Chapter 5 #3
I drew a deep breath and began to play. All at once, the alien feeling ebbed away.
My mind might have forgotten, but my body remembered exactly what to do.
My fingers found the right keys of their own accord.
I had played this piece dozens, if not hundreds of times, and it had become second nature to me.
I went so far as to close my eyes. I didn’t need to see the piano to play; I only needed to feel the music.
It flowed through me, guiding me. My pulse slowed, steadying to match the melody.
I opened my eyes as the final note rang out through the tearoom. The guests began to clap, my mum the loudest. But my gaze flitted instinctively to my dad, searching for his approval. I hated myself for it.
He didn’t clap. Of course he didn’t. He didn’t even smile. Instead, he gave me a curt nod. Not praise—a simple acknowledgement that I hadn’t embarrassed him. For some messed-up reason, that felt better and meant more to me than the applause.
I rose from the stool and made my way back to my seat.
My mum was beaming. “That was wonderful!”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“I wish you’d never stopped playing. You might have been a famous concert pianist like my father,” my mum said, brimming with pride as her eyes glistened with tears. I couldn’t tell if she was moved by my playing or the memory of my late granddad.
“I heard from Claude Asterdam that you’re planning to go out with James at the weekend,” my dad said, changing the topic abruptly to signal he’d had enough talk about my playing.
“I hardly need to remind you that my trial starts soon. I’ve been preparing with my lawyers, and they’ve stressed once again that it’s crucial not to attract any negative attention right now.
So until this farce is over, I don’t want to read a single headline about wild parties, property damage, or scandalous liaisons with women. ”
“Ethan will behave impeccably,” my mum said, defending me before I could say a word. It hadn’t escaped her notice that I was trying to do better, though that had nothing to do with my dad and his trial, and everything to do with me and my life.
“I should hope so,” my dad replied, not taking his eyes off me. “Any wrong move on Ethan’s part could reflect badly on me. So I expect faultless conduct. Anything else is unacceptable.”
I didn’t speak, though I was raging on the inside.
There was so much I wanted to say to him—that it hadn’t been my wrong moves that had brought him to this point, that everything was his fault, that neither I nor my behaviour would determine the outcome of his trial.
But I said none of it. I couldn’t. It felt as if someone had clamped a hand over my mouth, and that someone was me. A younger, frightened me.
“Are you listening to me?” my dad demanded.
I looked at him, my stomach clenching. His eyes were the same pale blue as mine, but it felt like I was looking straight into an abyss.
There was no light, only an all-consuming darkness that robbed me of not only my courage but also my self-confidence and strength, until there was nothing left but fear.
I hated it. I hated what being close to this man did to me, how I felt in his presence.
I was no longer a child but an adult, bigger and stronger than him, yet the old fear remained the same.
“Yes, sir,” I answered with the obedience he’d drilled into me.
My dad nodded, satisfied. A triumphant smile played on his lips, as if he were not only aware of the power he had over me but actively took pleasure in it.
“Excuse me,” I said, pushing my chair back, unable to sit at the table with him for another second. “I have a paper to finish.”
I cast my mum an apologetic look as I left. She nodded. She understood why I couldn’t stay. I left the tearoom and strode to the lifts without turning back. A single word echoed through my head: coward.
Coward.
Coward.
In my fantasies, I was brave enough to confront my dad with all the things that ran through my mind when I saw his face. In reality, I wasn’t—not yet, anyway. But one day, I would be. Hopefully.
I took the lift up and told my smart-home system to switch on the lights, as the sun had disappeared behind thick clouds.
Yet even with the lights on, my mood made everything seem bleak and grey, empty and joyless.
Or perhaps it was simply my lifeless flat.
There were no photos on the walls, no keepsakes on the shelves, nothing to remind me of my past. I had spent years at boarding school pretty much living out of suitcases, and when I returned to London, I hadn’t made an effort to make the penthouse my parents had given me feel like my own.
I had never intended to stay. But then everything with my dad had happened, and . . . here I still was.
I put on my workout clothes and strapped myself into the rowing machine in my gym.
It didn’t take me long to settle into a fast, hard rhythm.
My muscles throbbed and my throat burned as I rowed, my heart fighting desperately to pump more oxygen through my body.
Sweat dripped from my forehead. It didn’t cross my mind to stop, not even when I felt a stabbing pain in my lungs and tasted bile rising in my throat.
As long as my body was battling the pounding, the burn, and the strain, there was simply no space left for negative thoughts.