Chapter Eight

Polly woke to music.

That was slightly unusual. Tilda never practised when she knew Polly was sleeping, but that was her violin. There was also someone on piano and—

Polly held her breath and listened.

She recognised that touch. Her skin knew it and her heart rate knew it seconds before her sleep-addled brain figured it out. She knew that style. The music swelled at the top of the phrase and the player leant into a perfectly controlled indulgence that Polly found herself anticipating and revelling in even as her mind reeled with a wistful litany of maybes, would-have-beens and what-nows.

Toks was here. Toks was at her piano.

Toks played as brilliantly as she always had.

Tilda’s violin followed bravely along, but the music stopped. There was a short pause and they took the phrase again, this time with a similar swell from Tilda.

Polly smiled. Nice. Her daughter was having a private masterclass with one of the world’s finest musicians.

Her smile widened into a grin. Tilda was going to be ecstatic. They were going to hear about this forever.

Polly skirted the edges of the wide, open-plan living room and padded into the kitchen.

The music stopped again. Massenet’s Méditation from Tha?s. A gentle piece – not too tricky for Tilda. She’d tackled it a year ago for her seventh grade exams but it hadn’t sounded quite like this the last time Polly had heard her play it. Toks was putting her through her paces.

“I want you to use more bow through the rallentando here. Let the music breathe.”

Tilda hummed. Meekly.

“Take it from the pick-up to the rall. And…”

Tilda’s violin soared back into the music.

It was nearly ten in the morning. Last night’s storm had washed the world clean and, as was often the case in February, dropped the temperature by around twenty degrees. Someone had thrown open all the operable walls and the house was now an open pavilion, the living room stretching all the way out to the verandah. The walls between the living room, the music room and the pool lounge had also been folded back making one large space. The sunshine poured in, sweetened by a fresh sea breeze.

She could smell scones cooking.

Magpie was sketching. She was outside on the verandah, leaning back against the balustrade, her sketchbook on one palm, her other hand moving furiously across the page. Her eyes were on the musicians.

Richard was watching them too. His instrument was on the coffee table between the lounge chairs. He nodded at Tilda every now and then. Encouragement when her eyes slipped past Toks.

Daz was at the end of the dining table, his laptop open. He was putting together the menu for the week as he did every Monday morning. He waved a hand when he saw Polly.

“Fridge,” he said.

Polly looked. A small serving of fruit salad had been saved for her with some Daz-made yoghurt. A tall glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice. She took it all to a kitchen stool and sat down to watch the show.

Across the wide, connected rooms, Toks sat at the piano with her back to her audience.

“Watch your intonation at the top of that phrase… better…”

She was in slim-fitting, light blue jeans again, a loose linen shirt untucked over top. Her feet were bare, and for some reason, that silly fact made Polly ludicrously happy. Toks was comfortable here – just as she’d always been. One foot worked the pedal. Polly saw a hint of purple toenails. Toks’ shoulders moved under the shirt as she played, but her whole body was twisted slightly sideways on the bench seat to face Tilda. Every now and then she raised a hand to illustrate the flow of the music, lifting it high to put it within Tilda’s eyeline. It was graceful but forceful too, then she dropped it back to the keys without the merest hiccup in the music.

She wasn’t reading. She had the accompaniment to Massenet’s piece in her head.

Polly listened more closely. There were slight variations in what Toks was playing compared to the piano arrangement that Tilda had performed from for her seventh grade examinations. Polly would know. She’d accompanied Tilda for her exams. But, she considered, Massenet had written the piece for solo violin and orchestra, not merely a piano.

Toks had the entire orchestral score in her head and was distilling a piano accompaniment from it on the fly.

“Full bow, full bow!” Toks called over a swell in the music. “No! Take it again from— where are we? Twenty-two?”

“Twenty-one,” muttered Tilda. She looked dazed.

Toks had the bar numbers in her head.

