought she might be intrigued, might quite like it, might be curious to hear the music Richie had grown up with, the music of the mines and the ships, but he had not thought that she would love it, that she would sit enthral ed while a little old man with a mouth organ sang a comic song from a nineteenth-century music hal , a lament from an oakum-picking prisoner in Durham Jail. She looked, in that cheerful, warm-hearted, unambitious room, as out of place as if she had fal en from another planet, but she was as absorbed as any of them, and when the shanty man had finished, and gone hobbling off the stage, to be replaced by a second group, two fiddlers, an accordionist and a slender girl carrying a flute, he thought she was hardly breathing.

The girl stepped up to the microphone. She was perhaps in her mid-twenties, with hair as long and dark as Amy’s own, dressed in deep green, to the floor, and wearing no jewel ery except for long glimmering silver chains in her ears.

‘Good evening,’ she said softly. Her accent was Scottish. ‘We’re so happy to be back. This is the twenty-ninth gig of our epic tour round England, Wales and Scotland. But we love coming here. We love coming back to the UK’s home for music and musical discovery.’

She paused for the cheering, standing quiet and stil and smiling. Then she bent towards the microphone again.

‘Sometimes, as you may remember, I want to jazz things up a little, give them a bluesy twist. But not tonight. Tonight, you get it sweet and straight, played the way it was written.’ She raised her flute and inclined her head to meet it.

‘Ladies and gentleman. Brothers and sisters. “The Rose Of Al andale”.’

They bought burgers on their way home, and carried the hot polystyrene boxes in the lift up to Scott’s flat. The flat was dim, lit only by the summertime night glow from the city coming through the huge window, and Scott didn’t switch any lights on, just let Amy walk in, and drop her bag on the floor randomly, just the way he dropped his work bag, and wander down the room, running her hand over the piano as she passed it, to stand, as he so often did, and stare out at the lights and the shining dark river far below and the great gleaming bulk of the Sage on the further shore.

She’d hardly spoken on the way home. He’d rung for a taxi while she was buying the CDs of the groups they’d heard, and she’d climbed in beside him in a silence he was perfectly happy to accommodate. In fact, he respected it, was gratified by it, and when, as they were crossing the river, almost home, and Scott had asked the driver to drop them off so that they could pick up something to eat, she had said suddenly, ‘Oh, I want to be her!’, he had had to restrain himself from putting his arms round in her in a heartfelt gesture of understanding and pleasure. Instead, with an effort, he’d asked her if she wanted a burger or a kebab, and when she didn’t answer, when it became plain that she had hardly heard him, he almost laughed out loud.

‘D’you want to eat standing there?’

She turned, very slowly.

‘Where – where are you going to eat?’

He gestured.

‘Where I usual y do. On the sofa.’

She came away from the window.

‘Wil you play for me?’

‘What, the piano?’

‘What else?’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe we’l both play tomorrow.’

She sat down on the sofa. He handed her a box.

‘Want a plate?’

‘No.’

‘Good girl. Eat up. What have you had today – coffee and crisps?’

‘My favourite,’ Amy said.

She opened the box and looked at her burger. She sighed.

‘I want to be her.’

‘I know.’

‘I want—’

‘Wait,’ Scott said, ‘wait. You’ve work to do first.’

She glanced up.

‘What work?’

‘Exploring.’

She lifted the burger out and inspected it.

‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’

‘What are you going to do tomorrow.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sending you off,’ Scott said. ‘I’m sending you on a little journey of discovery.’

Amy stared at him. He winked at her.

‘You’l see,’ he said, and wedged his burger in his mouth.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Chrissie had never felt quite at home in Sue’s kitchen. It wasn’t the disorder realy, or the noise – the television never seemed to be switched off –

but more a sense that Sue’s children and Kevin were so intent upon their own robust and random lives that her presence there meant no more than if a new chair or saucepan had been added to the mix.

Sue herself seemed oblivious. The muddle of people and purposes, of washing-up and lunch boxes, of newspapers and flyers and scribbled notes, wasn’t something she strove for, but rather something she simply didn’t notice. She had absently moved a footbal boot, a magazine and an empty crisp packet from a chair in order that Chrissie could sit down, in a manner that suggested that sitting down wasn’t necessarily a chair’s function in the first place.

‘Can I turn that off?’

‘What?’ Sue said. She was polishing a wine glass with a shirt lying on top of a pile in a laundry basket.

‘The TV,’ Chrissie said.

‘Course. I’ve stopped hearing it. I’ve stopped hearing most things, especial y anybody under sixteen asking for money.’

‘I gave Amy twenty quid,’ Chrissie said, ‘and now I’m worrying that wasn’t nearly enough. A whole weekend, on twenty pounds.’

Sue put the wine glass on the table, amid the clutter.

‘They’l pay for her, won’t they?’

Chrissie made a face.

‘That’s what I was thinking when I gave her the money. They can darn wel pay for her, that’s what I thought. But now, I wish they weren’t. I wish I’d given her more.’

Sue found a second glass, and blew on it.

‘Stop thinking about her.’

‘I—’

‘Haven’t you got enough to think about?’ Sue demanded. ‘Isn’t there enough going on without fretting over the one child who’s actual y striking out?’

‘In the wrong direction—’

‘For you,’ Sue said. ‘Not necessarily for her. Don’t you just love it that wine comes in screw-top bottles these days?’

Chrissie wandered back from turning off the television and watched Sue pouring wine into the glasses.

‘I’ve sometimes wished, since Richie died, that I real y, really liked alcohol. I mean, I do like it, I love a glass of wine, but I don’t crave it. It would have been easier to crave something rather than just be in such a state.’

Sue held a ful glass out to her.

‘Tel me some good news.’

‘It’s sort of OK news—’

‘Fine by me.’

‘I took the job,’ Chrissie said.

Sue let out a yelp, and clinked her glass against Chrissie’s.

‘Go, girlfriend!’

‘It isn’t amazing. In fact, it’s very lowly, very lowly indeed, but it’s the first one I’ve been offered, actual y offered, in al these months of trying, and I suppose it might lead to something—’

‘It’s a job!’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘they were so nice to me. I met Mark’s father, and al his uncles, and they were lovely, so welcoming.’

‘You’l be so good at it—’

‘I hope so. Nine-thirty to six, four weeks’ paid holiday, pay-as-you-earn tax.’

‘Chrissie,’ Sue said, ‘this is good. This is even great. This is like starting again, and do not, do not, do not tel me that starting again is the last thing you want to do.’

‘OK,’ Chrissie said.

‘You’re smiling.’

‘I’m not—’

‘You’re smiling.’

‘It’s relief,’ Chrissie said.

‘I don’t care what it is. You’re smiling. And the flat?’

Chrissie took a sip of wine.

‘If I don’t sel the house—’

‘You will sel the house.’

‘I can’t afford the flat on what I’l be earning.’

Sue cleared a heap of T-shirts and a pair of swimming goggles off another chair, and sat down.

She said, ‘What about those girls?’

‘Wel , Amy—’

‘I don’t mean Amy. I mean Tamsin and Dil y.’

Chrissie said cautiously, ‘Dil y is looking for a job—’

‘Is she now.’

‘And Tamsin. Wel , I don’t real y know what’s going on with Tamsin.’

‘Do sit down,’ Sue said.

