The boy, Tanner, worked hard, Jim had to give him that. He got the fingering right, or mostly right, read music well and could now change between chords with fewer hiccups. But he lacked musicality, which was the one thing Jim couldn’t teach him. He found himself silently urging Tanner on as he played, willing him to let go, to forget the actual notes and get in touch with the magic that would lift his music beyond the mere plodding of note follows note, chord follows chord.
“Good . . . good,” Jim said, as the boy finished playing “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” He was a good-looking lad in a quiet, pale sort of way, eighteen, and dead set on becoming a musician—John Denver his hero and role model—once he’d finished college, where he was studying some media bollocks that Jim knew would get him nowhere, certainly not into a job. “You know the words?” he asked.
Tanner nodded. Jim had been trying to persuade the boy to sing for weeks now.
“Go on, then.” He smiled encouragingly as Tanner blushed, his pale adolescent skin betraying him.
Tanner shook his head. “Can’t.”
The boy gave a sheepish smile. “S’pose it’s ‘won’t.’”
“Okay, but how’s it going to work when you want gigs, you not singing?”
“Someone else can sing, can’t they?”
“Yeah, they can. But they can probably make a stab at playing guitar too. So where do you fit in? You’re limiting your options.”
The boy slumped over his guitar.
“Give it a go. It’s just me,” Jim urged, wondering if maybe the key to unlocking the boy’s talent lay in his voice.
And finally Tanner nodded, took a deep breath, placed his fingers on the guitar strings. He started badly, his voice hoarse and quivering all over the place, but as he settled into the rhythm, the sound got stronger. It was perfectly on key, but still tight and small. When he finished, he gave Jim a smile of pure relief.
“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Dunno, you tell me,” the boy replied.
“You’ve got a good voice, you just need to use it,” Jim told him. “In fact you’d be better off finding a singing teacher, instead of coming to me.”
*
Jim’s mobile rang just as Tanner was leaving. He grabbed it from the table, hoping it was Nancy. But it was Greg, the estate agent.
“Good news. The couple who saw it on Wednesday have made an offer. Ten short of the asking price, but I’m sure we can get them up. They seem keen and there’s no chain. We love first-time buyers.”
“Great,” Jim said, when fuck was what he actually thought. “So what do we do now?”
“I tell them you reject the offer, see what they come back with. Brinkmanship, Mr. Bowdry, it’s all brinkmanship. See who blinks first.”
“Well, I’m in no hurry, so it’s not going to be me.”
“Just what we want to hear,” said Greg. “I’ll get back to you soon as.”
Jim groaned softly. Here we go, he thought. Another row with Chrissie on the slate. But it was also good. The sooner he put some distance between him and his wife, the more comfortable he’d feel around Nancy.
He sat for a moment, phone in hand. Since the previous Sunday—a week ago now—when Chrissie had dropped her robe on the kitchen floor and come on to him, relations between them had been sticky to say the least. He cringed at the memory of her body pressed against his own, the challenge in her eyes as she’d dared him to kiss her, his almost default desire to do so. He’d gone so far as to lay his hand on her naked back, slide it down her smooth skin to her buttock, as he always used to. He’d heard her soft intake of breath, her own hand reaching down to touch him. It would have been so bloody easy. But the thought of Nancy had stopped him. Even in his dumb, unthinking state of arousal, he’d known he couldn’t face her again if he gave in to Chrissie’s manipulation. But when he’d gently disentangled himself from her arms, she’d had a major meltdown. He’d had to leave the house to escape her rage.
Now he waited for her to come home from work with trepidation. He’d been teaching all day and was knackered, but he knew he had to tell her about the offer on the house.
“Okay,” Chrissie said, seeming surprisingly sanguine at his news as she kicked off her navy court shoes and lay back on the sofa in the kitchen, closing her eyes.
Jim had made her some tea to smooth his path and got out the ginger nuts. He handed her a mug and offered her the biscuits. “If we accept their offer, it’ll all start to happen,” he said. “We’ll have to set a date for moving out.”
Chrissie rolled her eyes at him. “Like, duh!”
“Just warning you.”
“Yeah, Jim, I do know what happens when you sell a house.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Chrissie gave him a dark look as she dunked the ginger nut in the hot tea, sucking the liquid from the biscuit before biting off a chunk and chewing it slowly. “Like you care,” she said.
“Of course I care,” Jim said. And he did. But a part of him was dying to be free of her.
“Care that you’re finally getting shot of me,” she said, as if she could read his mind.
Jim sighed. Why was he trying to be nice to this woman? The relationship had run its course months ago, maybe years. It was just a technicality now, separating their lives. But she was still his wife.
“I spoke to Tommy yesterday,” Chrissie was saying. “He thinks the same as me—that you’ve got another woman.”
He loved his son very much, but Chrissie had always spoiled him, treated him more as a friend than a son. Jim knew he should make more effort with the boy, but they had so little in common and they barely saw each other these days. Tommy’s only focus seemed to be computers and making money. He was very successful at both, apparently. His son wasn’t much of a country music fan either, his tastes running more to the likes of Kanye West.
“He says you’re behaving like a total bastard.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “He said that?”
“Not those exact words, no. But he’s really pissed off with you, chucking me out onto the streets like this. He says I should go up to Edinburgh and start again. Leave you to stew in your own juice.”
Jim doubted very much that his son had said any such thing. He was a kind, mild-mannered boy, even if he did normally take his mother’s side about the marriage. But, then, what kid wants his parents to split up?
“Would you do that? Go and live in Scotland?”
“I might. He says I can stay with him for a bit, while I get on my feet. His new flat is gorgeous, he says, in Leith Docks. I’m going up there soon, check it out.”
“Yeah, he told me about the flat,” Jim said, just to point out that he did talk to his son occasionally. “Won’t you miss your friends if you move all that way?” Chrissie had barely been out of Brighton since the day she was born.
She gave an exaggerated sigh, her green eyes wide with self-pity. “Probably. But this town’s no good for me anymore. Crap job, no one to love. I need to get away, make a fresh start somewhere before it’s too late . . .”
Christ, she’s beginning to sound like a bad country and western song, Jim thought, repressing a smile. He made a mental note to call his son later, make it right with the boy.