“Twenty-one,” Toks agreed, cheerfully. She led Tilda back in with just a shrug of her shoulders. “Lovely. Again. Stay with me this time. We’re going to make it move.”

Tilda’s eyes widened a moment with a nervous grin. She sucked in a breath before diving in again.

Richard caught Polly’s gaze and gave her a thumbs up.

Toks was still calling out encouragement over the music. “Yes… forte, forte… More! Piu mosso agitato! Gorgeous. And this is the bit we’re all here for… Let those harmonics really ring out.”

She was clever, Polly thought. Her accompaniment pushed at Tilda, goading her and supporting her. With her hands on the keys, Toks showed her how open the sky was above her and how she could soar through it if she dared. Tilda had never played like this.

“Beautiful,” cried Toks. “Now bring it gently back— don’t rush it— put it down so, so sweetly, yes! And straight on… With me…”

Richard ambled over to Polly as the pair worked through the return of the main theme.

“They’ve been at it for an hour,” he told her under the music. He reached out to steal a cube of her watermelon. Polly slapped his hand away. “The moment Toks figured out who she was and that she played, it was on. I’ve never actually seen Tilda play for so long. You should have heard them on her Vivaldi preludes. Tilda was sweating blood.”

They both chuckled at that. Tilda was blessed with a gift that meant she’d breezed through the grades without having to put too much effort in. Up until now, of course. If she wanted to pursue music any further, this was where it really began.

Justin appeared at the stairs, dressed in his uniform for work. He joined them at the kitchen bench, putting together some food for his lunch.

“They’re still going? Tilds is doing well?” It was a half-question. Classical music wasn’t Justin’s thing, despite living at Jerinja and being surrounded by it.

“The maestro is really working her,” Richard said. He looked impressed. He’d been part of Tilda’s musical upbringing since she’d first picked up a violin. It wasn’t Toks’ musicality that impressed him – she was one of the world’s top conductors, he didn’t expect anything less from her – it was her ability to pin Tilda down and get some discipline out of the stubborn teenager that was extraordinary.

They listened a moment longer.

Justin tipped his head toward the piano. “I’m off to work after morning tea. What do we tell Draga?” he murmured.

Draga wouldn’t know her daughter was home. Really home, as opposed to simply being back in the country.

Polly scrunched her nose at Toks’ back. “Don’t say anything yet,” she said. “Maybe I can convince Toks to come and visit her with me.”

Justin looked doubtful.

“I can try.” Polly shrugged.

Toks was giving more notes. “We can be more free with the articulation here. I’ll follow you. Yes, yes, but we want a crescendo there. No, lift your bow between those phrases. Again… lovely.”

Tilda wiped her forehead with the back of her bow hand when they reached the end. She finally saw Polly watching, crossed her eyes and poked her tongue out. Polly stuck hers out in return.

Toks turned on the piano stool and caught her doing it. A tiny frown creased her forehead, but a look of cunning crept into her expression when she noticed the small crowd watching. She actually rubbed her hands together with glee.

“And now we perform it,” she told Tilda.

Tilda wilted. A teenage groan.

“Harden up,” said Toks. She plunged immediately into the two-bar intro and showed Tilda no mercy. “Show me what you’ve learned.”

Tilda had no time to protest, but the performance she gave then was wholly different to the version she’d practised all last year. The notes were the same, of course, but now she played with a freedom in her phrasing, a delicacy in her line that lifted the piece to a new level. Toks’ watched her closely as she played and, as she did, the magic happened. Tilda slipped into a different realm. Her vibrato released a yearning in the music Polly had never heard from her before, a passion Tilda would have mocked at any other time, a peacefulness in the final bars that seemed too deep for a sixteen-year-old to be able to access.

Even Tilda seemed surprised when they brought the piece to a gentle close.

There was a long moment.

“Fuck me, darls.” Magpie sounded choked up. “Never heard you play it like that before.”

