Since the evening of the green-apple Martinis – not an evening to be remembered without wincing, on several fronts – Chrissie had been much on Sue’s mind. Chrissie had always been such a contrast to Sue, so organized in her life and her person, so apparently able to make decisions and steer her life and her family in a way that was invisible to them but satisfactory to her, so very much an example of that exasperating breed of women who, when interviewed in their flawless homes about their ability not to go mad running four or five people’s lives as well as their own, plus a job, smiled serenely and said it was really just a matter of making lists. Sue had never made a list in her life. There was a large old blackboard nailed to the wall in her kitchen on which the members of the household – Sue, her partner Kevin, Sue’s sister Fran, who was an intermittent lodger, and three children – were supposed to write food and domestic items that needed r eplacing. But nobody did. The blackboard was used for games of hangman, and writing rude poems, and drawing body parts as a challenge to Sue to demand to know who drew them, and then forbid it. But Sue wasn’t interested in challenges about which child was responsible for a row of caricature penises drawn in mauve chalk. Sue, just now, was interested in why her friend Chrissie seemed to have disintegrated since Richie’s death, and be unable to access any of the admirable managerial and practical qualities that she had manifested when he was alive. It shocked Sue that Richie’s clothes still hung in the bedroom cupboards and that the only change to their bedroom had been the removal of two pillows from the bed. It shocked her even more that his piano still sat in the room where he had practised, hours every day, which now was in grave danger of becoming the most lifeless and pointless kind of shrine. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Sue said to Kevin, ‘if she wasn’t hunting for hairs in his comb.’ Kevin, who was twelve years younger than Sue, and worked for a highclass local plumber, was reading the evening paper. He said, without looking up, ‘Wouldn’t you do that for me?’ Sue looked at him. Kevin had had a shaved head ever since she met him. ‘Very funny. But Chrissie isn’t funny. She might be griefstricken but I think she’s more loss-stricken. The structure of her life was founded on that bloody man, and that’s gone now he’s gone.’ Kevin said, staring at the sports page, ‘What a wanker.’ ‘She loved him,’ Sue said. Kevin shrugged. ‘Kev,’ Sue said, ‘Kev. Are you listening to me? You like Chrissie.’ Kevin shook the paper slightly. ‘Fit bird.’ ‘You like her. When I suggest seeing her, you don’t behave like I’ve asked you to have tea with the Queen, like you do with Verna or Danielle.’ Kevin made a face. Sue leaned across the table and twitched the paper out of his hands. He didn’t move, merely sat there with his hands out, as they had been while holding the paper. ‘Listen to me, tosser boy.’ ‘On message,’ Kevin said. ‘Chrissie is stuck. Chrissie is lost. Chrissie is consumed by a sense of betrayal and a hopeless rage and jealousy about that lot up in Newcastle. Chrissie needs to move forward because there’s no money coming in and those useless little madams, her daughters – sorry, I exclude Amy, on a good day – aren’t going to lift a spoiled finger to help her or change their ways. Chrissie is in some bad place with the door locked and what I would like to do, Kev, is find the key.’ Kevin gazed at her. Sue waited. Years ago, when they had first met, Kevin sitting gazing, apparently blankly, at her had driven her wild. She’d shrieked at him, certain his mind had slipped back to its comfort zones of football and sex and boiler systems. But over
