Page 29 of Crescendo

Ella

Every muscle in my body locked up as I sat at the piano and the instructor frowned at me again. I wasn’t used to being such a terrible student.

Three days since we’d been to the Philharmonic.

People were still talking about it, of course, gushing about how great it had been, how much they wanted to see their own pieces performed like that.

But I’d sat in my seat beside Lydia—the fancy, expensive ones she absolutely shouldn’t have bought—and I’d shut down.

Physically, I’d been there, but every muscle had ached, the tension flooded through my body until it felt like I would snap.

I’d felt sick and dizzy and like white noise was buzzing in my brain.

I knew the music had been wonderful. It was the bloody Philharmonic, of course it was.

But every sound had felt like it was splitting my head open, leaving me wounded and bleeding.

And all I’d really been able to think about had been Callum’s fifteenth birthday, back when he’d thought he might do classical music, before his love for dirty guitar riffs and pounding drums had taken over and shifted him in a different direction.

Because we’d been there.

We’d sat in that room and he had been in awe, filled with the hope that, one day, he might play that stage too. It didn’t feel right that I was closer to that than he’d ever had the chance to be.

My brain had screamed at me to run, to escape, to do whatever it took to get out.

But I couldn’t. Even if the others had believed that lie about me being ill, Lydia wouldn’t have.

She’d have needed an explanation. Once I’d made it there, leaving would have meant explaining to her why I was stealing that experience from her, and the reason wasn’t good enough to take anything from her.

So, I’d stayed. Feeling constantly on the edge of crying or throwing up, and, somehow, we’d made it through, made it home, and I’d made it to my bed. Dropped my dress on the floor and hidden under the covers, unable to sleep.

And every day since, whatever breakthrough I’d been having last week slipped further and further away, like sand through my fingers.

I was glad Lydia wasn’t in this group. I couldn't take the way she’d look at me, that concern I’d seen on her the last few days loud and clear and reflected on every other face in here.

I was going to be sick.

I leapt up from the piano, apologised to the instructor I could now barely see through tears, covered my mouth, and ran from the room.

I shouldn’t have done this. Should have known I couldn’t.

The bathrooms weren’t busy, what with everyone in class, and I sobbed into the toilet, trying to keep the noise down. I’d barely slept and barely eaten anything the last few days. I had nothing left to give.

I should have stayed in my regular life, kept going to work, engaged only with events Sian and Alisha wanted to attend. Life was manageable when those things happened, when I kept moving, kept staying the exact same way I’d been since he died.

I collapsed back against the stall door, not caring that I was sitting on the floor of a public bathroom—I’d seen worse—and pulled out my phone.

“Hey, baby girl,” my dad’s voice said when the call connected, cheerful and warm. “You all right?”

“Dad.” The word wrestled itself from my body between gasps and panic and the unshakeable sensation that I was falling, drowning, dying.

I was too old to be calling my dad in tears like this, but here we were.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he replied, soft, gentle, familiar. “I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“I can’t breathe.” Hot tears ran fast down my cheeks. Scary, violent, rattling chokes echoed around the room.

Enough oxygen to stay alive, not enough not to panic.

“Ella,” he said clearly, “feel the floor beneath you—solid, sturdy, constant. My voice in your ear—familiar, safe.”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. He knew the drill. We knew the drill. It had been a minute—and I knew I should know better, should know how to handle this. I was a doctor for fuck’s sake. But the body and the mind remembered. And we both knew we’d been here before.

Maybe he’d known we’d be here again.

“The sky is blue and clear here—shocking, I know.” He let out a gentle, breathed laugh. A sign that everything was fine, life was still going on, I could be a part of something other than dying alone on a bathroom floor.

I’d run out of class in front of everyone.

My breathing came faster again, shallow.

He paused for the briefest of seconds, registering that. “Papa came home with seven gnomes the other day.”

I blinked.

“I know. Can you believe that man? Never shown a single bit of interest in gnomes in the forty years we’ve been together, and then, out of the blue, he comes home with seven of them.

