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Jules nodded.
“Most of my students are a lot… younger.”
“Now you’ve called me big and old,” Jules pointed out. “Do you insult all your students?”
“Only the large ones,” said the woman tartly. She opened the door further. “You’d better come in, I suppose.”
Jules accepted the invitation, walking into a small hallway and then following Ms. Brooke’s directions into a sunny living room with a piano in one corner. She slumped into an armchair in front of a coffee table and had a look around. The place wasn’t at all what she’d have expected from the woman who had opened the door. A woman who couldn’t be that much older than her.
But as she peered around she had a growing sense of familiarity. The pictures that littered every surface seemed oddly familiar, but it was the violin case on the dresser that finally made things click.
“Wait a second,” Jules said, turning back to the woman. “I know you. You’re Billie Brooke.”
???
Teaching adults had not been part of the plan, but then what was she supposed to do when someone showed up at her door? The woman had messy blonde hair, dark eyes, a sharp chin, and a smile that lit up her face. Billie had been a little wrong-footed by it all, to be honest.
Maybe because she tended to forget that she could be attracted to people. Cora had been her world for a long time, and out of habit she’d ignored everyone else. Maybe because even if she did remember that she found some women attractive she hadn’t expected to find an attractive woman here. Like London had cornered the market in attractive women.
It wasn’t until the woman spoke her full name though that Billie finally came back to Earth.
“Jules,” the woman said, grinning up at her. “Jules Hawthorne? I was about three years behind you in school. I heard you play at assembly once. You were pretty good.”
Pretty good. Ouch.
Billie sniffed. “I was better than that.”
“Oh, yeah, Am said you were a bit of a snob,” Jules said.
Of course. Amelia Hawthorne. Climber of climbing frames and breaker of arms. Billie didn’t want the reminiscences to go any further but she wasn’t entirely sure how to stop them.
“So, how does this work then?” Jules asked. She was sprawled across Billie’s father’s armchair.
“Well, generally one sits at a piano, not a coffee table.”
“Oooo, generally one does, does one?” Jules snorted. She stood up. “Go on then.”
“No,” Billie said with a sigh. “You sit at the piano. I’m assuming that you’re the one that wants to learn to play, despite your age.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Jules, striding over to the piano and pulling the stool out. “How hard can it be? I mean if little kids can do it, it shouldn’t take me long, should it?”
Billie rolled her eyes. “Fine, if that’s what you think.”
“Look, I’m here to learn, so teach me, Billie Brooke.”
“Ms. Brooke,” Billie said. “For as long as we’re in class you’ll treat me with respect.” She could feel Jules’s return eye roll but chose to ignore it. “And very well, we shall begin then. You have no musical training at all?”
Jules laughed. “I got thrown out of Mrs. Lawton’s class for the incident with Kevin McKnight’s ear and the chalk.”
Billie held up a hand. “I don’t need to hear about it. Then we shall start from the very beginning.” She opened up a book and placed it on the music stand. “What you see there is called a bar. This bar has four beats in it.”
“I could use a bar,” Jules mumbled, then caught Billie’s eye and shut up.
“When you’re reading music, you basically need to know two things: the pitch of the note, how high or low it is, which we show by making a circle somewhere on this set of five lines or above or below it; and the rhythm or timing of the note, which we show by the stick that is attached to the circle.”
“Right, circles and sticks,” Jules said. “Easy enough then.”
Billie ignored her again. “The note you see there corresponds to middle C, this one here.” She pointed it out on the keyboard. “The bar of music you see has four beats in it, as I said, and there are four identical notes inside the bar, meaning each note is one beat. So we play it thus.” She demonstrated. “Now you. Count aloud.”