Chrissie said, sitting, ‘She keeps talking about moving in with Robbie, but she doesn’t do it. He’s built her an amazing cupboard, apparently, but she doesn’t seem in any hurry to fil it. He’s like a dog, sitting there hoping for chocolate. I thought he was so strong and masculine, and would support her the way Richie did, but she doesn’t seem to want to let him any more.’

‘You can’t have both of them living with you—’

‘I could—’

‘No,’ Sue said.

‘There’s just enough room—’

‘ If you get the flat—’

‘Yes. If—’

‘Stil no,’ Sue said. She leaned back, twiddling her wine glass round by its stem, watching it, not looking at Chrissie. ‘Do you real y want them to live with you?’

There was a pause, and then Chrissie said slowly, ‘I don’t know if I want to be alone.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like. You might love it. You might prefer it, actual y, to living with two people who ought to be fending for themselves.’

Chrissie said nothing. Sue went on leaning back. Then she took a mouthful of wine and said, ‘Wel , Amy’s having a go at it, isn’t she? Amy’s trying to swim without her family water wings on, isn’t she? Instead of banging on about how you don’t like what Amy’s doing, why don’t you try imitating her instead?’

Scott had given her some money. She’d felt very awkward about confessing that she’d spent the money her mother had given her on CDs at the folk club, and that her card would probably be rejected at an ATM, but he’d held some notes out to her that morning, saying, just take it, don’t say anything, take it.

‘But I feel awful—’

‘You’re family. Take it.’

‘I shouldn’t—’

‘Yes, you should. Anyway, I want to. I want to give it to you.’

‘OK,’ Amy said. She glanced down at the notes in her hand. It looked as if he’d given her an awful lot. ‘That’s – so great. Thank you.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Scott said. ‘The hard part is now.’

‘The hard part?’

‘You’re going to North Shields. You’re going to see where Dad and my mother grew up, went to school. You’re going on your own.’

Amy looked at him.

‘Why aren’t you coming?’

‘Because I’l colour it for you. Because you’ve got to see it through your eyes, not mine.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I’l tel you where to go.’

Amy said doubtful y, ‘Is this a good idea?’

‘Was last night a good idea?’

Her face lit up.

‘Oh, yes!’

‘Then trust me,’ Scott said. ‘Walk your feet off and come back and tel me. I’l be waiting for you.’

She had walked, on her own, up the steep streets to the metro station at Monument, and there, as instructed, she had bought herself a return ticket to North Shields, feeling as she did so that her very anonymity in the Saturday-morning crowds was as exciting as the adventure itself. She sat, as Scott had told her to, near the front of the train so that she could have a sense of the scene through the windows of the driver’s cab, as they sped out of the glowing underground station and out on to the raised rails through Manors and Byker, past the cranes of Walker and Wal send and out along the river shore through Hadrian Road and Howden, through Percy Main and Meadow Wel , to North Shields.

On the platform, busy with people who belonged there, who knew where they were going, she said to herself, ‘This is it.’

‘Start with the quays,’ Scott had said. ‘Head for the river. Head for the quays.’

You could smel your way to the shore, almost at once. The air smel ed of water, river and sea, rank and salty, and overhead there were gul s, wheeling and screaming, huge black-headed gul s with heavy beaks and solid, shining bodies. Amy headed south, staring up at the sky and the clouds and the shouting seabirds, staring about her at the street and the houses and the children, scuffing along together in packs, just as Richie must have done when he grew out of being that toddler in hand-knitted socks and bar shoes.

And then, quite abruptly, she was on a ridge high above the water, standing by a house which had plainly once been a lighthouse, looking out across the great breadth of the Tyne River, to South Shields and Jarrow, a name Amy knew because of Bede, the seventh-century monk who lived in the monastery there, whom she remembered because a history teacher had once told her class that he kept a precious store of peppercorns to make monastic food less boring. The road she was standing on was quiet, much quieter than the streets near the metro station, and the gul s seemed to be whirling higher, their cries echoing in the wind up there, the wind that was blowing in off the sea, blowing Amy’s hair across her face, obscuring her vision. She caught it up in both hands, and twisted it into a rough knot behind her head, and set off down a steep and turning path to the shore.

And there was Fish Quay, as Scott had said it would be, the quayside where his grandmother and great-aunts had gutted herrings for a living.

He’d said that in their day, in his mother’s girlhood, the herring drifters had been packed in against the quayside several deep, but now the water lay almost empty, just a straggling line of trawlers moored alongside battered iron-roofed sheds, with the water slapping at them and long rust marks streaking their sides. Everything was shuttered, al the doors were closed, there was nobody on the street, no movement except the odd plastic bag and scrap of paper litter lifting in the wind and skittering along the surface.

She walked slowly along the quay, past the bacon grocer’s with its jol y chal enges painted in the window glass – ‘If you aren’t wearing knickers, smile!’; ‘Never go to bed mad: stay up and fight!’; ‘Do not enter the shop if you have no sense of humour!’ – past the fish and chip shops, past the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, and the warehouses for Larry’s Fishcakes and Blue Dolphin Seafoods, and came out at the end into the Low Lights car park, where there was a bench looking out across the wide, crinkled grey river melting into the further grey sea and, on the horizon, the silhouetted statue of Admiral Col ingwood, where Scott said he and his mates used to gather after school, standing like Earl Grey high above the world below and gazing forever eastwards from his grassy mound.

She subsided on to the bench. It was wonderful there, so big and so bleak, al that sea and sky, but it was sobering too, laden with al those lives, those past lives, battling and struggling and hating the sea as much as they needed it, relied on it. Amy put her hands into her hoodie pockets and breathed deeply, in and out, in and out. This was the sort of place that last night’s music had come from, it was people who’d lived and laboured here who had instinctively recorded how they were feeling, how they were thinking, in a way that could be easily remembered, could be simply passed on. She sniffed once or twice in the wind. If she shut her eyes, she could conjure up that girl last night, the girl with the flute and the lovely, light, straightforward singing voice. If she kept them shut, she could imagine Scott as a boy down here, as a teenager in his school uniform with his tie bunched up in his blazer pocket, and not just Scott, but her father who might even – even – have sat on this bench, or whatever was here before this bench, and looked at the sky and the sea and the gul s, and thought and thought about music too.

She opened her eyes and tipped her head back, wriggling herself down until her body was in a straight line, shoulder to heel, the back of her head balanced on the back of the bench, and stared up at the sky. She felt taken over, bowled over, blown away by a sudden and extraordinary wave of happiness.

‘Don’t read anything into this,’ Margaret said.

Bernie Harrison was in an armchair in her sitting room, legs crossed, very comfortable. He had a cup of coffee balanced on the arm of the chair and Dawson, stretched in his usual place along the back of the sofa, was keeping a discreet but definite eye on him.

‘What would I read?’ Bernie said.

He was wearing wel -pressed summer trousers and brown-suede loafers, which were entirely appropriate to the dining room of the Grand Hotel at Sunday lunchtime.

‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, trying to sound unconcerned, ‘this might look like a family occasion, but it isn’t. I’m not, as it were, introducing you to the family.’

‘Ah,’ Bernie said. He smiled at her. ‘You manage to put things so graciously.’

‘It’s better if we are al quite clear where we stand.’

‘So,’ Bernie said easily, ‘I have been asked along to leaven an awkward social lump, have I?’

‘You’ve been asked,’ Margaret said, ‘to make a foursome.’

‘Not like you to be nervous, Margaret.’

‘No.’

