Chapter Nine

“I’ve managed to reschedule all your meetings to online except for one,” Sumi said, early on Monday morning. “Everything is updated in your diary.”

Toks sat on the small deck out the front of the tiny home nestled in a corner of the gardens at Jerinja and wondered why she was still there.

The deck had a sensational view down the coast – perhaps that was why. It was a view she’d forgotten over the years in the cramped cities of Europe. The sky was infinitely wider here, an impossible blue that stretched to a horizon so sweeping she could see the curve of the planet.

She’d watched the sun rise over the ocean.

She had pretty views from her apartments in Berlin, in Hamburg, Vienna and Severin – centuries old buildings, cathedrals, a few grand old trees – but nothing like this.

This was … inspiring. Music and possibilities were swirling under her skin and her fingers itched for a piano to get the thoughts down.

Jerinja had awakened her mind in ways that made her realise she’d been sleepwalking for years and not known it.

She made that connection tentatively. Part of her didn’t want it to be true.

That same part was brusque and impatient with Sumi now.

“Which one?”

“Your first piano rehearsal with Rebecca Herzog. Thursday at two. She’s here in Sydney a week early. Grandparents are local, or something.”

Becca was her violin soloist for the first week of the season. Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Shamelessly romantic and a definite crowd-puller. Rebecca Herzog was an Aussie girl too, though she was based in New York now. Toks had programmed this with her two years ago when she’d first started scheduling works and artists for her Sydney stint. It was part of her scheme to showcase Australian talent on the country’s finest stage – bring them home from their stellar careers in Europe and the U.S. and show them off in front of local audiences. It was rather cunning of her, she thought, and she hoped it would cover her arse. They might forgive her for running back to Europe at every available opportunity.

“Cancel it. I’ll have dinner with her early next week and we’ll have a play-through afterwards. Arrange it.”

Sumi’s eye roll was practically audible. They both knew exactly what that meant. Becca did too. They’d played the Tchaikovsky together often enough to know what they both wanted for it. It was just a matter of reconnecting.

They could do that in Toks’ bed.

“Of course, Maestro,” Sumi murmured. There was the shuffling of papers. “Things going well for you down there, then?”

That stopped Toks cold.

Polly.

She’d almost forgotten.

She had to admit she had no idea how things were going at all. She had no idea why she was even doing this. Seeing Polly was wonderful, painful and almost, almost made the careful, meticulous wall-building of the last sixteen years pointless. Until Polly turned those eyes so completely liquid with accusation on her and Toks felt like running.

Maybe she should.

Jump back in the car and flee back up to the city. Call in a favour from her cousin and soar home to Korovinja in his private jet. Put some Mahler, some Shostakovich, some Messiaen on the music stand and lose herself to the complexities of one hundred instruments and just as many egos. Sit herself in front of the piano with a bottle of scotch on the rim, anger in her fingers and emptiness in her heart, and play and play and play until—

But Polly was here.

She had to try.

“Please check with Rebecca,” she said, more circumspectly. “I can, of course, meet her for a piano rehearsal if she wants one.”

Sumi choked. “Is everything alright, Toks?”

She really didn’t know.

“It’s ten o’clock. Do I have the link for my first meeting?”

“Sure,” Sumi said. Flustered. Confused. “Sure. Orchestra Board and the major sponsors. And be nice, Toks. They’re paying you, remember?”

Toks couldn’t help a grin. “Aren’t they just?”

“God, you’re awful. Forty minutes, immediately followed by a quick check in with your associate conductors and your concertmaster. Ten minute break and then you’ll be talking to Vienna. It will be one a.m. in Vienna and the exec team is staying up especially to accommodate your timezone so be particularly nice on that call, if you can, Maestro.”

“Is that sass, Sumi?”

Sumi made a sweet humming noise. “You bet it is. Your meeting is ready.”

The business side of her world dragged on until midday when the signal dropped out utterly.

Not a single bar on any of her devices.

“The hell?” she murmured, but she was also struggling to care. When she raised her eyes above her laptop screen, the blue of the sky had deepened, the ocean was an aquamarine that bent her mind and a delicate blue haze was rising off the trees on the escarpment as the day warmed up. Not even her office high in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg had a view like this.

She breathed in the fresh tang of eucalyptus.

All the same, she had one more call to Chicago to get out of the way before she was done. She took her phone and stepped out into the garden with her hand in the air, searching for signal.

