The Other Family (35 page)

It was past two in the morning before either of them thought of the time. And then Amy had discovered she was starving and they had eaten a bag of cashew nuts and some cheese slices Scott found in the fridge and shared a battered KitKat from the bottom of his work bag. Going into his bedroom, Amy had been almost overwhelmed by the need to thank him, to say that she felt rescued, guided, excited, but had not known how to do any of that without embarrassing both of them, so she had put her arms round his neck, awkwardly and in silence, and he had somehow understood, and had given her a quick, hard hug, and said, ‘You’re not the only one who’s had a good day,’ and let her go.

Then he said, ‘I’ll be gone in the morning, remember. It’s Monday.’

‘Oh—’

‘I took a half-day off, Friday. Can’t do more right now.’

‘No, I know, I knew—’

He was tossing a pillow and an unzipped sleeping bag on to the sofa.

‘Mr Harrison’ll look after you. He’ll show you the Sage. He knows his way round the music scene better than I do, in any case.’

Mr Harrison! Amy shot up in bed. Where was her watch? What was the time? What would happen if she kept Mr Harrison waiting?

‘It was opened in 2004,’ Bernie Harrison said. ‘It’s bigger than two football pitches and twice the height of
The Angel of the North
. And up there,’ he pointed to the vast curved roof soaring high above them, ‘there’s six hundred-some-odd panes of glass, and each one weighs more than two baby elephants.’

Amy was turning slowly, head thrown back, gawping.

‘I’ve run out of things to say—’

‘I’m old enough to remember the Northern Sinfonia being founded,’ Bernie said. ‘It was 1958. Michael Hall. I was sixteen, same age as your—’ He stopped. ‘No, I suppose she isn’t your anything, Margaret, is she?’

Amy retrieved her dazzled gaze from the immensity of the Sage’s roof.

‘Not really—’

‘Your father’s first wife is just your father’s first wife.’

Amy swallowed.

‘She – she was his only wife. He and Mum never—’

Bernie Harrison cleared his throat.

‘Well, don’t let it trouble you. Doesn’t trouble me. You made your mark with Margaret, I can tell you.’

‘I hope she wasn’t upset about me not staying—’

‘She’s got a mind of her own and she likes to see one in other people. I’ve known her since she was a stroppy little object in pigtails. We grew up in a different world from now, Margaret and me. You wouldn’t believe, now, our world had ever been, sometimes. It was hard, though. You can’t really miss something that hard.’

Amy looked past him, along the immense shining spaces of floor, to the glass walls and the view of the river. She said a little hesitantly, ‘So, the Grand Hotel—’

‘Yes,’ Bernie said firmly. ‘She’d deny it, but that’s why we like places like the Grand Hotel. We’ve made our mark and our brass and we like value for it. Quality.’

‘Of course.’

‘It may be different in London—’

‘Please don’t talk about London.’

Bernie glanced at her.

‘Very well.’

‘I’ve just fallen in love with all this—’

‘It doesn’t take half an eye to see that.’

‘Everyone,’ Amy said, ‘has been so lovely to me.’

Bernie indicated that Amy should follow him across to the stupendous windows, to lean on the steel balustrade and look down on the river and the bridges.

He said, looking at the view, ‘We’ve all got something to give each other.’

‘I haven’t,’ Amy said, ‘I haven’t got anything. I’ve only just left school. I couldn’t even buy my own train ticket up here.’

‘You’re too sharp to take me literally. It’s not about the money.’

‘Not having any makes you a bit helpless—’

‘Are you going to let that stand in your way?’

‘No,’ Amy said uncertainly.

‘There’s ways and means. There’s grants. There’s charities that like giving bursaries for music. There’ll be a way if you want it.’

‘I want it so much—’

‘Well,’ Bernie said, ‘we’ll see. You’d have to work hard for a year, you’d have to get some experience. But if something comes of it, it’ll cheer us all up, I can tell you. We’ve got in a bit of a rut.’

‘Up here?’ Amy said, incredulous, gesturing at the slim white arc of the Millennium Bridge. ‘Up
here
? With all
this
?’

