The Other Family (14 page)

On the desk in front of her, Scott’s phone beeped twice and jerked itself sideways. Donna leaned forward so that she could see the screen.

‘One message received’, the screen said.

Donna hesitated. She glanced at the doorway. Then she stretched her arm out and touched Select.

‘Amy’, said the message box.

Donna uncrossed her legs and sat straighter. She touched again.

‘Sorry about that,’ Amy had written.

Donna peered at the screen. That was all there was. ‘Sorry about that.’ No signing off, no x’s, no initial. She scrolled down. Nothing but a mobile number and the time of the message. Sorry about what? Donna put the phone down. She stood up. She felt, abruptly, sick and angry and guilty. She also felt consumed by disappointment, waves of it, rolling and crashing over her in just the way they had when Scott had told her that she was a fantastic fuck but that didn’t mean he loved her, because he didn’t.

She walked – with difficulty, her knees seeming to have locked rigid with shock – to the window. Ten feet and two windows away, a girl in a short skirt and knee boots was perched on the edge of a man’s desk, and he was leaning back in his chair with his fingers interlaced behind his head, and they clearly were not talking about the cost of insurance of cars with two-litre engines. Donna felt hot tears spring up and flood her eyes. She swallowed hard and tossed her hair back. No crying, she told herself. No crying and no softness over what her Irish father would have called feckin’ Scott Rossiter.

‘Oh, hi,’ Scott said from the doorway.

Donna whirled round. He was in his suit, but looking slightly dishevelled, and he had a plastic cup of water in each hand. Donna glared at him.

‘Who is Amy?’ she demanded.

‘Look,’ Scott said later, stretched on his sofa and replete with a Thai green curry Donna had made with real lemon grass
and kaffir lime leaves purchased in her lunch hour, despite the four-inch heels. ‘Look. That was great, last night was great, but I am completely bushed and you’ve got to go now.’

Donna had kicked her shoes off. She had removed the jacket of her work suit and replaced it with a little wrap cardigan that tied meaningfully under her bosom, of which she was proud. She looked at the remaining wine in her glass.

‘I’m not suggesting a repeat of last night,’ Donna said.

Scott repressed a groan.

‘But it’s nice,’ Donna said, still looking at the wine and not at Scott, ‘to have a bit of support at family times like this. Nice for you.’

Scott said nothing.

‘It’s a comfort,’ Donna said. ‘It’s a comfort not to be alone.’

Scott closed his eyes. Then he made a huge effort and swung himself upright. He looked directly at Donna.

‘I want to be alone,’ Scott said.

Donna regarded her wine in silence.

‘You’re right, it is a family time,’ Scott said. ‘But it’s my family and my difficulties, and you don’t know any of them.’

Donna let a small pause fall, and then she said, ‘But I could.’

Scott stood up. His clothes were deeply rumpled.

‘No.’

Donna leaned forward very slowly and put her wine glass down among the dirty plates on the coffee table.

She said, ‘I thought you said Amy was just your kid half-sister.’

‘She is.’

‘Who you’ve seen but never spoken to except on the phone.’

‘Correct.’

‘Then why are you making such a big deal about this piano and Amy and everyone? Why do you have to do anything about her or anyone else, except your mother? Why don’t you want me to help you?

‘Because,’ Scott said, looking down at her, ‘it’s none of your business.’

‘Thank you!’ Donna cried. She waved wildly at the curry plates. ‘After all I’ve—’

‘I didn’t
ask
you to!’ Scott shouted. ‘I didn’t ask you to snoop round my office and check my phone! I didn’t ask you to be a shoulder to cry on because I don’t want one, I don’t need one, I never have, my family is my business and always has been and I’ll deal with it my way and on my own as I always have!’

Donna leaned out of her chair and found her shoes. She put them on and stood up, with difficulty.

She said, ‘I think it’s disgusting, getting fixated on an eighteen-year-old, especially if she’s your half-sister.’

‘I’m not fixated,’ Scott said, ‘I’m just trying to get this bloody piano to Newcastle. And before you start spreading the news that I’m some sort of perv, let me tell you something, something that’s none of your bloody business, but I’ll tell you to stop you making mucky trouble. When my father left, Donna, there was no one to comfort me. Yes, there was my mother but she was in her own bad place and, anyway, she wasn’t a child like me, his child, I was on my own there. And all I’m trying to do now, Donna, is to help Amy a bit because I know what it’s like. I’m trying to do for her just a little of what no one did for me. OK? Get it?’