“Won’t help, darls.”

Toks blinked. The Magpie-woman had a paintbrush in her hair again. She was watching with her hands on her hips.

“Multipath interference,” she said, sagely, and Toks tried not to let her eyes bug out. “Reflections off the escarpment and the ocean. That Lion King technique will never work. You need to go higher.”

Toks glanced at the safety of her tiny home.

“The big house, if you’re brave.” Magpie said it mildly, but she managed to convey a truly incredible amount of judgement. It grated on Toks’ nerves. “It’s in line with the repeater up at Nerradja. Signal’s always good. And you could try talking to Polly, rather than to your phone. She’s been up there twisting her hands all morning.”

The woman looked exceptionally pleased with herself and turned away.

No one talked to the Maestro like that.

Magpie might have been a preposterous arse with an ego that rivalled Toks’ own, but she was wrong about Polly. Only Tilda was in the house.

She led Toks into the music room and hooked her up to wifi, big screens and a camera that made Toks look like she was in a studio. The teenager being clever with the tech. Then she withdrew very respectfully and left Toks to her final meeting, sliding the glass doors of the music room behind her. She was still lurking in the living room once Toks was done.

“No school?” Toks asked.

The kid looked thrilled to be talking with her. Toks was used to that – everyone she met was dazzled by her reputation – but it was odd coming from someone who had Polly’s eyes. Who the hell was this kid? How had sixteen years gone by?

“I home school.”

The hippy-vibe still ran strong at Jerinja, after all. “Why?”

“Why not?” Tilda looked annoyed. Toks didn’t care for her tone. “Sorry. It’s just that everyone asks that, like there’s something weird about it. I didn’t expect you to.”

“No?”

Tilda’s grin was a carbon copy of Polly’s at the same age. It punched Toks in the gut.

“You’re cool.”

“Hmm.” Toks sat on the piano stool, her back to the keys. She gave Tilda the invitation the girl was plainly desperate for. “Tell me about you? Why do you home school?”

Tilda practically bounced over. “I just always have. Well, aside from the first three months of kindergarten. Mum couldn’t handle the school gate. Nerradja is a small town. Everyone knows each other. Everyone talks. Is that a score for something you’re working on?” She pointed to the music Toks had in her lap.

Toks spun and placed it on the music board of the piano. She patted the bench next to her and stifled a grin when Tilda’s eyes widened.

“New music. I commissioned a piece from an Australian composer. No one has heard it before. I need to learn it.” She flipped it open. “What does everyone talk about?”

“About what happened, I ‘spose.” Tilda shrugged. “Mum insists on wearing long sleeves and long dresses and stuff, but everyone knows the scars are still there.”

Her matter of fact tone pulled Toks off balance. The comfortable rhythm of her own perception was yanked into someone else’s emotional song. Toks had known about Polly’s scars – she’d seen them the other day when Polly had wrapped her shirt around her body to hide them – but she’d forgotten. Again. It was a bucket of reality dumped over her cold with the knowledge she’d missed something big, something important.

A pain that could have been guilt twinged hard under her ribs.

“So, we homeschooled. I think it was Justin who insisted, otherwise Mum would probably just have ignored the issue. I’d have gone feral like my grandparents. But I really liked it, so I just kept going.” She pointed at the music. “I conduct the primary school band though—” She quailed, then ploughed on. “All the Frozen hits and the Bluey theme song, and I know that’s totally crap compared to what you do, but I was wondering— could we— Would you mind sharing how you approach learning a new work like this?”

Another weird twist of life and circles, and more proof that Toks had been arrogant and blind in her own world.

“I start with determining the main line. The pathway into the music for the listener. Where do you think it is?”

Tilda rose to the slight challenge in her tone in the exact same way Polly always had. She wrinkled her nose at the music. “There’s a main line in this?”

Toks nudged her with her shoulder. “Show some respect. Contemporary music transcends time and form and can sing like the stars, but only if you put the work in and truly serve the composer’s intent. Tell me where the main line is.”

They were a good forty minutes into the work – Tilda was a quick student – when Polly emerged. She came in with Daz, both of them chattering about the new guests arriving that day. They’d been surfing. Polly brought a bowl of breakfast cereal over to the piano, and watched Toks and Tilda through the triangle of its lid.