‘But I’m flattered. Yes, I’m flattered. When did you last ask anyone for help?’

She didn’t look at him, but she smiled.

‘A while back.’

‘What do we know about this child?’

Margaret sighed.

‘She’s eighteen, she’s bright, she’s musical, she’s the youngest of three. She’s talked a bit to Scott on the telephone but she’s never been north and she’s not going to like my guest bedroom.’

‘Why is she in it?’

‘Because,’ Margaret said firmly, ‘she can’t possibly stay with Scott. I promised her mother.’

‘Did you? You spoke to her mother?’

‘I did.’

‘Successful y?’

‘No,’ Margaret said.

Bernie turned his head.

‘There’s a taxi pul ing up outside.’

Margaret gave a little gasp.

‘Oh my God—’

‘Stay there,’ Bernie said.

He stood up and walked to the window, carrying his coffee cup.

‘Deep breaths, Margaret. Yes, it’s them. Scott, I’m sorry to tel you, looks like an off-duty footbal er but the girl looks lovely. Tal and slim. Long, dark hair. A skirt, you’l be pleased to hear. What there is of it. But I can’t see any luggage.’ He turned and glanced at Margaret. ‘I think your guest has come to stay in what she stands up in.’

Amy had never been anywhere like the dining room of the Grand Hotel. It had upholstered chairs, and ornately draped curtains at the huge high windows, and the wal s were decorated with long, narrow panels of stylized fruit and flowers. The carpet was very thick, patterned with medal ions in russet and green, and so were the tablecloths and the napkins, which sat like smal icebergs in a forest of glassware. The tablecloths even had undercloths, which went right down to the floor, which was just as wel since they enabled Scott to stick his feet right out of sight so that they didn’t offend his mother.

Amy wasn’t quite sure what other things might offend his mother. They had, the previous afternoon when she got back from North Shields, gone shopping to buy her a skirt, and it hadn’t struck either of them, til they saw Margaret’s eyes on Amy’s legs, that the length of the skirt might signify as much as its existence in the first place. Margaret looked OK to Amy, because she was as Amy was expecting her to be, but she also looked a bit unpredictable, as if she might suddenly object to something that had never previously occurred to anyone as a potential flashpoint. Amy thought of catching Scott’s eye, and winking, but then she remembered that Margaret was Scott’s mother, and therefore not an appropriate subject for complicity, and refrained.

The other man, the sort of grandfather man, was fine. He’d told Amy he was an agent, that he’d known her father as a boy and as a young man, and he mentioned several names, people he represented, whom Amy had heard of. He seemed very easy and friendly, and Amy wondered if he was a kind of boyfriend, if that was the right word when you got as old as that, and he teased Scott about his appearance and Scott, who looked perfectly normal to Amy, didn’t seem to mind and just said cheerful y, ‘Places like this need a bit of shaking up, Mr Harrison,’ and Mr Harrison said,

‘Oh for God’s sake, lad. Bernie.’ And Scott had laughed and shaken his head and said, ‘Can’t do it, sir. Sorry.’

The menu was enormous. Margaret watched Amy reading it and then she said, in a voice with far more warmth in it than it had had before,

‘Choose whatever you like, pet. You must be hungry. They never give you anything but rubbish on the train.’

Scott shot Amy a warning look.

‘Thank you,’ Amy said politely.

‘Was it a good journey?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘And was Scott on the platform to meet you?’

‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘Yes, he was.’

‘And what,’ Bernie Harrison said in a jocular voice, ‘do you think of the Frozen North so far?’

Amy put her huge menu down. She turned to look straight at him.

‘I think it’s wonderful.’

He said, laughing, ‘Wel , the station’s wonderful—’

‘ It’s nice of you, dear,’ Margaret said, ‘ but you’ve only seen that and Scott’s flat.’

‘I love Scott’s flat,’ Amy said.

‘Thank you,’ Scott said.

‘And,’ Amy said, deliberately ignoring him, and now looking straight at Margaret, ‘I love North Shields and the river and the metro and the bridges.’

She stopped. There was a brief silence.

‘Excuse me?’ Margaret said.

‘We went to a folk club on Friday,’ Amy said. ‘It was amazing. I – I just loved it. I loved the music. I can’t stop thinking about the music. I think it’s –

it’s so, so great. Up here.’

‘You came up on Friday?’ Margaret said.

‘Yes.’

Margaret looked at Scott.

‘You told me—’

‘Stop it,’ Bernie Harrison said.

‘No,’ Scott said to his mother, ‘you wouldn’t be told.’

‘I promised your mother—’

‘This isn’t about my mother,’ Amy said. ‘It isn’t about any mothers. It’s about us – us children.’

Bernie Harrison reached out and took Margaret’s nearest wrist.

‘There you go—’

Amy said, ‘I’m real y sorry if you thought I was staying with you but I’m not. I’m staying with Scott. I’ve had an amazing time, the best time. I’ve had the best time I’ve had since Dad died. I real y have.’

Margaret was looking at the tablecloth. Scott tried to catch Amy’s eye but she was stil looking at Margaret. So was Bernie Harrison.

‘I don’t forget,’ Amy said. ‘I promise I don’t forget that Dad belonged to you too. To you and Scott.’

‘Oh, pet,’ Margaret said in a whisper.

‘But I’m staying with Scott. I’m staying with Scott til I go – south again.’

With his free hand, Bernie Harrison gestured to attract the attention of the wine waiter.

‘Now, young lady. Young lady who knows her own mind. I suggest we now talk about music. Don’t you?’

‘Did he mean that?’ Amy said.

They were sitting on Scott’s black sofa, Amy curled up at one end with her feet under her.

‘What?’

‘Mr Harrison. Did he mean that about a folk-music degree?’

‘Yes.’

She was holding a mug of tea. She looked at him over the rim.

‘Do you know about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘You have to make up your own mind.’

‘But—’

‘I didn’t know how you’d feel,’ Scott said. ‘I didn’t know how we’d get on. I mean, al I know about being in your teens is what I knew when I was in them, but I might have got that al wrong, mightn’t I, because you’re a girl, not a boy. I might have thought I was helping you, which is what I wanted to do, and got that wrong too. I just had to wait, and give you time to think for yourself a bit. I couldn’t push you, could I?’

‘No,’ Amy said grateful y.

‘I didn’t know what sort of music you liked, even.’

Amy smiled.

‘Nor did I.’

He leaned forward.

‘Want to look?’

‘Look at what—’

‘This music degree.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘ Yes.’

He stood up and went to retrieve his laptop from the kitchen counter. He felt very tired and very, almost unsteadily, happy. It would only be later, when he was alone and stretched out on the sofa, that he could think about the day, unpick it, unravel it, marvel at it. He carried the laptop back to the sofa and sat down close to Amy, so that she could see the screen.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘University of Newcastle. Here we go.’

She watched the screen flicker. ‘You interested in taking this further?’ Bernie Harrison had said at lunchtime. ‘Are you serious about this?’

‘There,’ Scott said.

Amy leaned forward.

‘Read it,’ Scott said. ‘Read it out loud.’

‘“Newcastle University,”’ Amy read, ‘“folk and traditional music. Bmus. Honours UCAS 4 years. Established in 2001, this is the first performance-based degree programme in folk and traditional music to be offered in England and Wales. The course explores folk music in its traditional and revived forms through practical work (composition as wel as performance) and academic work.”’

She stopped.

