The Other Family (19 page)

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 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 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 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 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. 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 all 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 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 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 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 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 wept 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
.’