'Well,' Bernie said, 'does she think that if she worked with me I'd make a nuisance of myself? Your mother's a good-looking woman.'

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 small silence, tinged with disappointment. Then Bernie said robustly, 'Well, she can't have doubts about her own abilities, can she? It may be small, 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. Well, if it's not me and it's not her, what is it?'

Scott said carefully, '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 all 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 all 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 really 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 really wants.'

Bernie looked at him in silence for a few moments. Then he touched Scott's arm.

'Anyone tell 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.

'h.e.l.lo?'

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 still there?' Sue said.

'Yes-'

'Well, 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-'

'Dilly took the number from Amy's phone,' Sue said. 'Dilly is Amy's sister.'

'I know that.'

'Well,' 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'll 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 Dilly's help, we're getting it shifted. I think it'll be next week. You should have your piano by the end of next week. I'll 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, n.o.body knows but Dilly 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. All 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 swallowed. 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 yelled, '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 a.s.sertive woman.

Sue said, slightly less vehemently, 'Don't go and b.u.g.g.e.r 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 all a favour. None of them can move on one inch until that piano is out of the house and they aren't pa.s.sing 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'll 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 called 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 chilli 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 carefully 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 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 allowed 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 telling 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 swallowing hard several times, 'Well, Scottie, I'll 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 gallant 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 strolled down the length of his flat and contemplated the s.p.a.ce 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 actually 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 allowed himself to consider this fully till 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 sh.o.r.e shimmering away beyond, outside the uncurtained window.

Scott moved over to the window and leaned his forehead against the cold gla.s.s. He supposed that part of him felt that Amy's mother and sister could look out for themselves. He had, after all, 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 G.o.d'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 call, she might well flip and refuse to let him have the piano. He looked, for a long time, at the dusty s.p.a.ce 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 dialled Amy's number.

Her phone rang four times, then five, then six. Then her voice said hurriedly, 'This is Amy's phone. I'll call 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 calling on Wednesday night. It's about the piano. There's something we should talk about. Could you call 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 m.u.f.fled, her tone was normal, even neutral.

She said, 'What is it? About the piano?'

Scott, lying back on his pillow, his eyes still closed from the deep sleep he'd been in, told her briefly about Sue's call.

'Oh,' Amy said.

'Look,' Scott said, 'it doesn't have to happen, not if you-'

'It does have to happen. It's not that-'