The carton of sheet music sat on the floor, in Margaret’s sitting room. Scott had sent it over in a taxi. Dawson had investigated it in a leisurely way, and had tried sitting on it, but had then retreated to his usual place along the back of the sofa, which was, after all, cushioned, and got the morning sun. Margaret had opened the carton with a kitchen knife, kneeling on the carpet. Then she had turned back the flaps and there, on top, was the familiar – oh, so familiar – cover of ‘Chase The Dream’, with Richie’s blurred photograph on the front against a background of a geometric pattern, printed in aquamarine, with the song’s title in black across the top, italic script, and Richie’s name at the bottom. She lifted it out. You didn’t get proper, printed, published song sheets like that any more. Everything was virtual, digitalized, ephemeral. You couldn’t hold a song in your hands, not unless it was by Sondheim or someone and worth publishing in huge numbers. But Richie’s songs, in the early days, came out as sheets at the same time that they came out as records. In that carton lay something that was far more valuable to Margaret than the copyright, which was a stack of these battered paper copies, all the songs that Richie had written in the golden decade before he’d believed – Margaret would never say ‘been persuaded’: it took two to tango,
76 every time – that going to London would fire him off into some career stratosphere. Those years, the Tynemouth houses, Scott’s school success, had produced songs that were right for Richie and, crucially, right for their times. And those songs lay, in their faded physical form, on her sitting-room carpet. It wasn’t a carpet Richie had ever trodden on – he had never been to Percy Gardens – but the furniture mostly dated from their time together, and the songs were the essence of those times. ‘You might have liked him,’ Margaret said to Dawson. ‘Exc ept he wouldn’t have liked you much. He preferred dogs to cats.’ Dawson yawned. ‘It’s something to leave behind, isn’t it, a box of songs? It’s quite something. It’s more than I’ll do. It’s certainly more than you’ll do. Though I expect I’ll get a little pang when I pass your dish on the floor, after you’ve gone.’ Dawson closed his eyes. Margaret closed hers too, and sang the first lines of ‘Chase The Dream’. ‘“When the clouds gather, when the day darkens, when hope’s small candle flickers and dies—”’ Dawson flattened his little ears. Margaret opened her eyes. ‘“That’s when I want you, that’s when I need you, that’s when I find the dream in your eyes.”’ She stopped. She said to Dawson, ‘Bit soppy for you?’ She looked down at the sheet in her hand. ‘Never too soppy for me. I can picture him writing it, picking out the melody with his left hand and singing snatches of the words and scribbling them down. It was lovely. They were lovely times. You must be very careful, you know, not to let good memories get poisoned by what comes later.’ She put the song sheet back in the carton and got stiffly to her feet. Better not to remember what those months and years had been like, after Richie left. Better not to recall how desperate she had been, both emotionally and practically, how unreachable poor Scott had been, mute with rage and misery, and twitching himself away from her hands. Better, always, to focus on what saved you, saved you from bitterness and nothingness. She glanced at Dawson. ‘We’ll have some nice times, with those songs. I’ll sing and you can turn your back on me, and then we’ll both be happy. I just hope the piano makes Scott a bit happy too, poor boy.’ Scott had asked Margaret to come and see the piano in situ. She had bought champagne to take with her and, for some reason which wasn’t quite clear to her although the impulse had been strong, flowers. She knew she couldn’t put flowers on the piano – Richie had been adamant that nothing should ever, ever be put on the piano – but they could sit on the windowsill near by, and lend an air of celebration as well as compensating for the fact that Scott seemed to feel no need for either blinds or curtains. She’d gone up in the lift of the Clavering Building with an armful of flowers and the champagne ready-chilled in an insulated bag, and Scott had been on the landing to meet her, looking animated and more than respectable in the trousers from his work suit and a white shirt open at the neck. He’d st epped forward, smiling but not saying anything, and he’d kissed her, and taken the champagne and the flowers, and then he’d gone ahead of her into the flat and just stood there, beaming, so that she could look past him and see the Steinway, shining and solid, sitting there with the view beyond it as if it had never been away. ‘Oh, pet,’ Margaret said. ‘It looks fine,’ Scott said, ‘doesn’t it?’ She nodded. ‘It looks—’ She stopped. Then she said, ‘Have you played it?’ ‘Oh yes. It needs a tune, after the journey. But I’ve played it all right.’ Margaret moved down the room. ‘What have you played?’ ‘Bit of Cole Porter. Bit of Sondheim. Bit of Chopin—’ Margaret stopped in front of the piano. ‘Chopin? That’s ambitious—’ ‘I didn’t,’ Scott said, grinning, ‘I didn’t say I played it well—’ He put the flowers down on the kitchen worktop. He lifted the insulated bag. ‘I guess this is champagne?’ ‘Laurent-Perrier,’ Margaret said.
