The Other Family

‘You’re right, it is a family time,’ Scott said. ‘But it’s my family and my difficulties, and you don’t know any of them.’

Donna let a smal pause fal , and then she said, ‘But I could.’

Scott stood up. His clothes were deeply rumpled.

‘No.’

Donna leaned forward very slowly and put her wine glass down among the dirty plates on the coffee table.

She said, ‘I thought you said Amy was just your kid half-sister.’

‘She is.’

‘Who you’ve seen but never spoken to except on the phone.’

‘Correct.’

‘Then why are you making such a big deal about this piano and Amy and everyone? Why do you have to do anything about her or anyone else, except your mother? Why don’t you want me to help you?

‘Because,’ Scott said, looking down at her, ‘it’s none of your business.’

‘Thank you!’ Donna cried. She waved wildly at the curry plates. ‘After al I’ve—’

‘I didn’t ask you to!’ Scott shouted. ‘I didn’t ask you to snoop round my office and check my phone! I didn’t ask you to be a shoulder to cry on because I don’t want one, I don’t need one, I never have, my family is my business and always has been and I’l deal with it my way and on my own as I always have!’

Donna leaned out of her chair and found her shoes. She put them on and stood up, with difficulty.

She said, ‘I think it’s disgusting, getting fixated on an eighteen-year-old, especial y if she’s your half- sister.’

‘I’m not fixated,’ Scott said, ‘I’m just trying to get this bloody piano to Newcastle. And before you start spreading the news that I’m some sort of perv, let me tel you something, something that’s none of your bloody business, but I’l tel you to stop you making mucky trouble. When my father left, Donna, there was no one to comfort me. Yes, there was my mother but she was in her own bad place and, anyway, she wasn’t a child like me, his child, I was on my own there. And al I’m trying to do now, Donna, is to help Amy a bit because I know what it’s like. I’m trying to do for her just a little of what no one did for me. OK? Get it?’

Donna turned to look at him. Her eyes were huge.

‘I just love it,’ she said softly, ‘when you play the piano.’

Scott closed his eyes. He clenched his fists. He heard Donna’s heels approaching, not quite steadily, across the wooden floor, and then felt her wine- and food-scented lips on his cheek for what was plainly intended to be a significant number of seconds. Then the lips were removed, and the heels tapped unevenly away across the floor, paused to open the door, tapped outside and let the door bang behind them. Scott let out a long, noisy breath and opened his eyes. Then he fel back on to the sofa and lay there, gazing at the girders of the ceiling and resolutely refusing to let his brain change out of neutral. His phone beeped. He picked it up and eyed the inbox warily. Donna. She could hardly have left the building.

‘Grow up Scottie. U R 37 not 7. Little girls not the answer.’

He deleted the message and struggled to sit up. The mess on the table revolted him, the mess of the last twenty-four hours revolted him, the mess he stil seemed bril iant at getting himself into revolted him beyond anything. He looked at his phone again and retrieved Amy’s message.

She’d said once that she played the flute. Scott got up and went to the window and looked at his view, glittering under a night sky. He stared out into the darkness, at the lines of light the cars made, at the dramatic glow of the Tyne Bridge. There was something very – wel , clean was the word that came to mind, about picturing his half-sister – yes, she was his half-sister – with her hair down her back, playing her flute. He closed his eyes again, and rested his mind on this mental image, with relief.

‘I think,’ Chrissie said, ‘that we need to talk.’

She closed Amy’s bedroom door behind her. Amy was on her bed, propped up against the headboard, with her flute in her hands. She hadn’t been playing anything in particular, just fiddling about with a few pop tunes, but it had been absorbing enough to prevent her from hearing Chrissie coming up the stairs, and when the handle of the door turned she’d given a little jump, and her flute had knocked against her teeth.

‘Ow,’ Amy said, rubbing.

Chrissie took no notice. She turned Amy’s desk chair round so that it was facing the bed, and sat down in it. She was wearing camel-coloured trousers and a camel-coloured sweater and a rope of pearls. She looked extremely considered and absolutely exhausted.

‘Now,’ Chrissie said, ‘what is going on?’

Amy polished her flute on her T-shirt sleeve.

‘Nothing.’

Chrissie looked up at the skylight.

‘Tamsin tel s me you spoke to Scott about moving the piano to Newcastle.’

‘Sort of,’ Amy said.

‘He rang you.’

‘Yes,’ Amy said.

‘How,’ Chrissie said, ‘did he know your number?’