It broke the spell. Tilda beamed and the group at the kitchen bench burst into applause.

Toks waved a hand at her, dismissing her from her masterclass. Tilda blurted a thoroughly overwhelmed ‘thank you’ and bounced over to Polly. Toks started playing again immediately, a florid, virtuosic improvisation on the piece they’d just played.

Show off.

“Oh my god, Mum, that was, like, amazing.” Tilda dumped her violin on the counter, gave Polly a quick squeeze and stole her last strawberry. She popped it into her mouth and ignored Richard’s pointed look. “I can’t believe I was just playing with Ksenia Tokarycz. I mean, she is amaaazing. She totally understands the music. I just learned more from her in one lesson than I’ve learned in ten years from Mrs de Nardi.” She was on a roll now. She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket and took a selfie, angling the phone to get Toks at the piano in the background. “Shelby is going to be soooo jealous. And Toks said my technique was really good—”

“I’m pretty sure it’s Maestro Tokarycz to you, young whippersnapper,” Richard grumbled. He was teasing but Tilda stumbled to a halt, eyes wide.

“Seriously?” she whispered. She put her hand over her mouth, mortified.

“The woman has a doctorate. Three, I think.”

Polly huffed.

Tilda rounded on her, outraged. “I’m sure she earned them, Mum.”

Polly knew for a fact that only one of them was earned. The other two were honorary. Not that she’d been keeping tabs. Her daughter’s loyal fangirling was impressive, though.

“Doctor Tokarycz,” Polly muttered with a smirk she couldn’t stop. “Doc Toks. Sounds ridiculous.”

Tilda giggled.

“I’m not deaf, thank you very much, Pearlie Paterson,” Toks called over her shoulder, not even moderating her playing.

Tilda’s giggle exploded into a full blown snort.

“Pearlie?! OMG, Mum. Please don’t tell me you were really called Pearlie when you were a kid. How embarrassing.”

Polly swatted her. “You don’t think Doc Toks is funnier?” She handed Tilda her instrument and pointed at her to get lost. She raised her voice. “Thank you for that, Ksenia.”

The music stopped in an instant.

Toks swung one leg over the bench seat and faced them. She was smirking. Her eyes were alight. It was a million percent on her cold, crisp fury of yesterday.

“Your kid bows like you do,” Toks said. She ran one hand up through her hair, still crinkled and tousled from yesterday’s rain, and it fell straight back over one eye again. It made Polly’s fingers tingle.

“You”re a piano player,” Polly retorted. “What would you know?”

“Timidly.”

Bitch.

Polly couldn’t stop a smile though. “I think you mean with sensitivity,” she said. “With grace.”

Toks blew a raspberry.

“With refinement,” Polly insisted. She wasn’t sure she was helping her own cause.

“Compliantly,” Toks said. Her smirk widened.

“With restraint.”

Toks looked triumphant. “Submissively,” she drawled and then laughed out loud at the long snorting noise that came from Magpie on the deck.

Polly found herself blushing. She hadn’t blushed in sixteen years. She crossed her legs.

Tilda missed the innuendo but edged in on the attention. “My bowing is fine!”

“Well, it could do with some advancement but you do have a gift, Tilds.” Richard was kind. Polly knew he liked the uncle role, though he never described it as such.

Toks clearly agreed. “From her mother, obviously.”

“Was that a compliment?” Polly shot.

Toks’ eyes narrowed and her head tipped back. The look she gave Polly pierced through the playful humour in the room. It was suddenly loaded with sixteen years of bitterness and Polly felt all its weight, all its hurt and pain and guilt burn on her skin. Toks had always complimented her, always encouraged her, always told her she could be anything she wanted to be. Polly wasn’t being fair.

The look was gone in a second. Toks shut it down with a dismissive shrug and another smirk.

No one else seemed to have noticed.

“She’s breezed through her grades,” Richard grumbled. He watched Tilda put her instrument back in its case.

