The Other Family

‘Oh my God—’

‘D’you remember asking me about the Tyne Bridge? That’s the Tyne Bridge.’

Amy raised an arm and pointed.

‘And what’s that? The silver thing.’

‘It’s the Sage,’ Scott said.

‘The Sage—’

‘Two concert hal s, a music education centre, a children’s concert hal , the home of the Northern Sinfonia. Peggy Seeger came last year.’

Amy said, ‘It’s like being abroad, it’s so different—’

‘Yes.’

She looked down at the piano.

‘I suppose—’

‘What?’

‘I suppose this has sort of come home?’

‘Except that it was probably made in America.’

She shot him a quick smile.

‘You don’t want me to get sentimental—’

‘No, I don’t.’

She looked back along the flat.

‘This is so great.’

‘I like it,’ Scott said. ‘My mother doesn’t get it. Can’t get it. She thinks it’s barbaric to live in a place like this.’

‘Let’s – not talk about mothers.’

‘Fine.’

‘While I’m here,’ Amy said, ‘I don’t want to wonder if I shouldn’t be here.’

‘I shan’t remind you.’

‘Where’m I sleeping?’

Scott moved behind the piano and opened his bedroom door.

‘Here.’

Amy took in the sparseness, and the size of the window, and the Yamaha keyboard at the end of the bed.

She said, ‘ Wicked—’

‘I’m sleeping on the sofa.’

‘D’you – d’you mind?’

‘I like the sofa. I’ve often slept, unintentional y if you get me, on the sofa.’

Amy sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned backwards, spreading her hands out on the new bedlinen, stil marked by the sharp creases of its packaging.

‘What are we going to do?’

Scott leaned against the door jamb. He folded his arms. He had a sudden, exhilarating sense of freedom, a sense that the next few days were not, actual y, going to be crippled by either the distant past or the recent past, that Amy had come north not so much for family reasons as for reasons of her own, which in turn, and wonderful y, liberated him.

‘Wel , he said, ‘when I’ve shown you around a bit, I’m going to take you to a folk club.’

Amy sat up.

‘A folk club?’

‘You’re in Newcastle. You’re in the birthplace of the living tradition. I’m taking you to hear a girl who plays jazz, who plays folk. On her flute.’

‘Oh!’ Amy said, and then, again, ‘ Wow.’

‘Mr Harrison cal ed,’ Glenda said. She did not say that Mr Harrison’s secretary had cal ed, wanting to speak to Margaret, and when Margaret didn’t ring back Mr Harrison had rung himself, as if his presence on the other end of a telephone line might conjure Margaret up by its very power.

‘Oh yes,’ Margaret said.

‘Would you like to know why?’

‘Not particularly,’ Margaret said.

Glenda went on typing. There was a difference, in her view, between being rather admirably strong-minded and resistant to cajolery and, on the other hand, taking that resistance so far that you looked like a sulky adolescent.