Page 62 of Playing By Ear

“The sausage rolls are gone,” Lucy said, “but Mummy saved you some.”

“Ah, bless her. Are they in a secret hiding place?” Martin asked as they descended, Layla on their heels.

Jamie followed them, heart pounding from his own audacity in mentioning the cousin who’d been more like a brother. But Martin had better get used to it, because Jamie was done playing the game of Pretend Ritchie Never Existed.

At the top of the stairs, Jamie stopped and looked back at the open wardrobe, its dark wooden depths visible through the doorway. Even in its new home, it filled him with dread at the long-ago lesson it had taught him.

In the world of TV crime dramas, justice and truth always won out. Eventually, all bad guys got their due. But real life wasn’t like that. The long arm of the law could never punish all sins, and some truths stayed hidden forever.

“I can still see Kerrera.”

Bang in the center of Perry’s visual field, sandwiched between the smoky porcelain of sky and sea, lay a large, low, dark-brown hump. The Isle of Kerrera wasn’t far from where he stood at the base of the old Dunollie Castle—from the shore below, he could probably swim to the island’s lighthouse—but setting his eyes on it again meant everything.

“That’s wonderful, Per,” his mum said from the bench to his left, where she sat with his dad. As usual, her voice held no envy or bitterness. Perry doubted he could be so sanguine were their roles reversed.

Using his cane, he found the fence which kept visitors from plummeting over the cliff edge, then stepped forward to rest his hand on one of its posts. This gave him stability as he swiveled his head to take in the panorama through the hazy tunnel of his visual field.

How much of this glorious view, he wondered, was being received by his optic nerve, and how much of it was mere memory from the dozen times he’d visited this place? If it was real to him, did it even matter?

Perry wondered which of his editors might fancy a thought piece on the phenomenology of nostalgia and its role in repeat tourism. He pulled out his phone and made a voice note about it.

Then he took a series of shots, from the mouth of Oban Bay to his left all the way to the distant Isle of Mull to his right, then behind him at the four-story Dunollie Castle tower ruin. Later he would zoom in on the photos to absorb details he couldn’t see now.

“Want me to take your picture?” his dad asked.

“Thanks.” He held out his phone, then smiled in his father’s direction, wishing he could remove his sunglasses without skull-piercing pain.

After a few clicks, his dad stepped next to the fence. “Now peer out towards Kerrera so I can get Mull in the background. Pretend you’re a fifteenth-century MacDougall clan chief, master of all you survey.”

Trying not to laugh, Perry did as he asked.

“Brilliant.” Click. “You look pure noble, with the wind in your hair.”

“Did clan chiefs get chapped lips from surveying their domains, I wonder?” Perry took his phone back. He would send Jamie these pics when he was alone in his room at the bed and breakfast, when he could speak to the screen without his parents asking Who’s Jamie?, as they’d done earlier when his phone had announced a call from him.

Maybe if Jamie was here, Perry could tell him the less obvious reason he’d no intention of showing his face to his cam audience.

To be sure, privacy was an issue. But there were thousands of cam models, and Perry would still wear sunglasses to ward off the bright studio lights. So the likelihood of being recognized was tiny. Besides, for anyone to blow his cover, they’d have to admit to watching him, which ruled out both straight and closeted people.

What worried Perry most wasn’t the reaction of those on the outside but on the inside. If his audience knew he was blind, would it tarnish their image of him? Would they find him less attractive?

Or worse, would they find him more attractive, his disability proving some sort of fetish? He didn’t want to be known as the blind guy, even the hot blind guy.

He rubbed his forehead, chastising himself, then chastising himself for chastising himself.

The wind carried his dad’s voice from behind him, chatting to Kevin, their tour guide, who’d given them their private bespoke tour the previous year as well.

Perry went and sat beside his mum on the bench, just out of reach of her wide-brimmed hat.

She reached over and touched his arm. “Are you happy we came?”

“Very. I can’t see any difference from what I remember of last year. Maybe my vision’s stabilizing.”

“Maybe.”

He spoke again before she could add maybe not. “I know there could still be decline ahead. I’m just enjoying the moment.”

“As you should do.” She drew in a deep breath through her nose. “It’s so vital to get out of the city. Literally vital, as in, it gives me life.”