“I’ve worked!” Tilda cried. “I have!”

Magpie made another long, rude fart sound from the verandah.

“Rubbish.” Richard followed her to the couch and snatched a micro-fibre cloth from her instrument case. He flicked it at her. Protective uncle mode was now fully engaged. “And clean your bow, you disgraceful child. The humidity is going to be dreadful today. Now you’ve done your seventh grade, you’ll have to practise like the rest of us.”

“Whatever.”

Across the room, Toks’ eyebrows arched up her forehead. Polly suspected she wasn’t accustomed to teenage backchat.

“Mr Castelli makes an excellent point, Tilda,” said Toks, mildly.

There was a low muttering about viola players. Richard ruffled Tilda’s hair.

“The real work starts now,” Toks told her. “Practise!”

“Uugghhh!”

Tilda snapped her violin case shut and flopped down on the couch, her face in her phone.

Polly was beyond humiliated. “Tilds!” she hissed.

Richard was on it. “Thank you, Maestro,” he prompted.

Tilda looked up and seemed to remember what had just happened. She beamed at Toks with teenage emotions typically scaled well out of proportion. It was either abject misery or enthusiasm unbounded. Toks looked taken aback.

“Thanks, Maestro. Thank you so, so much. That was amazing. Can we work on my Sarasate later? The Spanish Dances. Please?”

Toks eyes flicked once to Polly’s then she grinned at Tilda.

“Sure.”

A long, tentatively comfortable moment stretched out on the ease of Toks’ smile. Polly found herself leaning towards her, sliding off her stool and padding into the music room without really knowing she was doing it. Toks slid around to the piano again and played something idle – Liszt, Polly thought, with half a mind – schmaltzy, romantic stuff she always used to tease Polly with. Technically, the stuff was profoundly difficult – Polly never mastered it – but Toks always played it with ease.

Which was infuriating, impressive and sexy as hell.

Whenever they’d had the place in Paddington to themselves, Polly had always stood behind Toks and pressed her body to Toks’ back. She’d drape her arms over Toks’ shoulders, her fingertips tickling her breasts and trying her best to drag her away from the music.

“Music to grope by,” Toks had snickered, refusing to stop, until Polly swatted the side of her head and Toks pulled her around and fucked her right there on the keyboard, Polly’s arse on the keys, her feet either side of Toks’ thighs on the piano stool.

Now, Polly stood at the belly of the piano and folded her arms on its edge.

Toks’ eyes danced at her.

“Sleep in, did you?” she said, over her music. “I keep you up all night?”

Polly blushed – instantly – and Toks smirked when she noticed. She threw a few extra trills and arpeggios into the piece that Liszt had never written.

Oh for some way to just wind back the clock, to brush away sixteen years of heartache with one cocky cadenza.

But Polly could see her family at Toks’ back, Tilda eavesdropping with no small amount of glee and Magpie wheezing out a disbelieving guffaw.

“You wish,” she huffed – and she wasn’t quite sure who she was talking to. Toks looked like she did wish – and that gripped Polly’s heart and yanked hard. Tilda looked far too tickled by the notion of her mum maybe getting some and held up her phone to snap a pic of her standing so close to the maestro. Magpie was going for a wise smile as if she was an all-knowing, all-seeing matriarch, which was a bit rich from a woman who got hers simply by taking a bottle of cheap red over to 613 and shagging Kerrie whenever there was nothing to binge watch on Netflix.

They were saved by Daz.

“Scones are cooked. Tilda! Set the table.”

Tilda groaned but she got up.

“Mum doesn’t sleep much,” she called to Toks, and it was cheeky enough to be both an explanation and a suggestive prompt.

Polly didn’t need her daughter playing matchmaking too.

“Ring the bell while you’re at it, child of mine,” she told her.