She was flushed from the sun, freckles like stars across her nose, her hair tangled with salt. That thin white scar tracked down her cheek and creased when she smiled at them both. Then she kissed her daughter on the top of the head.

“I haven’t slept,” she murmured. “Going to get an hour now.”

One hand landed on Toks’ shoulder – impossibly light, like she remembered at the last minute that she shouldn’t. Her touch nearly melted Toks’ spine.

And then she was gone.

It was midday.

What was wrong with her?

Polly slept and Toks wandered.

She wasn’t sure what came over her. Hands in the pockets of the jeans Daz washed for her. Shirt sleeves rolled to her elbows as the summer heat intensified.

Borrowed boots.

She snorted at the ridiculousness of it. She was Maestro Ksenia Tokarycz, widely acclaimed as the generation’s finest classical musician. She ruled over Europe’s most illustrious concert halls. She commanded the world’s most esteemed orchestras. And yet, here she was in ‘the spare pair’ of Blundstones Tilda had dug out of the boot-bin for her.

“They’re Mum’s old ones. I reckon they’ll fit.”

Every instinct told her not to, but she slipped her feet into Polly’s shoes. Brown and scuffed, muddy and elastic-sided. They didn’t merely fit – they connected directly to something deep within her memory that told her she was home.

Jerinja shimmered in the heat of the noon-day sun. A patch of emerald high on the escarpment with the brightness of the ocean at its feet, its heart shaded by towering eucalyptus and the cool tang that collected in the hollows.

It was madness. She had no time for this. She had work. Study. A pile of symphonies she needed to get into her head. But Jerinja called, and Toks went for a walk.

Even the trees had looked funny to seven-year-old Ksenia when she’d arrived in Australia. Granted, at that age she couldn’t have named the elms, oaks, ash and beech trees that had graced the elegant avenues and parks of Severin, but gum trees? They were scrappy. Ugly. Twisted. Messy.

And they had a silly name.

It had taken Pearlie Paterson to show Toks how to really see her adopted country.

Grey-green leaves against the purple-bruise clouds of an approaching storm. The mottled white and salmon of their trunks after rain. Fluffy yellow flowers like fairy powder-puffs – Toks had rolled her eyes – and gum nuts of every size and shape. The beauty was there, once Polly had helped her find it, and Toks saw it now. It woke in her chest – almost forgotten and buried beneath the stone and steel of Europe’s cities – but it played a song that was all wrapped up with her confusion about Polly.

They used to swim in the pool in the glade here.

Toks’ feet had taken her along a path they remembered better than she did. It began at the back of the Jerinja house, skirted the farm buildings and headed straight for the shelter of the trees. From there, it tracked between giant sandstone boulders that littered the edge of the escarpment, around tall blackbutts and thinner stringybarks. A stream swelled into a pond and collected at the lip of a sandstone shelf, green with slime, before tumbling away again on its path to the waterfall.

There was music, but it wasn’t her imagination – not some romantic cliche spun from Toks’ childish memories. She could hear it.

A piano stood in the water.

Toks was dumbfounded.

This was the pond in the glade. The place was ordinary, really – only magical if you listened to the fanciful stories Polly made up when they were tired from swimming and sunning themselves on the big rock over there. Milica the horse would have nosed up to the water and patiently endured the splashing from two giggling girls. There was the spot where Toks totally misjudged the swinging rope one time and smashed her toes on a boulder. Polly got a gumboot stuck in the mud right there – so stuck they couldn’t get it out and were in tears of laughter – stitches – when rescuing it meant they lost her other one. It was just a creek that ran between Jerinja and 613, and further up on the plateau, Walter Nugent used to throw his dead sheep in it until one washed down in a storm and Polly’s dad went up to give him what for.

It was nothing special.

But there was a piano in the water like it was art.

Like the place was sacred.

It was an old wooden upright, though much of the wood was gone. The back and front of the cabinet had been removed and all the hammers and mechanisms were missing. An enormous shelf fungus grew from the wood on one side, orange and red and fanned like a turkey tail. The keys were buckled and swollen on their shelf, green with moss, mouldering with life.

But the bones of the piano were iron, and its feet stood ankle-deep in the water. The current tickled the wires and music flowed into the glade.

Before she even knew what she was doing, Toks pulled off her borrowed Blundstones and rolled up her jeans. She stepped into the divinely cool water.

This wasn’t an accident, she realised. This piano had been deliberately tuned. She trailed her fingers over soft cushions of moss. Brushed her nails over the wires of the harp.

