Joanna Trollope - The Other Family

It was not a new impulse. He had, when the piano first arrived, thought he might ring to say that it was safely in Newcastle. Then he had thought that texting would be better – polite, but more casual. So he had composed a text, and deleted it, and then a second, less brief one, and deleted that, and realized that he would rather like to hear her vocal response to his description of where the piano now was. But his nerve had failed him.

There was no real reason, if he was honest, to ring her – unless, of course, he admitted to the real reason, which was that he didn’t want the piano’s arrival in Newcastle to mean that there was no further excuse for them to be in touch with one another. She was only his half-sister, after al , and there wasn’t any comfortable shared history between them, but even the scrappy communications that they’d had had given him a sense of how much better furnished he felt to know that there was a sister there – even, potential y, three sisters – and how very much he did not want to return to the state of being the only son of a single mother; he did not, emphatical y, want his human landscape to shrink again.

He dial ed Amy’s number with quick, jabbing movements, not stopping to think what he was going to say. She didn’t answer, and he listened to her rapid, awkward little message and then he said, with a flash of inspiration, ‘Hi, it’s Scott, just ringing to wish you luck,’ and, as an afterthought, before this burst of courage failed him, ‘Ring me.’ Then he put his phone on the piano, and sat down on the stool and began to play the theme from The Lion King , which someone had asked for earlier that evening, and which was running in his head with an insistence that was, he knew, the mark of a successful show tune.

His phone rang. Amy.

‘Amy,’ he said.

‘Hi.’

‘Sorry to ring so late—’

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ she said. ‘I was doing stuff.’

‘I’m sitting at the piano,’ Scott said.

‘Are you? ’

He shifted the phone to his left ear and hunched his shoulder to hold it in place.

‘Playing this.’ He played a few bars. ‘Recognize it?’

‘ The Lion King ,’ Amy said.

Scott was smiling. ‘Yes. The Lion King . I rang to wish you luck.’

‘What for?’

‘Your exams. Aren’t you about to start your exams?’

‘No,’ Amy said.

‘Oh, I thought—’

‘The exams are starting,’ Amy said, ‘but I’m not doing them.’

Scott waited. He took his right hand off the keyboard and retrieved his phone. Then he cleared his throat.

‘Come again?’

‘A levels start this week,’ Amy said. ‘Spanish literature and music theory. But I shan’t be doing them.’

‘Why not?’

There was a silence.

‘Why not?’ Scott said again.

‘Because,’ Amy said, ‘I need to get a job.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to stop being a kid, a schoolgirl, I’ve got to get out there and do something and earn some money, because—’ She stopped.

‘Because?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Maybe I can guess—’

‘Because,’ Amy said angrily, ‘it’s al in meltdown here, and I can’t go on pretending anything is how it was and that I can be sort of protected from it. I’ve got to do something.’

‘Like not sit your exams.’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you told your teachers?’

‘I haven’t told anyone,’ Amy said, ‘I just won’t turn up. I’l pretend I’m going to school, but I won’t. I’l be finding a job instead.’

‘What kind of job?’

‘Anything,’ Amy said. ‘Waiting tables, putting leaflets through letterboxes, I don’t care.’

Scott stood up. He walked to the window and looked at his dark and glittering view.

‘Amy? ’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you listening to me?’

‘Yes—’

‘Do not,’ Scott said, ‘be so bloody stupid.’

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion—’

‘This isn’t an opinion,’ Scott said. He found he had straightened his shoulders. ‘This is an order. I am tel ing you not to be such a complete and utter idiot. I am tel ing you to get into that school and do those exams to the best of your ability and to do yourself and al of us proud. I am telling you.’

There was a pause, and then Amy said, ‘Oh.’

‘Did you hear me? Did you actual y hear what I said ?’

Amy made a smal unintel igible noise.

‘You’re a clever girl,’ Scott said. ‘You’re a talented girl. You are eighteen years old with your life before you, and you may not give up just because there are some short-term problems you don’t like the look of. I won’t have it. I won’t have you throwing your chances away, wasting your opportunities. Is that clear?’

Amy said faintly, ‘You’ve no right—’

‘I have!’ Scott shouted. ‘I have! I’m your brother! I’m your older brother .’

‘Wow,’ Amy said. There was a hint of admiration in her voice.

‘Any more of this,’ Scott said, slightly more calmly, ‘and I shal come down to London and frogmarch you into that school personal y.’

‘I haven’t done enough revision—’

‘Nobody’s ever done enough revision.’

Amy sounded imminently tearful. She said, ‘I can’t change now, I’ve made up my mind, I can’t—’

‘Don’t snivel,’ Scott said. ‘You can. You wil .’

‘There isn’t enough money—’

‘There isn’t enough money for you to bugger up your own chances.’

Amy said in a whisper, sniffing, ‘It’s awful here.’

‘And you think it’s a good idea to make it worse?’

‘I wouldn’t—’

‘You think your mother would thank you giving up your future for a minimum-wage job washing pots in a café?’

‘She—’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Scott said, interrupting. ‘Don’t fool yourself. Giving up’s never the best way out of anything. I should know.’

‘I wish I hadn’t told you,’ Amy said.

Scott laughed. ‘Do you?’

‘I’m scared—’

‘Course you are. Exams are hideous.’

‘I wish,’ Amy said suddenly, ‘I wish I had something to look forward to, I wish it wasn’t just al this unravel ing, al this uncertainty.’

Scott’s gaze was resting on the great gleaming curve of the Sage Centre, across the river, its shining flank visible through the girders of the Tyne Bridge. He said thoughtful y, ‘I’l give you something.’

‘What?’

‘I’l give you something to look forward to. Wel , maybe looking forward is a bit strong, but something to think about, something a bit different.’

‘What?’ Amy said again.

‘When your exams are done,’ Scott said, ‘when you’re in that time after exams and you’re waiting for the results and trying not to think about them, why don’t you come up here?’

‘Come—’

‘Yes,’ Scott said. ‘Pack your flute and I’l give you the train ticket, and you come to Newcastle. I’l show you where Dad lived, when he was a kid. I’l show you where he came from. Tel your mother, so it’s al above board, and come up to Newcastle next month.’

There was a silence. Scott wondered if he could hear Amy breathing, or whether he just imagined he could. He pressed the phone to his ear and began to count. When he got to ten, he would say her name again. One, two, three, four—

‘OK,’ Amy said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The flat was on the top two floors of a tal house close to Highgate School. The rooms were smal, with thin wals and creaky floorboards, but there were spectacular views eastwards, over a dramatical y sloping garden, and the rol ing roofscape of London al the way to the hazy blue lines of Essex. The owner of the house, a television producer, lived half his life in Los Angeles, and wanted a tenant who would be there permanently, paying the mortgage and justifying the investment in a building whose owner only occupied it for half the year.