‘Now, young lady. Young lady who knows her own mind. I suggest we now talk about music. Don’t you?’

‘Did he mean that?’ Amy said.

They were sitting on Scott’s black sofa, Amy curled up at one end with her feet under her.

‘What?’

‘Mr Harrison. Did he mean that about a folk-music degree?’

‘Yes.’

She was holding a mug of tea. She looked at him over the rim.

‘Do you know about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’

‘You have to make up your own mind.’

‘But—’

‘I didn’t know how you’d feel,’ Scott said. ‘I didn’t know how we’d get on. I mean, al I know about being in your teens is what I knew when I was in them, but I might have got that al wrong, mightn’t I, because you’re a girl, not a boy. I might have thought I was helping you, which is what I wanted to do, and got that wrong too. I just had to wait, and give you time to think for yourself a bit. I couldn’t push you, could I?’

‘No,’ Amy said grateful y.

‘I didn’t know what sort of music you liked, even.’

Amy smiled.

‘Nor did I.’

He leaned forward.

‘Want to look?’

‘Look at what—’

‘This music degree.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘ Yes.’

He stood up and went to retrieve his laptop from the kitchen counter. He felt very tired and very, almost unsteadily, happy. It would only be later, when he was alone and stretched out on the sofa, that he could think about the day, unpick it, unravel it, marvel at it. He carried the laptop back to the sofa and sat down close to Amy, so that she could see the screen.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘University of Newcastle. Here we go.’

She watched the screen flicker. ‘You interested in taking this further?’ Bernie Harrison had said at lunchtime. ‘Are you serious about this?’

‘There,’ Scott said.

Amy leaned forward.

‘Read it,’ Scott said. ‘Read it out loud.’

‘“Newcastle University,”’ Amy read, ‘“folk and traditional music. Bmus. Honours UCAS 4 years. Established in 2001, this is the first performance-based degree programme in folk and traditional music to be offered in England and Wales. The course explores folk music in its traditional and revived forms through practical work (composition as wel as performance) and academic work.”’

She stopped.

‘OK?’ Scott said.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Amy said.

‘Look,’ Scott said, ‘look. Teaching’s at the university and at the Sage. Folkworks is at the Sage.’

‘Folkworks?’

‘It’s a charity,’ Scott said. ‘It’s an educational charity for traditional music.’

‘Did – did you know about al this?’

‘Yes.’

‘And were you just waiting?’

‘Hoping,’ Scott said, ‘not waiting. Other people’s expectations give you a headache.’

Amy looked back at the screen.

‘I love this. I love al this. Look at those modules, look at them, songs of struggle, songs from the US Southern states, bal ads – oh boy,’ Amy said, ‘I think I’m going to cry—’

‘Please try not to.’

‘Happy cry—’

‘Not even happy cry.’

She jumped to her feet.

‘This is so brilliant—’

‘You haven’t got in yet.’

‘But I wil . I’l do anything. Anything. You cannot imagine how this makes me feel—’

He grinned at her.

‘I can see it.’

‘Wow,’ Amy said. ‘Wow, wow, mega wow.’

She began to spin down the room, turning like a skater, arms out, hair flying, her canvas boots thudding lightly on the bare boards. He watched her go whirling down the room, behind the piano and back again, until she came to an unsteady halt in front of him.

‘Scott,’ she said. She was panting slightly and her eyes were bright. ‘Scott, I real y, really, don’t want to go home tomorrow.’

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was the young couple’s third visit to the house. Chrissie had been wary of them at first, convinced that they were part of the deceptive culture of debt-financed outward prosperity, and that they would talk loudly about their enthusiasm and plans for the house, and then suddenly stare at her blankly and say they couldn’t possibly afford such an asking price, as if the fault lay with her.

The asking price had been careful y engineered by Tamsin’s Mr Mundy. He had come to see the house in person, as Tamsin had assured Chrissie he would, and had been very measured and deliberate, and had told Chrissie, over coffee in the kitchen – he had deprecatingly declined the sitting room as if to emphasize that he was merely a man of business – that they would advertise the house at fifty thousand pounds above the price that she should calculate on getting for it, in order to al ow for the bargaining and inevitable reduction that were al part of the current house-buying-and-sel ing market.

