Misguided Ghosts

Chapter Forty-Two

Forty-Two – Ed

I sat in the drawing room, with Clara on my lap, a copy of Harry Potter held open in front of us. I didn’t care if she was only two months old; I wanted her to know my favourite books when I was growing up. But then I grimaced, remembering all the weird books I’d read when I was younger. I’d had violent nightmares until I was thirteen, the majority of which had left me sleeping with the light on.

I’d been staying with my parents for a week and I was glad to be home. It was someplace familiar, somewhere safe. It smelled of home-cooked meals and my parents. It was somewhere away from the mess that I’d made.

Clara wriggled on my lap, a small cry escaping her. You could tell that we were siblings. According to my parents, I had never been able to stay still when I was a baby. Just like me, she had inherited my mother’s blonde hair and my father’s silver eyes. But there was a subtle difference. While my eyes were a bright, pale silver, hers were darker, more subtle, closer to grey than silver.

“Okay,” I groaned, shutting the book and picking her up.

I began to pace the room, bouncing her up and down in an attempt to stop her from crying. But she was having none of it. She wailed, each cry getting louder and louder with every step I took.

“Come on,” I whined. “Please stop crying,”

I glanced around the room, looking for something that could entertain her more than a book. Not even a toy in sight. But then I saw the piano. I hadn’t played the piano in months. All of a sudden, my fingers began aching to play, to feel the familiar smoothness of the keys as they followed underneath my fingers.

Placing the still-screaming Clara down on the sofa that we’d been sitting on, I sat at the piano. Taking a deep breath, I placed my fingers on the keys. What could I even play? My fingers began to tremble, my body shaking with anticipation, but my emotions clear. Years of practice and lessons, right up until I left home, and I couldn’t bring myself to play a single note.

“Come on,” I whispered, Clara’s cries drowning my voice out to everyone but me. “Just one note. Come on,”

I closed my eyes. And pressed down with two fingers on my left hand. Two clear E notes rang through the room. Unable to figure out where the sound came from, Clara’s cries halted for a second. I knew a piece that started with two E notes. What was it? It was my mother’s favourite. It came from a movie soundtrack, I knew that much. But what was the piece called? If I could just remember it, then the notes would come back. Notes were always attached to names. Something French. Come on, Ed. Think. You know about five million songs with French titles.

“Comptine d'un Autre Été,” I smiled as the notes came flooding back.

Then I was playing, notes flooding out from underneath my fingers in a seamless wave of serenity that tied in with so much of my childhood. My mother would always sit with me while I practiced, occasionally dancing with my father, especially when I played that piece. Clara’s cries faded to the back of my mind as my past came flooding back. A fire cracking in the grate, the glow of the flames being all that was required to see the sheet music that I didn’t really need. Rain hammering against the windows. Sunlight flooding through the windows, illuminating the spine of every book. Wind making the window panes rattle. The soft whisper of my parents’ feet against the carpet as the danced in graceful circles that seemed to go on forever, trapped in their own world until the song ended.

The notes died away and I blinked, not even realising that my cheeks were damp. Clara’s cries had died away. I span on the piano stool and stood up, walking over to the sofa. She was sound asleep. A smile twitched my lips. Crying one minute and fast asleep the next.