‘Fancy a singsong at mine Friday?’ and the word would get round, and eight or ten people would gather in his flat and order in pizzas, and sometimes they’d sing – Henry did a bril iant version of Noël Coward – and sometimes Scott would play something classical, and they’d pile on the sofa or lie about on the floor and just listen, and after they’d gone, Scott would be conscious of having made a brief connection, through the music, which left him feeling curiously isolated and empty when it was over. And it was in one of those post-playing moods, closing the piano lid, picking up the pizza boxes, carrying the ashtrays – disdainful y – to the bin, that an impulse to ring Amy came upon him.
It was not a new impulse. He had, when the piano first arrived, thought he might ring to say that it was safely in Newcastle. Then he had thought that texting would be better – polite, but more casual. So he had composed a text, and deleted it, and then a second, less brief one, and deleted that, and realized that he would rather like to hear her vocal response to his description of where the piano now was. But his nerve had failed him.
There was no real reason, if he was honest, to ring her – unless, of course, he admitted to the real reason, which was that he didn’t want the piano’s arrival in Newcastle to mean that there was no further excuse for them to be in touch with one another. She was only his half-sister, after al , and there wasn’t any comfortable shared history between them, but even the scrappy communications that they’d had had given him a sense of how much better furnished he felt to know that there was a sister there – even, potential y, three sisters – and how very much he did not want to return to the state of being the only son of a single mother; he did not, emphatical y, want his human landscape to shrink again.
He dial ed Amy’s number with quick, jabbing movements, not stopping to think what he was going to say. She didn’t answer, and he listened to her rapid, awkward little message and then he said, with a flash of inspiration, ‘Hi, it’s Scott, just ringing to wish you luck,’ and, as an afterthought, before this burst of courage failed him, ‘Ring me.’ Then he put his phone on the piano, and sat down on the stool and began to play the theme from The Lion King, which someone had asked for earlier that evening, and which was running in his head with an insistence that was, he knew, the mark of a successful show tune.
His phone rang. Amy.
‘Amy,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
‘Sorry to ring so late—’
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she said. ‘I was doing stuff.’
‘I’m sitting at the piano,’ Scott said.
‘Are you? ’
He shifted the phone to his left ear and hunched his shoulder to hold it in place.
‘Playing this.’ He played a few bars. ‘Recognize it?’
‘ The Lion King,’ Amy said.
Scott was smiling. ‘Yes. The Lion King. I rang to wish you luck.’
‘What for?’
‘Your exams. Aren’t you about to start your exams?’
‘No,’ Amy said.
‘Oh, I thought—’
‘The exams are starting,’ Amy said, ‘but I’m not doing them.’
Scott waited. He took his right hand off the keyboard and retrieved his phone. Then he cleared his throat.
‘Come again?’
‘A levels start this week,’ Amy said. ‘Spanish literature and music theory. But I shan’t be doing them.’
‘Why not?’
There was a silence.
‘Why not?’ Scott said again.
‘Because,’ Amy said, ‘I need to get a job.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to stop being a kid, a schoolgirl, I’ve got to get out there and do something and earn some money, because—’ She stopped.
‘Because?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Maybe I can guess—’
‘Because,’ Amy said angrily, ‘it’s al in meltdown here, and I can’t go on pretending anything is how it was and that I can be sort of protected from it. I’ve got to do something.’
‘Like not sit your exams.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you told your teachers?’
‘I haven’t told anyone,’ Amy said, ‘I just won’t turn up. I’l pretend I’m going to school, but I won’t. I’l be finding a job instead.’
‘What kind of job?’
‘Anything,’ Amy said. ‘Waiting tables, putting leaflets through letterboxes, I don’t care.’
Scott stood up. He walked to the window and looked at his dark and glittering view.
‘Amy? ’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes—’
‘Do not,’ Scott said, ‘be so bloody stupid.’
‘I didn’t ask for your opinion—’
‘This isn’t an opinion,’ Scott said. He found he had straightened his shoulders. ‘This is an order. I am tel ing you not to be such a complete and utter idiot. I am tel ing you to get into that school and do those exams to the best of your ability and to do yourself and al of us proud. I am telling you.’
