‘You like this?’
‘I feel I should be in a cocktail dress and expensive jewellery. Leaning against the piano and sipping... I wonder what they were drinking in Casablanca?’
He chuckled. ‘Champagne?’
‘You remember?’
‘No. Just a guess. I’ve got a bottle somewhere, if you’d like some.’
Charlotte laughed. ‘No. I don’t have the cocktail dress.’ Or the jewellery. Her mother’s ruby necklace, the one that she thought she’d never part with, had been sold and the money spent on the bricks and mortar of her house. The one that she’d been driven out of just a few days ago.
He seemed about to say something, then stopped himself. Moved on to play another song. The soft, melancholy chords filled the air around them.
Suddenly the music stopped. ‘Hey... Hey, what’s the matter?’
She felt him turn, but didn’t raise her head. She didn’t want Edward to see the tears.
Too late.
His fingers touched her arm, hesitantly at first, and then more resolute. She felt his arm around her and, try as she might, couldn’t bring herself to break away from him.
‘It’s nothing. Just the music.’
‘Much as I’d like to think that it was my playing that moved you to tears, I doubt it.’
She wanted to hold on to him. It felt so natural to do so. But she shouldn’t. She’d always been a sucker for the quiet type, and the last one she’d got involved with had almost destroyed her life.
‘I...I’m just afraid that I’m going to lose everything. And you’ve been so kind...’
‘You’re not going to lose anything.’
He hugged her tight and she gave in and buried her face against the protective arc of his chest.
‘Did you ring my father this afternoon?’
‘Yeah. I’ve arranged to leave work early tomorrow and go and see him.’
‘Good. You can stop worrying, then. He’ll sort this out for you.’
‘I know. Thank you. I’m just being silly.’
She felt his fingers stroking her hair. Just for a moment, before he snatched his hand away again. This must be torture for someone like Edward. So self-contained, so controlled. He didn’t really do tears. She tried to move away from him, but his arm kept her firmly in place.
‘You’re not being silly. You lost everything once. It’s natural to fear that it’ll happen again.’ He drew back, holding her shoulders tightly. Bending to capture her gaze in his. ‘It’s not going to. You’re going to fight it.’
‘I haven’t got anything to fight with. All my savings are gone, and...’ She couldn’t even say it. The money was just a number. It was the loss of little things that she’d hoped she’d always keep that hurt the most. Memories...presents that people had given her over the years. The cot which, at one time, she’d hoped might see some more use. All Isaac’s baby stuff. It hadn’t fetched much, but every penny had counted when she’d been trying to put the deposit on the house together.
He shook his head. ‘I wish you’d told someone. The clinic might have arranged an employee loan, or if not...’ He pressed his lips together, apparently not wanting to finish the ‘or if not’.
‘I’d only been there for a couple of months. I was just glad to have the job. The extra income meant I could make the mortgage. Anyway...it would just have been another debt that I couldn’t pay back.’
‘So you sold everything you had?’ His grip on her shoulders relaxed and his hands slid down to her elbows.
‘Pretty much.’ Charlotte put it to the back of her mind. ‘But that’s okay. Things are easier now. I’ve had a pay rise, and the first year’s always the worst with a mortgage.’
‘And I guess the extra shifts come in handy?’
He’d noticed, then. The way that she grabbed every bit of overtime that came her way, even though it meant that she had less time to spend with Isaac. ‘Yes, they do.’
‘You’ve worked hard. No one’s going to take that from you. Just explain everything to my father and let him sort it out. And in the meantime you can stay here. Isaac seems...well, he doesn’t seem to mind the arrangement.’
‘You’ve made us both very welcome. Being here has been so good for Isaac.’ It was Edward who had been good for Isaac, not the house. Providing a broad pair of shoulders that her son felt he could rely on. For that matter, he’d been good for Charlotte, as well.
‘You can stay as long as you like.’
‘Thank you. But we won’t outstay our welcome.’
Like always, his smile was reticent, hard won, but all the better for it.
‘Then I think we’ll be okay. I can outlast you.’
No doubt he could. At the moment Charlotte reckoned that she had about ten minutes before she made a fool of herself and threw herself into his arms if she didn’t find something to distract him.
‘Will you play something else?’
* * *
Edward couldn’t get the image out of his head. Charlotte in a dark figure-hugging dress. Something sparkly at her wrist and around her neck and a glass of champagne in her hand. Leaning against the piano, the gold flecks in her eyes reflecting the light better than any jewel could.
He played for a while on autopilot, while he added the fine detail to his vision. Then the real Charlotte broke in, her body warm and moving to the rhythm next to his.
‘You’ll have plenty of offers if you ever decide to give up the day job.’
Her smile made him stop thinking and start feeling as he ran his hands across the keyboard in a short, improvised cascade of notes.
‘I used to play in a bar. When I was at medical school.’
‘Yeah?’
‘It paid better than stacking shelves. And I got to keep the tips as well.’
‘Tips are always good.’
‘Yeah. Made a big difference.’
‘I bet you spent them on books.’
‘Um... Yeah. Okay, you’re making me feel predictable again.’
With Charlotte he could begin to fathom what people saw in small talk. It was easy. Delightful. Maybe they were getting a little too close to flirting, but that would be okay as long as he kept playing. Somehow the music made pretty much anything permissible.
She laughed. ‘I think you’re one of the most unpredictable people I’ve ever met.’
‘Dancing to the beat of a different drum, you mean?’ People had said that to him, and about him, all his life. That he was gifted. Different. That he didn’t need the company of his peers as much as he needed to fulfil his potential.
‘Is it a different drum? I rather thought that it was the same drum, but you just hear it a little more clearly.’
Edward let the thought percolate. ‘That might be one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.’
The unexpected idea that words might not be enough to express his feelings on the matter occurred to him. He wanted to hold her again.
She smiled and his theory morphed into a tried and tested fact. Charlotte’s smile held so much more meaning than words, and he allowed himself to bathe in it, feeling its warmth lap against his skin.
He