Donna turned to look at him. Her eyes were huge.

‘I just
love
it,’ she said softly, ‘when you play the piano.’

Scott closed his eyes. He clenched his fists. He heard Donna’s heels approaching, not quite steadily, across the
wooden floor, and then felt her wine- and food-scented lips on his cheek for what was plainly intended to be a significant number of seconds. Then the lips were removed, and the heels tapped unevenly away across the floor, paused to open the door, tapped outside and let the door bang behind them. Scott let out a long, noisy breath and opened his eyes. Then he fell back on to the sofa and lay there, gazing at the girders of the ceiling and resolutely refusing to let his brain change out of neutral. His phone beeped. He picked it up and eyed the inbox warily. Donna. She could hardly have left the building.

‘Grow up Scottie. U R 37 not 7. Little girls not the answer.’

He deleted the message and struggled to sit up. The mess on the table revolted him, the mess of the last twenty-four hours revolted him, the mess he still seemed brilliant at getting himself into revolted him beyond anything. He looked at his phone again and retrieved Amy’s message. She’d said once that she played the flute. Scott got up and went to the window and looked at his view, glittering under a night sky. He stared out into the darkness, at the lines of light the cars made, at the dramatic glow of the Tyne Bridge. There was something very – well,
clean
was the word that came to mind, about picturing his half-sister – yes, she was his half-sister – with her hair down her back, playing her flute. He closed his eyes again, and rested his mind on this mental image, with relief.

‘I think,’ Chrissie said, ‘that we need to talk.’

She closed Amy’s bedroom door behind her. Amy was on her bed, propped up against the headboard, with her flute in her hands. She hadn’t been playing anything in particular, just fiddling about with a few pop tunes, but it had been absorbing enough to prevent her from hearing Chrissie
coming up the stairs, and when the handle of the door turned she’d given a little jump, and her flute had knocked against her teeth.

‘Ow,’ Amy said, rubbing.

Chrissie took no notice. She turned Amy’s desk chair round so that it was facing the bed, and sat down in it. She was wearing camel-coloured trousers and a camel-coloured sweater and a rope of pearls. She looked extremely considered and absolutely exhausted.

‘Now,’ Chrissie said, ‘what is going on?’

Amy polished her flute on her T-shirt sleeve.

‘Nothing.’

Chrissie looked up at the skylight.

‘Tamsin tells me you spoke to Scott about moving the piano to Newcastle.’

‘Sort of,’ Amy said.

‘He rang you.’

‘Yes,’ Amy said.

‘How,’ Chrissie said, ‘did he know your number?’

Amy put the flute down beside her, and laid her hands flat on the duvet. She looked directly at Chrissie.

‘Because I rang him once.’

‘And why did you do that?’

Amy thought for a moment. She was conscious of a dangerous energy beginning to surge up inside her, an energy compounded of apprehension at Chrissie’s imminent anger and distress, and excitement at defending her own position.

She said slowly, ‘It was an impulse.’

‘Inspired by what?’

‘Newcastle,’ Amy said truthfully.

‘
Newcastle
?’

‘I Googled it.’ She got off the bed and reached up to slide the envelope from behind the Duffy poster. ‘And I also found this.’

Chrissie took the envelope and opened it. Amy watched her. Chrissie glanced at the photograph, and then held it and the envelope out to Amy.

‘Please put that away.’

‘It’s Dad!’ Amy said.

‘I know it’s Dad.’

‘But—’

‘Look,’ Chrissie said, suddenly agitated. ‘Look. I know he came from Newcastle. I know he was born on North Tyneside. I know his parents struggled for money and his mother adored him. I know all that. But I can’t bear to know it. After everything that’s happened, after everything he’s done and we’ve discovered, all his life in the North, all his loyalties in the North just seem like a betrayal to me. Perhaps you can’t feel it because he never let you down, but, Amy, having you talk to that man, having you making plans with that man, and without telling me, just makes me feel worse, it makes me feel that I can’t trust you, that you’re taking sides with people whose existence has made my life so difficult for so long and stopped me having what I really wanted, what I should have had, I should, I
should
.’

