Chapter 9 #2
‘You head up if you like, love? I’ll do last orders,’ Mum offered, registering the shift on my face as I struggled to hold it all together.
I nodded, grabbing the orchid and hugging the ceramic pot tightly against my chest as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom.
Placing it on my bedside table, I collapsed onto the bed with a sigh, my eyes falling on several of Joe’s framed photographs.
They were still leaning against the wall, a thin layer of greying dust collecting atop the slim, black frames.
Hanging them here felt wrong somehow. They didn’t belong in my childhood bedroom, with its too-small single bed and one of everything.
One bedside table. One lamp. One toothbrush in the old plastic beaker beside the sink in the corner. And neither did I.
‘You know I had a bet going with Alice on how long it would take you to kill that.’
I didn’t need to glance over my shoulder to know that Joe was stood in the middle of the room; I could just feel his presence. Sense the atoms in the room shifting. But I did so anyway, his face illuminated by the dim glow of the streetlight in the car park below.
‘Your confidence in me is touching, as always.’
‘Hey, I’ll have you know that Alice bet one week. I – your loving, supportive, loyal fiancé – bet two.’ He grinned cheekily. The normally squeaky springs stayed disturbingly silent as he perched on the end of the bed. ‘She owes me ￡20.’
‘Well, I’ll be sure to remind her.’ I yawned, resting my head against the pillow.
I wanted to stay up and talk, to stretch out this precious time together as long as possible.
But I could feel the inevitability of sleep calling to me, my eyelids heavy.
The world took on that strange haziness as I drifted in and out of consciousness, my thoughts and dreams all knotting together, making it impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
‘Alice was right, you know,’ I heard Joe whisper. Or maybe I was already dreaming.
‘Hmm?’
‘The love it represents will never die.’
I smiled sleepily, the silhouette of the orchid the last thing I saw before my eyes closed completely.
I glanced at my watch, the end of my biro tapping noisily against the spiral top of my notebook.
I was waiting for Luca. Or rather, he was making me wait.
It was 17:35, which meant the Wednesday session at the community centre had officially ended five minutes ago, and yet all I had to show for it was a poorly executed doodle of a saxophone in the bottom right corner of an otherwise blank page.
Luca had been avoiding me all day. All week actually.
This in itself was not unusual. We generally did a pretty good job at staying out of each other’s way, orbiting around the musty old hall like two opposing planets.
But unfortunately, conducting an interview required us to be in the same vicinity as each other for at least fifteen minutes, something that Luca had purposefully gone out of his way to avoid.
On Friday, it was a leak in the roof that apparently required his immediate attention.
On Monday, he’d left as soon as the class was over, almost tripping over the metal bucket on the floor – that he’d deemed the solution to the leak problem – in the process.
A washed-out image of me queueing in the rain outside Hove Job Centre floated around my head when I considered what might happen if I didn’t have something to show Derek tomorrow.
No. I was not about to let Luca Patel be the reason that another part of my life was ripped away from me.
He looked up from where he was collecting sheet music, hitching an eyebrow in surprise at seeing me still sat on the edge of the stage.
He scratched at his jaw, a deep scowl of annoyance darkening his face.
I was surprised he didn’t have more wrinkles on that smooth forehead of his, considering how often it was scrunched in displeasure.
I raised a hand in the air, beckoning him over, but he turned away, changing direction so fast that he lost his balance and collided with an unsuspecting Terry.
He tried to style it out, giving Terry a jovial punch to the bicep as he launched into an animated conversation about something.
Oh no you don’t. I strode purposefully across the hall, the heels of my boots click-clacking determinedly against the warped flooring as I went.
‘Hey Jenny.’ Terry beamed at me over Luca’s shoulder, which tensed beneath his shirt as I approached, the worn cotton failing to hide his unease.
‘You wouldn’t believe the number of people who’ve sent me your article.
Even the ’lecky I work with was reading it on his phone the other day and I didn’t know he could read! ’
‘It was the most popular article on our website last week.’ I bobbed proudly on the balls of my feet like a six-year-old who’d just been awarded a gold star at school.
‘Really?’
‘Really?’ Luca parroted, albeit with distinctly more disbelief than Terry.