77 ‘Wow—’ ‘Well, if it’s good enough for Bernie Harrison, it’s good enough for a Steinway, wouldn’t you say?’ ‘Our Steinway.’ Margaret sat down gingerly on the piano stool. ‘Your Steinway, pet.’ Scott extricated the bottle from the bag. ‘I even have champagne flutes.’ ‘Impressive—’ ‘They came free with something.’ Margaret put a finger lightly on a white key. ‘I’m getting the shivers—’ ‘Good shivers?’ Scott said. He was almost laughing, twisting the cork out of the bottle and letting the champagne foam out and down the sides, over his hand. ‘Just shivers,’ Margaret said, ‘just echoes. Just the past jumping up again like it wasn’t over.’ Scott poured champagne into his flutes. He carried them down the room to the piano. ‘Don’t put them down!’ Margaret said sharply. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Scott said. He handed her a glass. ‘What shall we toast?’ Margaret looked doubtful. ‘Dad?’ Scott said. ‘Don’t think so, pet.’ ‘Us? Each other?’ Margaret eyed him. ‘That wouldn’t suit us either, dear.’ ‘OK,’ Scott said, ‘the piano itself, music, the future—’ Margaret gave a little snort. ‘Don’t get carried away—’ ‘I feel carried away. I am carried away. I want to be carried away.’ Margaret looked up at him. She took a sip of her champagne without toasting anything. She said, ‘Talking of carried, who paid for the carriage? Who paid for this to come up here?’ Scott hesitated. He looked fixedly at his drink. Then he said, ‘I did.’ There was a silence. Margaret looked at him steadily. She took another sip of her drink. ‘Why did you do that?’ ‘I wanted to,’ Scott said. ‘I needed to.’ ‘How did you arrange it?’ ‘Doesn’t matter.’ ‘Who did you speak to?’ ‘Mam,’ Scott said, ‘it doesn’t matter. It’s done, it’s sorted and I’ve got the piano. I couldn’t bear to be obliged to them.’ ‘No,’ Margaret said, ‘I see that.’ She paused, and then she said quietly, ‘I wonder how it was, for her, when it went.’ Scott moved round behind the piano and leaned against the windowsill, his back to the view. He said, ‘She wasn’t there.’ Margaret looked up sharply. ‘What?’ ‘ She wasn’t there. It went while she was out. They arranged it that way on purpose. She’d gone out with a friend.’ ‘How do you know all this?’ Scott took a big swallow of champagne. ‘Amy told me.’ ‘Amy—’ ‘I rang her.’ ‘Again? ’ ‘Yes,’ Scott said, ‘I rang her to check she was OK about the piano, that she didn’t think I was party to some kind of plot. I rang her to say I wanted to pay for the carriage.’ He grinned at his drink. ‘She said she thought they’d expect me to do that anyway.’ Margaret gave a second small snort. ‘She said she hoped I’d really play it,’ Scott said. ‘She said she hoped it’d bring me luck. She said—’ Scott stopped. Margaret waited, holding her glass, the finger of her other hand still lightly poised on the piano key. ‘What?’ ‘She said,’ Scott said with emphasis, ‘she said that one day she hoped she’d hear me play it. She wants, one day, to hear me play the piano. She said so.’ Margaret’s finger went down on the middle C. ‘And,’ Scott said, ‘I told her I hoped so too. I told her I’d like her to hear me play. I’d like it.’ ‘I see.’ Scott put his champagne glass down on the windowsill. ‘Move over,’ he said to his mother. ‘What?’ ‘Move over,’ Scott said. ‘Make room for me.’ ‘What are you doing—’ ‘I’m going to play,’ Scott said. ‘I’m going to play Dad’s piano and you’re going to listen to me.’ Margaret moved to the right-hand edge of the piano stool. She felt as she used to feel at the beginning of one of Richie’s concerts. ‘What are you going to play?’ Scott settled himself. She watched him flex his right foot above the pedals, settle his hands lightly on the keys. ‘Gershwin,’ he said, ‘“Rhapsody In Blue”. And you can cry if you want to.’ Margaret’s throat was full. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ she said. The door of