‘We’ve grown up with all this,’ Bernie said. ‘We’ve watched this city come alive again. My mother worked in a sweet factory in North Shields, and I drive a Jaguar and I like a fancy place to eat. But for all that, you keep needing a new energy, you never stop looking for the next little push and shove. I’ll tell you something. I’ve got a good business here, a solid business. This
place
– well, this place means I can think of performers I couldn’t even consider ten years ago. But I still look to change, I look to improve all the time,
and don’t ask me who for, because I’ve got no children and I don’t know who for, in the future, I only know it’s for me, right now. And what I want right now is for Margaret to come in with me, and manage the areas of the business that she manages better than anyone. She knows the North-East entertainment business like the back of her hand. And she won’t come. She goes fiddling on with that little tinpot business of hers, and she won’t come.’

‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Bernie said, ‘she’s stuck in a rut of her own.’

Amy put both hands on the rail and leaned back, her feet braced.

‘I thought I was stuck.’

‘You’re never stuck at eighteen.’

‘But if it’s how you feel—’

Bernie Harrison glanced at her.

‘Exactly. And you being young and being struck with all this made us old fogeys feel a whole lot better. Why else am I here and not in my office?’

Amy straightened up.

‘Thank you very much for that.’

‘I’m not doing it for you, young lady.’

‘Aren’t you?’

He shrugged. He was laughing.

‘I never do anything without a motive. And I’ve got two motives this morning. One, I promised Margaret we’d all have lunch together.’

‘Oh,’ Amy said.

‘Oh good or oh bad?’

‘Oh fine,’ Amy said.

‘And the second thing, before we go any further, is I need to have an idea of you.’

‘An idea—’

‘As a musician,’ Bernie said.

‘How—’

Bernie turned. He gestured across the concourse.

‘Down there,’ he said, ‘down one level, is the music education centre. Workshops, practice rooms, teaching rooms, recording studios. We’re going down there now. I’ve set it up. There’s a flute down there, waiting for you, and I’m going to hear you play.’

The owner of the Highgate flat was in Los Angeles.

‘Oh my God,’ Chrissie said, ‘did I wake you?’

He did not sound quite sure.

‘Not really—’

‘I forgot the time difference. I’m so sorry but I quite forgot about Pacific time. I just wanted—’

‘Yes?’

‘I just wondered if you’d let the flat—’

‘Oh no,’ he said. He sounded as if he was lying down. ‘No, I haven’t. I was kinda waiting for you—’

‘Well,’ Chrissie said, ‘I think it will be OK. I
think
– I think I’ve sold my house.’

‘Good,’ he said, ‘good news—’

‘Could you possibly wait a bit more? Could you wait two more weeks?’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I can wait two weeks.’ He yawned. ‘I’ll even be over, I think, in two weeks. I’m not sure.’

‘That’s so kind of you—’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s business. My accountant says I should let it and you seem the right kind of person to let it to. That’s fine by me.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Call me when you know—’

‘I will. I’ll call you straight away—’

‘And go round there. Go and see it again. The housekeeper has the keys. Help yourself.’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘thank you—’

‘See you,’ he said. He yawned again. ‘From sunny California, and a view of the freeway, I send greetings and say see you in Highgate.’

Chrissie put the phone down. The call had been, despite the yawns, strangely elating. As was, to her surprise, the presence of the young couple’s surveyor in the house, tapping walls and peering into cupboards in a manner that suggested he would be very, very disappointed if he found nothing amiss. Chrissie had made him tea – he’d been very specific, asking for only enough milk to cloud the tea, and one sugar – which he had left to get cold in the kitchen, but even that didn’t irritate her. She was beginning, cautiously, to believe that she was feeling better. Not all the time, and not reliably, dramatically so, but she was distinctly aware that instead of believing she was at the mercy of Richie’s decisions, Richie’s erratic earning power and enthusiasm, Richie’s fans, Richie’s particular brand of sweetly expressed utter stubbornness, she was instead sensing the first stirrings of the luxury of being free to choose. She might have much – much – less money, and she would no longer own a property, but then she would no longer be in a position of dependency either, reliant upon another person for livelihood, for emotional reassurance.

The surveyor was coming down the stairs, slowly, still making notes. He’d been in the house for hours, which suggested to Chrissie not so much that he was being exhaustively, dangerously thorough, as that he had, these days, far less work coming in.

‘I’m afraid your tea is cold,’ Chrissie said. In the old days, she might have added, ‘Shall I make you another?’ Now, however, she merely smiled.

