The Other Family

And there was Fish Quay, as Scott had said it would be, the quayside where his grandmother and great-aunts had gutted herrings for a living.

He’d said that in their day, in his mother’s girlhood, the herring drifters had been packed in against the quayside several deep, but now the water lay almost empty, just a straggling line of trawlers moored alongside battered iron-roofed sheds, with the water slapping at them and long rust marks streaking their sides. Everything was shuttered, al the doors were closed, there was nobody on the street, no movement except the odd plastic bag and scrap of paper litter lifting in the wind and skittering along the surface.

She walked slowly along the quay, past the bacon grocer’s with its jol y chal enges painted in the window glass – ‘If you aren’t wearing knickers, smile!’; ‘Never go to bed mad: stay up and fight!’; ‘Do not enter the shop if you have no sense of humour!’ – past the fish and chip shops, past the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, and the warehouses for Larry’s Fishcakes and Blue Dolphin Seafoods, and came out at the end into the Low Lights car park, where there was a bench looking out across the wide, crinkled grey river melting into the further grey sea and, on the horizon, the silhouetted statue of Admiral Col ingwood, where Scott said he and his mates used to gather after school, standing like Earl Grey high above the world below and gazing forever eastwards from his grassy mound.

She subsided on to the bench. It was wonderful there, so big and so bleak, al that sea and sky, but it was sobering too, laden with al those lives, those past lives, battling and struggling and hating the sea as much as they needed it, relied on it. Amy put her hands into her hoodie pockets and breathed deeply, in and out, in and out. This was the sort of place that last night’s music had come from, it was people who’d lived and laboured here who had instinctively recorded how they were feeling, how they were thinking, in a way that could be easily remembered, could be simply passed on. She sniffed once or twice in the wind. If she shut her eyes, she could conjure up that girl last night, the girl with the flute and the lovely, light, straightforward singing voice. If she kept them shut, she could imagine Scott as a boy down here, as a teenager in his school uniform with his tie bunched up in his blazer pocket, and not just Scott, but her father who might even – even – have sat on this bench, or whatever was here before this bench, and looked at the sky and the sea and the gul s, and thought and thought about music too.

She opened her eyes and tipped her head back, wriggling herself down until her body was in a straight line, shoulder to heel, the back of her head balanced on the back of the bench, and stared up at the sky. She felt taken over, bowled over, blown away by a sudden and extraordinary wave of happiness.

‘Don’t read anything into this,’ Margaret said.

Bernie Harrison was in an armchair in her sitting room, legs crossed, very comfortable. He had a cup of coffee balanced on the arm of the chair and Dawson, stretched in his usual place along the back of the sofa, was keeping a discreet but definite eye on him.

‘What would I read?’ Bernie said.

He was wearing wel -pressed summer trousers and brown-suede loafers, which were entirely appropriate to the dining room of the Grand Hotel at Sunday lunchtime.

‘Wel ,’ Margaret said, trying to sound unconcerned, ‘this might look like a family occasion, but it isn’t. I’m not, as it were, introducing you to the family.’

‘Ah,’ Bernie said. He smiled at her. ‘You manage to put things so graciously.’

‘It’s better if we are al quite clear where we stand.’

‘So,’ Bernie said easily, ‘I have been asked along to leaven an awkward social lump, have I?’

‘You’ve been asked,’ Margaret said, ‘to make a foursome.’

‘Not like you to be nervous, Margaret.’

‘No.’

‘But I’m flattered. Yes, I’m flattered. When did you last ask anyone for help?’

She didn’t look at him, but she smiled.

‘A while back.’

‘What do we know about this child?’

Margaret sighed.

‘She’s eighteen, she’s bright, she’s musical, she’s the youngest of three. She’s talked a bit to Scott on the telephone but she’s never been north and she’s not going to like my guest bedroom.’

‘Why is she in it?’

‘Because,’ Margaret said firmly, ‘she can’t possibly stay with Scott. I promised her mother.’

‘Did you? You spoke to her mother?’

‘I did.’

‘Successful y?’

‘No,’ Margaret said.

Bernie turned his head.

‘There’s a taxi pul ing up outside.’

Margaret gave a little gasp.

‘Oh my God—’

‘Stay there,’ Bernie said.

He stood up and walked to the window, carrying his coffee cup.

‘Deep breaths, Margaret. Yes, it’s them. Scott, I’m sorry to tel you, looks like an off-duty footbal er but the girl