‘D’you want to eat standing there?’

She turned, very slowly.

‘Where – where are you going to eat?’

He gestured.

‘Where I usual y do. On the sofa.’

She came away from the window.

‘Wil you play for me?’

‘What, the piano?’

‘What else?’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Maybe we’l both play tomorrow.’

She sat down on the sofa. He handed her a box.

‘Want a plate?’

‘No.’

‘Good girl. Eat up. What have you had today – coffee and crisps?’

‘My favourite,’ Amy said.

She opened the box and looked at her burger. She sighed.

‘I want to be her.’

‘I know.’

‘I want—’

‘Wait,’ Scott said, ‘wait. You’ve work to do first.’

She glanced up.

‘What work?’

‘Exploring.’

She lifted the burger out and inspected it.

‘What are we going to do tomorrow?’

‘What are you going to do tomorrow.’

‘What?’

‘I’m sending you off,’ Scott said. ‘I’m sending you on a little journey of discovery.’

Amy stared at him. He winked at her.

‘You’l see,’ he said, and wedged his burger in his mouth.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Chrissie had never felt quite at home in Sue’s kitchen. It wasn’t the disorder realy, or the noise – the television never seemed to be switched off –

but more a sense that Sue’s children and Kevin were so intent upon their own robust and random lives that her presence there meant no more than if a new chair or saucepan had been added to the mix.

Sue herself seemed oblivious. The muddle of people and purposes, of washing-up and lunch boxes, of newspapers and flyers and scribbled notes, wasn’t something she strove for, but rather something she simply didn’t notice. She had absently moved a footbal boot, a magazine and an empty crisp packet from a chair in order that Chrissie could sit down, in a manner that suggested that sitting down wasn’t necessarily a chair’s function in the first place.

‘Can I turn that off?’

‘What?’ Sue said. She was polishing a wine glass with a shirt lying on top of a pile in a laundry basket.

‘The TV,’ Chrissie said.

‘Course. I’ve stopped hearing it. I’ve stopped hearing most things, especial y anybody under sixteen asking for money.’

‘I gave Amy twenty quid,’ Chrissie said, ‘and now I’m worrying that wasn’t nearly enough. A whole weekend, on twenty pounds.’

Sue put the wine glass on the table, amid the clutter.

‘They’l pay for her, won’t they?’

Chrissie made a face.

‘That’s what I was thinking when I gave her the money. They can darn wel pay for her, that’s what I thought. But now, I wish they weren’t. I wish I’d given her more.’

Sue found a second glass, and blew on it.

‘Stop thinking about her.’

‘I—’

‘Haven’t you got enough to think about?’ Sue demanded. ‘Isn’t there enough going on without fretting over the one child who’s actual y striking out?’

‘In the wrong direction—’

‘For you,’ Sue said. ‘Not necessarily for her. Don’t you just love it that wine comes in screw-top bottles these days?’

Chrissie wandered back from turning off the television and watched Sue pouring wine into the glasses.

‘I’ve sometimes wished, since Richie died, that I real y, really liked alcohol. I mean, I do like it, I love a glass of wine, but I don’t crave it. It would have been easier to crave something rather than just be in such a state.’

Sue held a ful glass out to her.

‘Tel me some good news.’

‘It’s sort of OK news—’

‘Fine by me.’

‘I took the job,’ Chrissie said.

Sue let out a yelp, and clinked her glass against Chrissie’s.

‘Go, girlfriend!’

‘It isn’t amazing. In fact, it’s very lowly, very lowly indeed, but it’s the first one I’ve been offered, actual y offered, in al these months of trying, and I suppose it might lead to something—’

‘It’s a job!’

‘Yes,’ Chrissie said, ‘they were so nice to me. I met Mark’s father, and al his uncles, and they were lovely, so welcoming.’

‘You’l be so good at it—’

‘I hope so. Nine-thirty to six, four weeks’ paid holiday, pay-as-you-earn tax.’

‘Chrissie,’ Sue said, ‘this is good. This is even great. This is like starting again, and do not, do not, do not tel me that starting again is the last thing you want to do.’

‘OK,’ Chrissie said.

‘You’re smiling.’

‘I’m not—’

‘You’re smiling.’

‘It’s relief,’ Chrissie said.

‘I don’t care what it is. You’re smiling. And the flat?’

Chrissie took a sip of wine.

‘If I don’t sel the house—’

‘You will sel the house.’

‘I can’t afford the flat on what I’l be earning.’

Sue cleared a heap of T-shirts and a pair of swimming goggles off another chair, and sat down.