There was a pause, and then Amy said, ‘Oh.’
‘Did you hear me? Did you actual y hear what I said?’
Amy made a smal unintel igible noise.
‘You’re a clever girl,’ Scott said. ‘You’re a talented girl. You are eighteen years old with your life before you, and you may not give up just because there are some short-term problems you don’t like the look of. I won’t have it. I won’t have you throwing your chances away, wasting your opportunities. Is that clear?’
Amy said faintly, ‘You’ve no right—’
‘I have!’ Scott shouted. ‘I have! I’m your brother! I’m your older brother.’
‘Wow,’ Amy said. There was a hint of admiration in her voice.
‘Any more of this,’ Scott said, slightly more calmly, ‘and I shal come down to London and frogmarch you into that school personal y.’
‘I haven’t done enough revision—’
‘Nobody’s ever done enough revision.’
Amy sounded imminently tearful. She said, ‘I can’t change now, I’ve made up my mind, I can’t—’
‘Don’t snivel,’ Scott said. ‘You can. You wil .’
‘There isn’t enough money—’
‘There isn’t enough money for you to bugger up your own chances.’
Amy said in a whisper, sniffing, ‘It’s awful here.’
‘And you think it’s a good idea to make it worse?’
‘I wouldn’t—’
‘You think your mother would thank you giving up your future for a minimum-wage job washing pots in a café?’
‘She—’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Scott said, interrupting. ‘Don’t fool yourself. Giving up’s never the best way out of anything. I should know.’
‘I wish I hadn’t told you,’ Amy said.
Scott laughed. ‘Do you?’
‘I’m scared—’
‘Course you are. Exams are hideous.’
‘I wish,’ Amy said suddenly, ‘I wish I had something to look forward to, I wish it wasn’t just al this unravel ing, al this uncertainty.’
Scott’s gaze was resting on the great gleaming curve of the Sage Centre, across the river, its shining flank visible through the girders of the Tyne Bridge. He said thoughtful y, ‘I’l give you something.’
‘What?’
‘I’l give you something to look forward to. Wel , maybe looking forward is a bit strong, but something to think about, something a bit different.’
‘What?’ Amy said again.
‘When your exams are done,’ Scott said, ‘when you’re in that time after exams and you’re waiting for the results and trying not to think about them, why don’t you come up here?’
‘Come—’
‘Yes,’ Scott said. ‘Pack your flute and I’l give you the train ticket, and you come to Newcastle. I’l show you where Dad lived, w
hen he was a kid. I’l show you where he came from. Tel your mother, so it’s al above board, and come up to Newcastle next month.’
There was a silence. Scott wondered if he could hear Amy breathing, or whether he just imagined he could. He pressed the phone to his ear and began to count. When he got to ten, he would say her name again. One, two, three, four—
‘OK,’ Amy said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The flat was on the top two floors of a tal house close to Highgate School. The rooms were smal, with thin wals and creaky floorboards, but there were spectacular views eastwards, over a dramatical y sloping garden, and the rol ing roofscape of London al the way to the hazy blue lines of Essex. The owner of the house, a television producer, lived half his life in Los Angeles, and wanted a tenant who would be there permanently, paying the mortgage and justifying the investment in a building whose owner only occupied it for half the year.
Sue had found the flat. Or rather, Sue’s Kevin had found it while commissioning a new boiler his firm had put in for the owner. The owner happened to be there, a tal , bespectacled man with long grey hair, in a black T-shirt, and they had fal en into conversation while contemplating the boiler – ‘These new systems mean you can control the therms on your rads from here,’ Kevin explained – and the owner had mentioned that the top floors of the house were empty, and self-contained, and that he was looking for a tenant.
‘As you’re local,’ he said to Kevin, making it sound like a social condition, rather than a category, ‘you might know of someone.’
