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Of course. We should maintain a civil relationship for Fred’s sake. We have to think of him going forward.
His throat closes. God, the formality. He reads the message over and over, a stone sinking in his gut. It is as if she’s someone he’d like to get to know but who is closed off to him, unattainable. He remembers thinking that about her the first time he saw her, at a client’s house party in Islington. She was going out with someone else then. She was a little tipsy and was playing the piano, and when he spoke to her, he was surprised that she, like him, hailed from near Manchester.
‘You’re amazing at the piano,’ he said to her once she’d left the keys to rumbles of drunken cries for just one more and they’d found themselves wedged in the smoky kitchen. ‘You could be a concert pianist.’
She shook her head. ‘Stage fright. I’m a primary school teacher. Try not to be disappointed.’
‘There’s nothing disappointing about that. Do you play for the kids? I bet they love you.’
‘Could you talk to my mother?’ She rolled her eyes, her head lolling a little, but she was blushing. ‘A waste. A waste of talent.’
‘Sharing your talent without any expectation of glory is not a waste.’
A week later, the client gave him her number. A week after that, he called her, with little hope of success, was amazed when she said yes, yes, sure, she’d come out to dinner.
He took her to a small dark restaurant in Soho. She seemed so sophisticated and he wanted to seem sophisticated too, but over dinner he admitted he didn’t know anything about classical music.
‘My parents are quite working class,’ he said, by way of explanation.
‘Is classical music the preserve of the middle classes?’ she asked, eyes flashing. ‘According to whom?’
He felt the heat in his cheeks, was glad of the dimly lit space. ‘Oh, I, no, I mean…’
She laughed. ‘My grandad was blue collar, as they say, but he drew the notes on a strip of cardboard and taught himself to play on an upright handed down from his father. He grew apples and rhubarb in the garden of his bungalow and made furniture for my dolls out of wood. On my father’s side, they all played the piano, all of them. They used to sing round it at Christmas – one of my great-uncles had a heart attack and collapsed on the keys. Everyone laughed because they thought he was joking; it was family folklore.’ She grinned, an expression that told him she wasn’t done yet. ‘My mum plays beautifully, used to play theMoonlight Sonatato lull me to sleep. My dad likes to cook, makes his own pesto, bakes his own bread. Both of them left school at sixteen, had nothing but a tiny flat when they first married, used to eat off the top of a washing machine. But classical music was all around me growing up. Honestly, people have such a weird view of what working-class people are actually like. Look at you. You went to a state school, didn’t you? And now you’re an architect, for goodness’ sake. Hardly a geezer, are you?’
‘No, but my best friend is.’ He laughed, poured more wine while he worked out what to say. ‘I’m sorry,’ was all that came to him. ‘I made an assumption. I guess I was scared we wouldn’t have enough in common.’
‘We don’t need to have a lot in common. We just need to have what’s important. Values. What’s right, what’s wrong. And we’re both scared, so that’s something else.’
‘Scared?’
‘I’m scared of the stage and you’re scared of… well, of me, at the moment.’ She laughed. ‘I’m teasing. Anyway, I listen to other kinds of music. I love Bruce Springsteen.’
‘So do I.’ He sat back in his chair. Knew already he was in trouble. Falling.
I don’t deserve her, he thought, as early as then.
He didn’t. Doesn’t. And he has proved it.
Now he studies her cold text, scraping through his hair with bitten fingers. She was right: he was always scared. Scared of his father, scared of the school bully, scared of success. He’s a coward. But she knew it and she married him anyway. She hoped he’d change is effectively what she told him during that horrible argument after the party. What is it they say? Men marry women hoping they’ll never change, but they do. Women marry men hoping they will change, but they don’t. And he hasn’t.
Of course, he replies.I’ll pick up some stuff after work. I’m so sorry, Ave. Really.
She doesn’t reply.
He waits.
Nothing. There is nothing to say. Sorry doesn’t cover it.
Thirty-One
Matt
Ava is in the living room watching television, Fred asleep in the crib at her feet. These last few months, he has hated finding her like this, like just anyone, slouched watching TV instead of being dynamic, being Ava, being the woman he married, the woman he would find playing Scott Joplin on the piano while Abi danced around the living room dressed in one of her pink tutus, her fairy wings strapped to her back.
‘Look, Daddy.’ Round and round, arms waving about, believing herself absolutely to be a ballerina. Up and down the length of the front room, around the piano, floating back to the front of the living-room area where DI Farnham sat them down and told them they’d found Abi’s coat, where now Fred sleeps at his mother’s feet. And Ava, his darling Ava…
‘Hi,’ he says, drumming the door jamb with his hands.
