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 smal silence, tinged with disappointment. Then Bernie said robustly, ‘Wel , she can’t have doubts about her own abilities, can she?
It may be smal , 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. Wel , if it’s not me and it’s not her, what is it?’
Scott said careful y, ‘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 al 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 al 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 real y 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 real y wants.’
Bernie looked at him in silence for a few moments. Then he touched Scott’s arm.
‘Anyone tel 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.
‘Hel o?’
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 stil there?’ Sue said.
‘Yes—’
‘Wel , 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—’
‘Dil y took the number from Amy’s phone,’ Sue said. ‘Dil y is Amy’s sister.’
‘I know that.’
‘Wel ,’ 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’l 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 Dil y’s help, we’re getting it shifted. I think it’l be next week. You should have your piano by the end of next week. I’l 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 Dil y 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. Al 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 swal owed. 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 yel ed, ‘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 al 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’l 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 cal ed 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 chil i 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 careful y 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