‘OK?’ Scott said.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Amy said.

‘Look,’ Scott said, ‘look. Teaching’s at the university and at the Sage. Folkworks is at the Sage.’

‘Folkworks?’

‘It’s a charity,’ Scott said. ‘It’s an educational charity for traditional music.’

‘Did – did you know about al this?’

‘Yes.’

‘And were you just waiting?’

‘Hoping,’ Scott said, ‘not waiting. Other people’s expectations give you a headache.’

Amy looked back at the screen.

‘I love this. I love al this. Look at those modules, look at them, songs of struggle, songs from the US Southern states, bal ads – oh boy,’ Amy said, ‘I think I’m going to cry—’

‘Please try not to.’

‘Happy cry—’

‘Not even happy cry.’

She jumped to her feet.

‘This is so brilliant—’

‘You haven’t got in yet.’

‘But I wil . I’l do anything. Anything. You cannot imagine how this makes me feel—’

He grinned at her.

‘I can see it.’

‘Wow,’ Amy said. ‘Wow, wow, mega wow.’

She began to spin down the room, turning like a skater, arms out, hair flying, her canvas boots thudding lightly on the bare boards. He watched her go whirling down the room, behind the piano and back again, until she came to an unsteady halt in front of him.

‘Scott,’ she said. She was panting slightly and her eyes were bright. ‘Scott, I real y, really, don’t want to go home tomorrow.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was the young couple’s third visit to the house. Chrissie had been wary of them at first, convinced that they were part of the deceptive culture of debt-financed outward prosperity, and that they would talk loudly about their enthusiasm and plans for the house, and then suddenly stare at her blankly and say they couldn’t possibly afford such an asking price, as if the fault lay with her.

The asking price had been careful y engineered by Tamsin’s Mr Mundy. He had come to see the house in person, as Tamsin had assured Chrissie he would, and had been very measured and deliberate, and had told Chrissie, over coffee in the kitchen – he had deprecatingly declined the sitting room as if to emphasize that he was merely a man of business – that they would advertise the house at fifty thousand pounds above the price that she should calculate on getting for it, in order to al ow for the bargaining and inevitable reduction that were al part of the current house-buying-and-sel ing market.

Chrissie had not liked Mr Mundy. She did not care for his heaviness, nor his slightly sweaty pal or, nor his patronage, and, most of al , she did not care for the way he was with Tamsin, like a seedily flirtatious uncle. Tamsin, she observed, did not respond to him in kind, but she certainly did nothing to discourage him, to the point where Chrissie made sure that, in going up the stairs to the top floor, it was she who preceded Mr Mundy, and not Tamsin.

When he left, he held her hand fractional y too long in his large, soft grasp, and said that he was very sure he could just about promise her a sale.

‘Good,’ Chrissie said, ‘and soon, please.’

‘As soon,’ Mr Mundy said, stil smiling, ‘as it is humanly possible under current market conditions.’

Chrissie shut the door.

‘What a creep—’

Tamsin remembered catching Mr Mundy with the massage-ads page of the Ham & High newspaper, and thought she wouldn’t mention it. She said instead, ‘Wel , he’s an estate agent, isn’t he? And if anyone can sel this house, he can.’

In the first weeks of the house being on the market, there were nine viewings. One of those viewings was by a young couple with a toddler, and after two days they came again. They stood about in the rooms, behaving, as Chrissie had come to realize, with amazement, in the way that people buying houses commonly behaved, remarking – as if Chrissie had not made this house her home for the past fifteen years – on what was the matter with it, and what needed doing to make it even halfway acceptable. On that second visit, there had been so much to find fault with – outdated decor, neglected garden, absence of garage, pokiness of existing office space, tired bathrooms – that Chrissie had seen them go with a mixture of relief that she need never see them again and regret that whatever had drawn them back was not strong enough to convince them.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said to Sue on the telephone. ‘I don’t want to have to sel this house but stil I’m panicking that nobody wil want to buy it. What’s going on?’

‘You’re getting better.’

‘I can’t be—’

‘You are. And they’l be back.’

‘They won’t. They couldn’t find anything to like today—’

‘They’l be back.’

And they were. They turned up, entirely insouciant, as if they had never had any intention of doing anything else.

‘But,’ Chrissie said, ‘I real y thought you didn’t like it, I thought you said—’

The wife stared at her. She was dressed in a grey linen tunic over a discreet pregnant bump, and she had the toddler on her hip, and an immense soft leather bag covered in pockets and buckles slung over her shoulder.

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘we love it.’ She looked at the toddler. ‘Don’t we, Jamie? We’re going to make a playroom out of that room you said used to have a piano in it. For Jamie. Aren’t we, Jamie?’

They offered Chrissie fifty thousand less than the asking price.

‘Say no,’ Tamsin said.

‘I was going to. Anyway.’

‘I would advise—’ Mr Mundy began.

‘No,’ Chrissie said, ‘I’l take ten off.’

‘Mrs Rossiter—’

‘Ten,’ Chrissie said.

The young couple offered forty thousand less than the asking price.

‘Fifteen,’ Chrissie said.

The young couple said that they were no longer interested at that price.

‘I wil leave in six weeks,’ Chrissie said, ‘and I wil take twenty thousand off the asking price.’

‘Oh God, Mum,’ Dil y said, ‘do you know what you’re doing?’

‘Not real y,’ Chrissie said, ‘but I’m going on instinct. I’m excited.’

‘You’re over excited—’

The young couple said that they would agree to exchange within two weeks and twenty-five thousand off, but that they were of course now looking at other properties.

‘Done,’ Chrissie said, ‘done. And I’ve taken the job at Leverton’s.’

‘You can’t—’

‘I can.’

‘She can!’

‘What do you know,’ Tamsin said to Dil y, ‘you’ve never earned a penny in al your life.’

‘I wil be,’ Dil y said. ‘I’m looking for work now. I will be.’

‘Playing houses,’ Tamsin said scornful y, ‘in that poky flat.’

‘It could be a pretty flat,’ Chrissie said. She was stirring Sunday-night scrambled eggs. ‘I’l ring the owner in the morning. I’l tel him that the minute I’ve exchanged contracts on this I’l sign the lease.’

‘Not before,’ Tamsin said.

‘I know not before,’ Chrissie said irritably. ‘Please do stop treating me like a halfwit.’

There was a fractional startled pause.

‘Sorr ee,’ Tamsin said in an offended voice.

‘I’ve bought and sold houses before,’ Chrissie said. ‘I’ve lived on my own and earned my own living, I’l have you know. And you can’t even manage to move into a flat that’s being provided for you, complete with customized wardrobe.’

The landline telephone rang.

‘I’l get it,’ Tamsin and Dil y said in unison.

There was a smal scuffle. Dil y was quicker. She twitched the handset out of its mooring and held it hard to her ear.

‘Hel o? Oh, hi, Ames. How goes it? How’re you doing?’

There was a considerable silence. Chrissie took the egg pan off the cooker and continued to stir with elaborate concentration. Tamsin leaned against the nearest wal and folded her arms, fixing her gaze resolutely on some midpoint halfway down the kitchen. Dil y stayed where she was, listening. Then, after what seemed an unconscionable time, she said, ‘Oh wow,’ and, ‘Jesus, Amy,’ and then, ‘You’d better talk to Mum. Hadn’t you?’

Chrissie stopped stirring. Tamsin stood upright. Chrissie held her hand out for the phone.

