‘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
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, ‘
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
‘I don’t like it being a secret—’
Sue yel ed, ‘It has nothing to
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
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