She cocked her head and listened properly.

A lydian tuning in E flat – though slightly unbalanced. Lydian sharp two, she decided, with a raised second as well as the raised fourth. Certain wires had been removed altogether. The F sharp below middle C was gone, she noticed, but others were missing too. This was precise.

Toks kicked a wave of water through it and shivered at the sound. Haunted, with hints of hopeful brightness pulled down into melancholy and twisted with unease.

This was Polly. Ruined but beautiful. Who else could it be?

The music stopped her thoughts and swirled them in the eddies at the piano’s feet. Her own musical tradition was far less fluid than this. She was bound to the notes written by the maestros of the past – and the artists of the future, she supposed, thinking of the score she’d worked on with Tilda. But even the great Maestro Ksenia Tokarycz was a conduit for other people’s music. Strict and unbending. She was surprised Polly had found this organic expression.

Back in her boots, she walked the rest of the path. It took her to the edge of the escarpment and a view that looked out over Jerinja and 613, as well as the sweep of the south coast and the ocean for miles. The view was stunning and she smiled into the sea breeze. What the fuck? She could feel herself recharging as she remembered the times she and Polly had picnicked up here, kissing as if the whole world could see them. Some residual hippy-woo-woo shit from the Jerinja of Polly’s parents’ time was flowing into her soul and making her feel—

Wait! There was music on the air here too.

She lifted her chin, searching for it. Dorian tuning this time. A G minor tonality with a brightened sixth. Down the path just a little further…

It was another old upright piano, just the iron frame with the wood of its furniture absent entirely. An aeolian harp wedged into the rocks and weathered by the winds that swept up from the sea. Another precise and wistful tuning, curiously centred around the absence of an F sharp, though a single augmented fourth in the upper register lent an upbeat twang whenever a swift gust hit the strings.

Clever, she mused.

She was struck by a sudden thought. A moment later, she was slightly astonished to find herself dashing along the backtracks on the ten minute walk to the orchard on her own property – 613 – and the quince tree where Polly said her horse was buried.

Another piano, disembowelled like the others. Toks was almost excited to hear its tuning, but the orchard was sheltered from the sea breeze. She strummed her fingers along the wires and smiled. Mixolydian mode in G – the lowered seventh naturally avoiding the F sharp. She was beginning to see the pattern, even if it made no sense. It was a slow and bluesy sound, most of the higher notes removed, the low, round tones reminding her of Milica and the old horse’s lazy, gambling gait.

Toks laughed out loud.

There was a strong chance Polly was absolutely and completely out of her mind, and Toks couldn’t keep the grin off her face.

But it was still so stupidly hot.

Closer to the house, there was an odd hum on the air. A wide, open chord in A minor, almost a pentatonic tuning with a few stray sevenths here and there. If it was another piano, Toks couldn’t find it.

At the back of the Jerinja house was a building that had once been Kathleen Paterson’s pottery shed. Inside, Toks saw a master’s workshop. A Bechstein concert grand commanded the room in a state of careful restoration. Shining new wires, vivid red felts. Its mechanisms were laid out in a precise order on another bench. Half a dozen other pianos in varying states of repair huddled in the corners of the workshop. A forgotten cup of tea – vintage china with a rose pattern, but chipped, of course – sat next to some well-worn tools, and Toks smiled.

Polly was an artisan. Toks had mocked the chook-shed Blüthner in her music room, but piano restoration was impressive. It was nowhere near what they’d dreamed of together – and the maestro in Toks grimaced at the waste of the woman’s talent – but it was… something.

Music came from the house. Not the kind the revered maestros of the past would have approved of. Toks caught the pulse of the bass – loud, urgent and stuttering. She could feel it in the wood of the balustrade of the front steps. It was oddly familiar.

It was a relief to walk inside. The air was on, the house was cool, and the vibe was fun. All the walls had been pushed back again, and the Jerinja house was one wonderful, welcoming pavilion. Tilda was DJ-ing from the music room. Daz was dancing around the kitchen – there was a spread of salads and cold meats being prepared. Magpie was in another alarmingly bright muumuu and was doing something that possibly resembled dancing. She had a sketchbook in her hands and was scrawling in it without taking her eyes off Polly.

And Polly looked…

Oh god, she looked beautiful.

