prevented him from being satisfied with either, and he now resorted to drifting about the flat, desultorily trying to create some order in honour of a new working week, clearing up dirty mugs and plates and glasses, straightening his bed (what for – when he was about to get into it again any minute?), finding a clean shirt for the morning, buffing up his black shoes with a handy gym towel. The friends he had who had live-in girlfriends complained mildly about the apparently compulsory domesticity of Sunday evenings and, although there were many poignant times when Scott remembered past girlfriends with inaccurate lonely yearning, he was mostly glad to be able to amble alone and haphazardly through this strange slice of life between time off and time on again.
And in any case, this particular evening was different. This particular evening required not just some energizing planning, but some actual shoving around of furniture. The black sofa needed to be pushed down towards the kitchen end, leaving a swathe of dusty, crumby detritus which had col ected comfortably underneath it, as wel as the coffee table, in order to leave a space big enough, at the window end of the flat, to house the Steinway grand in al its glory. The Yamaha keyboard could go into his bedroom, after al , where it would prove a useful clothes-parking place, the table and chairs (metal, cool to look at, unwelcome to sit on) could be rearranged on the wal opposite the sofa, never mind it was al a bit crowded, and then, when he came in, in the future, he could look down the length of the room to his spectacular view of the Tyne Bridge, and there the Steinway would be, gleaming and glossy, and ful of the double resonance of its own voice and his father’s. It was, for once, an exciting use of a Sunday evening, inspiring him not only to move everything around, but also to clean up the mess on the floor, throw away months’ worth of old papers and magazines, and bang clouds of dust out of his sofa cushions. The results of his efforts were very pleasing indeed and gave him an irrational but gratifying sense that his life, from now on, would somehow be very different, and inclusive of a new, important, if as yet entirely undefined, dimension.
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.’