Morning tea on Sundays had always been a grand event at Jerinja. Scones with jam and cream, tea brewed in a proper tea pot and the bell rung to invite every guest on the property – all served on the big, long table near the deck. The bell used to be Polly’s job when she was a kid and she’d hang on the railing after she’d rung it, watching over the paddocks for Toks on Milica. Toks always said morning tea at Jerinja was better than the cold, silent remembrance of Sundays at 613. Her face softened now as she heard it and the Liszt twisted and flipped into a lighthearted improvisation on the sound of the bell that curled into a far gentler arabesque by Debussy.

“Some things haven’t changed here,” she murmured.

“Everything’s changed, Toks.”

Toks’ face closed over again.

The Debussy rippled and fluttered for a few moments longer, then Toks snapped a short, sharp chord onto the keys as she stood. She put her hands on her hips and regarded the piano. She shook her head.

“This is, by far and away, the ugliest piano I’ve ever seen,” Toks said. She frowned at Polly. “Why? Why do you have this complete piece of crap in your house? What is it – two-hundred years old?” She looked at the rest of the music room, at the computers and electric keyboards set up for Tightly Strung, and the microphones aimed at the innards of the two old upright pianos. She was lost for words, aghast, her hand over her lips. “And this? Pearlie? What the hell?”

The bewilderment in her voice made Polly look at the chaos with new eyes.

She supposed it might look like a mess to someone like Toks, whose orchestra of refined musicians with their acoustic instruments sat neatly before her dressed in suits and gowns. Polly’s music was an exploration – an endless search for something she wasn’t sure she wanted to find – and her instruments reflected that.

There were seven electric keyboards and synthesisers set in a U-shape – two Junos within easy reach, the Moog and the DX-7 forming the foundation, with a Mellotron balanced delicately on top. Two old, weathered upright pianos provided a backdrop, their cabinets long removed, their hammers and wippens exposed to the room. Polly had stuffed them full of felt and tape, she’d added tacks and foil to muffle and tame their sound, and the mess of it bled out of the repeating pattern of their mechanisms. A labyrinth of cabling connected the lot, adding sequencers, samplers, modules and the digital mixers Tilda liked for their coloured LEDs. It looked chaotic, but it was a pathway of wires, a web of curiosity that drew Polly onward in her pursuit of the once-heard.

“What is this, Pearlie?” That plaintive puzzlement again.

Tilda rescued her this time.

“Mum restored that piano,” Tilda called, still bristling at Toks’ first remarks about the Blüthner grand Toks had just been playing.

Toks seemed glad to be distracted from the mess of Polly’s recording gear.

“She missed some bits,” she said, stating the obvious. “Where did you find this piece of rubbish? Someone’s cow shed?”

“Literally someone’s chook shed.” Tilda was slinging plates around the big table with belligerence now. Toks’ disrespect had irritated her. Polly smiled at her loyalty.

If anything Toks seemed slightly more aghast at the idea of a grand piano that had been in a chicken coop than the confusion of recording gear on the other side of the room.

“Some lovely old lady down near Ulladulla heard about what I do with— with pianos and wanted me to take it,” Polly explained. “It belonged to her great grandmother, but no one had played it for decades. They built the chook pen around it because no one could shift it. She was moving into an aged care place. We took the chickens too.”

Toks just looked at her. The uneasiness in her eyes hurt.

“That doesn’t really explain it, Pearlie.” And then— “What do you do with pianos?”

“I restore them.”

It was half of the truth.

Toks raised a doubtful eyebrow.

“I left the outside the way I found it—”

“She washed the chook poop off it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Tilda said. Jars of jam and pots of whipped cream hit the table sullenly.

“That’s enough, Tilds,” Magpie muttered.

“—but I spent nearly twelve months on the mechanism,” Polly continued. “Lifted out the frame and redrilled the pinholes. New pin blocks, of course—”

“Of course.” Sarcastic.

“—and I had to source nearly three-quarters of the actions and wippens. New felts. Restrung the whole thing with sweet new wire and nursed it and voiced it through the six months it took for its tuning to settle.”