She said, ‘What about those girls?’

‘Wel , Amy—’

‘I don’t mean Amy. I mean Tamsin and Dil y.’

Chrissie said cautiously, ‘Dil y is looking for a job—’

‘Is she now.’

‘And Tamsin. Wel , I don’t real y know what’s going on with Tamsin.’

‘Do sit down,’ Sue said.

Chrissie said, sitting, ‘She keeps talking about moving in with Robbie, but she doesn’t do it. He’s built her an amazing cupboard, apparently, but she doesn’t seem in any hurry to fil it. He’s like a dog, sitting there hoping for chocolate. I thought he was so strong and masculine, and would support her the way Richie did, but she doesn’t seem to want to let him any more.’

‘You can’t have both of them living with you—’

‘I could—’

‘No,’ Sue said.

‘There’s just enough room—’

‘ If you get the flat—’

‘Yes. If—’

‘Stil no,’ Sue said. She leaned back, twiddling her wine glass round by its stem, watching it, not looking at Chrissie. ‘Do you real y want them to live with you?’

There was a pause, and then Chrissie said slowly, ‘I don’t know if I want to be alone.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like. You might love it. You might prefer it, actual y, to living with two people who ought to be fending for themselves.’

Chrissie said nothing. Sue went on leaning back. Then she took a mouthful of wine and said, ‘Wel , Amy’s having a go at it, isn’t she? Amy’s trying to swim without her family water wings on, isn’t she? Instead of banging on about how you don’t like what Amy’s doing, why don’t you try imitating her instead?’

Scott had given her some money. She’d felt very awkward about confessing that she’d spent the money her mother had given her on CDs at the folk club, and that her card would probably be rejected at an ATM, but he’d held some notes out to her that morning, saying, just take it, don’t say anything, take it.

‘But I feel awful—’

‘You’re family. Take it.’

‘I shouldn’t—’

‘Yes, you should. Anyway, I want to. I want to give it to you.’

‘OK,’ Amy said. She glanced down at the notes in her hand. It looked as if he’d given her an awful lot. ‘That’s – so great. Thank you.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Scott said. ‘The hard part is now.’

‘The hard part?’

‘You’re going to North Shields. You’re going to see where Dad and my mother grew up, went to school. You’re going on your own.’

Amy looked at him.

‘Why aren’t you coming?’

‘Because I’l colour it for you. Because you’ve got to see it through your eyes, not mine.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry. I’l tel you where to go.’

Amy said doubtful y, ‘Is this a good idea?’

‘Was last night a good idea?’

Her face lit up.

‘Oh, yes!’

‘Then trust me,’ Scott said. ‘Walk your feet off and come back and tel me. I’l be waiting for you.’

She had walked, on her own, up the steep streets to the metro station at Monument, and there, as instructed, she had bought herself a return ticket to North Shields, feeling as she did so that her very anonymity in the Saturday-morning crowds was as exciting as the adventure itself. She sat, as Scott had told her to, near the front of the train so that she could have a sense of the scene through the windows of the driver’s cab, as they sped out of the glowing underground station and out on to the raised rails through Manors and Byker, past the cranes of Walker and Wal send and out along the river shore through Hadrian Road and Howden, through Percy Main and Meadow Wel , to North Shields.

On the platform, busy with people who belonged there, who knew where they were going, she said to herself, ‘This is it.’

‘Start with the quays,’ Scott had said. ‘Head for the river. Head for the quays.’

You could smel your way to the shore, almost at once. The air smel ed of water, river and sea, rank and salty, and overhead there were gul s, wheeling and screaming, huge black-headed gul s with heavy beaks and solid, shining bodies. Amy headed south, staring up at the sky and the clouds and the shouting seabirds, staring about her at the street and the houses and the children, scuffing along together in packs, just as Richie must have done when he grew out of being that toddler in hand-knitted socks and bar shoes.

And then, quite abruptly, she was on a ridge high above the water, standing by a house which had plainly once been a lighthouse, looking out across the great breadth of the Tyne River, to South Shields and Jarrow, a name Amy knew because of Bede, the seventh-century monk who lived in the monastery there, whom she remembered because a history teacher had once told her class that he kept a precious store of peppercorns to make monastic food less boring. The road she was standing on was quiet, much quieter than the streets near the metro station, and the gul s seemed to be whirling higher, their cries echoing in the wind up there, the wind that was blowing in off the sea, blowing Amy’s hair across her face, obscuring her vision. She caught it up in both hands, and twisted it into a rough knot behind her head, and set off down a steep and turning path to the shore.