Named them and everything. Seven new residents.

” He laughed and switched his tone to his impersonation of Papa. “But look at their little faces!”

“ Sherlock Gnomes ,” I managed to gurgle through my burning throat.

“Oh, that’s right. He did love that film. So, I guess he’s shown an interest in gnomes once in forty years. But it feels a little different—Sherlock as an animated, living, talking gnome versus moving seven of them into our house.”

I tried to hum in agreement but it came out as a sad, grizzled sound.

His accent was so soothing. I’d never had the strongest accent growing up, but, listening to him now, I realised how much more London mine had become since living here.

I guess thirteen years in a place did that to you.

Just like growing up with a Northern dad had an impact on you, even when he was raising you in Harpenden.

“Oh, what are their names, you say?” my dad asked, and I could just see the way he’d be shaking his head so fondly. “Lancelot, Deborah, Harry, Oscar, Olivia, Bernadette, and… Pookie.”

“Pookie?”

“Pookie.”

“Why?” Some of the other choices were odd together, too, but Pookie really stood out.

He chuckled again. “If you think forty years of knowing someone is long enough to know why they’re going to show up with seven gnomes one day and name one of them Pookie, well, allow me to disabuse you of that notion immediately.”

I breathed a laugh, still shaky and unsure, but better than before.

My dad hummed quietly. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“No.” I wrung my fingers through my shirt. “I ran out in the middle of class. Everyone’s going to be—”

“Fine. Everyone is going to be just fine.”

“I’m going to have to—”

“Just tell them you have food poisoning.”

“I don’t, though.”

He laughed. “We know that, but they don’t have to.”

“I feel bad lying…”

“Do you want me to write your teacher a note?”

“Dad,” I groaned, amused. “It’s not primary school.”

“I don’t care. You’re my baby girl and you’re ill. That’s all I care about.”

My stomach jolted like a rock had been dropped into it. “I’m not ill.”

He snorted. “Ella, I didn’t have ‘explaining to a literal doctor that there are more ways than one to be ill’ on my to-do list today.”

I groaned. “I know. I know. I just… I don’t… want…” I sucked in a painful breath. “I need… to be…”

“Can you book an appointment with—”

“No,” I said quickly, knowing I was disappointing him. “I don’t have time.”

It wasn’t just that. It was that this felt like failure.

Like I was failing at Crescendo, failing in school, failing in moving on like everyone thought I should, failing at everything.

And I couldn’t face the look on my therapist’s face when I showed up there and admitted that I was failing at grieving. Again.

Last week, I’d been doing it. I was doing okay, doing well. I just needed to get that back.

I heard him suck in a breath that way he did—had always done—when he was about to impart wisdom he knew we didn’t want to hear. Callum had always whined and thrown himself about and then taken it out on an instrument, making something beautiful from his fury.

I’d always felt it like a punch to the gut, wrapped it up inside, and held onto it. A bruise I couldn’t let go of but didn’t know how to let out.

“It’s not going to go away if you don’t face it, sweetheart,” my dad said, his voice low and sad.

I cracked, fresh tears running down my face. “I don’t know how.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. I hate it. I hate it every day. And I hate that we can’t help you with it.

” He sniffed. “All you want to do in life is take away every little thing that hurts your children, keep them safe from all of it. And I’m so sorry that we don’t know how to take this hurt for you. ”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It’s not yours, either, Ella. None of it is your fault.”

It was. I should have known, should have worked harder.

Callum was the loud one, the brave one. He showed the world exactly who he was every single day of his life.

He lived so big. The house was filled with all his noise, his music, his life.

And I was older, I was supposed to protect him, help him, guide him, keep him safe.

I was a fucking doctor and I didn’t talk to him about the risks of riding a motorbike.

I’d blown it off and thought he wouldn’t listen.

I should have tried.

“Sweetheart?” my dad said quietly, a little more composed.