Amy sat down on the edge of the bed and held the photograph between her hands.

‘I wasn’t making plans.’

‘But you were, about the piano, Tamsin—’

‘Tamsin answered my phone,’ Amy said. ‘I was in the loo, and she answered my phone.’

Chrissie began to wind her pearls in and out of her fingers.

‘Did you hear a word I’ve just said?’

Amy nodded.

‘Do you have any
idea
of what I’ve been through?’

Amy looked up.

‘Of course.’

‘Then how
can
you? How
can
you talk to that man about the piano behind my back?’

‘He’s not that man,’ Amy said, ‘he’s Dad’s son. He’s our half-brother.’

‘Don’t you care at
all
?’

‘Of course.’

‘You said that already.’

‘Mum,’ Amy said, suddenly allowing the dangerous energy to spurt out like hot liquid, ‘Mum, it’s not all about you, it’s not all about Tam or Dilly, or me, either, it’s about other people too, who never did you any harm except by existing, which they couldn’t help, and who didn’t ask for the piano or expect the piano, they just politely wondered when it would suit
you
to have them arrange for it to go. Don’t take your anger at Dad out on them, it isn’t fair, it isn’t OK, it isn’t
like
you.’

‘Amy! ’

Amy slid the photograph back into the envelope.

‘How dare you,’ Chrissie said. ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

Amy’s head drooped. She felt the energy drain away and be replaced by a tremendous desire to cry. She put the back of her hand up against her mouth and pressed. She was not going to cry in front of her mother.

Chrissie stood up.

‘I want you to think about what I’ve just said to you. I want you to think about family loyalty. I want you to use your emotional intelligence and
feel
the shock this has all been.’

She moved to the door and put her hand on the knob.

‘Amy? ’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you?’

Amy nodded. Chrissie turned the doorknob and went out
into the little landing outside, not closing the door behind her. Amy waited a few moments and then she tipped backwards on to her bed, and rolled towards the wall, her knees drawn up, the photograph in its envelope held against her chest. Only then, as quietly as she could, did she allow herself to cry.

B
ernie Harrison liked quality in a restaurant. He liked stiff white tablecloths, and heavy cutlery and his fish to be filleted with a flourish at the table, and presented to him complete with a half-lemon neatly wrapped in muslin. He liked carpets, and thick curtains, and properly dressed waiters who said things like ‘Mr Harrison, Chef has some guinea fowl he’d very much like to offer you today.’ Booking a table at his favourite restaurant in the centre of the city, he specified a particular table for two, and was not in the least pleased to be told that that table had already been reserved.

‘Then unreserve it,’ Bernie said to the young woman – Dutch? Scandinavian? Eastern European? – on the other end of the line.

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr Harrison.’

Bernie glared ahead of him. He usually had his personal assistant telephone restaurants for him, but he found he did not particularly want Moira to know that he was giving Margaret Rossiter dinner. Moira had been the late Mrs Harrison’s choice of assistant for Bernie – personable without being seductive, middle-aged and capable, with enough of her own family and life to prevent her from becoming needy – and she had been silently but eloquently
intolerant of Bernie’s entertaining any woman alone since his wife’s death five years before. Admittedly, Bernie’s taste, in the immediate aftermath of Renée’s death, had run to the extremely obvious, but Margaret Rossiter was of the calibre of lady dinner companion that Moira considered to have the potential to be a real threat. Margaret Rossiter would be a catch, even for a man like Bernie.

‘I’ve eaten at La Réserve, young lady,’ Bernie said, ‘since before you were born. I want table six, in the alcove, and a bottle of Laurent-Perrier on ice, by eight o’clock tomorrow night, and no more bloody nonsense.
If
you please.’

Then he put the phone down. Stupid girl. Not only did he want to give Margaret Rossiter a good time, he wanted her to see that he was a man of consequence who was acknowledged as such, in places where you paid London prices. He put his hands flat either side of his head and smoothed his thick iron-grey hair back. Renée had hated to see him do that. Touching your hair in public, she said, was common.

Margaret had reacted to his invitation to dinner without surprise.