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Zoe: Okay, but you’re alright, yeah? Not missing us even a teeny bit?
Morgan sighed. How easy it would be to spill it all and tell her friend about the situation she had found herself in?
Morgan: Of course I miss you. I’ll be home before you know it.
Zoe: That’s alright then. Okay, go to sleep.
Morgan: Night x
She closed the phone and placed it back on the nightstand, rolling on to her back for a second time to stare into the darkness before she fell into a fitful night’s sleep.
Alex stripped and headed for the shower. She closed her eyes and let the water beat down on her, soaking her muscles and warming her skin with a beat, fast and constant.
She pressed her left hand against the wall and bent her neck forward as the water cascaded over her. There was no way she was going to sleep anytime soon.
On any other tour, she would stay up all night playing the piano, working on her new pieces. She couldn’t do that and not wake Morgan, but she could go down to the bar and play theirs.
The bar was empty. No staff on duty, closed to the public and guests unless ordered via room service. Alex wandered in, wet hair tied up and wrapped into a messy bun. She looked anything but a classical composer with her baggy sweatpants and matching hoody, not to mention the bare feet.
In the corner was an upright Steinhoven SU. The kind of piano you found in school halls and old-fashioned pubs. Ideal for taking up little room and giving a nice sound in a room like this.
She lifted the lid and pressed a key. Its soft tinkle sounded louder in the empty room. Her fingers moved along the keys and then she pulled the stool out and sat down.
The big clock on the wall said 3 a.m. She looked away and back down at the keys before deciding on a version of Interstellar. She was almost halfway through when a man appeared. Night staff, she assumed as he nodded a hello and backed out of the room with a smile as she continued to play.
Maybe this was all she needed, she thought, just the music. Her eyes closed as she got swept away in it and then the inevitable happened: Morgan, naked, writhing in time with the music. She kept playing, one piece into another, into another.
“You been down here all night?” a familiar voice asked. Alex smiled and turned on the stool to find Francine standing there, a room full of staff working around her to clean and organise. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t heard a thing.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
Francine nodded slowly. “Maybe the doc can give you a pill or something, or I can you know, organise something.”
Alex knew what “organise something” meant: someone, not something. A paid for, discreet, someone.
“No, I’ll be fine.” She looked up at the clock, almost six. “I should go up and try to get a few hours. What time are we leaving?”
“Eleven,” Francine said quietly. “I’ll have breakfast and packing sent up at ten. It’s going to be a long drive.”
Alex stood up, wrapping her palm around her friend’s thin arm. “Thank you.”
Francine watched her leave, closed the piano lid and pushed the stool back into place. “It’s going to be a long day.” She smiled to herself.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Salisbury
The journey to Salisbury was quiet. Alex slept, Francine was answering emails and taking phone calls, and so Morgan stared out of the window as the car flew down the motorway, past fields and trees and spectacular views of the English countryside. Her mind, however, wasn’t registering any of it. All she could think about was how she was going to make it through the next three weeks.
She didn’t regret her night with Alex, that wasn’t it at all, but she wished it hadn’t happened. It was one of those moments where you knew what you were missing. Before, it would have just stayed a fantasy in her head; no substance, nothing 3D, no soundtrack. She wouldn’t have the intoxicating scent of them, and the bed, all mixed together into a stimulating memory that surged her thoughts at any quiet moment. And there were going to be many quiet moments over the next three weeks, weren’t there?
Morgan picked up her phone and Googled the cathedral. Built in the twelve hundreds. It was definitely old then, she mused as she skipped through images of the building. She wondered if she’d get to see it or be kept at the hotel again.
“Francine?”
“Hm?” she replied without looking up from her tablet.
“I was wondering if it would be okay to go to the cathedral with you all, rather than just sitting around at the hotel?”