It had been an exercise in patience and endurance. Pianos didn’t age like violins. Stradivarius and his ilk were lucky in that their instruments would only ever mellow and deepen with the centuries, carrying their names into a musical future with whispers of reverence.

Old pianos simply rattled. Even a Steinway really only had a fifteen year window of excellence. After that they either needed the type of total overhaul Polly had given her chicken shed Blüthner, or they needed to gracefully retire from public performance. At the Sydney Opera House, Polly regularly retired pianos that were a million times better than her Blüthner.

She’d given her heart to that Blüthner, vaguely hoping it might help her own.

Almost everyone asked her why she did it. She wasn’t sure. She’d worked on it for a whole year and hadn’t found any clarity.

Toks just stared.

“I like the juxtaposition between the beaten, weathered exterior and the hopeful new sound within,” Polly finished, lamely. She hugged her shirt around her. Toks’ eyes were burning her.

Tilda was still feeling protective.

“It’s a Blüthner,” she said, appearing beside Polly and folding her arms like a warrior.

“I can see that.” Toks raised her eyebrow again and that perfect, prideful arch that had always made Polly weak at the knees now looked condescending. Supercilious.

“Style VIII,” Tilda added. “1893.”

God, they were like bloody roosters, the both of them, Polly thought. How had that happened?

“And yet, your F sharp is buzzing like a chainsaw,” Toks said, shortly, and turned back to the piano, her blond hair flopping over one eye.

Polly saw what she was about to do in slow motion. Slow, thick horror dripped down her spine like a glacier and crushed away the brightness of the morning. She was sixteen years and ten-thousand miles away in moments, trapped, as she always had been.

She managed to turn away before the first note was struck.

“Listen to it,” cried Toks. She hammered away at it, hitting the F sharps the octave above and below for good measure. She slammed it again and again and rippled a blisteringly fast scale through the middle of it, stopping ostentatiously at the offending note and pounding it harder. “It’s a good five cents off where it should be—” she paused and sounded the octaves again, angry now “—though the octaves are good. And you say you tuned it, Polly? This is what you do now? What happened to your cello? What happened to our dreams— your dreams— your—” She choked that off and banged the keys again. “How could you not notice this?”

But Polly barely heard a thing.

She was frozen.

One part of her mind felt her family swing into action.

The other part simply stopped, locked in an old terror. Counting heartbeats. Watching, but not feeling. Standing, but dead inside.

It had been so long.

“Mum?”

“Sounds fine to me,” drawled Magpie. The woman could move when she needed to. She dashed from the big table to the music room in seconds, calling for Richard as she moved. “Don’t you think, Richard?”

Richard took his cue. A flurry of distracting conversation.

“It’s tuned to 443, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, Maestro. Same as the orchestra. Which I appreciate every time I play here. She’s done such a good job with it—”

“It’s flat,” Toks declared and struck the note again.

Polly couldn’t breathe. There was smoke in the air. Another piano – a broken one – echoed every cry, an endless resonance that found the cracks in Polly’s mind and seeped in deep. Booming like gunshots, ringing with pleas. Twisting and rolling and ringing, on and on and on and—

“Mum? Mum, it’s okay.”

“And there is something buzzing on the strings. Let me look.”

The rational part of Polly heard the piano stool creak as Toks put one knee on it and leaned over to investigate the inside of the piano. Her voice echoed off the triangle of the raised lid.

“Here! Look— What the hell?”

Tilda gave up. Dimly, Polly recognised the pain of failure in her eyes as Tilda realised, again, that she wasn’t enough. But her daughter knew what to do.

“Justin! Please?”

Justin was already on his way, as tall and strong and implacable as ever.

He bent down to put his face in Polly’s line of sight.

“You’re safe, Polly,” he murmured. “Shhh. Listen. You’re home.”