‘Big deal, Ames,’ Dil y said into the phone, taking no notice.

Chrissie took a step closer.

‘ Please—’

‘Give it to her!’ Tamsin said sharply.

‘They’re going mad here,’ Dil y said. ‘Shal I pass you over?’ Then she laughed. ‘Countdown,’ she said. ‘Ready? Three, two, one, Mothah!’

She handed the telephone to Chrissie.

‘And?’ Tamsin demanded.

Dil y ignored her. She was watching Chrissie. Chrissie was listening intently. Then she said, ‘But I want you home tomorrow. You promised you would be back tomorrow—’

‘She’s not staying?’ Tamsin hissed.

‘She’s fal en in love with some music thing,’ Dil y said, stil watching Chrissie. ‘Some folk-music degree, or something. Sounded a bit weird to me.’

‘ Folk-music degree?’

‘She sounded completely mental about it. Newcastle University or something. Where is Newcastle?’

‘Wel , obviously I can’t force you,’ Chrissie said, ‘but it does seem very strange, very sudden. You’ve only been there ten minutes—’

‘They’ve brainwashed her,’ Tamsin said.

‘I wish somebody’d wash your brain,’ Dil y said with spirit. ‘You mightn’t think you’re right al the time if they did.’

‘You can be such a little cow—’

‘Al right,’ Chrissie said, ‘al right. Of course I’m not going to forbid you. I couldn’t forbid you, in any case. I suppose—’ She stopped. Then she said with difficulty, ‘I suppose I should wish you luck. Wel , I do. I do wish you luck, darling. If this is what you want.’

‘Oh my God,’ Tamsin said, uncrossing her arms and flinging them out dramatical y. ‘This family is fal ing apart.’

Dil y went over to the cooker and prodded at the egg with a wooden spoon.

‘It’s al gone rubbery—’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said. She sounded tired, defeated. ‘Yes. Wel , ring and tel me. Or text me. At least text me. Oh, and Amy? I sold the house. Yes.

Yes, I think so, I think that too. OK, OK, darling. Night night.’

She took the phone away from her ear and held it, looking down at it.

‘What have they done to her?’ Tamsin said.

When Amy woke, it was broad daylight and the uncurtained window by the bed was ful of the wide, high, cloud-streaked Northern sky. She lay there for a while, so that her mind could swim slowly to the surface, past al the events of the day before, past the lunch and the conversation, past the discoveries and the phone cal home, and past – much more savouringly – the marvel ous unexpected midnight hours when Scott had at last sat down at the piano and played, and she had retrieved her flute from her rucksack and joined him, and it was better than talking, better than anything, better even than playing with Dad had been, because Scott played like an equal, played as if only the music mattered and who cared who was fol owing or leading.

It was past two in the morning before either of them thought of the time. And then Amy had discovered she was starving and they had eaten a bag of cashew nuts and some cheese slices Scott found in the fridge and shared a battered KitKat from the bottom of his work bag. Going into his bedroom, Amy had been almost overwhelmed by the need to thank him, to say that she felt rescued, guided, excited, but had not known how to do any of that without embarrassing both of them, so she had put her arms round his neck, awkwardly and in silence, and he had somehow understood, and had given her a quick, hard hug, and said, ‘You’re not the only one who’s had a good day,’ and let her go.

Then he said, ‘I’l be gone in the morning, remember. It’s Monday.’

‘Oh—’

‘I took a half-day off, Friday. Can’t do more right now.’

‘No, I know, I knew—’

He was tossing a pil ow and an unzipped sleeping bag on to the sofa.

‘Mr Harrison’l look after you. He’l show you the Sage. He knows his way round the music scene better than I do, in any case.’

Mr Harrison! Amy shot up in bed. Where was her watch? What was the time? What would happen if she kept Mr Harrison waiting?

‘It was opened in 2004,’ Bernie Harrison said. ‘It’s bigger than two footbal pitches and twice the height of The Angel of the North. And up there,’ he pointed to the vast curved roof soaring high above them, ‘there’s six hundred-some-odd panes of glass, and each one weighs more than two baby elephants.’

Amy was turning slowly, head thrown back, gawping.

‘I’ve run out of things to say—’

‘I’m old enough to remember the Northern Sinfonia being founded,’ Bernie said. ‘It was 1958. Michael Hal . I was sixteen, same age as your—’

He stopped. ‘No, I suppose she isn’t your anything, Margaret, is she?’

Amy retrieved her dazzled gaze from the immensity of the Sage’s roof.

‘Not real y—’

‘Your father’s first wife is just your father’s first wife.’

Amy swal owed.

‘She – she was his only wife. He and Mum never—’

Bernie Harrison cleared his throat.

‘Wel , don’t let it trouble you. Doesn’t trouble me. You made your mark with Margaret, I can tel you.’

‘I hope she wasn’t upset about me not staying—’

‘She’s got a mind of her own and she likes to see one in other people. I’ve known her since she was a stroppy little object in pigtails. We grew up in a different world from now, Margaret and me. You wouldn’t believe, now, our world had ever been, sometimes. It was hard, though. You can’t real y miss something that hard.’

Amy looked past him, along the immense shining spaces of floor, to the glass wal s and the view of the river. She said a little hesitantly, ‘So, the Grand Hotel—’

‘Yes,’ Bernie said firmly. ‘She’d deny it, but that’s why we like places like the Grand Hotel. We’ve made our mark and our brass and we like value for it. Quality.’

‘Of course.’

‘It may be different in London—’

‘Please don’t talk about London.’

Bernie glanced at her.

‘Very wel .’

‘I’ve just fal en in love with al this—’

‘It doesn’t take half an eye to see that.’

‘Everyone,’ Amy said, ‘has been so lovely to me.’

Bernie indicated that Amy should fol ow him across to the stupendous windows, to lean on the steel balustrade and look down on the river and the bridges.

He said, looking at the view, ‘We’ve al got something to give each other.’

‘I haven’t,’ Amy said, ‘I haven’t got anything. I’ve only just left school. I couldn’t even buy my own train ticket up here.’

‘You’re too sharp to take me literal y. It’s not about the money.’

‘Not having any makes you a bit helpless—’

‘Are you going to let that stand in your way?’

‘No,’ Amy said uncertainly.

‘There’s ways and means. There’s grants. There’s charities that like giving bursaries for music. There’l be a way if you want it.’

‘I want it so much—’

‘Wel ,’ Bernie said, ‘we’l see. You’d have to work hard for a year, you’d have to get some experience. But if something comes of it, it’l cheer us al up, I can tel you. We’ve got in a bit of a rut.’

‘Up here?’ Amy said, incredulous, gesturing at the slim white arc of the Mil ennium Bridge. ‘Up here? With al this?’

‘We’ve grown up with al this,’ Bernie said. ‘We’ve watched this city come alive again. My mother worked in a sweet factory in North Shields, and I drive a Jaguar and I like a fancy place to eat. But for al that, you keep needing a new energy, you never stop looking for the next little push and shove. I’l tel you something. I’ve got a good business here, a solid business. This place – wel , this place means I can think of performers I couldn’t even consider ten years ago. But I stil look to change, I look to improve al the time, and don’t ask me who for, because I’ve got no children and I don’t know who for, in the future, I only know it’s for me, right now. And what I want right now is for Margaret to come in with me, and manage the areas of the business that she manages better than anyone. She knows the North-East entertainment business like the back of her hand. And she won’t come. She goes fiddling on with that little tinpot business of hers, and she won’t come.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Bernie said, ‘she’s stuck in a rut of her own.’

