Page 59 of And Then There Was You

Fifty-One Merryn

I lie awake in darkness, trying to calm my racing mind enough to sleep.

But it’s no use.

I’ve turned the facts over and over, searching for any glimpse of hope, like sifting pebbles at the tideline, seeking seaglass buried beneath. But there is no hope.

Zanna can’t help me. The newspaper has halted the search.

Grant doesn’t want to found. I’m not ready to talk to Seth about everything yet, and Zach is gone, never to return.

Everything that brought me hope this summer seems broken and worthless.

Even the piano has become a reminder that the promise Grant made to me with the small carved heart was one he couldn’t keep.

I passed Merlin before I turned off the café lights tonight, his bright colours shrouded in the grey sheet. A spectre of a dream that once meant the world.

There are no answers, nothing I can find in the darkness of my room or the corners of my consciousness that can change the truth.

Luke’s assertion that Grant didn’t care about me seems proven, even though my ex-husband is the last person on earth I want to be right about this.

His damning indictment of Grant’s character refuses to leave, buzzing around my ears like a mosquito.

I have nothing to counter it with because I have no evidence to the contrary.

I sit up, reach for the glass of water beside my bed, and drink.

When Mum was at her most desperate, I would have countless nights like this.

Lying awake and scared in a tangle of bedsheets, seeking solutions that weren’t there to be found.

Hearing her voice racked by sobs through the too-thin walls, or the constant wail of her on the phone to some loser or other, begging them to listen; knowing that, if I made a sound, the full weight of her hurt, frustration and self-hate would fall on me.

A teacher at my primary school once told me that the best sea captains know the safest course to steer when a storm hits isn’t around it, but through it.

Going against every human instinct to avoid danger, charting a path through the heart of the storm.

It’s stayed with me all my life, because as a young kid too scared to admit what was happening at home for fear of being taken from my mother, it spoke to where I was.

Not around, but through.

The skill is in knowing the storm you face. In forging ahead when all seems lost.

I wonder what would have happened if Mum had learned that skill. She was too battered by life and broken in her mind to realise she still had power to steer a better course. I wish she’d seen that, before she ran out of time.

I still have time. And I’m not her.

I’m not Grant, either. I don’t run from trouble, even when the impulse to escape is overwhelming. I didn’t run from the fallout of my divorce and I won’t run from this.

All is not lost, however easy it is to assume that.

I have my business, thriving this year after the step of faith it took to extend our opening hours.

I have the piano that miraculously returned to my life, now a fixture of the café.

My expanded team of Murph, Jenna and Ruthie have breathed new life into Sweet Reverie, bringing possibility and positivity with them.

And slowly, I’m learning to trust the good stuff, instead of fearing it might all be taken from me.

I won’t let what happened this summer steal everything.

I steady my thudding heart with a deep inhale, my body aching and settling as I release the breath.

Then I lie back down, pulling the sheets around me.

It doesn’t matter if I sleep, I tell myself: I’m just going to close my eyes and rest. Stop trying to avoid the storm in my mind and chart a course through it instead.

Slowly, I begin to drift, spaces appearing between the conflicting thoughts like clouds parting after rain. My bed is comfortable once again, its soothing softness drawing me in.

And then, I hear it.

A sound from beyond my room.

A gentle rhythm, a soft lilt.

I’m imagining it. A ghost of a memory, drifting through my semi-consciousness. I shift position, burying my head in my pillow.

But the sound continues.

It can’t possibly be what it was before. The side gate is locked, the café, too. Merlin is silent and still beneath his cover. There’s no way the piano is playing.

Unless . . .

Could Zach have returned? Might this be his apology? Quiet, understated, powerful, knowing what the piano means to me?

Slowly, the music modulates, the disparate notes merging together. And the melody it forms is unmistakable.

I’m out of bed in a heartbeat, pulling on my hoodie and a pair of shorts, hurrying through my flat to the staircase, where at the bottom step the softest light glows.

Tears flood my view, but I stab them away with the cuff of my sleeve.

The main café remains in darkness, but the courtyard is bathed in warm white light.

‘Time Wears Awa’ fills the air, willing me towards it. It’s gentler than Zach played it before, the altered cadence striking a chord within me that I can’t quantify. It’s familiar yet different, timeless yet brand new.

The slate floor is cold beneath my feet, but the welcome that draws me is as warm as sun-baked sand.

He’s here. He came back. Zach hasn’t forgotten me.

I reach the door at the boundary between café and courtyard.

And breath leaves my body.

Zach is here. But he’s standing beside Merlin, his hands nowhere near the keys. His eyes are still as he observes me.

And he’s not alone.

At the piano, a grey-haired man sits, tanned arms bent at the elbows, fingers travelling over the keys. The hunch of his shoulders, the position he adopts on the piano stool, are all immediately recognisable.

My legs shake beneath me. I grab the door to steady myself.

The sound it makes halts the music.

Grant Henderson’s hands leave the keys. Slowly, he looks towards me. And the years between my stolen views on the stairs in my childhood home and this moment on the courtyard’s threshold melt away.

‘Hey, birdie.’ His voice is deeper than I remember, its peripheries cracked by time.

‘You came.’

‘Zach said you wanted to see me.’

There are a thousand and one things I stored up in his name over the years, tiny treasures of observance, dream and hope stacked together, ready to share with him, awaiting his return. Now he’s here, in the place I thought I’d never see him, my words fail me.

