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‘I will leave you to dress. There are things in the bathroom, soap and perfume, make-up. There is a towel you can use, the blue one. Take whatever you need.’
I nodded. ‘Thanks, Sylvie, I really appreciate this,’ I called after her as she marched out of the room looking all sulky. I’d thought Léo was hard work, but she stormed around as though she was constantly on the brink of having an almighty meltdown. That all it might take would be for someone to say the wrong thing, or even look at her in the wrong way. There must be many advantages to being beautiful, but I imagined that being able to behave badly and get away with it was probably one of them.
I went into the bathroom, where Sylvie’s huge collection of products were placed artfully around the sink. Careful not to knock anything over, I peered at labels, trying to work out what was what. I had a quick wash, never having enjoyed the feel of warm, soapy water on my face quite as much. Then I picked through Sylvie’s toiletries bag and applied some of her make-up; her foundation was too pale for me, but the powder was fine. I was ecstatic to find a bottle of de-tangling serum that looked like it cost a fortune and used a ton of it to give my curls some definition, pulling the front off my face so that my hair was half up, half down. I squeezed toothpaste onto my middle finger and scrubbed at my teeth. And then I got dressed in the outfit Sylvie had selected for me, tying the hoodie around my waist, because I’d got quite used to wearing it and thought I might need it later, when the weather inevitably turned chilly again. I examined myself in the full-length free-standing mirror at the end of her bed, relieved that I was looking halfway decent for the first time since leaving Venice. Before I went to find Léo, I doused myself in Sylvie’s Diptyque Eau des Sens, leaving a trail of orange and patchouli behind me in the room.
I couldn’t see them immediately, but I could hear someone playing the piano, a slow, romantic piece I wasn’t familiar with. I followed the sound into Sylvie’s lounge, stopping dead in the doorway when I saw Léo sitting at the piano. He was curved over the keys with his back to me, his elbows rising and falling as he moved them from the lower register to the higher one. When he’d said he played the piano, I hadn’t imagined him to be anywhere near this good. How could such an insensitive guy produce a sound as tender and beautiful as this? I leaned against the frame, closing my eyes, enjoying the music; wondering why he hadn’t told me how talented he was. He ended the piece on an exquisite run of notes that actually sounded the tiniest bit familiar, pausing with his hands on the keys before swivelling round on the stool.
He almost jumped when he saw me. ‘Fuck, Hannah. I thought you were still getting changed.’
I shrugged.
‘You’re really good,’ I said, reluctant to rub his ego even more, but feeling the need to say something. How could I not?
He slammed the lid on the keys and shot out of his seat.
‘What was that piece of music?’ I said. ‘I feel like I’ve heard it before.’
He flung himself onto the sofa, refusing to look at me. ‘It is something I wrote.’
‘Tell her more, Léo,’ said Sylvie, appearing in the room and sitting cross-legged on her exquisite duck-egg blue chaise longue. She looked all neat and compact, like a curled-up cat.
‘It is for the project I am working on in Amsterdam,’ he said, pretending there was something on his phone that urgently needed attending to.
‘He has written a song for an up-and-coming Dutch pop singer,’ said Sylvie, jumping in. ‘And that piece you heard was sampled for the track.’
It dawned on me then, where I’d heard it before.
‘That’s what you were listening to on the train, wasn’t it?’ I said to Léo, who was now looking in a darker mood than ever.
‘Terrible dance music, I think you called it,’ he said, glancing up at me.
I grimaced. ‘Sorry. I could only hear the bass, and in my defence I was so tired, the slightest noise would have set me off.’
‘No, Hannah. You are right. Terrible is exactly what it is.’
‘I know nothing about music, anyway,’ I added, looking nervously at Sylvie, who started speaking French to him again and then, as though remembering I was there, switched to English.
‘It is not the decision of that silly girl, it is for the record company to decide,’ she was saying. ‘She is a teenager, Léo. What does she know?’
This was too intriguing, I had to know what they were talking about. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, as casually as I could manage.
Léo waved his hand dismissively. ‘They hate it, Hannah, that is all.’
Sylvie rolled her eyes and looked at me. ‘They do not hate it. The pop star, who is a brat, by the way, performed Léo’s song on television in Amsterdam and she did not feel it went well. The record company have asked Léo to make some small changes, that is all.’
‘And that’s what your meeting was about?’ I asked.
‘Exactly. Now I have missed the meeting and instead must go straight to the concert of this girl tonight.’
‘Maybe it’s one of those songs that grows on you,’ I suggested, terrified of saying the wrong thing and still mortified that I’d called his work terrible. ‘I bet she’ll love it eventually.’
‘Can we talk about something else?’ he asked, rubbing his face with both hands. ‘You want to use the computer?’ he said turning to me.
‘I guess I could check my emails, if that would be ok?’
‘Of course,’ said Sylvie.
Léo moved up to make room for me on the sofa. ‘Here, let me write my phone number down for you. In case there is somebody you would like to give it to.’