Amy put both hands on the rail and leaned back, her feet braced.

‘I thought I was stuck.’

‘You’re never stuck at eighteen.’

‘But if it’s how you feel—’

Bernie Harrison glanced at her.

‘Exactly. And you being young and being struck with al this made us old fogeys feel a whole lot better. Why else am I here and not in my office?’

Amy straightened up.

‘Thank you very much for that.’

‘I’m not doing it for you, young lady.’

‘Aren’t you?’

He shrugged. He was laughing.

‘I never do anything without a motive. And I’ve got two motives this morning. One, I promised Margaret we’d al have lunch together.’

‘Oh,’ Amy said.

‘Oh good or oh bad?’

‘Oh fine,’ Amy said.

‘And the second thing, before we go any further, is I need to have an idea of you.’

‘An idea—’

‘As a musician,’ Bernie said.

‘How—’

Bernie turned. He gestured across the concourse.

‘Down there,’ he said, ‘down one level, is the music education centre. Workshops, practice rooms, teaching rooms, recording studios. We’re going down there now. I’ve set it up. There’s a flute down there, waiting for you, and I’m going to hear you play.’

The owner of the Highgate flat was in Los Angeles.

‘Oh my God,’ Chrissie said, ‘did I wake you?’

He did not sound quite sure.

‘Not real y—’

‘I forgot the time difference. I’m so sorry but I quite forgot about Pacific time. I just wanted—’

‘Yes?’

‘I just wondered if you’d let the flat—’

‘Oh no,’ he said. He sounded as if he was lying down. ‘No, I haven’t. I was kinda waiting for you—’

‘Wel ,’ Chrissie said, ‘I think it wil be OK. I think – I think I’ve sold my house.’

‘Good,’ he said, ‘good news—’

‘Could you possibly wait a bit more? Could you wait two more weeks?’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I can wait two weeks.’ He yawned. ‘I’l even be over, I think, in two weeks. I’m not sure.’

‘That’s so kind of you—’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s business. My accountant says I should let it and you seem the right kind of person to let it to. That’s fine by me.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Cal me when you know—’

‘I wil . I’l cal you straight away—’

‘And go round there. Go and see it again. The housekeeper has the keys. Help yourself.’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘thank you—’

‘See you,’ he said. He yawned again. ‘From sunny California, and a view of the freeway, I send greetings and say see you in Highgate.’

Chrissie put the phone down. The cal had been, despite the yawns, strangely elating. As was, to her surprise, the presence of the young couple’s surveyor in the house, tapping wal s and peering into cupboards in a manner that suggested he would be very, very disappointed if he found nothing amiss. Chrissie had made him tea – he’d been very specific, asking for only enough milk to cloud the tea, and one sugar – which he had left to get cold in the kitchen, but even that didn’t irritate her. She was beginning, cautiously, to believe that she was feeling better. Not al the time, and not reliably, dramatical y so, but she was distinctly aware that instead of believing she was at the mercy of Richie’s decisions, Richie’s erratic earning power and enthusiasm, Richie’s fans, Richie’s particular brand of sweetly expressed utter stubbornness, she was instead sensing the first stirrings of the luxury of being free to choose. She might have much – much – less money, and she would no longer own a property, but then she would no longer be in a position of dependency either, reliant upon another person for livelihood, for emotional reassurance.

The surveyor was coming down the stairs, slowly, stil making notes. He’d been in the house for hours, which suggested to Chrissie not so much that he was being exhaustively, dangerously thorough, as that he had, these days, far less work coming in.

‘I’m afraid your tea is cold,’ Chrissie said. In the old days, she might have added, ‘Shal I make you another?’ Now, however, she merely smiled.

He didn’t look up.

‘I always drink it cold,’ he said.

* * *

Tamsin, despite being at work, had been on the phone to Amy. She had rung her to tel her that they were al very upset by her behaviour, and that it was real y hurtful and disloyal to behave like this, especial y for Chrissie. Perhaps, Tamsin said, Amy hadn’t realized what it was like for Chrissie to have to sel the house and take a pretty menial job – Chrissie, after al , Tamsin reminded Amy, was used to a professional managerial role – and it was absolutely out of order for Amy to add to al this pain by behaving with such cal ous disregard for anybody’s feelings but her own. In fact, Amy should know that she, Tamsin, was thinking of going to live with Chrissie in the Highgate flat because it was going to be so hard, so very hard, for her to adjust without help and support.

‘Have you done?’ Amy demanded, when her sister paused for breath.

‘For the moment. Where are you?’

‘I’m sitting,’ Amy said, ‘with a cat on my knee.’

Tamsin gave a little snort.

‘Maybe,’ Amy went on, not sounding anything like as ruffled as Tamsin thought she ought to be, ‘maybe Mum is doing better than you give her credit for. Maybe she quite likes choosing her life again.’

‘It’s not a choice,’ Tamsin said, ‘she has to do al this. And we have to help her.’

‘Wel ,’ Amy said, ‘I might be helping. I might not be a burden on her. I might not be living there. More space for you—’

‘You are unbelievable—’

‘They take twenty-five people a year on this course. I need three Bs and grade eight, and I’ve got grade eight.’

‘You’re obsessed,’ Tamsin said.

‘No more than you are,’ Amy said. ‘It’s just about something different.’

‘When are you deigning to come back?’

‘On Friday,’ Amy said, ‘I told Mum. God, this cat is heavy, it’s like sitting under a furry hippo or something. I’ve got to do the application through UCAS and al that, but I’m going into the department at the university to have a look.’ She paused and then she said proudly, ‘I’ve got an introduction.’

‘I’m not asking,’ Tamsin said. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘OK,’ Amy said. ‘No change there, then.’

‘I want you to think about what I said—’

Amy was silent.

‘Amy? ’

Silence.

‘ Amy?’

Tamsin took the phone from her ear and looked at the screen. ‘Cal ended’, it said. She gave a furious little exclamation.

‘Tamsin?’ Robbie said.

She looked up from her seat behind the reception desk, stil frowning. She had not been expecting him.

‘Robbie, not til six, you know not til six.’

He was not, to her slight surprise, smiling. He was in his work suit and looked absolutely as he usual y did, but instead of regarding her with his customary expression of being alert to accommodate to her precisely current mood, he was looking, wel , stern was the word that came to mind.

She said, ‘Is everything OK?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘no, it isn’t. I wouldn’t interrupt you at work if it was.’

She half rose.

‘What’s happened?’

‘You probably haven’t noticed,’ Robbie said. He leaned over the desk a little and Tamsin felt a smal clutch of real apprehension. ‘In fact, if you had noticed, I wouldn’t be here. I could have waited til tonight, but for once I didn’t think I would. If you want to know, I’m sick of waiting.’ He leaned a little further. ‘Tamsin,’ Robbie said, ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’

A smal beauty salon in Marylebone, just off the High Street, offered Dil y a job as a junior therapist for four days a week, with the expectation that she would work every other weekend. Dil y said she would think about it. She liked the look of the salon and the other girls seemed perfectly friendly, but she wasn’t sure about the commitment of working at weekends, which would mean, if she only had three days a week when she wasn’t working, but al her friends were, she’d be stuck in that top-floor flat alone with no one to hang out with.