78 Richie’s practice room was shut. While he was alive, it had never been completely closed exc ept on very rare occasions, because he liked to feel that his playing belonged to all of them, to the whole house; so much so that Chrissie had had to organize insulation for the party wall with the neighbouring house, and have ugly soundproofing tiles fixed to the ceiling. But now the door was firmly shut so that none of them, Chrissie said, would have to see the sharp dents in the carpet where the little wheels on the piano’s legs had dug almost through to the canvas. ‘It’s worse than his shoes,’ Chrissie said. There was a silence when she said this. All the girls felt a different kind of relief once the piano had gone, but it wasn’t, plainly, going to be possible to admit to it. Tamsin felt relieved because she might now be able to implement a few plans for the future; Dilly felt relieved because her own part in an alarming plot was over, and Amy felt relieved that justice had been done, and the piano was at last where it was supposed to be. ‘I wouldn’t expect,’ Chrissie said, ‘any of you to feel like I do.’ When she had come home, after her expedition with Sue, which had produced nothing exc ept an abortive conversation about what work avenues Chrissie might explore next, she had found Tamsin and Dilly waiting tensely in the kitchen with the kettle on, and the corkscrew ready (which would she be in the mood for?) and Amy sitting cross-legged on the empty space of dented carpet where the piano had once been. ‘I didn’t want,’ Amy had said unhappily, ‘for there to be nothing here when you came back.’ Chrissie had been quite silent. She stood in the doorway of the practice room holding her bag and her keys, and she looked at Amy, and then she looked all round the room, very slowly, as if she was checking to see what else was missing, and then she said, ‘Did Sue know too?’ Amy nodded. ‘Get up,’ Chrissie said. Amy got to her feet. Chrissie st epped forward and took her arm and pulled her out into the hall. Then she closed the door of the practice room, and propelled Amy down the hall to the kitchen. Tamsin and Dilly were both there, both standing. Even Tamsin looked slightly scared. She opened her mouth to say, ‘Glass of wine, Mum?’ but nothing happened. Chrissie let go of Amy and put her bag and her keys on the table. Then she said, ‘I suppose this is the same impulse that makes you want me to clear out his clothes.’ ‘We want to help,’ Tamsin said bravely. ‘Yourselves, maybe,’ Chrissie said. She sounded bitter. Dilly said, on a wail, ‘I didn’t want it to go!’ ‘You can’t do someone’s grieving for them,’ Chrissie said. ‘You can’t move someone on at the pace that suits you, not them.’ Amy cleared her throat. She said, ‘But if we’re going to live together, we count as much as you do. We can’t be held back just because you won’t move on.’ Tamsin gave a little gasp. Chrissie looked at Amy. ‘Is that how you see it?’ ‘It’s how it is,’ Amy said. ‘I knew you’d take it hard, that’s why I sat there. But you could think why we did it, you could try and think sometimes.’ ‘You have a nerve,’ Chrissie said. Amy said rudely, ‘Someone needs nerve round here.’ Chrissie st epped forward with sudden speed, reached out, and slapped her. She used her right hand, and the big ring she was wearing on her third finger caught Amy’s cheekbone and left an instant small welt, a little scarlet bar under Amy’s left eye. Then Chrissie burst into tears. Nobody moved. There was a singing silence exc ept for Chrissie’s crying. Then Tamsin darted forward and pushed Amy down the kitchen to the sink and turned the cold tap on. ‘Ice is better,’ Dilly said faintly. She moved towards the fridge and then Chrissie sprang after her, pushing her out of the way, and clawing to get ice cubes. She ran unsteadily, still sobbing and sniffing, down the