He didn’t look up.

‘I always drink it cold,’ he said.

*    *    *

Tamsin, despite being at work, had been on the phone to Amy. She had rung her to tell her that they were all very upset by her behaviour, and that it was really hurtful and disloyal to behave like this, especially for Chrissie. Perhaps, Tamsin said, Amy hadn’t realized what it was like for Chrissie to have to sell the house and take a pretty menial job – Chrissie, after all, Tamsin reminded Amy, was used to a professional managerial role – and it was absolutely out of order for Amy to add to all this pain by behaving with such callous disregard for anybody’s feelings but her own. In fact, Amy should know that she, Tamsin, was thinking of going to live with Chrissie in the Highgate flat because it was going to be so hard, so very hard, for her to adjust without help and support.

‘Have you done?’ Amy demanded, when her sister paused for breath.

‘For the moment. Where are you?’

‘I’m sitting,’ Amy said, ‘with a cat on my knee.’

Tamsin gave a little snort.

‘Maybe,’ Amy went on, not sounding anything like as ruffled as Tamsin thought she ought to be, ‘maybe Mum is doing better than you give her credit for. Maybe she quite likes choosing her life again.’

‘It’s not a choice,’ Tamsin said, ‘she
has
to do all this. And we have to help her.’

‘Well,’ Amy said, ‘I might be helping. I might not be a burden on her. I might not be living there. More space for you—’

‘You are unbelievable—’

‘They take twenty-five people a year on this course. I need three Bs and grade eight, and I’ve got grade eight.’

‘You’re obsessed,’ Tamsin said.

‘No more than you are,’ Amy said. ‘It’s just about something different.’

‘When are you deigning to come back?’

‘On Friday,’ Amy said, ‘I told Mum. God, this cat is heavy, it’s like sitting under a furry hippo or something. I’ve got to do the application through UCAS and all that, but I’m going into the department at the university to have a look.’ She paused and then she said proudly, ‘I’ve got an introduction.’

‘I’m not asking,’ Tamsin said. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘OK,’ Amy said. ‘No change there, then.’

‘I want you to think about what I said—’

Amy was silent.

‘Amy? ’

Silence.

‘
Amy
?’

Tamsin took the phone from her ear and looked at the screen. ‘Call ended’, it said. She gave a furious little exclamation.

‘Tamsin?’ Robbie said.

She looked up from her seat behind the reception desk, still frowning. She had not been expecting him.

‘Robbie, not till six, you know not till six.’

He was not, to her slight surprise, smiling. He was in his work suit and looked absolutely as he usually did, but instead of regarding her with his customary expression of being alert to accommodate to her precisely current mood, he was looking, well, stern was the word that came to mind.

She said, ‘Is everything OK?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘no, it isn’t. I wouldn’t interrupt you at work if it was.’

She half rose.

‘What’s happened?’

‘You probably haven’t noticed,’ Robbie said. He leaned over the desk a little and Tamsin felt a small clutch of real apprehension. ‘In fact, if you had noticed, I wouldn’t be here. I could have waited till tonight, but for once I didn’t think I
would. If you want to know, I’m sick of waiting.’ He leaned a little further. ‘Tamsin,’ Robbie said, ‘I’m at the end of my tether.’

A small beauty salon in Marylebone, just off the High Street, offered Dilly a job as a junior therapist for four days a week, with the expectation that she would work every other weekend. Dilly said she would think about it. She liked the look of the salon and the other girls seemed perfectly friendly, but she wasn’t sure about the commitment of working at weekends, which would mean, if she only had three days a week when she wasn’t working, but all her friends were, she’d be stuck in that top-floor flat alone with no one to hang out with.

The manageress of the salon had seen quite a lot of girls like Dilly. In fact she was rather tired of girls like Dilly and wasn’t going to waste her breath, yet again, explaining that the current employment market was not a pick-and-choose, plenty-more-where-that-came-from scenario any more. So she looked at Dilly – pretty girl, and a deft worker – and said she should of course make up her own mind, but that the salon needed an extra girl, on the terms she had specified, immediately, and that the job would be given to the next suitable candidate who came through the door, which might be that very afternoon. She then turned away to talk to a client in a very different, animated manner, and Dilly went out into the street feeling, aggrievedly, that she hadn’t in any way merited being treated like that.