Extract

The plane landed at Newcastle Airport at 9.30 a.m. When Harry Robson left the North thirty years ago the terminal hadn’t looked like this. There hadn’t been a Metro either. Who would have believed it?

Harry, at twenty-one was going places. He couldn’t wait to kick the dust of the depressed North-East off his boots. Now he’d returned to North Shields and he was frightened.

He expected everything to be as it was. It wasn’t. His memory played tricks. Buildings seemed smaller, larger or not where they should be. He remembered a tired scramble of red brick terraces; boarded up shops; crater landscapes and lost hope. Now there was a buzz, an air of expectation and hope centred round Bella Vista Green with its smart shops, fresh paint and new flats. It was a rebirth, a reinvention of the old and familiar. Instead of looking back at a depressed past, the North had turned her face to the future. He only wished his future was as hopeful. They’d agreed to meet at a small café ‘The Place’, but he’d been waiting fifteen minutes and there was no sign of her.

‘Mr. Robson, Harry Robson?’ The voice was female and tentative.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Emma, Emma Nicholson. My friends call me Em.’ He’d forgotten how much he missed the accent.

‘What should he do?’ Manners took over where emotion couldn’t. ‘Please sit down. Let me get you a coffee, or tea if you’d prefer?’

‘Coffee will be fine, black, one sugar. Thanks.’

‘Coward,’ he thought as he made his way to the counter. ‘Just like always, you dodge the issue. Cut and run, anything, but deal with the facts. Well, Emma, Em he corrected himself, is here and you have to deal with her, fact.’

The letter from Em had come out of the blue. It had been a shock, no doubt about that. She claimed she was his daughter. He’d organised the DNA tests of course.

She was his!

He placed the coffees on the table and studied her for the first time. About thirty, dark, short hair, a heavy fringe shading brown eyes. Slight figure. Looked like her mother. Smart suit. She’d made an effort. That pleased him. Way down, he felt...what?

‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me all about yourself.’

‘No you start, I can’t. I need to know…about you…before I can…’ her voice trailed to a clumsy halt.

‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ he said filling the silence. He was closing down, putting up barriers.

‘Don’t shut me out.’ It was a plea.

‘I’m not…’ he looked at her earnest face. ‘I’ve been living in Oz, Australia for over thirty years. Done most things in my time, some I’m not proud of. I’ve got my own car business in Melbourne.’

‘Your family?’

‘I had a wife, no kids. We divorced. I’m not perfect, I’ve made m…Just don’t build me up to be something I’m not, okay?’

‘Okay.’ She steered the conversation onto safer ground. ‘I suppose this has all changed?’ She pointed at the street.

‘Yeah for the better. When I was a lad, this place hadn’t recovered from the depression and the war. We had a family business. Funnily enough the yard was over there. ‘Robson’s’ a ships chandlers. Just a ruin now. My grandfather owned it, he got dementia. It went to the wall.’

‘And your parents?’

‘Dad worked in the shipyard at Wallsend, Mam looked after the kids. We lived in Hendon Street, number 16. I had two brothers, Alex and Ron, one was killed in Korea and the other got cancer. They’re all dead now.’

‘Why did you leave the North?’ The question hung in the air.

‘You mightn’t like the answer.’

‘Just be…honest.’ There it was again, that hesitance.

‘I’d known your mum since we were kids. We were young… Jean was all for us marrying, but I wanted to go to Oz. There were opportunities there. Jean knew that. I got a cheap ticket, couldn’t believe my luck. I didn’t know she was pregnant. She didn’t ask me to stay, perhaps if she had... I never dreamt...she never contacted me ... in all those years she never let me know.’

‘God, this is difficult. She never told me about you either, not till the end. Then I asked around, used the ‘Sally Army’. She gave a big sigh. ‘Look, I’ve never had a father, someone to confide in, ask for advice. You’re a stranger really, but I …’ she hesitated.

'Go on.’

‘I need help.’

‘Now we’re getting to it.’ Harry thought cynically. ‘How much?’ he reached for his wallet. He’d give her the money and go.

‘No, I don’t want money. Please, I …look I own this.’

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