I pull my chair right in front of his and lean in so close he edges back in his seat, away from the wild composer. ‘You don’t understand. I’m not on a deadline. Nobody’s waiting on me. Right now, I don’t carewhatI write. As long as it’s new. If you tell me the plot of your movie, that will be just another creative stimulus for me.Youwon’t use the music, but I might. And when we put your words and my music together, maybe we’ll find this elusive female lead that you’re searching for.’
The waves crash on the nearby beach and we stare at each other.
‘I started a piece this morning, inspired by that moment on the cliff.’
He tilts his head. ‘Which one?’
I meant the one standing on the bonnet of his ute, but now I’m thinking of the one on that rock, water gushing over us while he was on top of me. The way he never took his eyes off me, as if the whole ocean could come at us and we wouldn’t move. The way his thigh had felt against mine, pushed into the hard surface of that rock, hot sun, cold water, delicious anticipation. Now I shake off a shiver, which he catches. I know he does, because he’s covering a smile.
‘I want to play it for you on a real piano,’ I say, slightly breathless.Why does it feel like I’m undressing in front of him?
He considers me carefully. ‘What are you telling me, Hepburn? I’m your muse?’
This line, he delivers deadpan, but with a sparkle in his eyes that unleashes the butterflies inside me that are never far from the surface around him.Somethinghas crashed through the barrier that has kept me from my music all this time.
‘Maybe you are,’ I venture, scared to assign him a role this critical when our acquaintance is so new and both of us are creatively fragile. I’ve been here once before, with disastrous consequences.
He leans forward now, too, pulling on both arms of my camping chair, tipping it towards him. Like that time Fraser wrenched my chair across the floor …
My heart quickens at the idea of just how unexpectedly far I have come in three years, and how unexpectedly far I might potentially let myself go. ‘You might be my muse,’ I repeat as I reach out and brace myself on his shoulders. ‘But more importantly, maybe I’m yours.’
45
FRASER
‘You don’t have to stay,’ Maggie instructs, having enrolled Parker in the summer music school, which I’m convinced is meant to be exposure therapy for me. She’s conveniently ignoring the end-of-program concert we’ll be subjected to and which she knows I’ll attend, because I would never let Parker down like that. ‘Just drop her off and collect her. What are you going to do otherwise? Take her to the office?’
‘Hardly. I’m still recovering from that time she dropped a piece of scientific-grade glass worth two thousand dollars.’
Maggie hadn’t been amused then, and she’s not amused now. ‘This is Parker’s first love. You can avoid music in your own life, but you can’t keep pushing it out of hers. It isn’t fair.’
I hate it when she’s right. In any case, it takes three attempts to dig Parker out of bed for her first day, andcan I possibly drop her off on the corner and not come in, and have I ever considered an electric car?They’re even less likely to draw attention when I drop her places, as they’re practically silent.When did this start?
I swing the car into a spot. ‘Sorry for the excruciating reality of having to sign you in, Parks.’
She grunts, gets out, pulls at her clothes awkwardly, and drags her feet. Is there anything less appealing than walking into aschool-holiday program at thirteen, with your dad, where you know nobody? Sometimes I wonder if Maggie gets her at all.
During the sign-in palaver, they check my details against the information Maggie provided and usher Parker into a big room with all the others. She graces me with a small goodbye nod, and I attempt to extract myself without causing any DEFCON-level teen humiliation—not before stopping at a popup coffee kiosk to grab a takeaway muffin, and of course, because this is Canberra, I run into a colleague from the School of Geology and end up in a half-hour debate about earth science, which thankfully Parker doesn’t witness, because what could be more mortifying than your father consuming a bakery item in public?
Eventually, I break away and walk down the corridor towards the exit, past a series of small practice rooms—each a hive of activity. Clarinet scales in one room, brass ensemble in the next. Every room stirring vivid associations with Audrey until it’s a dizzying array of memories and a pointed reminder of all she has lost. And I’m at the door to Llewellyn Hall now, almost at the exact spot where I saw her looking crushed in the stairwell during Josh’s concert, while he went and smashed it out of the park.God, how I wanted to protect her from him that night.
So now it’s me, exposed to all of this, needing the protection, even though I’ve worked so hard. Tackled the loss and the parenting, the depression and the endless decisions about moving through it all and moving forward. Except for this one thing. Music.How can something this beautiful be my nemesis?
There’s only one more room to push past, and I focus on the sunlight streaming into the distant foyer as if I’m underwater, rising to the surface, holding my breath. But before I can make it past, I am entangled in familiar melodic lines.
Audrey’s song.The final one she was writing, which we played, half finished, at her funeral.
I step forward and place my forehead flat against the door, eyes shut, the melody seeping through the wood into this corridor, into my soul, tangling around raw grief and the memory of the heat and the pulsing of cicadas and the whirring of ceiling fans at the crematorium.
The pianist crashes through the peak of the crescendo, beyond what I remember. Memories dislodge, splintering like ice smashing into the ocean as I realise it’s not exactly Audrey’s piece. It’s different now.
My eyes jolt open again and I step back from the door, lifting my hand as if I’ve touched fire. Of course it’s not her piece. How could it be, when the music died inside her?I must be more messed up than I thought.
When I turn, intending to run, I slam into someone blocking the corridor. It takes a second for my brain to catch up and for my heart to plunge.
He heard that piece, too. I know he’s recognised it as hers. I can see that he’s equally baffled. But it’s only when our eyes meet and I see familiar pain reflected in my brother’s eyes that something else is finally confirmed, too. He loved her once. Even if it was always unrequited.
46
