Читать книгу The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder - Sarah J. Harris - Страница 12

The windows of 20 Vincent Gardens swung open and loud music poured out, like a long, windy snake trailing across the road and up to my bedroom, tap-tapping on the window. Tap-tapping on all the windows in the street.

I’m here. Notice me.

The colours arrived with a bang and drifted into each other’s business, disrupting everything.

Some might call them a nuisance. They certainly did that night and in the weeks and months to come.

The glossy, deep magenta cello; the dazzling bright electric dots of the piano and the flute’s light pink circles with flecks of crimson formally announced that someone new had arrived on the street.

A person as well as a parakeet. They wanted to be seen. They loved loud, bright music as much as me.

Later, much later, I discovered this glorious music was called The Carnival of the Animals. Fourteen movements by Camille Saint-Saëns, a French Romantic composer, who wrote music for animals: kangaroos, elephants and tortoises. I loved the colours of Aviary, birds of the jungle, the most, but that evening was the turn of the Royal Lion.

As soon as the colours started, I jumped off my bed and raced to the window, tearing open the curtains. A woman with long blonde hair held a glass while she threw herself around the sitting room. She danced like me, not caring if anyone else watched. Not caring if she spilt her drink.

Whirling, twirling, she wrapped herself in a brightly coloured shawl of shimmering musical colours, hugging it close to her body.

The colours overlapped and faded in and out of each other on a transparent screen in front of my eyes. If I reached out, it felt like I could almost touch them.

‘Jasper! Turn it downnnnnnnnn …’

The last word was long and drawn out because the sentence never finished, like a lot of Dad’s sentences when he talks to me.

He walked towards me, but I couldn’t turn around. The pulsating music pushed absolutely everything out of my mind. Our house could have burnt to the ground and I wouldn’t have shifted voluntarily.

I thought it was the most perfect combination of colours I’d ever seen. I was wrong, of course. Much better was to come when the pandemonium of parakeets arrived. But I couldn’t know that then.

I focused my binoculars on the house opposite. The colourful music had squeezed out most of the furniture from the sitting room. The sofa, a small table and chairs were pushed up against the walls by the side of a piano. A green beanbag remained, along with an iPod on a stand.

I recognized the dark brown curtains and greyish-white nets that usually hung at the windows folded neatly into squares and placed on the table. They’d been sacked, made redundant.

‘Good God.’ Dad snatched the binoculars off me. ‘What will people think? You mustn’t do that, Jasper. No one likes a spy.’

I didn’t bother to ask what people would think. I’d given up trying to guess the answer to that particular puzzle long ago.

Normally Dad’s grabby hands would have outraged me – it’s rude to snatch. That’s one of the rules he’s taught me. I didn’t remind him because the depth of colours had transfixed me.

They dazzled against the whiteness of the woman’s arms in the background as she waltzed around and around, her floral dressing gown flapping open as if she’d been caught in a sudden breeze.

I couldn’t pull my gaze away to look at Dad.

He was about to explain what I’d done wrong when the music stopped.

‘No! Wait!’ I cried.

The colours vanished as fast as the parakeet from the oak tree. They didn’t drift off or melt away. Gone. Like a TV switched off. But then …