The Other Family

She had learned, too, that if she ignored both Margaret and Barry –

two very different personalities who shared a singular capacity for pig-headedness – they would capitulate to being ignored long before she gave in out of pity. She kept an eye on Margaret, using her peripheral vision, but continued to look steadily and straight ahead at her screen.

‘I can’t concentrate today,’ Margaret said abruptly.

Glenda let a beat fal , and then she said, ‘It’s that girl coming.’

‘I haven’t had anyone of eighteen in the house since Scott was that age. Twenty years or more. What do they eat, for heaven’s sake?’

‘What you give them,’ Glenda said.

‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, ‘it’l be Sunday lunch at the Grand Hotel. I’ve fixed that, with Scott. I told him, Sunday lunch and don’t you wear trainers.’

‘I’ve never been to the Grand Hotel—’

‘Haven’t you, dear? I’l take you on your fiftieth.’

‘I had my fiftieth four years ago.’

‘Sixtieth, then.’

‘I may be dead by then—’

Margaret looked up.

‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

‘She’s a lucky girl,’ Glenda said, ‘sleeping in your guestroom, having lunch at the Grand Hotel.’

‘ She’s Richie’s daughter — ’

‘She can’t help that.’

‘Glenda,’ Margaret said, ‘what did Bernie Harrison want?’

Without hurry, Glenda sifted through the papers on her desk to find the note she had made of his message.

‘He said he has two people he’d like you to hear, just for your opinion, one a singer, one a pianist, and he would like to invite you for dinner or cocktails or cocktails and dinner and he’s given you a choice of five dates.’

‘ Five?’

‘He said you couldn’t go to the dentist on five occasions and get away with it.’

‘I don’t see my dentist in the evenings—’

Glenda held out the note.

‘If we spoke like that, trying to be funny, to our mam, she’d say, “Get along with you, Mrs Teapot,” and I never understood why.’

Margaret took the note.

‘He doesn’t give up, does he?’

‘No.’

‘On and on and on—’

‘He means it.’

‘Glenda,’ Margaret said, ‘I have nothing to offer him.’

Glenda gave a smal snort.

Margaret said, ‘Nothing new.’

‘New isn’t what he’s after.’

‘But I need it. I’m in a rut—’

Glenda said, ‘Don’t start that again.’

‘I’l ring him tomorrow.’

‘I said you’d cal by close of business today.’

‘And what, precisely, do you suggest that I say?’

Glenda typed a few more words. Then she said, without turning to look at Margaret, ‘Why don’t you ask him to lunch, too? At the Grand Hotel.

Wouldn’t it be easier, four of you, rather than just the three, with you fussing about Scott’s footwear?’

* * *

They drove to the folk club in a taxi. Amy had assumed that Scott would have a car, but he said that there was no need for one, living in the city as he did, and the way he said it made her wonder if he could drive, and for the first time since she had arrived in Newcastle she felt shy, too shy to ask him something so personal. It was, in a way, like asking someone if they could read, especial y a man, so she said nothing and climbed into the taxi with him, quel ing an instinct to remark that they never used taxis at home, that either Chrissie or her sisters drove – she