Justin’s hands were warm and everything was fine, but Toks was still assaulting the piano.

“There’s something wrapped around the wires,” she said. “No, it’s a knot!” The F sharp cut through the air, violent, angry.

Justin lost his temper.

“Make her stop,” he snapped at Tilda, and he pulled Polly away to the kitchen.

Daz was there to meet her, a tray of scones straight from the oven in his hands. They smelled like home-cooking – like childhood memories and recipes written by hand in an old notebook stuffed on the top of the fridge. They smelled like cake – not like gun-smoke, after all. Their warmth cradled her. Daz put an arm over her shoulder just as he had long ago, and gave her a task: separate the scones, tuck them safely into a basket, cover them with a tea towel. They did it together, slowly, methodically, the simple directions and the homeliness of the job grounding both of them. Justin hovered close by.

Their presence gave Polly room to watch, as her hands carefully broke apart the bread. She saw Toks by her piano – and, bit by bit, she came back to herself again.

In the music room, Tilda turned her helplessness on Toks, still with her head half under the piano lid.

“Leave it – just don’t touch it. Maestro, please.” She jiggled on the spot, desperate now. “Play something, will you? Can you just play something that she likes? Quickly. Please?”

Toks emerged from the piano and her exasperation was obvious. It blossomed into surprise and then concern and then— irritation.

“Play us a tune, darls,” said Magpie. She and Richard made a barrier of their bodies between Toks and the kitchen, and Toks craned her neck to look at Polly.

Polly stared back at her.

Toks – who had never called, who didn’t come to the hospital, who had never even asked after her – was in her house.

“How about the Liszt you were playing earlier, Maestro?” Richard was still urgent, bless him.

“Please?” begged Tilda.

Toks sat down at the keys and played, not the Liebestraum, but an improvisation on it, and it was a clever, flashy rendition. Typical Toks, with virtuosic runs and leaps and cadenzas stolen from Liszt’s more difficult pieces, showing off like she always did. It snapped Polly’s mind back to the present, its confidence, its audacity exactly what she’d needed sixteen years ago, though she’d take it now.

Better late than never, a tiny, tiny hopeful part of her whispered.

Daz had just nudged Polly toward the table with her basket of scones neatly wrapped and warm in their tea towel when the two guests strode in from the garden. Their timing was perfect. Polly used them as an excuse to brush away the last of her wobble and welcomed them in. They went straight to stand around the piano with Tilda, Magpie and Richard as if the gathering was a small recital, and Polly saw Toks notice the crowd and play up to it even further.

The Liebestraum – love’s dream – was exceptionally florid now.

She was brilliant.

An insufferable show off, but brilliant.

Sunlight streamed through the opened walls of the music room and a cool, fresh breeze ruffled Toks’ hair as she played. Beyond her, the view down the coast glittered like emeralds and sapphires. In the big eucalypt near the dam, a trio of kookaburras laughed at her music, and a breeze grinned through her Steinway. Her audience was dazzled. Tilda hung over the curve of the piano and was entranced. She looked up to find Polly’s eyes and smiled happily when she saw Polly was okay again, then she mimed an ostentatious Oh my god, how good is the Maestro? at Toks.

And everything was okay again.

Justin squeezed her hand.

“You good?” he murmured.

She nodded.

“You haven’t done that in ages. I can ask her to leave, if you want me to.”

“Don’t,” said Polly. “I think— I think she’s good for me.”

Justin didn’t look so sure.

“Anything you need,” Daz added, quietly. His eyes turned wicked. “Can toss her off the escarpment if you want us to.”

There was an outrageously grandiose cadenza from the piano. Polly winced.

“Might take you up on that if she keeps massacring the classics like that,” she said.

Justin chuckled. “It isn’t supposed to sound like that?”

Polly smiled and huffed out a happy snort, and Toks brought the piece to a close to wild applause from her small audience.

Magpie looked over to check on Polly, then instantly cut Toks back down to size.