The rooms, apart from a cooker and a fridge and two aggressively modern chairs upholstered in leather, were empty. They were painted white and carpeted with narrow grey-and-black stripes, like the stripes of an expensive carrier bag. Chrissie looked round with the apprehension born of being confronted with something completely alien.
‘I haven’t lived in a flat since I met Richie—’
‘Look,’ Sue said, ‘it’s been weeks, months now. Richie didn’t die yesterday. You are stil waiting for probate. You can’t do anything major til then but you can start moving yourself.’
She was not going to be roused. She had said to Kevin that morning, drinking tea in the kitchen while he packed his customary lunch of carbohydrate and sugar, that she’d accompany Chrissie to the flat in the spirit of friendship but that she was not, not, going to involve herself in anything emotional again. If Chrissie threw a fit and said she couldn’t contemplate living anywhere like that, Sue would just let her throw it.
‘I’ve done enough, and look where the last lot got me. I’l show her and that’s that.’
Kevin came round the kitchen table, his canvas bag on his shoulder, and kissed her goodbye on the mouth. It was something she could always say for Kevin – he always kissed her hel o and goodbye and he always kissed her on the mouth.
‘Good luck,’ he said.
‘D’you think I shouldn’t be bothering?’
He considered for a second, then he said, ‘A mate’s a mate,’ and kissed her again, and she felt the brief glow of being approved of. Now, standing watching Chrissie trying to imagine herself in the flat’s sitting room with its uncompromising decor and wonderful view, she tried to recal that sensation of doing the right – but stil the sensible – thing.
‘It’s so different,’ Chrissie said.
‘Course it is.’
‘I don’t know about renting—’
Sue leaned against a wal and folded her arms. She said patiently, ‘We discussed that.’
‘I know—’
‘We discussed releasing al the capital in the house, and using the interest from investing that, to rent for a year or so until you’ve got your breath back.’
‘Tamsin says it’s such a bad time to sel —’
Sue looked at the ceiling.
‘It’s going to be a bad time for a while. Waiting isn’t going to help. And you can’t afford to stay.’
Chrissie said nothing and then Sue said, in the same voice but a little slower, ‘You can’t afford to stay.’
Chrissie crossed the room to look out of the window. The house was on the edge of such a precipitous slope that it felt like being in a tower, with the ground fal ing away so steeply below her. It felt improbable, completely improbable, the idea of living here, coupled with the idea of not living in the house with her little office, and the sitting-room window that jammed no matter how often the cords and weights were adjusted, and her bedroom with its cupboards and adjacent bathroom, and intimate knowledge of the way the light came in round the curtains in the morning. The sense of alarming unreality that had possessed her, on and off but more on than off, since Richie died seemed to have found its physical embodiment in this flat, and the prospect of living here.
‘Suppose,’ she said, not turning, stil gazing out eastwards, ‘suppose I take it and find I can’t stand it?’
Sue imagined Kevin listening to her. He’d be eating a cheese-and-pickle sandwich (white bread only) right now.
She said level y, ‘Then you move.’
‘But—’
‘You take it for six months, and if you can’t stand it, you move.’
‘It would just be me and Dil y and Amy.’
‘Would it?’
Chrissie turned.
‘Tamsin’s been talking about moving in with Robbie for ages. Now she’s going to do it. Robbie has a flat in Archway.’ She smiled weakly. ‘He’s going to build a cupboard for her clothes. Sweet, real y.’
‘Yeah,’ Sue said. Domestical y considerate men, in her view, lacked sex appeal. She suppressed a smal yawn. ‘Tam’s left before, though.’
‘She came back—’
‘As I recal it,’ Sue said, ‘Richie wanted her back and he got his way.’
‘Maybe—’
‘You didn’t want her back, Chris,’ Sue said. ‘You thought it was time one of them showed a bit of independence. You thought Richie babied them.’
‘He did,’ Chrissie said fondly.
‘And look what that’s landed you with. It’s good that Tamsin’s making a move. Even if it would be better that she was doing it for herself rather than exchanging one support system for another.’
Chrissie said, nettled, ‘And when did you last live on your own?’