“Yeah, Dad. I’m here.” I dragged the hanging toilet roll towards me, tearing some of it off and mopping at my face, makeup already everywhere.

“You know your papa and I are so proud of you for doing Crescendo. For taking time to finally stop and to rediscover something you always loved, that you shared with your brother. And we know you’re going to do spectacularly—you always do.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to hurt.

There’s no way to do this without it being full of him.

And you’ve waited long enough to feel it all, baby girl.

Four years of feelings trapped inside of you. You’ve got to let them out.”

“I don’t know how,” I said again. I’d never felt so trapped in my life.

“Do you remember the first time we watched Sleeping Beauty at the ballet?”

“A little.” I remembered being small and excited. Just me and my dad and my papa. I remembered wearing sparkly shoes and a thick, winter coat. I remembered it raining and Papa carrying me because of those shoes.

“You cried so hard at some of the music. You felt it so deeply, even then. And, of course, we cried because we loved the way you felt things, how freely you felt them. And then you put it away. The world is not an easy place for someone who feels that much. Most especially when you suffer a loss.”

But they’d suffered it too. He was their son. And they were doing okay. What was wrong with me?

“I didn’t remember crying,” I said, my voice tiny.

He hummed. “That’s okay. My point is, music has always made you feel so much, Ella. And you should let it. It’s not going to be easy, or neat, or tidy—and I know that’s scary, but it’s okay.”

“I’m not very good at it.”

He barked a surprised laugh. “I know that’s not true.

You just need to sit down and let yourself bleed over the music, sweetheart.

Let yourself feel every little second of it, every part that hurts, every part you hate, and every part you love.

You can take a leaf out of your brother’s book and channel it all into your instrument. ”

“I can’t—the clarinet—no.” The words rushed from me like a gasp.

“That’s okay.” He wasn’t fazed. So calm, so constant. “Another instrument. It doesn’t even have to be one you particularly like or know very well. Just… hit it, strum it, blow it like you’re trying to destroy the whole world. Just let it out, darling. You’ve carried it long enough.”

I heard a sound from outside the door, someone moving around, and jolted back to the present, swiping frantically at my face. “I have to go, Dad.”

“Okay, sweetheart. I love you. Papa loves you. And we’re all so proud of you.” His voice broke a little and I knew he meant Callum, too.

God, how I wanted to be worthy of the three of them, to be good enough to be proud of, to be doing well enough to deserve their pride.

I hung up the call, wiped clean my face—though there was no hiding the blotches and puffy eyes—and knew I couldn’t withstand going back to class. It was late in the day. Someone would hold onto my stuff or I’d collect it tomorrow, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t be here right now.

I fled the building and half ran back to our flat. And I stood in the music room, staring down that piano. It had to be that. The piano was the foundation of composition. I had to know it. I had to beat it. It had started this whole spiral and it was where I was going to end it.

My heart pounded as I sat on the familiar stool feeling broken and bruised and alien. My fingers were stiff and uncoordinated as they hovered over the keys.

I didn’t know how to do it. I’d never done this. I played with precision and care. I’d always done exactly what Papa or my music teacher told me—exactly what every teacher told me. I thought about posture and technique and creating beautiful sounds.

“Callum,” I whispered out loud, my voice angrier than I’d expected. Not at him. “How did you do this? How do I do this?”

Four years of holding every single thing in. I had no idea how to be messy.

But this whole thing was messy. Losing your brother at twenty-seven was messy. What happened to him was wrong and hard and horrid.

My heart pounded in my chest.

It was death. And I hated that. It was a million endings and eternal pain. It was a million things I’d never said and never would. A million people he’d never gotten to be, never gotten to meet. It was a life unlived and the terror of letting that go.

It was loss and grief and pain and that feeling like I wanted to rip my own heart out just to stop it from hurting.

And I was angry .

A cry—primal, painful, harrowing—ripped itself from my throat, leaving me raw as my fingers slammed into crisp white keys.

And I bled into the piano.