“Bit sentimental, that piece.”

Toks looked put out. “Romantic,” she admonished. “Liszt was a Romantic.”

“Not sure I’d call that romantic.”

Toks peered around the group to cast a worried glance at Polly but Magpie and Richard were still in protective mode. Polly loved them for it.

“From the Romantic era, ignoramus,” Richard said, mildly. “The maestro can explain it, if you would?”

They kept her occupied all the way through morning tea, plying her with questions about her work, about her take on arts funding in Europe versus the rest of the world – and when her attention wandered back to Polly, her eyes seeking her out across the table, they introduced her to the guests and drew her into those conversations too.

Polly almost felt sorry for her.

They were almost at the end of the meal before Toks finally had room for a question of her own.

“Do you happen to know where my piano is, by the way?” It was honest, genuine confusion, almost forlorn except that the confident, capable woman currently holding court at the Jerinja table was far too suave to sound forlorn. “Pearlie? Did my mother sell it? My Steinway?”

With a noise like a cat yakking on the carpet, Tilda snorted her tea. Toks looked at her in alarm, but it was exactly the distraction everyone else needed. Richard slapped Tilda on the back and made loud ‘ahem-ing’ noises. Magpie held up the plate containing the last scone and loudly asked if anyone else wanted it. “Going once, going twice…” she joked, far too loudly. Justin stood and stretched and yawned like a tuba, and announced he was off to work, and Daz suddenly remembered to ask Toks about any food allergies she might have in relation to dinner.

Toks narrowed her eyes.

The meal broke up and Polly cleared the table. Toks stood to one side with her arms folded and watched. Polly revelled in the feeling of her eyes following her as she worked, that proud stance turning her on like it always had.

But the same feelings mustn’t have been swirling in Toks’ mind because she turned away after a few short moments – back to the piano. She bullied Richard into some Mendelssohn. Two world class artists creating extraordinary music with an almost lazy casualness – it was a Sunday morning, after all. Breezy, but still utterly brilliant.

Polly watched them from behind the kitchen bench.

It was a world she was locked out of now – one that had almost been hers until it had been ripped violently from her.

She was happy to own every decision she’d made since then, but this must be what regret felt like, she thought. A mid-life crisis. She wiped crumbs from the counter top, wringing the cloth in the sink.

Domesticity.

It was bitter, even while it was homely and loving and comfortable and almost everything she wanted.

“Polly! Get your cello! Tilda, grab your fiddle.”

Toks called from the piano without turning her head, without stopping her playing. She’d swept Richard into the Mahler Piano Quartet now with barely even a break in the music and, with breathtaking mastery, was improvising the cello and violin parts on the fly while she waited for Polly and her daughter to join them.

Tilda rifled through one of the many piles of sheet music on the bookshelf and swore under her breath.

“Second shelf,” Richard muttered, playing from memory and not wanting to admit he needed the sheets in front of his maestro.

“Pearl! Cello!”

She was still so bossy, Polly thought, moving to stand at the edge of the music room, just behind Toks’ back. People would probably call it authoritative now.

And she was beautiful – the muscles in her shoulders as she played, the tilt of her head at a particularly lyrical line.

The sun in her hair.

“I don’t really play anymore, Toks,” Polly said.

Toks’ shoulders went rigid, but she didn’t stop. Polly was glad she couldn’t see her face.

“I haven’t played seriously since— well, for a long time. I can’t—”

“You’re not that bad, Mum.” Tilda found the sheet music she wanted and jumped in. “Come on.”

Traitorous child.

“Get your instrument, Pearlie,” Toks ordered.

The Mahler flowed sweetly on. It hadn’t ever really needed a cello line.

Polly looked at Toks’ back and saw nothing but the years between them. There were far too many.

“I can’t,” she said.

She’d let too much go.

Magpie watched her sadly.

Polly felt every atom in her body twist and tear, and she turned and ran from the room.