Tousled red hair, messed from the salt of the ocean and her morning surf, mussed like she’d just risen from sleep. Toks remembered the way it used to spill around her face on the pillow when she loomed above her. She flushed with the memory of it tangled in her fingers, the way Toks would tug on it just hard enough to lengthen Polly’s throat. The way Polly’s eyes would flutter closed, snap open to gaze deep into Toks’ soul, then fall helplessly closed again. She had her eyes closed now, her arms in the air, the same lost, abandoned freedom in the curl of her smile.

Toks clenched deep and hard.

How had they come to this?

Why?

Another flowy, hippy skirt was tied in a knot at Polly’s knees and an old fuschia singlet-top hugged her breasts. No bra. The waist of her skirt slipped crookedly to her hips and the singlet rode up as she danced. That mind-bending curve at the small of her back, the perfect, perfect slender shape of her waist, an adorable hint of a belly – the knowledge of Polly’s body slammed against Toks’ entire sense of being. This used to be hers – and her own heart, her own body, still thought it was. Her pulse tripped harder than the beat. She burned hot between her legs and felt her face flush.

Polly’s entire body was a spider-web of old, white scars.

And she was so, so beautiful.

No one had noticed Toks come in.

“We remixed this one too,” Tilda called as she cued up another track. “Well, I did. Completely different vibe to the original.” She punched a button and laid the beginning of the new song over the tail of the old one. “Mum doesn’t like it.”

It was as bouncy and fun as the other track had been intricate and driving. Once again, several elements tugged at Toks’ musicality. She knew this music.

It didn’t look like Polly didn’t like it. Her arms went straight back into the air again, like she was some nubile twenty-something raving at three a.m. in a packed out club. Daz literally bounced over to her just as carefree and they were back to back singing along to the lyric at the tops of their lungs.

“Ha!” Tilda yelled, triumphantly. “See? You do like it!”

Polly didn’t even open her eyes. “No, I don’t.” Her grin was joyous and pure tease.

“Yes, you do!”

It suddenly occurred to Toks that the liquid female vocals soaring over the track were Tilda’s. Lower, backing her up in key chorus loops, was Polly’s voice. A violin – raw and organic over a complex palette of synthetic and natural sounds – provided a counterpart to the vocals. The melody was—

“This is Dvo?ák!”

Four sets of eyes turned to hers, and Polly and Daz stumbled to a halt. Polly undid the knot in her skirt.

Tilda turned the music down. “No, it’s not.”

Toks wasn’t accustomed to being challenged on matters of music. “I rather think it is, thank you. Antonín Dvo?ák, Cello Concerto in B minor. The main theme from the allegro – though you’ve transposed it to G major and” —she shuddered. Dvo?ák had never sounded so upbeat and catchy— “god only knows what else you’ve done to it.”

Tilda turned to her mother for confirmation. Toks felt her eyebrows climb her forehead. Polly gave a nod and Tilda exploded.

“Oh, great. Thanks, Mum. Now I look like an idiot in front of the maestro.”

“Managing that all by yourself, darls,” Magpie drawled.

Tilda sulked. She left the volume down low, but Toks’ entrance seemed to have ruined the mood. Daz went back to the kitchen and Magpie sat down to draw. Polly looked lost. She stood in the middle of the room and wrapped her arms around herself, completely failing to hide the scars on her arms.

Toks couldn’t stop looking at her.

It was Magpie who came to their rescue.

“According to your mother, Maestro, Polly and Tilda rip off the great classical composers all the time. They’re Tightly Strung.”

Weren’t we all?

“What?”

“They release dance tracks under the name Tightly Strung,” Daz provided. Toks let her eyes flick to his, then straight back to Polly’s where she stood as if waiting for Toks’ judgement. “They’re pretty big, actually, in the EDM world— Oh, that’s electronic dance music—”

“I know what EDM is,” Toks said.

It snapped Tilda out of her strop. “You do?”

“I’m not all symphonies and concertos. I go out.”

Tilda looked dubious. “So you know this, then?”

The track she cued up – and absolutely cranked – jumped into Toks mind in a joyous rainbow of sound, and suddenly she was laughing again.

“I do! I know this!” Of course, she did. It had been all over Berlin a few years ago, remixed by anyone and everyone since. A sparkling, happy electro-house blend of liquid vocals and all the good vibes. And Beethoven, of all things! It had driven Toks insane at the time – what kind of musical heathen based an entire dance track on eight bars of Beethoven’s seventh symphony?

