Page 37 of And Then There Was You

Thirty-One Merryn

His fingers move slowly, warm beneath my own.

And as the song my heart loves begins to play beneath our fingers, I bite my lip to hold back tears.

It’s a gentle rendition, the chord and melody changes deliberately slower to accommodate our joined hands. Every note brings me closer to Zach. Closer to the memory that’s held me back from touching the piano keys.

If I play it alone, it means he won’t come back.

I’ve never been able to express a reason why I couldn’t play, only that it hurt too much to try. But now it arrives, clarion and undeniable.

It wrenches my heart in two, but here I’m not alone.

Zach is playing for us both.

It’s tender and sweet, impossibly lovely and powerful as a lightning bolt.

‘Time Wears Awa’ fills the courtyard with its lovely sound, soothing away hurt, warming this space I’ve created to welcome others.

Memories of the past swirl like the melody, dancing with the feeling of this moment: the sensation of warmth beneath my hands, the flow of movement as we travel together across the keys.

And safety. Complete, all-encompassing safety, in this single, astonishing act.

I’m not alone. I’m shaking, but I’m no longer scared.

And between us, the song plays.

My tears break free as we play, as the melody becomes stronger.

I want to look at him, but I can’t tear my gaze away from our hands together on the keys.

I can hear Zach’s breathing, feel the warmth of his body beside me.

It’s more intimate than the kiss we almost shared before.

It’s an all-encompassing caress: fingers and bodies, heartbeats and breath.

I’m stunned by the intensity, exhilarated by the feeling.

He did this for me. Hardly knowing me at all. The first person I’ve told about Grant who actually listened, who cared enough to ask why I couldn’t play.

When the song ends our hands become still. Neither of us speaks, the final echo of the notes ebbing away, replaced by the beat of my heart and the soft sound of our breathing.

I can’t find words to express what Zach just did, but I need him to know.

I lift my head – and find his eyes intent on me.

Blue.

His eyes are startlingly blue.

A deep blue, like the colour of the bay on the sunniest days. It’s a colour my heart knows, contained within a gaze I long to know.

In a heartbeat, our lips meet, our hands leaving the keys to find each other. I will all of my heart into our kiss, hoping Zach catches what this means to me. Tonight, he doesn’t pull back, his arms drawing me closer. I’m surrounded and cradled, beside the piano that made all of this possible.

Swept into this single moment.

I reach out to steady myself, my right hand finding the curve on the piano above the point where the key block meets the outer case. My fingers settle in a smooth indentation in the centre of the wood . . . and my world shifts.

Shocked, I break our kiss, easing from Zach’s embrace.

His smile disappears. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing, it’s just, there’s something here.’

‘Where?’

I move off the piano stool and crouch by the side of the cabinet, peering underneath.

It’s there .

I blink twice, force my eyes to refocus. Because what can’t possibly be there, is .

Zach is beside me now, following my move. ‘Is that a heart?’

I nod, because a surge of emotion is claiming my throat, blocking any words I could offer.

‘It’s been carved into the wood.’

A pen-knife, scratching away at the dark varnish, splinters of pale wood revealed as they fall to the floor.

A heart traced over and over, frantic lines deepening, the meaning clear.

The tears that match my own: only his strange and alien.

The first tears I ever see him cry. And behind it all, the slam and shatter of objects tossed down the stairs to the hard tiles of the hall floor below, a woman’s furious screeching rising high over every other sound . . .

My own heart shattering like the belongings being hurled at the floor.

‘I want to go with you.’

‘You can’t, birdie. I’m so sorry. I’d take you with me if I could.’

‘She doesn’t want me. You do.’

A pause in the carving. A hand, rough and warm, against my cheek.

‘You’ve got to be here for your mum. Because I can’t look out for her now.’

‘What about me?’

The thin line of his lips – a grimace held, masquerading as a smile.

‘See this heart? Put your finger here and I’ll do the same.’

My finger finding the spiky centre of the heart. His index finger resting beside it.

‘Now you’re part of the piano’s journey. Wherever I go, I’ll take this with me. I promise, birdie. I’ll never forget you.’

‘Merryn?’ Zach’s voice now, soft and low, close to me.

‘It’s his,’ I manage, before I’m overwhelmed, curling into his body where we kneel together on the courtyard floor.

Zach holds me for a long time. He says nothing, but the resolute beat of his heart where my head rests against his chest keeps me company. His arms are shields across my body, his hand cradles my head against him.

Outside my body, a calm settles. Inside my mind, a storm rages.

This has to be Grant’s piano. But how? Could someone else have carved a heart, hidden in a corner of the cabinet – in exactly the same place, exactly the same shape?

It’s been there all the time, during all the hours Seth and I spent painting it, and every day it’s been in the courtyard as I’ve worked and dreamed and lived around it. Why did I never think to look?

Zach’s gentle kiss on the top of my head makes me pull him closer. He strokes my hair and eases us to a seated position, drawing me to rest against him.

I never thought to look for the carved heart because I never believed the piano could be Grant’s.

