He dumped a stout row of black bin bags by the front door, to go down in the morning, and went off, whistling, to have a shower. Showered, and wrapped in a towel, he cleaned wedges of curious rubbery grey scum out of the plugs and the shower tray, poured bleach lavishly down the lavatory, and shined up the mirrors with handfuls of toilet paper. Because of the splashing and the whistling, he only heard the telephone in time to race out of the bathroom and seize it at the moment when his voicemail cut in.
‘Hel o?’ Scott said.
‘Hi,’ his own voice said to him. ‘Scott here—’
‘Hel o?’ Scott said again over it. ‘Hel o? I’m here. I’m home.’
There was a silence.
‘I’m here,’ Scott said again. ‘Who is it?’
‘Amy,’ Amy said.
‘Amy — ’
‘Yes,’ Amy said. ‘You know.’
‘Gosh,’ Scott said. With his free hand, he tucked the towel more firmly round his waist. It didn’t feel quite decent, somehow, to be talking to Amy, wearing only a bath towel.
‘Is – it OK?’ Amy said.
‘OK what?’
‘OK to talk to you.’
‘Sure it is,’ Scott said. ‘I was just a bit surprised.’
‘Me too. I mean, I’m surprised I’ve done it. That I’ve rung you.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in my bedroom. At home. I’m on my phone, in my bedroom.’
Scott walked, with his phone, to the window with the view.
‘I’m looking at the Tyne Bridge,’ he said.
‘What’s the Tyne Bridge?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘If I knew,’ Amy said, her voice becoming more confident, ‘I wouldn’t ask you, would I?’
‘S’pose not,’ Scott said. ‘Wel , it’s a great massive thing, iron and stuff, over the Tyne. The railway goes over it. I can see the trains from my window.’
‘Oh,’ Amy said.
There was a pause. After letting it hang for some seconds, and wondering if he could actual y hear her breathing, or whether he just thought he could, Scott said, ‘Did you want something?’
‘I don’t know,’ Amy said uncertainly.
Scott decided to grasp the nettle. He stood straighter and looked sternly at his view.
‘Is it about the piano?’
‘No,’ Amy said.
‘Wel ,’ Scott said, ‘that’s something.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it a dare?’
‘What—’
‘Did you,’ Scott asked, ‘dare yourself to ring me?’
There was another little pause and then Amy said, ‘Maybe.’
‘Did you think I’d refuse to speak to you?’
‘No.’
‘I might have. We didn’t exactly get a welcome, Mam and me.’
‘No,’ Amy said again. ‘What did you expect?’
‘OK,’ Scott said. ‘OK.’ He tried to picture her in detail. Tal ish, slim, long dark hair down her back. But he couldn’t remember her face, only that when he and Margaret confronted the four of them outside the church she was the only one who hadn’t looked daggers.
She said, ‘I’m supposed to be revising. I’m always supposed to be revising.’
‘A levels? ’
‘Don’t mention them.’
He turned his back to the window and regarded the swept space where the piano would stand.
He said, ‘You play an instrument?’
‘Flute,’ she said.
He looked at the ceiling.
‘Nice,’ he said.
‘And you? ’
‘Piano,’ he said. ‘Not wel .’
‘Then you—’
‘Yes,’ he said. He let his gaze drop back to the floor. ‘Yes, I’l play it here.’
She said, ‘I’d better go—’
‘Someone come in?’
‘No, I just think—’
‘Why did you ring, Amy?’ Scott said. ‘Why did you ring me?’
‘I was thinking,’ Amy said, ‘about Dad. My dad.’
‘Our dad. Was that why?’
‘Do you miss him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Scott said. ‘I hardly saw him after I was fourteen.’
‘Yeah,’ Amy said, very quietly.
‘Wel , is that why you rang? Because he was my dad too and you knew he didn’t see me?’
‘Are you angry about that?’
There was a silence.
‘Sorry,’ Amy said. ‘I shouldn’t have asked that.’
‘The answer’s yes,’ Scott said.
Amy said softly, ‘Me too. About other things.’
‘I’ve never said it out loud,’ Scott said. ‘Not for twenty-odd years. I’ve just let it stew around in my head.’
‘Yes,’ Amy said in a whisper.
‘And then you ask me—’
Amy said, more clearly, ‘I don’t know why I rang. I just thought I would. It was in my mind and it was bugging me, so I did.’
‘Wil it bug you again?’
‘You could ring me,’ Amy said. ‘It doesn’t have to be me. You could phone.’
‘I don’t think so—’
‘I’m going,’ Amy said. ‘I’m going to ring off.’
‘Cheers,’ Scott said. He waited. Amy said nothing. Then he heard her phone go dead. ‘Bye,’ Scott said, with exaggerated emphasis, into the ether. ‘Bye. Thanks for cal ing.’
He threw his phone across the space of the floor on to the sofa, and put his hands into his stil -damp hair, ruffling it up into spikes. What had al that been about?
Amy got down on to the floor and crouched there, holding her knees, pushing her eye sockets against them. She stayed there for some time, just breathing and waiting for the bones of her skul to press against the bones of her kneecaps until they were more painful than merely uncomfortable, and then she unrol ed herself slowly and stood up and stretched until her fingertips touched the sloping ceiling above her bed. She had taped a big picture of Duffy up there, wearing a red-and-black jumper and a lot of eye make-up, posed against a brick wal and looking pretty panicky. It was a look that Amy could often identify with.
She bent to pick up her phone from the carpet, and put it in her jeans pocket, leaving the charm she had attached to it – a blue glitter dolphin –
hanging outside so that she could tweak the phone out in an instant when it began to vibrate. She always had her phone on vibrate. Her sisters, of course, had loud ring tones but Amy preferred the near secrecy of vibrate, just as she preferred to let most family things drift her way, being ever observant but seldom demanding. It was only things that real y mattered that got Amy into demand mode, that turned her into someone she wasn’t al that pleased to be, someone who snooped, someone who went through drawers and checked e-mail inboxes and eavesdropped. Someone who opened her dead father’s piano stool – something that had never even remotely occurred to her to do, al the eighteen years of her life – and found inside al sorts of old stuff; stuff relating to a place and a time which had nothing to do with the dad who was part of Amy’s life, nothing to do with anything familiar to her either.
There was quite a lot of sheet music in there, battered copies of songs from musicals, Show Boat, and Guys and Dolls, and Carousel. There were footbal programmes from St James’ Park, dated in the 1970s. There was a postcard of something cal ed St Andrew’s Churchyard and on the back someone had written in a handwriting that wasn’t Richie’s, ‘Fifteen witches buried here!’ and a date, 27 July 1963. There was a brochure for the Grand Hotel, Tynemouth, and a smal wooden coat of arms, gold keys crossed on a red background, below a gilded helmet and a little ship, above a motto, ‘ Moribus Civilis’, and on the back of the shield was a grubby white label on which – her father’s hand this time – was written ‘Scott –
1983’. And there was a photograph. It was in an envelope but both the envelope and the photograph looked as if they’d been much handled. It showed a young mother, and a baby, quite a big baby, almost a toddler. The young mother had her hair in a curled pageboy, and a plainly home-made frock, and a hat like a halo. The baby was in hand-knitted shorts and an Eton-col ared jersey and little socks and bar shoes.