Her own Pearlie Paterson, apparently.

“You mean, you know it’s Beethoven?” Tilda was sly, dropping the volume again.

“Tilda! I think Maestro Ksenia Tokarycz knows Beethoven when she hears it.” Polly chastised her daughter all while watching Toks cautiously. She didn’t see the massive eye roll Tilda aimed at her. Polly was timid – defusing Toks’ scorn before it breached. Toks could understand why. She had all of Beethoven’s symphonies in her head – and Dvo?ák’s, for that matter, plus a hundred others – and they were vast, complex things, overflowing with nuance. Polly and Tilda had reduced Beethoven’s entire symphony to two boppy lines at 130 beats per minute. The previous track boiled down the soulful breadth of Dvo?ák’s entire magnificent cello concerto to a trite little lyric about love.

Polly used to play that concerto brilliantly, every sweep of her bow across the strings a secret hush of love just for Toks. Accompanying her on the piano had been terrifying and wonderful as Toks flat out played for her heart. She’d been proud to provide the structure and Polly had soared above her. She’d always known that one day, she’d show Polly off to the whole world – her as maestro, Polly as acclaimed soloist.

She’d wanted everyone to know how exquisite a musician Polly Paterson was.

Tightly Strungwasn’t quite what she”d had in mind.

They were catchy songs, though.

“I know Tightly Strung,” Toks explained. “I’ve heard your tracks before. In clubs. I just didn’t realise they were yours. I like them.”

A tentative relief blossomed on Polly’s face when she saw Toks’ smile – and it was confusing. Polly acted as if Toks had hurt her – as if Toks’ disapproval was something to flinch from. As if she hadn’t been the one who’d left Toks standing alone and rejected on a railway station in Berlin sixteen years ago. It was worth swallowing her pride though, if it meant she could watch Polly dance again…

Hell, she could even forgive her if it meant—

Once again, it was Magpie who broke the moment.

“Well, I’ll say it if no one else will. I wouldn’t mind watching you bust a move with gay abandon in a Berlin nightclub, Maestro. Phwoarh.” She fanned her face with her sketchbook and waggled her eyebrows.

Toks froze. No one had had the temerity to speak to her like that in a very long time.

A long and thoroughly juvenile snort came from the music room. Tilda slapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes bugging out of her head. A delighted chuckle erupted from Magpie – and Polly stared at Toks like a rabbit in the headlights, stock still. Appalled.

Then her lips twitched.

Suddenly, there was a laugh – another one – building in Toks’ chest. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so often, but it felt … fuck it, it felt good.

“They’d have to let you into a Berlin nightclub in the first place, old woman,” she told Magpie. Proud.

“Ha! Bitch! I like her!” Magpie was delighted. She slapped her thighs. “Turn it up, Tilda. Guess I’ll have to get my eyeful now then. Come on, Maestro.” She stood up and bopped to the beat, so much unsupported breast jiggling under the bright orange muumuu Toks wasn’t sure where to look. Tilda gave a whoop and leapt over to join them, and Daz did too – all of them jumping and cavorting around Polly with their hands in the air and grinning like fools.

Polly’s eyes glittered at her. One side of her smile was full of the exact kind of tease Toks would have kissed off her lips sixteen years ago, and she could almost taste it now. Polly’s hand reached out – and Toks’ body answered before her brain did. She stumbled into her and Polly’s radiance was louder than the music, brighter than the beat. Her fingers found Polly’s, slotting perfectly together like they always had and Toks couldn’t keep the idiotic grin off her face.

“Whooooooo!” Magpie howled. She looked ludicrously pleased with herself and swung her hips at Toks in a 1960s-style hip-bump that nearly skittled Toks to the ground. “Shake it, Maestro.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s Toks.”

Toks slung one arm low around Polly’s waist, ignored her pretend-outrage, and pulled her onto her thigh. She felt the past, the future, and every perfect moment through the touch of Polly’s body against her own, and she threw back her head and danced.

They were dizzy and breathless when they finally sat down to lunch, and Polly’s cheeks were pink.

Toks rolled her sleeves to her elbows and undid another button of her shirt. She didn’t miss the way Polly’s eyes followed her hands as she did.

