Page 180 of Playing By Ear

A door to open

I did nothing

The strength to stand up

I am nothing

I am nothing, nothing

Now you are nothing too

Jamie sang the unpolished second verse, stealing the smallest of glances at his father, who listened with his eyes closed. Then the chorus again, and finally the as-yet-wordless bridge and third verse.

He let the final chord fade into the silence of the room. “I bet you’re sorry you asked to hear it.”

Martin took a long moment. “You okay, son?”

Jamie wanted to laugh but didn’t. “That bad?”

“It’s good. Is it real, or, is it about a character you made up, like Ziggy Stardust?”

“The song is me, more or less. The me I would be without my music and football and friends. And now Perry.”

“A lost wee lad.” Martin sighed. “That’s my fault.”

“See, this is why I didn’t want to play it. I don’t blame you for everything. And this song, it’s not the whole of me. Putting that sadness into music means I don’t have to be sad in real life. I can be the happy-go-lucky lad everyone superficially loves.”

“What about Perry? He heard it yet?”

“Not the lyrics.”

“Give him the words.”

“Someday, when it’s finished. I don’t know the ending yet.”

“I think you do.”

Maybe. Maybe Jamie didn’t want to finish it because that would collapse all possibilities into a single inevitability.

“Play another,” Martin said. “Until I sleep.”

So Jamie played on, past the start of Martin’s snoring, until the ache in his fingers was half the size of the ache in his heart.

Then he stopped and watched his father sleep, to see if the next breath would be his last.

But the next was not, and the next was not, and the next was not either. Death would not be so merciful to the merciless.

Martin MacKray had much further to fall.

Chapter 35

“Are those muffins for me? Please say yes.”

Perry looked up from Jamie’s mattress. He’d been so deep in thought, he hadn’t heard his boyfriend open Martin’s bedroom door.

“They’re for all of us.” Perry touched the basket where it sat upon the smooth wooden bedside table. “You, your father…” He trailed off, reeling from the weight of Jamie’s lyrics.

Jamie sat beside him, groaning like someone twice his age with half his fitness. “Did you overhear all that rubbish just now?”