64 time she had learned that not only did Kevin not think like her, he also manifested his thinking quite differently. Quite often, when he was just sitting there, ostensibly gormlessly, his mind was like rats in a cage, zooming up and down and round and about, seeking an answer. If Sue waited long enough, she had discovered, Kevin would say something that not only astounded and delighted her with its astuteness but also proved that, while absorbed in the newspaper or the television, he had missed not a nuance or a syllable of what had been going on around him. ‘I learned deadpan as a kid,’ he once said to Sue. ‘It was best, really. Saved getting clobbered all the time.’ Kevin leaned forward. Very gently, he took his newspaper back. Then he said, ‘Get that piano out of the house.’ * * * The house was quiet. Amy was at school, Tamsin was at work and Chrissie, in a grey-flannel trouser suit, had gone into town, to an address off the Tottenham Court Road, for an interview. ‘I don’t hold out much hope,’ Chrissie said to Dilly before she left. She had her handbag on the kitchen table and was checking its contents. Dilly had her laptop open. She preferred working in the kitchen because that left her bedroom pristine and undisturbed. It also meant that, if there were any distractions going on, she wouldn’t miss them. Next to her laptop lay a manual on hair-removal techniques. The screen on her laptop showed her Facebook account. ‘Why’d you say that?’ ‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ Chrissie said. ‘It doesn’t feel me. I didn’t like the tone of the woman I spoke to.’ Dilly was looking at the screen. Her friend Zena had posted a series of pictures of her trip to Paris. They were so boring that Dilly couldn’t think why she’d bothered. ‘Why’re you going then?’ ‘Because I have to,’ Chrissie said. ‘Because I have to find something that will bring some money in. We’re not on the wire, but we’re close.’ Dilly gave a little shiver. It was frightening when Chrissie talked like this, and she’d talked like this a lot recently. Dilly didn’t want to be unsympathetic, but she couldn’t see what was so very different about the way they’d lived since Richie died, apart from his glaring absence. Chrissie wore the same clothes; the fridge was full of the same food; they all took showers and baths and spent hours on the computer and switched the lights and the television on, just as they always had. Tamsin had made a bit of a speech about economy the other day, but then she swished off to work in a pair of shoes Dilly swore she’d never seen before, and for shoes Dilly had a memory like a card index. It wasn’t so much that Dilly was afraid of economizing, afraid of making changes, but more that she was made fearful by the uncertainty, by these vague and awful threats of an impending doom, which was never quite specified and whose arrival, though certain, was vague as to timing. ‘Mum,’ Dilly said, turning away from yet another of Zena’s art shots of the Eiffel Tower, ‘Mum, we’ll all get on our bikes when you tell us what’s happening and how we can help.’ Chrissie picked up her handbag and blew Dilly a kiss. ‘I’ll tell you that, poppet, as soon as I even begin to know myself.’ When she had gone, Dilly was very miserable. Even the thought of texting Craig, of seeing Craig on Friday, didn’t have its usual diverting capacity. She logged off Facebook with an effort of will and glanced at her manual. The next section was on sugaring and threading. Threading was really difficult. The Asian girls on Dilly’s course said that in their community the threading technique was passed down from mother to daughter, so
65 they’d known how to do it since they were tiny, a sort of beauty routine cat’s cradle. Dilly looked up, tapping a pencil against her teeth. Anxiety was an almost perpetual waking state now, and it made her fidgety and unhappy, unable to distract herself as she usually could with a phone call or a coffee or a bit of e Bay browsing. She would have liked to cry. Crying had always been Dilly’s first resort when confronted by the smallest hiccup in life, but one of the many miseries of the present time was that she couldn’t seem to cry with any ease at all over little things. Crying seemed to have taken itself into another league altogether, and in volved huge, wrenching sobbing sessions when she suddenly, all over again, had to confront the fact that Richie was no longer there. Her phone, lying on the table beyond her laptop, began to ring. She picked it up and looked at the screen. It was bound to be Craig. It was, instead, a number she didn’t recognize. She put the phone to her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said cautiously. ‘Dilly?’ Sue said. ‘Oh. Sue—’ ‘Got a minute?’ ‘Well, I—’ ‘Home alone, are you? I need to see you for a moment.’ ‘Me?’ ‘Dilly,’ Sue said, ‘I’m ringing you, aren’t I?’ ‘I’m – I’m working—’ ‘No, you’re not,’ Sue said. ‘You’re doing your nails and comparing boyfriends on Facebook. I’m coming round.’ ‘Mum isn’t here—’ ‘Exactly. I’m coming round to see you.’ Dilly said warily, ‘Are you going to tick me off?’ ‘Why would I?’ ‘You just sounded a bit – forceful—’ ‘Not forceful,’ Sue said, ‘decided. That’s why I’m coming round. I’ve decided something and I want your help.’ Dilly said, ‘Why don’t you ask Tamsin whatever it is?’ ‘Too bossy.’ ‘Amy — ’ ‘Too young.’ ‘OK,’ Dilly said doubtfully. ‘Don’t move. I’ll be ten minutes. Put the kettle on.’ Dilly roused herself. She said abruptly, ‘What’s it about?’ ‘Tell you when I get there.’ ‘No,’ Dilly said, ‘no. No games. Tell me now.’ ‘No.’ ‘Then I won’t open the door to you.’ ‘You’re an evil little witch, aren’t you—’ ‘Tell me!’ There was a short pause, and then Sue said, ‘It’s about the piano.’ Bernie Harrison asked Scott Rossiter to meet him in his offices. He had thought of suggesting a drink together, but he wanted the occasion to be more businesslike than convivial, and he wanted Scott’s full attention. So he thought, on reflection, that to meet in his offices would not only achieve both those things but would also impress upon Scott the size and significance of the Bernie Harrison Agency. He had known Scott almost all his life. He remembered him as a small boy at home in one of the plain-brick, metal-windowed council houses on the Chirton Estate in North Shields, when Richie and Margaret were still sharing with Richie’s parents. Richie’s parents had been living in the house since Richie was five, being categorized as ‘homeless’ after the Second World War, which then meant being a married couple still forced to live with their parents. And then, a generation later, it had happened to Richie and Margaret, before Richie’s career struck gold, and while he was still taking low-key dates in obscure venues, and she was a junior secretary in a North Shields legal firm, and Scott was a toddler, cared for in the daytime by his sweet and ineffectual grandmother. After that, of course, it all changed. After that, after Richie’s ‘discovery’ on a talent show for Yorkshire Television, it was very different. The house on the Chirton Estate was abandoned for a little terraced house in Tynemouth and then a semidetached, much larger house, with a sizeable garden, and when Scott left primary school he left the state system too and gained a place, a fee-paying place, at the King’s School in Tynemouth. Richie and Margaret had almost died of pride when Scott got into the King’s School. Bernie held out a big hand. ‘Scott, my lad.’ Scott took his hand. ‘Mr Harrison.’ ‘Bernie, please—’ Scott shook his head. ‘Couldn’t, Mr Harrison. Sorry.’ Bernie motioned to a leather wing chair.
66 ‘Good to see you. Sit yourself down.’ ‘Isn’t that your chair?’ Bernie winked. ‘They are all my chairs, Scott.’ Scott gave a half-smile, and subsided into the chair. He had a pretty good idea why Bernie had asked to see him, and an even better idea of what he was going to say in r eply. He had not told Margaret he had been summoned, but he was going to tell her about the meeting when it was over. He was feeling fond and protective of Margaret at the moment. When, the other night, he’d asked her if she ever felt like he did that there might be someone or something out there that could spring him from the trap of his sense of obstructing himself from moving forward, she’d said, ‘Oh, pet, you know, you always hope and hope it’ll be someone else who does the trick, but in the end it comes down to you yourself, and the sad fact is that some of us can and some of us can’t,’ and then she’d taken his hand and said again, ‘Some of us just can’t,’ and he’d had a sudden lightning glimpse of how she’d looked at his age, younger even, when there seemed to be everything to live for, and nothing to dread. He looked now at Bernie Harrison. ‘I shouldn’t be too long, Mr Harrison.’ ‘Me neither,’ Bernie said firmly. He balanced himself against the edge of the desk and held the rim either side of him. ‘It’s your mother, Scott.’ ‘Yes,’ Scott said. He looked at Bernie’s shoes. They were expensive, black calf slip-ons, with tassels. The fabric of his suit trousers looked classy too, with a rich, soft sheen to it, and his shirt had French cuffs and links the size of gobstoppers. ‘Did she tell you,’ Bernie said, ‘about my proposal?’ ‘Yes,’ Scott said. ‘The other night.’ ‘So she also will have told you that she declined my offer.’ ‘Yes.’ Bernie cleared his throat. ‘Can you enlighten me as to why she’d turn me down?’ ‘I wouldn’t try,’ Scott said. ‘OK, OK. I’m not asking you to betray any confidences. I’m just seeking a few assurances. Is it – is it me?’ ‘You?’ ‘Well,’ Bernie said, ‘does she think that if she worked with me I’d make a nuisance of myself? Your mother’s a good-looking woman.’ Scott smiled at him. ‘No, Mr Harrison, I don’t think that was the problem.’ Bernie flicked him a look. ‘Sure?’ ‘Pretty sure.’ There was a small silence, tinged with disappointment. Then Bernie said robustly, ‘Well, she can’t have doubts about her own abilities, can she? It may be small, but that’s a cracking little business she has.’ ‘No,’ Scott said, ‘I don’t think the possibility of inadequacy crossed her mind. Quite rightly.’ ‘Oh,’ Bernie said with energy, ‘quite rightly, I agree. Well, if it’s not me and it’s not her, what is it?’ Scott said carefully, ‘Sometimes you find you just don’t want to do something, however great the offer is.’ Bernie regarded him. ‘But that’s not like your mother.’ Scott shrugged. Bernie said, ‘Has she been affected by your father’s death? I mean, badly affected?’ Scott looked out of the window. He said, ‘It’s something to come to terms with. Obviously.’ ‘You’re not helping me much, young man.’ Scott looked back. He said, ‘I can’t answer your question because I don’t know much more than you do. She was very pleased and very flattered by your offer, but she doesn’t want to acc ept it. Maybe she doesn’t know why any more than we do.’ Bernie shook his head. He stood up and put his hands in his trouser pockets, and jangled his keys and his change. ‘I’m baffled.’ He shook his head again, as if to clear a buzzing in his ears. ‘It isn’t me, and it isn’t her, and it isn’t your dad’s death—’ ‘Or it’s all three of them.’ ‘Maybe.’ ‘But it won’t be personal, if you see what I mean. Mam’s not like that. She won’t have said no for any reason that isn’t straight, she wouldn’t do it just to spite you or something like that.’ Bernie shook his keys again. ‘That’s one of the reasons I asked her.
67 Because she’s so straight, and everyone knows that. I want her r eputation as much as I want her expertise and her input and her presence.’ Scott made to get up. ‘If it’s OK by you, Mr Harrison—’ Bernie looked at him again. He took his hands out of his pockets and jabbed a forefinger towards Scott. ‘If this is how it is, my lad, I’m not giving up. If it was a concrete reason, I’m not saying I wouldn’t have another go, but I’d respect it. But as it’s all this vague, don’t-know, wishy-washy stuff, I’m going to ke ep trying. And I’d be grateful if you’d put in a word for me with her now and then. I want to ke ep the pot boiling.’ Scott said, standing now, ‘I’m happy to see you today, Mr Harrison, but this is between you and my mother. Whatever I think may be good for her is really neither here nor there. It’s what she thinks is good herself that counts, and she’s had years of practice deciding that. I’d like to see her here, Mr Harrison, but only if that’s what she really wants.’ Bernie looked at him in silence for a few moments. Then he touched Scott’s arm. ‘Anyone tell you how like your dad you are, to look at?’ Threading his way through the ambling crowds in the Eldon Square shopping centre, Scott felt his phone vibrating in his top pocket. He paused to take it out and put it to his ear. ‘Hello?’ A female voice with a slight London accent said, ‘That Scott?’ Scott moved into a quieter spot in the doorway of a children’s clothes shop. ‘Who is this?’ ‘My name’s Sue,’ Sue said. ‘I’m a friend of your st epmother’s.’ ‘My—’ ‘Of Chrissie’s,’ Sue said. ‘Of your father’s wife.’ Scott shut his eyes briefly. This was no moment to say forcibly to a stranger on the tel ephone that his father had only ever had one wife, and it wasn’t Chrissie. ‘You still there?’ Sue said. ‘Yes—’ ‘Well, I just rang—’ ‘How did you get my number?’ There was a short pause, and then Sue said, ‘Amy’s phone.’ ‘Amy knows you are ringing? Why aren’t I talking to Amy?’ ‘Amy doesn’t know,’ Sue said. ‘Then—’ ‘Dilly took the number from Amy’s phone,’ Sue said. ‘Dilly is Amy’s sister.’ ‘I know that.’ ‘Well,’ Sue said with irritation, ‘how I got your number is neither here nor there—’ ‘It is.’ ‘It’s why I’m ringing that matters. And you’ll be pleased when you hear.’ Scott waited. A lump of indignation at Amy’s phone being investigated behind her back sat in his throat like a walnut. ‘Listen,’ Sue said. ‘I am—’ ‘The piano is fixed.’ ‘What?’ ‘The piano. Your piano. With Dilly’s help, we’re getting it shifted. I think it’ll be next week. You should have your piano by the end of next week. I’ll let you know the exact timing when I’ve got firm dates from the removal company.’ Scott said, ‘Does Amy know? Does – does her mother know?’ ‘Look,’ Sue said, suddenly furious, ‘look, you ungrateful oaf, none of that is any of your business. No, they don’t know, nobody knows but Dilly and me, but that’s none of your business either. Your business is to thank me for extricating your sodding piano and arranging for it to come north. All I need from you is thanks and a delivery address. The rest is none of your business. You have no idea what it’s like down here.’ Scott swallowed. He said, with evident self-control, ‘I told Amy the piano could wait until – until it was OK for them to let it go.’ ‘They won’t even begin to be OK until the piano has gone. Trust me. Cruel to be kind, maybe, but the piano has to go.’ ‘I don’t like it being a secret—’ Sue yelled, ‘It has nothing to do with what you like or don’t like!’ Scott held his phone a little way from his ear. He wanted to explain that he didn’t, for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate, wish to do anything remotely underhand as far as Amy was concerned, but he had no wish to open himself up, in any way, to this assertive woman. Sue said, slightly less vehemently, ‘Don’t go and bugger this plan up now by refusing the piano.’ ‘I wouldn’t do that—’ ‘You’re doing Chrissie a favour, removing the piano. You’re doing them
68 all a favour. None of them can move on one inch until that piano is out of the house and they aren’t passing it every five minutes.’ Scott put the phone back against his ear. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ ‘That’s more like it,’ Sue said. ‘Jeez, what a family. I thought mine was a byword for dysfunction but the Rossiters run us a close second. Text me your address and I’ll let you know the delivery date.’ ‘OK.’ ‘Is it too much to ask,’ Sue demanded, ‘that you say, “Thank you so much, stranger lady, for restoring my birthright to me”?’ Scott considered. Who knew if this woman was a miracle-worker or a meddler? He remembered that she had called him an oaf. A peculiarly Southern insult somehow. ‘Yes,’ Scott said decidedly, and flipped his phone shut. * * * That night, instead of slamming a curry or chilli con carne into the microwave, Scott cooked dinner. He paused in the little Asian supermarket on his way home and bought an array of vegetables, including pak choi, and a packet of chicken-breast strips, and a box of jasmine rice, and when he got home he made himself a stir-fry. He put the stir-fry on a proper dinner plate, instead of eating it out of the pan, and put the plate on his table with a knife and a fork and three carefully torn-off sheets of kitchen paper as a napkin. Then he stuck a candle-end in an empty bottle of Old Speckled Hen, and put a disc in the CD player, a disc of his father playing Rachmaninov, a disc that had never sold in anything like the numbers that his covers of Tony Bennett songs had. Then he sat down, and ate his dinner in as measured a way as he could, and reflected with something approaching pride on having stood up to Bernie Harrison, not allowed himself to be grateful to that rude cow from London, and succeeded, at last, in taking Donna out for a coffee – not the drink she would have preferred – and telling her that he was very sorry but she was mistaken and nothing she could do was going to make him change his mind. He had feared she might cry. There were long moments while she stared down into her skinny latte with an extra shot, and he had been afraid that she was going to opt for tears rather than fury. But to her credit, she had neither w ept nor shouted. In fact she’d said, after swallowing hard several times, ‘Well, Scottie, I’ll be thirty-six next October, so you can’t blame me for trying,’ and he’d squeezed her hand briefly and said, ‘I don’t. I just don’t want you to waste any more time or effort on me.’ She looked at him. She said, with a gallant attempt at a smile, ‘Rather have a piano than a relationship, would you?’ He said, ‘At least you know where you are with a piano,’ and they’d grinned weakly at each other, and then she bent to pick up her bag and stood up and said she was off to see the girls from work to drown her sorrows. Or, as it was only Wednesday, to half drown them anyway. She bent and gave his cheek a quick brush with her own. ‘It was nice being wanted for my body—’ ‘Great body,’ Scott said politely. Then she had clicked out of the coffee bar on her heels and he had gone to the Asian supermarket and bought the ingredients for a proper meal. Which he had now pr epared, and cooked, and eaten. And washed up. He put the kettle on, to make a coffee, and then he strolled down the length of his flat and contemplated the space he had cleared – but not sw ept, recently – where the piano would sit. It was very, very wonderful to think that, within ten days, it would be sitting there, huge and shining and impregnated with memories and possibilities. Now that it was actually on its way, Scott could permit himself to acknowledge how much he wanted it, how hard it had been to say that they should not let it go until they
69 were ready to let it go. It had been hard, but it had been worth it, both because it gave Scott the sense of having behaved honourably in an awkward situation and because the joy of knowing it would soon be on its way north was so very intense by contrast. The joy was, Scott thought, an unexpected bonus. It gave him an energy of pleasure that he couldn’t remember feeling about anything much for a very long time. The only element that tempered it – and Scott had not allowed himself to consider this fully till now – was that a dec eption was being practised on Amy, and on her mother and older sister, in order that he might have the Steinway sitting where he was standing now, with the night view of the bridge, and the Gateshead shore shimmering away beyond, outside the uncurtained window. Scott moved over to the window and leaned his forehead against the cold glass. He supposed that part of him felt that Amy’s mother and sister could look out for themselves. He had, after all, had no contact with them exc ept cold looks at the funeral and an unpleasant brief tel ephone exchange with Tamsin. But Amy herself was another matter. Amy had had the guts to ring him, had spoken to him as if the bond between them didn’t just exist but should be respected and, for God’s sake, she was only eighteen, she was only a kid, but she had shown an ind ependence of mind that would do credit to someone twice her age. Scott took his phone out of his trouser pocket, and tossed it once or twice in his hand. If he rang her, and told her about Sue’s call, she might well flip and refuse to let him have the piano. He looked, for a long time, at the dusty space where the piano was going to sit. He walked across it, and then back again. He weighed his desire for it to be there against his peace of mind. He flipped his phone open, and dialled Amy’s number. Her phone rang four times, then five, then six. Then her voice said hurriedly, ‘This is Amy’s phone. I’ll call you back,’ and stopped, as if she had meant to leave more message, and suddenly couldn’t think what more to say. Scott looked out at his view. ‘Amy,’ he said, ‘it’s Scott. I’m calling on Wednesday night. It’s about the piano. There’s something we should talk about. Could you call me when you get this? Any time. I mean, any time.’ She rang back at ten past two in the morning. She sounded odd, but she said that was because she was under the duvet. Apart from being a bit muffled, her tone was normal, even neutral. She said, ‘What is it? About the piano?’ Scott, lying back on his pillow, his eyes still closed from the de ep sle ep he’d been in, told her briefly about Sue’s call. ‘Oh,’ Amy said. ‘Look,’ Scott said, ‘it doesn’t have to happen, not if you—’ ‘It does have to happen. It’s not that—’ ‘Not what?’ ‘It’s not you having the piano—’ ‘Oh,’ Scott said. Amy said, ‘I’m glad.’ ‘Are you? ’ ‘Oh yes,’ she said. He waited for her to ask if she’d woken him, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, ‘I won’t let my phone out of my sight now.’ ‘No.’ There was a silence. He longed to say more but couldn’t initiate it. Then she said, ‘Night-night. Thanks for telling me,’ and the line went dead. Scott looked at the clock beside his bed. Two-thirteen and he was awake now. Wide awake.