“Far too fucking hot for that shit,” huffed Magpie, throwing herself down at the table. She grinned hugely. Her devious plan had worked. Polly sat directly opposite Toks and Toks counted it as a win when her bare feet found Toks’ under the table. Toks tweaked an eyebrow. Polly blushed. Tilda rolled her eyes.

Bit by bit Jerinja sank more deeply back into Toks’ bones. Lunch was slow and languid, and full of idle talk and laughter. Toks had three symphonies and a concerto she needed to study and she couldn’t bring herself to care. She sighed and stretched contentedly.

The crazy suggestion was on her lips before her mind had even thought it through.

“Synthony.”

Her audience frowned.

“What?”

“Electro Orchestra. Tempo Fusion.”

“Oh. Em. Gee,” breathed Tilda. She held up jazz hands. “The symphony remixed.”

“Exactly,” grinned Toks. Tilda was on her wavelength. She quite liked the kid. “The Synthphonic Sessions. I mean, how many other dead composers’ work have you ripped off?”

Tilda pulled a face. “I don’t know, Mum. How many dead composers’ work have we ripped off?”

“Loads,” admitted Polly, cheerfully. “Not my fault your musical education is lacking.”

“I’m home schooled, Mum. It is literally your fault my musical education is lacking!” Tilda turned straight back to Toks. “But what are you thinking, um— Maestro?”

Toks reached out and ruffled the girl’s hair. Tilda beamed and Polly sucked in an audible breath. “Toks. I’m thinking a series of concerts of your music, plus a few other artists, scored for orchestra and electronics. I’m thinking big, outdoor events – the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House, the Kindl-Bühne Wuhlheide in Berlin, in front of the Eiffel Tower in the Champ du Mars…”

“Bullshit!”

“Tilda.” Polly admonished. “You can have a concert in front of the Eiffel Tower?” She didn’t look as excited as Tilda. She asked with the kind of polite interest that knew Toks’ suggestion would never be realised. She pulled her bare toes away from Toks’.

Toks shrugged. “Le Concert de Paris plays there every year. I’ve led it twice as cheffe d”orchestre principale de l”Orchestre de Paris.”

“That sounds hot,” drawled Magpie.

Polly’s eyes disappeared into the back of her head.

“It would be twelve months away, at least, but I could lead a series of concerts like that across Europe. Easy. The major orchestras would be lining up at my door. The crowds they’d pull! New audiences. Sponsorship would be extremely lucrative. We could go so big.” The more she thought about it, the more enticing it became. Exciting, even. The thought of breaking free from yet another round of old masters for stuffy, ageing audiences was incredibly appealing. This could be fun.

She was a little put-out to find Polly wasn’t as interested. Polly gathered plates from around the table and began clearing away. Tilda was practically jiggling on her chair, but Polly gave her a look and pushed an empty salad bowl towards her. Tilda ignored it.

“But who would arrange them for orchestra? I’d love to work with you on that—”

Polly blew a raspberry from the kitchen. “They already were scored for orchestra. We were the ones who simplified things.”

Toks saw her moment. “Yes. Well. On that. I was chatting with Dvo?ák the other day. He doesn’t like what you’ve done.”

Tilda blinked. The look that crossed Polly’s face was the same adorably irritated one that Toks remembered from years ago – the look she used to love being responsible for. Something sizzled and fizzed inside her. Polly caught her vibe.

“He wouldn’t even recognise it,” she said, her chin going up, “and no you weren’t.”

“How would you know?” Toks settled back in her chair and folded her arms. Smug.

“Because you don’t speak Czech.”

“How do you know he wouldn’t recognise it? Is that a dig at classically trained musicians not getting modern music?” She smirked dangerously.

Polly’s smile widened. “He wouldn’t recognise it because he’s dead, you nong. And I’m classically trained, thank you very much—”

Tilda couldn’t hold it in any more. “Seriously, you two bicker like you’ve been married for fifty years.”

“Button it, junior. Do I look that old to you?”

Pearlie Paterson’s mum-voice was hysterical, but Toks” eyes met Tilda’s and the game kicked up a notch.

“Well, I wasn’t going to say…” started Tilda.

“Throw her in the pool for me,” ordered Polly, flicking her fingers at Toks.

Toks would be delighted. “Your wish is my command,” she murmured, and Tilda squealed.

“What?! Oh my god, nooo! What is this? Are you two—? Somebody help me!”