‘Yes, really,’ I said indignantly, taking offence at his unspoken implication that I was somehow exaggerating. ‘Speaking of articles, can I steal this one away for a few minutes, Terry?’ I grabbed Luca’s forearm in a vice-like grip as he pretended to spot someone across the other side of the hall.
‘Be my guest. Kiki and I need to make a move anyway. It’s film night and I promised her we’d watch The Greatest Showman .
.?. again.’ Terry groaned theatrically as he swung Kiki’s bag over one arm, the strap of the bright pink Dora the Explorer backpack too small to fit around his giant shoulder.
I watched him stride over to where Kiki was sat on the floor, tongue sticking out in silent concentration as she performed the very technical bunny ears method on her shoelaces.
Luca’s arm jerked beneath my hand but my grip tightened.
‘You just can’t keep your hands off me, can you, Thompson?’ His voice was heavy. Suggestive. Smug.
I snorted in disgust, but something about the way my engagement ring winked up at me against the bare skin of Luca’s forearm made my insides churn and I snatched my hand away, hiding it behind my back.
Luca took the opportunity to march over towards the piano where abandoned percussion instruments still littered the floor.
I followed him like a disgruntled shadow.
‘Come on, Luca, why do you have to make everything so bloody difficult?’
‘Me? Difficult?’ Luca guffawed but he was stalling, and he knew it.
‘I thought you wanted to get the word out about this place? Or do you not care whether you stay open anymore?’
‘Of course I care,’ he snapped, a lightning bolt of anger flashing across his face. And something about the way his shoulder slumped with defeat told me he did care. More than I perhaps realised. ‘What do you want to know?’
I quickly pressed record on the Dictaphone app on my phone, placing it on top of the piano. He recoiled, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
‘OK, let’s just start with an easy one,’ I said gently. ‘How did you first learn about this place?’
‘My Dadaji,’ Luca snapped. Zero explanation.
I dipped my head encouragingly, but Luca didn’t get the hint. Or perhaps he did, and he chose to ignore it. He sighed wearily, as if I was majorly inconveniencing him .
‘My Dadaji, that’s my paternal grandfather,’ Luca explained, ‘was the one who set this whole thing up, almost 20 years ago.’ His face softened immediately when he mentioned his grandfather, his eyes creasing at the corners with obvious affection.
‘He was a professional piano player turned music teacher back in Calcutta, but he couldn’t afford to requalify when his family moved over here in the 60s, so he got a job as a janitor at the local primary school.
The only one he could get as an immigrant.
’ His voice was jaded, worn around the edges by the trials suffered by many a generation before him.
‘Anyway, he started helping out with the after-school clubs, eventually volunteering to run a music group. It was nothing fancy, just a couple of kids sitting round an old piano for an hour after school each day whilst Dadaji belted out Elton John and Stevie Wonder. But he saw how much they loved it. How kids that other teachers had just written off as difficult or disruptive would blossom, thanks to him.’
‘So, is that where your love of music came from?’ I kept my tone light, but my eyes were curious.
He nodded. ‘Our house was always full of music. I think I learnt to play the guitar before I could even walk.’
‘And what about your dad? Is he a musician, too?’
‘I wouldn’t know. He walked out on us when I was two. Not seen him since. He’s got a whole other family now – wife, kids, Cockapoo.’ I blinked, his emotionless delivery making me question whether I’d heard him correctly, but seeing his knuckles turn white around a maraca confirmed I had.
‘Oh.’ There was a very long pause where neither of us quite knew where to look. I watched his face darken, a frown scrunching his features into an ugly, confused mess. I guess it wasn’t any easier, being abandoned by choice. ‘Well, your Dadaji sounds like an amazing man.’
Luca’s face softened a fraction, his fingers unclenching. ‘He is.’ I breathed a sigh of relief at his use of the present tense. My pen stilled as I reviewed my notes, a big glaring question mark forming on the page.
‘So, how did you end up here?’ I asked, looking around at the musty hall.
‘The school ended up selling its sports field to a developer, yet more budget cuts, no doubt,’ he muttered with a disapproving shake of his head. ‘But it meant they needed the hall for football practice, so Dadaji had to come up with a plan B.’
‘Giving up wasn’t an option for him?’
Luca shook his head. ‘Not even in his vocabulary. He’s stubborn like that. Like a dog with a bone. Come to think of it, you remind me of him quite a lot.’
My lips pursed but I ignored the blatant dig.