Sue took her shoulder away from the wal , and hitched her bag higher.
‘I was on my own for eight years before Kev. But that’s not the point. The point is you and your future and what you can afford. You can’t stay in the house – bad – but you can stay in Highgate – good. You can’t have al your children here – bad – but you can have two out of three – good. You can’t afford the house – bad – but you could afford this flat with ace views and a civilized landlord – good to very good. Shal we just start from there?’
Chrissie walked past her and began to climb the stairs to the top floor and the bedrooms.
‘Dil y won’t be with me long, she says—’
Sue sighed. She fol owed Chrissie up the stairs.
‘There’l stil be Amy—’
Chrissie was standing in the doorway of one of the bedrooms.
‘This is pretty smal for Amy.’
‘It’s as big as the bedroom she has now.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m not arguing,’ Sue said, ‘I’m saving my energy to argue exclusively about the big stuff.’
Chrissie ran a hand down one wal , as if it were an animal.
‘Amy’s been so sweet—’
‘Has she?’
‘That day,’ Chrissie said, ‘that day when I completely lost it and chucked al his clothes on the landing, she was so sweet. Poor Dil y didn’t know what to do, she just stood there, looking petrified, but Amy didn’t seem scared, which was amazing when you think how I’d managed to scare myself.’
Sue came into the room.
‘What did she do?’
‘She gave me a hug,’ Chrissie said, ‘she hugged me. Then she pushed me back to the
bed and told me just to stay there and then she picked up al the clothes, very calmly, hanger by hanger, and put them back in the cupboards, exactly where they’d been. And she made Dil y do it too. She sort of talked her through it and I just sat there and watched them until everything was back and the doors were shut. And then she took my hand and led me downstairs and made tea and toast and al the time she was just quietly talking, about nothing very much, as if I was a dog or something that had been frightened. It was amazing.’
‘Wel done Amy,’ Sue said. She looked round the room. ‘She’l probably be the same about this, you know. She’l probably be amazing about this too.’
Chrissie closed her eyes briefly.
‘I just wish I could be too.’
‘Wel ,’ Sue said, ‘you’l have to work at it.’
Chrissie turned to look at her.
‘What’s the matter with me?’
Sue shrugged. The morning had gone on long enough, as had going round in unproductive circles.
‘Shock,’ she said tiredly. ‘Grief. Disappointment. Anger. To name but a few.’
Chrissie came to stand close to her.
‘Sorry.’
‘Please don’t—’
‘I hate not being able to decide, I’m used to being able to decide—’
Sue leaned towards her and gave her cheek a quick kiss.
‘I’m going to leave you to do just that.’
‘Please—’
She made for the door.
‘You’l be better on your own. And I must run.’
Chrissie said nothing. She heard Sue’s booted feet going rapidly and resolutely down the stairs, and then the sound of the flat’s front door opening and shutting decisively. She went slowly over to the window and looked once more at the view. Their house had no view, only the prospect into the street one way and the garden – not of great interest to either her or Richie, ever – the other. She wasn’t used to views. She gazed out at the improbable distances. She wasn’t, she told herself, used to any of this. And that was the problem.
* * *
Amy had put flowers on the kitchen table. They weren’t much, just the ones the guy with a stal by the tube station let her have, as the last, slightly squashed bunches in the bucket, for fifty pence. They were those Peruvian lily things, with spotted throats to their petals, which made them look slightly exotic, and they were a gloomy purplish red and the flower guy said give them some warm water and a bit of sugar, or an aspirin, and they’l perk up. Amy had dissolved a sugar cube in water in the blue jug with cream spots that she knew Chrissie liked, and stuck the lilies in there. They stil looked sad, and sort of gawky, so she took them out again, and chopped off a length of stalk and picked off al the floppy leaves, and put them back again. They looked better, but stil not right. Maybe flower arranging was like hair plaiting, something that some people could make look real y cool without even trying, and other people just couldn’t. Whatever, the table looked better for having flowers on it, and not just papers and jars of peanut butter and the cables for Dil y’s laptop.
The Other Family Page 20