player, a disc of his father playing Rachmaninov, a disc that had never sold in anything like the numbers that his covers of Tony Bennett songs had.
Then he sat down, and ate his dinner in as measured a way as he could, and reflected with something approaching pride on having stood up to Bernie Harrison, not al owed himself to be grateful to that rude cow from London, and succeeded, at last, in taking Donna out for a coffee – not the drink she would have preferred – and tel ing her that he was very sorry but she was mistaken and nothing she could do was going to make him change his mind.
He had feared she might cry. There were long moments while she stared down into her skinny latte with an extra shot, and he had been afraid that she was going to opt for tears rather than fury. But to her credit, she had neither wept nor shouted. In fact she’d said, after swal owing hard several times, ‘Wel , Scottie, I’l be thirty-six next October, so you can’t blame me for trying,’ and he’d squeezed her hand briefly and said, ‘I don’t. I just don’t want you to waste any more time or effort on me.’
She looked at him. She said, with a gal ant attempt at a smile, ‘Rather have a piano than a relationship, would you?’
He said, ‘At least you know where you are with a piano,’ and they’d grinned weakly at each other, and then she bent to pick up her bag and stood up and said she was off to see the girls from work to drown her sorrows. Or, as it was only Wednesday, to half drown them anyway. She bent and gave his cheek a quick brush with her own.
‘It was nice being wanted for my body—’
‘Great body,’ Scott said politely.
Then she had clicked out of the coffee bar on her heels and he had gone to the Asian supermarket and bought the ingredients for a proper meal.
Which he had now prepared, and cooked, and eaten. And washed up. He put the kettle on, to make a coffee, and then he strol ed down the length of his flat and contemplated the space he had cleared – but not swept, recently – where the piano would sit.
It was very, very wonderful to think that, within ten days, it would be sitting there, huge and shining and impregnated with memories and possibilities. Now that it was actual y on its way, Scott could permit himself to acknowledge how much he wanted it, how hard it had been to say that they should not let it go until they were ready to let it go. It had been hard, but it had been worth it, both because it gave Scott the sense of having behaved honourably in an awkward situation and because the joy of knowing it would soon be on its way north was so very intense by contrast.
The joy was, Scott thought, an unexpected bonus. It gave him an energy of pleasure that he couldn’t remember feeling about anything much for a very long time. The only element that tempered it – and Scott had not al owed himself to consider this ful y til now – was that a deception was being practised on Amy, and on her mother and older sister, in order that he might have the Steinway sitting where he was standing now, with the night view of the bridge, and the Gateshead shore shimmering away beyond, outside the uncurtained window.
Scott moved over to the window and leaned his forehead against the cold glass. He supposed that part of him felt that Amy’s mother and sister could look out for themselves. He had, after al , had no contact with them except cold looks at the funeral and an unpleasant brief telephone exchange with Tamsin. But Amy herself was another matter. Amy had had the guts to ring him, had spoken to him as if the bond between them didn’t just exist but should be respected and, for God’s sake, she was only eighteen, she was only a kid, but she had shown an independence of mind that would do credit to someone twice her age.
Scott took his phone out of his trouser pocket, and tossed it once or twice in his hand. If he rang her, and told her about Sue’s cal , she might wel flip and refuse to let him have the piano. He looked, for a long time, at the dusty space where the piano was going to sit. He walked across it, and then back again. He weighed his desire for it to be there against his peace of mind. He flipped his phone open, and dial ed Amy’s number.
Her phone rang four times, then five, then six. Then her voice said hurriedly, ‘This is Amy’s phone. I’l cal you back,’ and stopped, as if she had meant to leave more message, and suddenly couldn’t think what more to say.
Scott looked out at his view.
‘Amy,’ he said, ‘it’s Scott. I’m cal ing on Wednesday night. It’s about the piano. There’s something we should talk about. Could you cal me when you get this? Any time. I mean, any time.’
She rang back at ten past two in the morning. She sounded odd, but she said that was because she was under the duvet. Apart from being a bit muffled, her tone was normal, even neutral.
She said, ‘What is it? About the piano?’
Scott, lying back on his pil ow, his eyes stil closed from the deep sleep he’d been in, told her briefly about Sue’s cal .
‘Oh,’ Amy said.
‘Look,’ Scott said, ‘it doesn’t have to happen, not if you—’
‘It does have to happen. It’s not that—’
‘Not what?’
‘It’s not you having the piano—’
‘Oh,’ Scott said.
Amy said, ‘I’m glad.’
‘Are you? ’
‘Oh yes,’ she said.
He waited for her to ask if she’d woken him, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, ‘I won’t let my phone out of my sight now.’
‘No.’
There was a silence. He longed to say more but couldn’t initiate it.
Then she said, ‘Night-night. Thanks for tel ing me,’ and the line went dead. Scott looked at the clock beside his bed. Two-thirteen and he was awake now. Wide awake.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tamsin was keeping her eyes and ears open. It was completely obvious, from the agents who were being summoned into the partners’ rooms and coming out looking as if they’d been hit with a bucket, that a fair number of redundancies were going on. There had been a confidential memo sent round saying that the present economic climate and resulting effect on the housing market meant that there inevitably had to be a certain amount of restructuring within the company, but that for the sake of al those concerned the partners requested that al members of staff should behave with as much discretion as possible. Which meant, Tamsin knew, that none of them were supposed to gossip when people were got rid of.
And people were being. People were going out of the building by the back door, carrying boxes and bin bags, with the contents of their desks in them, and a lot of company cars were beginning to sit idle, day after day, in the company car park.
Tamsin had said to Robbie that the fact that she wasn’t paid much more than the minimum wage might work either way. The partners might think she was extremely expendable, or they might think that she was very good value. Robbie said he thought the latter would be the case and that she should work on that assumption anyway, so Tamsin was going into work having made an extra effort with her appearance every day, and was conducting herself with increased alertness and alacrity as wel as a wide and confident smile every time she encountered a partner. If she was made redundant, she reckoned, she’d make sure she left with a glowing recommendation.
The reception desk, Tamsin decided, was where she was going to make her mark. It didn’t take much to realize that the first face of a business that a customer saw was also the one that made the significant first impression. So Tamsin was making an extra effort to greet everyone, including the least prepossessing of the courier delivery boys, with a wide smile and an air of being completely impervious to any possibility of suffering in the current crisis. It was annoying, therefore, to turn from a switchboard complication to greet a new arrival and find that she was wasting warmth and charm on her sister Amy.