Page 24 of Love at First Fright

My gaze caught on the drop beyond the glass. I was three storeys up. Four, if the attic counted as a storey. The roof tiles looked ancient, crumbling at the edges. One wrong step and I’d be the manor’s newest permanent resident.

Maybe my ghost could haunt Brad. Follow him around. Move his clipboards.

Not funny. Not remotely funny.

I pulled out my phone. Still no signal. Obviously.

Right. Fine. Brad would come looking eventually. He’d finish his meticulous examination of that bloody corner and realise I’d been gone too long. He’d trudge up here, all superior and smug, and unlock the door. I’d endure his lecture about protocol and staying together, and then we’d go back to ignoring each other.

Simple.

I sat down on a trunk near the window, more dust puffing up around me. My pulse hammered. The attic pressed in, all wrong angles and shadows that moved when I wasn’t looking directly at them.

Don’t think about it. Just wait. Brad will come.

I drummed my fingers on my thigh. Stopped when the sound felt too loud. Too much like an invitation.

A shape caught my eye—leaning against the far wall, half hidden behind a stack of boxes. A familiar curve. The distinctive silhouette.

A guitar.

I crossed the attic before I’d consciously decided to move. The case looked ancient, leather cracked and peeling. I knelt, flicking open the latches. They protested, stiff with age.

The acoustic guitar inside was battered. Scratches marred the body, the wood darker where fingers had pressed against it for hours. Someone had loved this once. Played it until the strings wore grooves into the fretboard.

I lifted it out. The weight settled into my hands like muscle memory.

When was the last time I’d held a guitar? Two years? Three? Longer? Back when my friends would encourage me to play at open mic nights.

I’d played loads in my teens, and my twenties. Before I’d decided music was a waste of time, that I needed to be practical, needed to earn money instead of chasing dreams that would never materialise.

My fingers found the strings, brushing against them without pressure.

Dad.

My downhill slope had started the moment the cancer took him. I’d been seventeen. Emily thirteen. Mum had crumbled inward like a dying star, and I’d had to hold everything together while my world fractured. Music had been the first casualty. Hard to practise guitar when you’re working two jobs to help with the bills. Hard to care about chord progressions when you’re watching your family fall apart.

Before that, though. Before the hospital visits and the funeral and the heavy weight of being a breadwinner at seventeen—before all that, there’d been music.

Dad had played old rock constantly. Pink Floyd drifting through the kitchen whilst he cooked Sunday roasts. The Beatles whilst he drove me to football practice. He’d air-guitar his way through entire albums, completely unselfconscious, grinning like an idiot when I’d cringe with embarrassment.

Then came the concerts. Cover bands with ridiculous names—Mentallica, Floyd’s Void, Nearvana. Cheap tickets. Pubs and small venues with sticky floors and mediocre sound systems. Dad would hoist me onto his shoulders so I could see over the crowd, his hands steady on my ankles whilst the music crashed over us.

I’d loved it. Not just the music itself—though that had wormed its way into my blood—but the atmosphere. The way hundreds of strangers became one organism, swaying and singing in unison. The electricity in the air before the first chord struck. The togetherness. The shared joy of something bigger than any individual person.

Music had been in my blood from those moments. Dad’s gift.

He’d brag about my talent to his mates at the pub. “Charlie’s got real skill. Natural ear for it. He’ll be playing stadiums one day, you watch.” I’d wanted to believe him. For a while, I had.

Then he died, and I’d packed it all away. Practical Charlie. Responsible Charlie. Charlie who needed to earn money, not waste time on fantasies. I still attempted university for a few years, at my mum’s insistence. But it was too late by that point. I’d lost my spark.

My throat tightened.

I adjusted my grip on the guitar, fingers finding familiar positions on the fretboard. The strings bit into my fingertips—soft now, no calluses. Years of disuse had erased the evidence of hours spent practising.

I plucked a string experimentally. The sound died instantly, swallowed by the attic’s strange stillness.

The temperature plummeted.