Читать книгу Of Things Gone Astray - Janina Matthewson - Страница 25

THE DOOR OPENING STARTLED HIM. He had no idea how much time had passed.

‘Dad?’

She looked like her mother. Funny how a girl raised by two men can so closely resemble the mother she barely knew. Not that ‘mother’ was really the right word. But then, what was? Nothing. There was no right word.

‘Don’t you have a class?’

‘Jasper’s taking notes for me. I was worried.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

She blinked at him and walked into the room. She crossed to the piano and opened the cover.

‘Oh my god.’

‘What?’

‘They’re really gone.’

He’d been hoping he was crazy.

‘What did you do with them?’ she asked.

‘Me? I didn’t touch them. Not since yesterday. Not since I was playing yesterday. They were fine.’

‘So, they just vanished?’

‘Yes. I came down this morning, I had my breakfast, I went to play. They were gone.’

She stared. She wrinkled her nose. No, she didn’t look like her mother. She looked like Albert. Thank god.

She hesitantly put out a hand as if to touch the keys that weren’t there, then abruptly shut the lid.

‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I went to Fortnum’s and got some new ones for us to try.’

She walked out of the room, giving Albert’s picture a casual pat as she passed it, and led the way into the kitchen.

‘I thought we could all have dinner tonight,’ she said, pulling down a tea pot. ‘I asked Jasper to come over and bring some food from the Iraqi place around the corner. That’s the place that we got the really good fish from that time, isn’t it? And you haven’t really spent any time with Jasper; haven’t you only met him the once? It’s my fault, of course. I should have brought him around here earlier.’

She stopped pottering around and sat at the table across from him.

‘What do I do?’

‘I don’t know, Dad. I suppose I’ll call a piano repair company. Do you think it’d cost a lot to replace them?’

The question unsettled him. It was his piano. He didn’t want someone else’s hands on his piano.

He suddenly didn’t like being still. He took his cup to the sink even though it wasn’t yet even half empty. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to empty it or keep drinking.

‘Dad?’

‘When’s he, when’s he coming? Your boy?’

‘It’s OK. I don’t have to ring someone now. We’ll just take some time. We won’t think about it for a while.’

His arm was itchy. Something had bitten him.

‘Dad?’

He turned back.

‘Right. Yes. Dinner will be lovely. We’ll have dinner.’