The manageress of the salon had seen quite a lot of girls like Dil y. In fact she was rather tired of girls like Dil y and wasn’t going to waste her breath, yet again, explaining that the current employment market was not a pick-and-choose, plenty-more-where-that-came-from scenario any more. So she looked at Dil y – pretty girl, and a deft worker – and said she should of course make up her own mind, but that the salon needed an extra girl, on the terms she had specified, immediately, and that the job would be given to the next suitable candidate who came through the door, which might be that very afternoon. She then turned away to talk to a client in a very different, animated manner, and Dil y went out into the street feeling, aggrievedly, that she hadn’t in any way merited being treated like that.

She continued to feel uneasy, heading for the underground. She’d gone for the interview at her friend Breda’s insistence, and everything about the salon, and the people, had been real y nice. It was just the hours. It was OK, wasn’t it, to decide for yourself about the hours? It wasn’t right, was it, to ask someone to work part-time, and then tel them that half that part-time was going to be Saturdays and Sundays? That wasn’t fair. Dil y was sure that wasn’t fair. Dad had always told them that work would never satisfy them if their hearts weren’t in it, and how could your heart be in something where you felt you were in some way being exploited because you were only a junior therapist, and part-time at that?

Dil y argued with herself al the way home. She texted Breda, as promised, to tel her about the interview and that she wasn’t sure about the job, and Breda texted back ‘MISTAKE’ in capital letters, which wasn’t the reaction Dil y was expecting, so she deleted the message, but the word

‘mistake’ clung to her mind and seemed to echo there like an insistent drumbeat. Her discomfort was increased by not being sure how Chrissie would react to her story, because there was a danger – a definite danger – that her mother might look at her as the manager of the salon had done, and Dil y wasn’t at al sure that she could take that. Everything had got so unpredictable lately, and the whole Amy thing was just making it worse.

The best thing to do, Dil y decided, was to hope that Chrissie would be at home alone, and that Dil y, instead of recounting the story as it had happened, could slightly readjust the narrative to conclude that Chrissie’s opinion had to be sought and acted upon before Dil y could, real y, either accept or decline the job offer.

But Chrissie wasn’t alone. Chrissie and Tamsin were in the sitting room and Tamsin had evidently been crying. She was sniffing stil , crouched in an armchair clutching a bal ed-up tissue. Chrissie was on the sofa, sitting rather upright, and not, to Dil y’s anxious eye, looking especial y sympathetic.

Dil y dropped her bag in the doorway.

‘What’s going on?’

Chrissie said to Tamsin, ‘Do you want to tel her, or shal I?’

Tamsin said unsteadily, teasing out shreds of her tissue bal , ‘It’s Robbie.’

Dil y came hurriedly round the sofa and sat down next to Chrissie. She said in a horrified voice, ‘He hasn’t dumped you?’

Tamsin shook her head.

‘Wel then—’

‘But he might!’ Tamsin said in a wail.

‘What d’you mean?’

Tamsin began to cry again.

‘He told Tamsin,’ Chrissie said, ‘that he was tired of waiting for her to move in with him, and that he could only suppose that her reluctance meant she didn’t real y want to, so he’s told her to go away and decide, and tel him final y in the morning.’

‘Wel ,’ Dil y said, abruptly conscious of her own currently single state, ‘that’s easy, isn’t it?’

‘No!’ Tamsin shouted.

Dil y glanced quickly at her mother.

‘I thought,’ Dil y said to Tamsin, ‘that you wanted to move in with Robbie?’

Tamsin howled, ‘I can’t, I can’t, can I?’

‘Why not?’ Dil y said.

‘Because of Mum,’ Tamsin wailed, ‘because of Mum and this flat and Amy – and Dad dying. And everything. I can’t.’

Dil y swal owed.

‘There’s stil me—’

‘You haven’t got a job—’

‘I might have!’

‘Oh God,’ Tamsin said, ‘ might this, might that. Why don’t you ever do something?’

‘Why don’t you?’ Dil y said crossly. ‘Why don’t you move in with Robbie?’

‘Exactly,’ Chrissie said.

They both turned to look at her. She had spread her hands out in her lap, and she was looking down at them.

‘I wasn’t sure,’ Chrissie said, ‘when or how I was going to say this to you. I certainly didn’t plan on saying it today, but here you both are, and now seems as good a time as any.’

She paused. Tamsin sat up a little straighter, and lifted her arms, in a characteristical y settling gesture, to pul her ponytail tighter through its black velvet band.

‘I think the house is sold,’ Chrissie said, ‘and I think I’m going to take the flat. And I’ve definitely accepted the job, for a trial period of three months, even though I don’t think of it as that, I think of it as something I’l do as wel as I can until I can do something better. I get the feeling Leverton’s understand that.’

The girls waited, watching her. She went on surveying her hands.

‘I haven’t thought what I’m going to say for very long,’ Chrissie said, ‘but the reason I’m talking to you is that, having had the thought, or, to be honest, having had it suggested to me, it strikes me as the right thing to do. The right way forward.’

She stopped and looked up. Tamsin and Dil y were sitting bolt upright, knees together, waiting.

‘What?’ Tamsin said.

‘There’l always be a home for you with me,’ Chrissie said, ‘always. And there’s one for Amy now, of course, if she wants it, which she doesn’t seem to. But it’s there for her, a bedroom, even if she isn’t in it. But – it’s different for you two, isn’t it? And it’s different for me now too, different in a way I never imagined, never pictured, and I can see that none of us are going to move forwards, move on from Dad dying, from life with Dad, if we just go on living round – round this kind of hol ow centre, if you see what I mean, living al clinging together because that’s al we know, even if it isn’t doing any of us any good.’

She paused. Dil y looked anxiously at Tamsin.

‘So?’ Tamsin said.

‘I think,’ Chrissie said careful y to Tamsin, ‘that you should go and live with Robbie. I think you should make Robbie your priority as you once appeared to want to because if you make me your priority you’l get stuck and then we won’t like each other at al . Wil we? And Dil y. I think you should take any job you are offered and ask about among your friends for a room in someone’s flat—’

Dil y gave a little gasp.

‘And discover,’ Chrissie said firmly, ‘the satisfaction of standing on your own two feet. I’l help you as much as I can, but I’m not suggesting you live with me for exactly the reasons I gave Tamsin. It won’t be easy, but we won’t get trapped in resentment, in the past, either. We are al going to try and make something of our lives and of our relationship. I don’t actual y think our relationship would survive living together. Do you?’ She stopped again, and looked at them. She seemed suddenly to be on the edge of tears. The girls were gazing back at her, but neither of them was crying.

‘And so,’ Chrissie said, not at al steadily, ‘I intend to live in that flat on my own after the house is sold. You’l be so welcome there, any time, but you won’t be living there. You’l be living your own lives, lives where you can begin to put the past behind you, where it belongs. Elsewhere.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

Margaret had done what Scott caled getting them in. She was at one of the low tables with armchairs, in the first-floor bar of the hotel overlooking the river, and she had ordered a gin and tonic for herself, and a bottle of Belgian beer for Scott, and it was very pleasant sitting there, with the early-evening sun shining on the river and the great bulk of the Baltic on the further shore with some daft modern-art slogan on a huge banner plastered to its side. Amazing what people thought they could get away with, amazing what people put up with, amazing to think of the contrasts. There was the pretentious nonsense al over the Baltic – it had just been a flour mil when Margaret was growing up – and then, at the other end of the scale, there was the old Baptist church in Tynemouth, now deconsecrated and a warren of gimcrack little shops with Mr Lee’s Tattooing Parlour right under the old church window which said ‘God is love’ in red-and-white glass. Just thinking about it made Margaret want to snort.