He shifts a little on the stool and reaches his arm towards me.

‘Come and sit with me. Like you used to.’

Does he even remember? Or has Zach relayed my memories to him? As I walk towards the piano, I realise it doesn’t matter. This is the moment I’ve longed for. I won’t let it pass by.

Beside him, I risk a smile. ‘What are you going to play?’

‘Might as well carry on with this one, I reckon.’ His fingers form the opening chords I know well, the memory of my hands resting on Zach’s the night we first kissed flooding back.

Slowly, Grant plays, the soft pulse of his breath in time with the music a feature I’d forgotten.

Not a whisper or an exhalation, but something in between.

I can feel Zach’s eyes on me as Grant plays, but I can’t look up from the keys for fear that the vision might vanish as easily as it appeared. Zach brought Grant here? How is that possible?

Abruptly, the song ends. When I look at Grant, he’s smiling.

‘Time for you to play now.’

‘I – I can’t,’ I rush, fear surging like an ocean swell.

Even though Grant is here, the thought of touching the keys still overwhelms me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the terror of good things snatched away. That if I dare to play now, it will herald another broken promise, another door slammed.

I thought I’d left the uncertainty of my childhood behind. But here I am, once again, poleaxed by it.

‘You know the notes to play. You know the song. So play it, Merryn. Forget everythin’ else – it doesn’t matter once the music takes over.

’ He strokes the keys, his eyes sad. ‘This old girl was escape for me. No matter what else was goin’ on around me – earthquakes, shouts, people comin’ at me – it all went away the moment I played. ’

‘Why did you throw it out?’

It’s the question that’s dominated my thoughts, more than anything else I want to know. And now it’s out there, awaiting an answer.

‘Life got in the way, birdie. Like it does with me. The landlord was sellin’ up, so I had to go.

Only place I found to rent couldn’t fit a piano.

Money was tight, my options were limited and I was scared if I didn’t take the flat in Carbis I’d never find anythin’ else I could afford.

’ He holds my gaze, as he did so many years before.

‘I reckoned the old girl had served her time with me, been shifted from pillar to post too often. Pianos don’t like to travel much and she put up with more than she should have. ’

‘So you left it?’

‘I asked the landlord to find her a home and he said he would. I didn’t reckon he’d sling her out onto the street.’

It makes sense. But there’s another question, one I’ve imagined asking for years. Now the time is here, I’m not sure how to ask.

‘Did you know I was looking for you?’

His eyes dip from mine. ‘I did.’

‘Why didn’t you reply?’

‘I was told not to.’ He stops, a sigh escaping. ‘I believed Luke was right to say it. My life isn’t what I wanted it to be. I’ve made a mess of so much. You were one of the good things I did. I thought it best left in the past.’

It hurts my heart, but I finally have the truth. ‘So what changed?’

He pats Merlin. ‘This old darlin’. You gave her a home, when I’d had to leave her.’

‘Maybe it’s a good thing you did.’

I look up. Zach’s smile is gentle, maybe a little cautious.

‘Why?’

‘Because the piano brought you to me. And brought Grant back. You were right when you said it had its own magic. Look what it’s done.’

Zach is here. The piano is here, restored from the fight. And Grant completes the picture. A triptych of magic, brought together in the heart of Sweet Reverie.

‘Play, birdie,’ Grant says, his arm nudging me. ‘We ain’t going anywhere.’

The keys shine in the glow of the courtyard lights. Battered and repaired, a thousand stories below each note. History and the here and now. Memory and possibility. All meet where my hands now tentatively rest.

If I play, this doesn’t end.

If I play, a new chapter will begin.

Around me, the people I love most are willing the music to start. The man who taught me to play, who was a dad when I needed one. And the man I love.

Whatever’s gone before – whatever wrongs and injustices, whatever misunderstandings and mistakes – is immaterial. It’s time to leave it all behind.

The first note I play sends a shockwave through my heart.

The spell broken, more notes follow. Slowly, the melody builds, the strangeness of my adult hands on the keys soon settling as muscle memory forged a lifetime ago takes over.

‘Time Wears Awa’ sings from beneath my fingers, the song bringing release and hope in a flood.

My tears follow suit, but I don’t stop to wipe them away.

It’s the escape Grant described, but something more besides. Healing. Restoration. A heart-hug of hope.

When my hands retreat from the keys, Grant’s arm around my shoulder steadies me. Zach kneels beside the piano stool, his warm fingers gently brushing tears from my cheeks.

‘I should have come back,’ Zach says, the deep ocean blue of his eyes sparkling like sunshine on waves. ‘I should have fought harder for you.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You made this happen.’

‘I love you,’ Zach says. ‘I always will.’

‘I love you, too,’ I reply.

And the magic is complete.

I don’t hesitate. My hands find his face, drawing him close. I will everything that fills my heart into our kiss, pulling him close, as the pieces of my life deftly join together. I’m found and loved, given new life like the piano beside us. And love surrounds us all.

Summer nights in St Ives are strange beasts. But tonight is a good one.

It’s where the magic returned, where rifts healed.

And where my heart finally found its home.

I don’t know what lies ahead. But for the first time, my past has no say in it. Wrapped in Zach’s embrace, reunited with Grant, with the piano that began it all making the music my heart longed for, I’m ready to sail right through.