“You asked for that one, darls,” said Magpie. “No sympathy here. She heaved open the glass doors to the pool area while Toks grabbed Tilda around the waist and waved them through.

She knew it was going to happen the moment they got to the edge of the pool. Tilda was hooting and squealing, and Magpie had some crazy whooping chant going on. Daz was cheering, and Polly was clapping and laughing – and Toks hadn’t felt so light in sixteen years. She could have taken The Rite of Spring at twice the tempo. She could have composed a thousand symphonies and named them all for Polly. She could have beaten back time itself just for the smile in Polly’s eyes…

So when Tilda wrapped both hands around Toks’ wrist at the very last minute and tugged for all she was worth – with a thoroughly gleeful peal of giggles – Toks let it happen.

They both splashed into the water, surfacing in an instant only to turn a concerted splashing attack on Polly.

Polly yelped, betrayed. Waist deep in the water, Toks conducted the rest. A peremptory gesture at Magpie and Daz, and the two took their cue. They swept up behind Polly, picked her up and deposited her neatly into the pool.

“Traitors!” she gulped, then disappeared under the water in a swirl of red hair and flowy, hippy skirt.

Toks dived instantly underwater to watch her – and for one long, extended moment, they grinned at each other in the silence of the water – bubbles laughing from their mouths, Polly’s hair fanning around her face like seaweed. Toks held out a hand, Polly took it and they burst to the surface—

“Cannonball!” hollered Magpie.

She drenched the lot of them – a tidal wave of fluoro orange muumuu and a total absence of dignity. Daz was seconds behind her with a ‘what the hell’ and they were all in the pool fully-clothed and laughing too much to do anything but float on their backs and clutch their sides.

Maestro Ksenia Tockarycz hadn’t done anything so frivolous for sixteen years. Longer. She let the water fill her ears and all the clammering noise of the world fall quiet and wondered when she’d become so uptight. When had she silenced and muzzled the girl deep inside her who laughed til her ribs ached? When had she exchanged such simple pleasure for ambition and drive and convinced herself she didn’t even need this happiness?

She floated alongside Polly and knew.

What the hell was happening?

If she stayed here much longer, she’d never want to leave. She couldn’t even think about what that meant. If Polly asked her to stay she had no idea what would happen to all her walls. It would only take one deliberate touch – the merest brush of Polly’s hands on her skin – and they would crumble, and Toks would be helpless before her, as she’d always been.

It made absolutely no fucking sense at all, but she watched Polly out of the corner of her eye, and knew helpless was almost what she wanted. What was Berlin next to a woman like this?

Tilda found a beach ball and they tossed it at each other for no reason other than the fun of it – Polly and Toks against Tilda, Daz and Magpie – and Toks found herself showing off like she was eighteen again. Polly’s singlet top stuck to her skin and pulled tight over her breasts and her skirt dragged down her hips when she leapt for the ball. There were scars – everywhere – but Toks couldn’t see them. Sixteen years were burning away in the laughter in Polly’s eyes, in the liquid magic of her teasing cries.

For the first time in a long time, Toks didn’t know who she was or where she was going.

And she didn’t really mind.

Polly had only just hauled herself from the water, her skirt slick against her thighs, every curve bending Toks’ mind, when Justin appeared at the glass doors.

He was in scrubs, just home from his shift and his smile slipped when he saw Toks in the pool. That same cautious, protectiveness that had greeted Toks the night of the storm straightened his shoulders. He may have been in the uniform of a nurse, but she was hit with the impression of a soldier once more – one who would defend Polly until the end.

It created a turmoil of emotion inside Toks. Some of it was shame. Some of it was jealousy. All of it was too difficult to think about.

There was a bright humming sound on the wind.

“You good, Poll?” Justin asked, cautiously.

She threw him a grin, but the others answered for her. One big, warm extended family that Toks wasn’t part of.

“She’s fine, love,” said Magpie.

“Sweet as,” confirmed Daz.

Justin checked in with Tilda too – a super-quick nod. Was he her father? Was he the one Polly had—?

But there was no time to finish the thought. Justin’s grin turned just as cheeky and he pushed Polly straight back in again. She squealed. Justin kicked off his shoes and dived in, coming up next to Daz and kissing him soundly. Tilda whooped and suddenly it was on again – some crazy, stupid, pointless splashing game that Toks didn’t understand and cared about even less.

But none of that mattered because Polly was beautiful, shining, vivid and wonderful – and right there.