79 kitchen, bundling ice cubes clumsily into a disposable cloth. She held it unsteadily against Amy’s face. ‘Sorry, oh sorry, so sorry, darling, so—’ ‘It’s OK,’ Amy said. She stared ahead, not at her mother. ‘It’s a big deal, the piano,’ Tamsin said. She still had an arm round Amy. Amy took the bundle of ice cubes in her own hand, and pressed it to her cheekbone. ‘I should never—’ Chrissie said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m—’ ‘We shouldn’t have done it!’ Dilly cried. Tamsin glared at her. ‘Sue—’ Dilly said. ‘Don’t blame Sue,’ Chrissie said. She drooped against the kitchen unit. ‘Don’t blame anyone.’ ‘It was Kevin’s idea,’ Tamsin said. ‘What would he know—’ Nobody reacted. Chrissie gave a huge sigh and tore off a length of kitchen paper to blow her nose. ‘So it’ll be another bill—’ ‘No,’ Amy said. She was still staring ahead, holding the ice cubes to her face. ‘No, no bill. He paid for it.’ Chrissie didn’t look at her. ‘I won’t ask how you know.’ Amy removed herself from Tamsin’s arm. ‘I’m going up to my room.’ Chrissie said, ‘I’ll find you some arnica.’ ‘I don’t want any arnica.’ ‘Amy, please, let me—’ ‘I don’t want any arnica,’ Amy said. ‘And I don’t want you to say anything else.’ ‘I’ll make some tea,’ Dilly said. Chrissie nodded slowly. She put out a hand to detain Amy, but Amy ducked round it and went down the kitchen, and through the hall, and then they could hear her feet thudding on the stairs. ‘What have I done?’ Chrissie said. There was another silence. Dilly picked up the kettle, pr eparatory to filling it. Tamsin took her phone out of her pocket. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘I’ll just ring Robbie.’ Later, Dilly took a tray up to Amy’s room. She had been in the kitchen on her own for what felt like a lifetime, since Tamsin had gone to meet Robbie and Chrissie had shut herself in the sitting room with her phone and the television. Dilly had heard her on the phone for quite a long time, going on and on about something, probably to Sue, and then she’d come out and made a cup of coffee, and dropped a kiss on Dilly’s head, and gone back to the sitting room without speaking. Dilly hadn’t dared to speak herself. All the time Chrissie was making coffee she had stared at her laptop screen, stared and stared without really seeing anything, and when Chrissie had kissed her, she hadn’t known what to do and had heard herself give a little startled bleat that could have meant anything. And then the sitting-room door had closed again, very firmly, and she could hear the East Enders theme tune, and she thought that she simply had to be with someone else, and not alone in the kitchen with Chrissie shut away and the practice room shut away and this terrible sense that everything was now in free fall. So she put random things on a tray, pieces of fruit, and pots of this and that, and some sliced bread still in its bag, and added a carton of juice and some glasses, and tiptoed stealthily past the sitting-room door and up the stairs to the top floor. Amy was playing her flute. It was something Dilly recognized and couldn’t name, something she knew Amy had learned from her James Galway CD. Amy was playing it well, Dilly could tell that, playing it with absorption and concentration. Dilly put the tray down on the landing and opened her own door. In a drawer in her desk was a box of chocolatecovered almonds a girl on her course had given her in order to stop her eating them herself. Dilly took them out of the drawer and added them to the tray. The addition went a little way towards Dilly’s incoherent but definite feeling that she wanted to do something to assuage the slap. Amy finished playing her piece. Dilly counted to ten. Then she knocked on Amy’s door. ‘Yes?’ Amy said. She did not sound helpful. Dilly opened the door and stooped to pick up the tray. ‘What’s that?’ Amy said. ‘Supper. Kind of.’ ‘Did Mum send you?’ ‘No,’ Dilly said. ‘Would she have sent all this?’ Amy
80 looked at the tray. ‘Thanks, Dill.’ ‘I couldn’t stand it down there,’ Dilly said. She peered at Amy. ‘How’s your face?’ ‘The ice did it. Mostly. I don’t want to talk about it.’ ‘Nor me,’ Dilly said. ‘I ke ep thinking,’ Amy said, ‘that it can’t get worse, and then it does.’ Dilly put the tray down on the floor. ‘Craig says—’ ‘Craig says—’ Amy mimicked. ‘If you’re going to be a bitch,’ Dilly said, ‘I’m leaving.’ ‘Sorry—’ ‘Don’t take it out on me. I brought you supper.’ ‘Sorry, Dill.’ Dilly knelt down beside the tray. ‘I didn’t bring any plates. I don’t really want to go back down. And I forgot knives and stuff.’ Amy knelt too. ‘Doesn’t matter. What does Craig say?’ Dilly looked obstinate. ‘Dill,’ Amy said, ‘please. What does Craig say?’ ‘That when people do your head in, mostly you can’t do anything about it exc ept put yourself out of their reach.’ Amy took a slice of bread out of the packet. ‘What if you live in the same house as them?’ ‘He does,’ Dilly said. ‘He lives with his mum’s boyfriend. He can’t stand him. That’s why he’s out all the time.’ Amy sighed. She tore a strip off the bread slice and dipped it into a pot of salsa. ‘It isn’t that I can’t stand Mum. It’s that I can’t get her to see that not everyone thinks like her.’ Dilly picked up a banana, and put it down again. ‘I suppose no one else is in her position. I mean, I suppose she’s responsible for us now. I can’t wait for this course to be over so I can get a job.’ Amy said, with her mouth full, ‘You are so lucky.’ ‘I’m scared,’ Dilly said. She put a grape in her mouth. ‘I want it to happen, but I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t know how you do it, jobs and flats and things.’ ‘Won’t Craig help?’ There was a short pause and then Dilly said, ‘No.’ ‘Dill—’ ‘I’m trying,’ Dilly said, ‘not to need him. Not to – lean on him.’ ‘Dill, has he—’ ‘No,’ Dilly said, ‘he’s still my boyfriend. But I know him better than I did. You can’t make people what they aren’t.’ ‘Oh God,’ Amy said. She put her bread down and reached to take Dilly’s arm. ‘Are you OK?’ ‘No,’ Dilly said, ‘not about anything. But at least I’m not pretending.’ She looked at Amy. ‘I want Dad back.’ ‘Don’t—’ ‘He’d know what to do.’ ‘No,’ Amy said quietly, ‘he wouldn’t.’ She removed her arm and picked up her bread. ‘He’d know how to cheer us up, but he wouldn’t know what to do. He relied on Mum for that, and now she doesn’t know what to do. At least you know what you’re going to do, even if it scares you.’ ‘Yes,’ Dilly said. She picked up the banana again and a slice of bread and climbed off the floor and onto Amy’s bed. She settled herself against the pillows. Amy watched while she carefully peeled the banana and rolled the slice of bread round it. ‘Banana sandwich,’ Dilly said. ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Amy said. Dilly took a bite. ‘About what? ’ ‘I’m not doing these frigging exams.’ ‘Amy! ’ ‘I’m not. It’s pointless. Music and Spanish and English lit. What’s the use of any of it? It’s just playing. I can’t bear to be playing. I’m going to leave school and get a job and stop feeling so helpless.’ Dilly put her banana roll down. ‘Amy, you can’t. Mum’ll flip.’ ‘She’s flipped already.’ ‘No, I mean, seriously flip. It’ll finish her. You’re the cleverest. Dad always said so. Anyway, what about uni? You’ve always wanted to go to uni. Dad was thrilled you wanted to, he was really chuffed, wasn’t he? He k ept saying, over and over, that at least one of us took after Mum in the brains d epartment.’ ‘Well,’ Amy said, ‘I’ll use my brain differently. I’ll get a job where they’ll train me. I’ll work for Marks & Spencer.’ ‘You are eighteen years old.’ ‘Loads of people leave school at sixteen. I don’t want to go to uni.’ Dilly said severely, ‘You don’t know what you want.’ ‘I do!’ Amy said fiercely. ‘I do! I want all this to stop, I want all this drifting and not deciding and crying and being upset all the time to stop. I want to stop being treated like a child, I want to be in charge of my own life and
81 make my own decisions. There is no use in doing A levels. A levels are for people who can afford to do them, and I can’t any more.’ ‘You’re overreacting,’ Dilly said. ‘You’re a fine one to talk—’ ‘We haven’t run out of money, we aren’t desperate—’ ‘We soon will be,’ Amy said. Dilly looked up at the ceiling. ‘Mum’s going to sell the house.’ ‘I know.’ ‘There’ll be some money when she sells the house.’ ‘She’ll have to buy something else,’ Amy said. ‘She hasn’t found a job yet. I don’t think she’s in a fit state to find a job.’ Dilly rolled on her side and looked at her sister. ‘How will you tell her?’ ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far. Don’t say anything.’ ‘I won’t—’ ‘Don’t say anything to Tam, either.’ ‘Amy,’ Dilly said, ‘just think about it. Grade eight music. A level music. All that Spanish. Just throw it all over to wipe tables in a coffee place?’ Amy looked defiant. She reached out to pick up Dilly’s banana roll, and took a bite. Round it, she said carelessly, ‘Sounds OK to me.’ There was a muffled thud from downstairs, and then another. Dilly sat bolt upright. ‘What’s that?’ Amy put the banana down. ‘Mum—’ They struggled to their feet and made for the door. ‘Oh God—’ ‘I’ll go first,’ Amy said. ‘Follow me. Come with me.’ It was quiet on the landing. Amy called, ‘Mum?’ There was another thud, more muted. And then a small clatter. ‘Mum?’ ‘I’m here,’ Chrissie called. They started down the stairs. ‘Where—’ ‘Here,’ she said. She sounded exhausted. They reached the first-floor landing. Chrissie’s bedroom door was open, and out of it spilled heaps and piles of clothes, still on their hangers, jackets and trousers and suits. Richie’s clothes. The girls stared. ‘Mum, what are you doing?’ Chrissie was still in the clothes she had been wearing when she went out with Sue, still in her gold necklaces, still in her high-heeled boots. She had scraped her hair back into a ponytail and there were dark shadows under her eyes. ‘What do you think I’m doing?’ ‘But—’ ‘I’m moving Dad’s clothes out. I’m emptying the cupboards in my bedroom of Dad’s clothes.’ ‘But not now, Mum, not tonight—’ ‘Why not tonight?’ ‘Because it’s late, because you’re tired, because we’ll help you—’ Chrissie waved an arm towards the sliding heaps of clothes. ‘I’ve done it. Can’t you see? I’ve done it. You can help me take it all downstairs if you want to, but I’ve done it.’ They were silent. They stood, Dilly slightly behind Amy, and looked at the chaos of garments and hangers. Amy said brokenly, ‘Oh Mum—’ Chrissie turned sharply to look at her. ‘Well,’ she demanded. ‘Well? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? It’s what you wanted me to do?’