Chapter 61 Freya
FREYA
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, my face flush with the pressure that’s building in my head—the tug that’s calling on me to do something to release it.
Tess has talked a good talk, almost convincing me that she’s telling the truth when she says she doesn’t know anything about Maria. But that’s because that’s what I want to believe.
Pouring cold water onto the insides of my wrists calms my nervous system, recalibrating my need to do something I know I’m going to regret. But that compulsion is still too great to ignore. I know I have to do something, anything to offload the crushing tension that’s squeezing my chest.
I cross the landing, willing myself to believe that Tess is nothing more than the friend I thought she was. But seeing her bedroom, with its pure-white linen sheets, I can’t help but imagine her and Charlie rolling between them, as I waited for him back home.
Nausea swirls in my stomach as I remember the married man she had talked about. Had it been staring me in the face all along? Had that been her intention? To leave the breadcrumbs of their affair behind her, hoping that I might pick them up and force it out into the open.
I almost expect to see something obvious—an item of Charlie’s clothing that would prove that the suspicion I can’t quite dampen is well-founded.
Or a bottle of his favorite cologne left on the dressing table, among the mismatched photo frames.
I move closer, wondering if she would be so audacious as to pose with her married lover and put it on display?
My eyes scan the pictures, stumbling over the one of a teenage girl sitting alongside a man in front of a piano, the pair of them smiling happily.
My vision blurs as my brain races to catch up.
There’s no doubt that it’s Tess looking proudly at the older man next to her. Her pride in him evident in her doe-eyed expression, as if awestruck by his presence. But he is focused on the piano keys beneath his fingertips … just as I remember him.
Geoffrey Wilson, the man who made me practice the chords to Pachelbel’s Canon in D until I thought my fingers might bleed.
“Do you want to play in the spring recital or not?” he’d asked, when he didn’t think I was putting enough hours in. “Because there are plenty of students who do.”
But like most thirteen-year-olds, as much as I wanted to perform—for the praise and the acclaim—I didn’t want to spend my spare time practicing. So, disappointed by my lack of commitment, he pulled me from the show with a few days’ notice.
“I don’t know why you’re so upset,” my mother said, as I lay sobbing under my duvet.
“If you’d shown more interest, he wouldn’t have dropped you.
” She sat down on the bed. “You’ll find out in life that you only get what you deserve—and you don’t get rewarded if you’re not prepared to put the hard work in. ”
“I don’t care about the show,” I cried, wondering if she was still going to buy me the new outfit I was supposed to be performing in.
“Well, what’s with all the tears then?” she asked.
She probably wished she hadn’t, because her face had drained of color when I told her what he’d done to me.