‘Penny for them, Mam,’ Scott said, dropping into the chair opposite her.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t want to know.’ She waved a hand at the Baltic. ‘That rubbish, for starters—’

‘He’s a serious artist,’ Scott said, ‘and if you don’t behave, I’l take you to see his video instal ation.’

‘You wil not—’

‘Amy liked it,’ Scott said.

Margaret’s expression gentled.

‘Amy — ’

Scott grinned.

‘She’s texting, al the time.’

Margaret said, ‘Dawson liked her. Even Dawson. He won’t sit on just anyone’s lap.’

‘We’ve al gone a bit soft on Amy—’

‘Wel ,’ Margaret said more briskly, ‘she’s got work to do.’

‘She’l do it.’

‘She’s not very practised. She’s been sheltered. Over-sheltered. She thinks money’s just pocket money. She doesn’t know anything about money

—’

‘She knows enough to get Mr Harrison to give her a job.’

‘Nonsense,’ Margaret said.

Scott pul ed out his phone, and pressed a few buttons. Then he held the phone out to his mother.

‘Read that.’

Margaret leaned forward, putting on her reading glasses. She peered at the screen. She said, ‘So he says there’s work for her. I doubt it. He’l only have her fetching coffee.’

‘She won’t mind that. She’l be learning. She’l get to see his acts. She’l be performing. She can sing.’

Margaret leaned back.

‘I know she can sing. It’s not much of a voice yet but it’s in tune—’

‘Bang on the note.’

‘Don’t make a fool of yourself over her, pet,’ Margaret said.

Scott took a swal ow of his beer. He grinned at his mother.

‘She’s on a mission to find me a girlfriend.’

‘Good luck to her.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t mind if she manages it—’

‘What’s got into you?’

Scott raised his beer bottle towards his mother.

‘Same as you.’

‘I’m just as I was,’ Margaret said.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘I’m—’

‘Look at you,’ Scott said, ‘look at you. You’ve had something done to your hair, and that’s new.’

‘What’s new?’

‘That dress.’

‘Oh,’ Margaret said airily, ‘this.’ She looked out at the river. ‘Everything I’d got suddenly looked so tired.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you say yes as if you know something I don’t know?’

‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t know anything you don’t know. The difference between us is just that I admit it.’

‘Admit what? ’

‘That I feel better. That you feel better. That we al feel better.’

‘Al ?’

‘Yes,’ Scott said firmly, ‘Mr Harrison too.’

Margaret took a sip of her drink.

‘What has Bernie Harrison got to do with it?’

‘You tel me,’ Scott said.

Margaret smiled privately down into her gin and tonic.

‘Why’d you ask me here?’ Scott said. ‘Why’re you al tarted up?’

‘Don’t use that word to me—’

‘Why, Mam?’

Margaret looked up.

‘Are you in a hurry, pet?’

‘No,’ Scott said. ‘Wel , yes, actual y. I’m meeting some of the lads from work.’

‘And the lasses, too?’ Margaret said.

Scott said, smiling, ‘There’s always the lasses too.’

‘Ah ’

‘Never mind ah. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why you asked me here.’

Margaret looked round the bar in a leisurely way, as if she was savouring something. Then she said, ‘Bernie’l be here in ten minutes.’

‘And? And?’

‘I just thought,’ Margaret said, ‘that I’d like to tel you before I told him. That’s al .’

It was late when she got home, but the night sky over the sea was dim rather than dark, and the sea was washing peaceful y up against the shore below Percy Gardens. Margaret liked the sea in its summer mood, when even if it lost its temper it was only briefly, unlike the sustained furious rages of winter when she could stand at her sitting-room window and see the spray flung angrily upwards in great dramatic plumes. But in the summer, there was less sense of frustration, less of a feeling that the sea was outraged to find its wild energies curtailed by a shoreline, by the upsettingly domestic barriers of a coast road and a crescent of houses inhabited by people who thought they had the capacity to control and contain whatever was inconvenient about nature.

Margaret paid off the taxi, and walked, in her new summer shoes, to the edge of the grassy oval of grass in front of Percy Gardens, so that she could see the sea, heaving and gleaming and spil ing itself, over and over, on to the stones below her. Bernie Harrison had wanted to take her somewhere impressive to celebrate, but she’d said no, they could eat there, in the brasserie of the hotel, and when he said wasn’t that meant for much younger people than they were she said speak for yourself, Bernie Harrison, but I feel years younger than I did only a week ago.

Their steaks had come on rectangular wooden platters, like superior bread boards, and Bernie had found a very respectable burgundy on the wine list to drink with them, and Margaret had to hand it to him, he hadn’t crowed over her once, he hadn’t said, ‘What kept you?’ or, ‘About time too,’ he’d just said, over and over, that he was so pleased, so pleased, and, if he was honest, relieved too.

‘Have you told Glenda?’

‘Of course not. Would I tel Glenda before I told you?’

‘I think,’ Bernie said, reflecting on how nice it was to have chips with his steak, how nice it was to be with a woman who didn’t think chips were common, ‘she’l like the plan, don’t you?’

‘She’s been on at me ever since you first suggested it.’

‘Margaret,’ Bernie said, putting down his knife and fork, ‘Margaret. How do you feel?’

She glanced up at him.

‘If you can’t see that for yourself, Bernie Harrison,’ she said, ‘you need your eyes seeing to.’

He put her into a taxi in a way she found entirely acceptable, no chal enges, no fake gal antry, no showing off. He’d just kissed her cheek, thanked her and said, ‘We’l both sleep happier tonight,’ and then slapped the roof of the taxi as if to wish her Godspeed on the journey home and somehow more than that, on a journey into something that was, of course, more of the same, but with a twist, with a new injection of vitality, a new optimism.

She took several deep breaths of the sea, and then she turned and went careful y back over the rough grass to her front door, and put the key in the lock.

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 smal , interrogatory remark.

Margaret looked at him. She remembered him as that smal , 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 fol owed him into the kitchen. He paced ahead of her, not hurrying, confident of his smal victory, and, as ever, blessedly, uncomplicatedly detached.

He sat down with dignity beside his food bowl and watched her while she found a smal 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 bul y.’

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 fal 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 al owed, 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 dul 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 il 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 real y 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 al its beguiling charms, had not made al owances 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 al 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 tel 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 shal ow cliff slope, holding the ring, and when she got to the bottom, as a mark of respect to the past and al 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.

Joanna Trollope is the author of fifteen highly acclaimed bestselling novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia’s Daughters, as well as a number of historical novels. Born in Gloucestershire, she now lives in London. She was awarded the OBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Visit her website at www.joannatrollope.com

Copyright © 2010 Joanna Trollope

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2010 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, and in the United Kingdom by Doubleday, a division of Random House Group (UK) and in the U.S. by Touchstone, a division of Simon and Schuster. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

www.randomhouse.ca

Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Trollope, Joanna

The other family / Joanna Trollope.

eISBN: 978-0-307-37426-4

I. Title.

PR6070.R57O82 2010 823′.914 C2009-905010-2

v3.0

Table of Contents

Cover

Other books by This Author

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

About the Author

Copyright