In the morning, she was gone. She had slipped out from beside him, smoothed the pil ow she had lain on, dressed, and left. There was no evidence she had been there, no hairs in the basin, no damp towels. His toothbrush was dry. The only thing that proved to him that she had not been part of a giant alcoholic hal ucination the night before – if pressed, Scott knew he probably couldn’t even name the last club they had al been to –
was that on the kitchen worktop was an empty tumbler and a foil square of Alka-Seltzer tablets. Scott ran water into the tumbler, and dropped two of the tablets into it, holding the glass away from him, eyes screwed shut, as if the fizzing of the tablets as they dissolved was too much for a head as tender as his to bear.
He drank. Then he held his breath. There were always a few seconds, with Alka-Seltzer, when you wondered whether you would throw it up as fast as you had swal owed it. Nothing happened. He ran another glass of water, and drank that. Then he bent and inserted his face sideways under the tap, and let the water splash across his eyes and ears and down his neck.
In the bathroom mirror, he looked at himself with revulsion. Being so dark meant a navy-blue chin most mornings. Today, his skin was yel owish grey and there were bruises around his eyes and he looked il . Which he was. Poisoned. His liver must be in despair.
‘You are,’ he said to his reflection, ‘too old for this. Any day now, you’l just be sad. Sad, sad, sad, sad.’ He shut his eyes. This was the moment self-pity usual y kicked in, the self-pity which had lain in wait for him ever since a history master at school – who had had his own reasons for ingratiating himself with the better-looking boys – had taken him aside, after Richie had left, and put an arm round his shoulders and said, in a voice intense with understanding sympathy, ‘I am very, very sorry for you, my boy.’ Scott had broken down. The history master had been very adept at comforting him, had made him feel there was no loss of manliness in weeping.
‘Just not in front of your mother,’ the history master said. ‘She has enough to bear. Come to me, when things get too much. Come to me. It wil be our secret.’
The word ‘secret’ had alarmed Scott. But the feeling of warmth, of understanding, remained. Al his life since then, Scott could summon up, at wil , the adolescent desolation of that moment, and the permission he had been given – whatever the motive – to grieve for his loss, and for the loneliness it left him in. Now standing naked in his bathroom, feeling disgusting and disgusted in every atom of his maltreated body, he waited to be given the pardon of self-pity. But it wouldn’t come.
‘Fuck,’ Scott said to the mirror.
He picked up the spray can of shaving foam, and pressed the nozzle. Nothing happened. He shook the can. It rattled emptily. He flung it furiously across the bathroom and it clattered into the shower tray. He picked an already used disposable razor out of the soap dish, and, with his other hand, attempted to lather a cake of soap onto his chin. He was two unsatisfactory stripes down the left-hand side when his phone rang.
Of course, he couldn’t find it. Last night’s clothes – his work suit, a shirt, socks, underpants – were in a shameful stew on the floor. From somewhere inside the mess, his phone was ringing. It would be Donna. Not content with the gentle hint of the Alka-Seltzer, she would be ringing to make sure he was awake and would not be late for work. She would also, no doubt, be after some little reference to last night, some little reassurance that he had wanted what had happened, that she had, somehow, reminded him of what he had been missing, that they might now—He found the phone, in the back pocket of his trousers, just as it stopped ringing. ‘One missed cal ’, said the screen. He pressed Select. ‘Mam’, the screen said helpful y.
Scott went back to the bathroom, and found a towel. He wound it round his waist, and then he took the phone into the sitting room, to look at the view rather than at his own dispiriting face. It was seven-forty in the morning. What could Margaret want, at seven-forty in the morning, unless she was il ? Scott dial ed her number, and then stood, leaning against the windowsil , and looked at the rain outside, fal ing in soft, wet sheets through the girders of the Tyne Bridge and into the river below.
‘Were you in the shower?’ Margaret said.
‘Sort of—’
‘Sorry to ring so early, but I’ve got a long day—’
‘Are you OK?’ Scott said.
‘Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m off to Durham in ten minutes.’
‘Oh,’ Scott said. If he didn’t concentrate on focusing, he would see two Tyne Bridges, at least. He wondered if his mother had ever had a hangover.
‘I wanted to catch you,’ Margaret said, ‘before you got to the office.’
‘Are you OK?’ Scott said again. He shut one eye.
‘Perfectly fine,’ Margaret said. ‘Why d’you keep asking? I’m fine, and so is Dawson, and I’m about to drive to Durham to see a new club. I could do with more venues in Durham. Scott, dear—’
‘Yes?’ He closed both eyes.
‘Scott, pet,’ Margaret said. Her voice was warm and he could tel a request was coming. ‘I want you to do something for me.’
‘What—’
‘It’s for you, real y. It’s about the piano. I want you to make a cal , about the piano.’
Scott opened his eyes and made himself focus sternly on a single bridge.
‘Who to?’ he said.
Tamsin worked in the oldest estate agency in Highgate vil age. There were a great many estate agencies up the hil , but the one where Tamsin worked prided itself on its antiquity, and the famous houses – famous both for their beauty and for the celebrity of their inhabitants – that had been bought and sold over the years through their good offices. Tamsin, after failing to get into art school and declining either the cookery course or IT
skil s course suggested to her, had found herself a job in the estate agency, with which she declared herself perfectly satisfied. It was, basical y, a reception job with the added task of arranging al the appointments for viewings of the properties, and it was becoming plain to the five partners of the company that Tamsin possessed the kind of competent attention to detail, as wel as an admirably together appearance, that made her, especial y in the present perilous times, good value in every sense. Rather than promote her, or increase her pay, the partners tacitly decided that the initial tactic to prevent her beginning to think that she might be better off somewhere else was to flatter and thank her. Tamsin, deftly managing the office diary, and answering the telephone and enquiries in person, to perfection, was wel aware that the smiling compliments that came her way on a daily basis were not without ulterior motive. In return, she declined to reassure the partners that, for the moment, aged twenty-one, with a boyfriend who was the definition of steady and the recent loss of her father and the effect of that loss on both her mother and sisters, she had no intention of going anywhere.
Al the same, it was nice to be treated as valuable. It was nice to have the attention she paid to hair and clothes obviously appreciated. It was nice to know that, as far as representing the firm was concerned, she was giving a good impression. Al these reassurances were contributing to Tamsin’s sense that, amidst al the family grief and insecurity and anxiety, she was emerging as the one member of the family who could be relied on to think straight even in the midst of emotional turmoil. And so, returning home one evening from work, and walking into the empty kitchen to find Amy’s phone jerking its little jewel ed dolphin about and ringing, unattended, on the kitchen table, Tamsin did not hesitate to pick it up and, after a cursory glance revealed an unfamiliar number on the screen, say crisply into it, ‘Amy’s phone.’