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 Daniel e.’
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 footbal and sex and boiler systems. But over 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 syl able of what had been going on around him.
‘I learned deadpan as a kid,’ he once said to Sue. ‘It was best, real y. Saved getting clobbered al 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 Dil y before she left. She had her handbag on the kitchen table and was checking its contents. Dil y 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.’
Dil y was looking at the screen. Her friend Zena had posted a series of pictures of her trip to Paris. They were so boring that Dil y 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 wil bring some money in. We’re not on the wire, but we’re close.’
Dil y gave a little shiver. It was frightening when Chrissie talked like this, and she’d talked like this a lot recently. Dil y 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 ful of the same food; they al 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 Dil y swore she’d never seen before, and for shoes Dil y had a memory like a card index. It wasn’t so much that Dil y 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,’ Dil y said, turning away from yet another of Zena’s art shots of the Eiffel Tower, ‘Mum, we’l al get on our bikes when you tel us what’s happening and how we can help.’
Chrissie picked up her handbag and blew Dil y a kiss.
‘I’l tel you that, poppet, as soon as I even begin to know myself.’
When she had gone, Dil y 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 wil and glanced at her manual. The next section was on sugaring and threading. Threading was real y difficult. The Asian girls on Dil y’s course said that in their community the threading technique was passed down from mother to daughter, so they’d known how to do it since they were tiny, a sort of beauty routine cat’s cradle. Dil y 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 usual y could with a phone cal or a coffee or a bit of eBay browsing. She would have liked to cry. Crying had always been Dil y’s first resort when confronted by the smal est 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 al over little things. Crying seemed to have taken itself into another league altogether, and involved huge, wrenching sobbing sessions when she suddenly, al 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.
‘Hel o?’ she said cautiously.
‘Dil y?’ Sue said.
‘Oh. Sue—’
‘Got a minute?’
‘Wel , I—’
‘Home alone, are you? I need to see you for a moment.’
‘Me?’
‘Dil y,’ 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.’
Dil y 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.’
Dil y said, ‘Why don’t you ask Tamsin whatever it is?’
‘Too bossy.’
‘Amy — ’
‘Too young.’
‘OK,’ Dil y said doubtful y.
‘Don’t move. I’l be ten minutes. Put the kettle on.’
Dil y roused herself. She said abruptly, ‘What’s it about?’
‘Tel you when I get there.’
‘No,’ Dil y said, ‘ no. No games. Tel me now.’
‘No.’
‘Then I won’t open the door to you.’
‘You’re an evil little witch, aren’t you—’
‘Tel 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 ful 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 al his life. He remembered him as a smal 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 stil sharing with Richie’s parents. Richie’s parents had been living in the house since Richi
e was five, being categorized as ‘homeless’ after the Second World War, which then meant being a married couple stil 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 stil 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 al 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 semi-detached, 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.
‘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 reply. He had not told Margaret he had been summoned, but he was going to tel 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’l 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 tel you,’ Bernie said, ‘about my proposal?’
‘Yes,’ Scott said. ‘The other night.’
‘So she also wil 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?’
‘Wel ,’ 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 smal silence, tinged with disappointment. Then Bernie said robustly, ‘Wel , she can’t have doubts about her own abilities, can she?
It may be smal , 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. Wel , if it’s not me and it’s not her, what is it?’
Scott said careful y, ‘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 accept 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 al 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. Because she’s so straight, and everyone knows that. I want her reputation 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 al this vague, don’t-know, wishy-washy stuff, I’m going to keep trying. And I’d be grateful if you’d put in a word for me with her now and then. I want to keep 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 real y 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 real y wants.’
Bernie looked at him in silence for a few moments. Then he touched Scott’s arm.
‘Anyone tel 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.
‘Hel o?’
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 stepmother’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 telephone that his father had only ever had one wife, and it wasn’t Chrissie.
‘You stil there?’ Sue said.
‘Yes—’
‘Wel , 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—’
‘Dil y took the number from Amy’s phone,’ Sue said. ‘Dil y is
Amy’s sister.’
‘I know that.’
‘Wel ,’ 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’l 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 Dil y’s help, we’re getting it shifted. I think it’l be next week. You should have your piano by the end of next week. I’l 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 Dil y 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. Al 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 swal owed. 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 yel ed, ‘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 al 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.’
The Other Family Page 15