Chrissie had not liked Mr Mundy. She did not care for his heaviness, nor his slightly sweaty pal or, nor his patronage, and, most of al , she did not care for the way he was with Tamsin, like a seedily flirtatious uncle. Tamsin, she observed, did not respond to him in kind, but she certainly did nothing to discourage him, to the point where Chrissie made sure that, in going up the stairs to the top floor, it was she who preceded Mr Mundy, and not Tamsin.

When he left, he held her hand fractional y too long in his large, soft grasp, and said that he was very sure he could just about promise her a sale.

‘Good,’ Chrissie said, ‘and soon, please.’

‘As soon,’ Mr Mundy said, stil smiling, ‘as it is humanly possible under current market conditions.’

Chrissie shut the door.

‘What a creep—’

Tamsin remembered catching Mr Mundy with the massage-ads page of the Ham & High newspaper, and thought she wouldn’t mention it. She said instead, ‘Wel , he’s an estate agent, isn’t he? And if anyone can sel this house, he can.’

In the first weeks of the house being on the market, there were nine viewings. One of those viewings was by a young couple with a toddler, and after two days they came again. They stood about in the rooms, behaving, as Chrissie had come to realize, with amazement, in the way that people buying houses commonly behaved, remarking – as if Chrissie had not made this house her home for the past fifteen years – on what was the matter with it, and what needed doing to make it even halfway acceptable. On that second visit, there had been so much to find fault with – outdated decor, neglected garden, absence of garage, pokiness of existing office space, tired bathrooms – that Chrissie had seen them go with a mixture of relief that she need never see them again and regret that whatever had drawn them back was not strong enough to convince them.

‘I don’t get it,’ she said to Sue on the telephone. ‘I don’t want to have to sel this house but stil I’m panicking that nobody wil want to buy it. What’s going on?’

‘You’re getting better.’

‘I can’t be—’

‘You are. And they’l be back.’

‘They won’t. They couldn’t find anything to like today—’

‘They’l be back.’

And they were. They turned up, entirely insouciant, as if they had never had any intention of doing anything else.

‘But,’ Chrissie said, ‘I real y thought you didn’t like it, I thought you said—’

The wife stared at her. She was dressed in a grey linen tunic over a discreet pregnant bump, and she had the toddler on her hip, and an immense soft leather bag covered in pockets and buckles slung over her shoulder.

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘we love it.’ She looked at the toddler. ‘Don’t we, Jamie? We’re going to make a playroom out of that room you said used to have a piano in it. For Jamie. Aren’t we, Jamie?’

They offered Chrissie fifty thousand less than the asking price.

‘Say no,’ Tamsin said.

‘I was going to. Anyway.’

‘I would advise—’ Mr Mundy began.

‘No,’ Chrissie said, ‘I’l take ten off.’

‘Mrs Rossiter—’

‘Ten,’ Chrissie said.

The young couple offered forty thousand less than the asking price.

‘Fifteen,’ Chrissie said.

The young couple said that they were no longer interested at that price.

‘I wil leave in six weeks,’ Chrissie said, ‘and I wil take twenty thousand off the asking price.’

‘Oh God, Mum,’ Dil y said, ‘do you know what you’re doing?’

‘Not real y,’ Chrissie said, ‘but I’m going on instinct. I’m excited.’

‘You’re over excited—’

The young couple said that they would agree to exchange within two weeks and twenty-five thousand off, but that they were of course now looking at other properties.

‘Done,’ Chrissie said, ‘done. And I’ve taken the job at Leverton’s.’

‘You can’t—’

‘I can.’

‘She can!’

‘What do you know,’ Tamsin said to Dil y, ‘you’ve never earned a penny in al your life.’

‘I wil be,’ Dil y said. ‘I’m looking for work now. I will be.’

‘Playing houses,’ Tamsin said scornful y, ‘in that poky flat.’

‘It could be a pretty flat,’ Chrissie said. She was stirring Sunday-night scrambled eggs. ‘I’l ring the owner in the morning. I’l tel him that the minute I’ve exchanged contracts on this I’l sign the lease.’

‘Not before,’ Tamsin said.

‘I know not before,’ Chrissie said irritably. ‘Please do stop treating me like a halfwit.’

There was a fractional startled pause.

‘Sorr ee,’ Tamsin said in an offended voice.

‘I’ve bought and sold houses before,’ Chrissie said. ‘I’ve lived on my own and earned my own living, I’l have you know. And you can’t even manage to move into a flat that’s being provided for you, complete with customized wardrobe.’