How could it be? There could be a hundred thousand pianos in Cornwall: any one of them might have ended up on the pavement outside that house.

And that’s assuming Grant remained in Cornwall.

He’d come from Hereford, via Newcastle, Bristol and London, before rocking up in Penzance at the bar Mum was thrown out of.

Any one of those places could have called him back.

‘What’s the story with the heart?’ Zach’s voice buzzes in his chest.

I lift my head, the initial wave of tears passed. ‘Grant carved it on the day he left. We put our fingers there, side by side, and he said it made me part of the piano’s journey wherever he took it.’

Zach’s blue eyes dim a little. ‘A touchpoint.’

‘Yes.’

He nods. ‘I had one on my board – the one I won my last major competition on.’

‘A heart?’

‘A wave. Like this.’ He twists his ankle to reveal an intricate wave tattoo. It’s instantly recognisable, although I can’t say how I know it. ‘It wasn’t carved, though. My mate Xan is a pyrography artist. He burned it into the wood, to remind me of my mum.’

‘Your mum loves the sea?’

His smile is instant, sad. ‘She did, but that’s not why I chose it. She passed away, three weeks before the competition.’

My heart contracts. Zach’s reply is weighted with love and loss. I don’t need to ask him if they were close, or if he loved her. It’s there, in every syllable, every breath between the words.

I lost my mum, too, but I didn’t know until the police arrived at my student flat.

They’d found her passed out and unresponsive behind a pub – she’d passed away from a massive heart attack in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

By then, she’d told me she didn’t need me and I’d gladly left her alone, reasoning that she was never going to be what I needed her to be.

I won’t tell Zach this – not now. I can see the love and loss for his mother washing across his lovely face.

All my life, I’ve envied people with that kind of familial love.

I don’t imagine it’s always easy, but the concept was alien to me.

I was the adult in our relationship from as early as I can remember: my own young hands holding my mother upright, my small arms bearing the weight of her lived years.

It took me many years to understand Mum’s inability to love me.

She couldn’t love because she didn’t know how to.

I don’t think she loved herself a day in her whole life.

So to have been loved as a kid should be, by a mother who knew love; to have been supported and held and cherished, and then to have lost it, must be unthinkable.

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ My words don’t seem enough.

He nods. ‘Thanks. She’s why I’m in St Ives. I miss her, but I feel like she’s closer here than anywhere.’

I don’t say that for me St Ives was a sanctuary from all the crap with my mum, or that I had to fight to own it again after my marriage fell apart. For me, the town is the place I chose for myself, time and again.

Zach runs his finger over the carved heart. ‘So this was a touchpoint for him? Your stepdad?’

‘That’s what he said. I think he was trying to offer me comfort while the massive upheaval was happening. He carved it just before he left. He couldn’t stop Mum throwing him out, so he tried to make it easier for me.’

‘And did it?’

His question stops me in my tracks. I’ve never considered this before, only seeing the hurt and betrayal and loss wrapped so tightly around my memories of the last day I saw Grant. Did knowing about the heart change my response to his leaving?

‘No,’ I reply, as much to myself as to Zach. ‘I haven’t thought about the heart for years. Maybe because it was never meant for me. Grant took it with him when he took the piano – this piano . There was never any question of me going with him.’

We lapse into silence. I rest my head against Zach, suddenly bone-weary.

His arms fold around me again. I can’t work out how we got here: from the kiss, to the discovery of the heart, to the revelation.

But, while I’m scrambling to make sense of Merlin being Grant’s piano, I’m relieved that Zach is with me.

Without him – without the invitation, his beautiful act that brought me closer to the piano than I’ve been in years, or the kiss that still thrills me – I might never have found the carved heart.

‘It’s here with you now,’ Zach says, at last, as if my thoughts were spoken aloud. ‘Which means Grant may be closer than you think.’

Could it be a sign? My searches have all drawn blanks, but could finding Grant’s piano mean he was closer to home than I realised?

I want to believe it – but another thought wedges itself between the possibility.

‘He abandoned it, though,’ I counter. ‘He would never do that. It can only mean he . . . he had no use for it anymore.’

I don’t want to think the worst, but the Grant Henderson I knew could never be parted from his beloved instrument. The only way he would let it go would be if the decision was out of his hands. Or if his hands had no more need of it.

As long as I’ve been searching, the prospect that he might have died has never been far away.

It would explain the blanks I’ve drawn and now the piano he left behind.

But I don’t want to think he isn’t alive: even if I never find him, I want to believe that he’s somewhere happy, living a good life.

Even if I can’t be part of it. I want that for him.

‘No, hear me out,’ Zach insists. ‘If the piano is in St Ives, it means Grant was here, too. Someone must know something about what happened to him. You know how gossip travels in town. If Grant lived on North Terrace, someone must know about it.’

I leave the warmth of his arms and study his face. His eyes are alive now, darting between Merlin and me, a thousand thoughts behind each movement.

‘What are you saying?’

He smiles – and possibility floods back in. ‘I’m saying that if you want to find out, I’m here. I’ll help you find him.’