I mean, she wouldn’t.
She shifted herself over towards the wall. After all, what if he was saying, ‘If you don’t play this properly I will kill you’?
As she got close to the wall, his low rumbling voice came through incredibly clearly.
‘. . . is just notes,’ he was saying. ‘You can learn to play notes. Notes can be wrong. Does not matter. But you must learn to trust heart. Celine, she say, heart go on. Do not hesitate. Go on.’
‘But I keep getting it wrong,’ came the querulous tones of the student. It was Mrs Baines, as it happened, one of Polly’s best clients, who had fallen in love with Mr Batbayar because she liked his dark flowing hair and was hoping that he would understand that when she played ‘My Heart Will Go On’ she was actually playing it to him.
Mr Batbayar did not understand this and thought that someone had sent this woman playing a terrible version of the worst song ever written in order to torture him for a sin he had committed in a past life and was wondering what it might be, and was regretting accidentally killing a spider the day before, which he had meant to pick up and free. His huge fingers on a keyboard were elegant and full of precision. When it came to being around the rest of the world, they were oversized and he had been unusually clumsy. This was spider karma, he had decided, and he was simply dealing with it as well as he could.
I love you, thought Mrs Baines next to him, who had mistaken his narrow brown eyes remembering a spider for fascination.
‘So?’ he said, returning to Mrs Baines, who was pink with effort. ‘Gettink wrong is our road to gettink right. Do not stop. But do be slower, yes? Fingers cannot run before head is ready. Try it slow slow slow, and put your heart in every note. It will find you.’
‘All right,’ said Mrs Baines timidly. ‘Could you show me again how to shape my hands?’
‘No! You know now! You can do it.’
Marisa frowned crossly. He didn’t sound remotely dangerous. And as Mrs Baines started, very slowly and not quite so falteringly, she irritatingly thought he was probably quite a good teacher. She googled ‘piano teacher murderer’ but it appeared to be a vanishingly rare set of circumstances.
She sighed and returned to the note. Still. She couldn’t live like this, she really couldn’t.
Chapter Seventeen
Marisa cautiously opened her door after Mrs Baines had left, with much cooing and chit-chat and cluttering of bags and purses as far as she could hear, and information being imparted about upcoming village events, of which there seemed to be an awful lot for a tiny village at the ends of the earth.
Next door, the man had gone back to playing something loud and threatening, occasionally interrupted by huge long runs at the top of the piano which were so unexpected and jarring she felt it get under her fingernails. She was so scared her teeth were nearly chattering.
She looked at the innocuous pale blue door next to her pale lemon one. Well, almost innocuous, apart from a missing step where, she was right, the piano had indeed broken it. She frowned. He should fix that. It pained her tidy heart.
She picked up the note, put it down again. This was ridiculous. She knew what she had to do. Knock at the door. Introduce herself. Politely state her request and why it was necessary for her well-being and mental health that she wasn’t being auditorily assaulted all the time . . .
Yes. She would. She would do that. Like a normal person. She was a normal person. She was fine. She was absolutely fine. She lifted her hand to raise it—
‘HELLO, NEW LADY!’ came two small voices. Up the unfinished road swung Daisy and Avery, the little twins from the bakery. A tall blond man in shorts, presumably their father – Avery was his spit – was following them up the hill, talking intensely into his mobile telephone, his face worried.
‘My daddy is on the telephone and we are going to our piano lesson,’ said Daisy, as if Marisa was a policewoman asking for a precise account of her movements.
‘We don’t need Daddy, AS YOU SEE,’ said Avery, swinging his arms. ‘BYE!’
Huckle lifted his tired face for a moment, then went back to his call.
‘We share a piano lesson now,’ said Daisy in a confiding voice. ‘We used to have one each but now we have one together and Avery is very naughty.’
‘Because is SPENSIVE.’
Unused to contact with other people for a long time – and completely unused to children of any sort – Marisa smiled in a slightly distant fashion and backed away, even as Huckle hung up his phone and smiled at her apologetically.
‘Sorry.’
‘We don’t need you, Daddy,’ said Avery.
‘But! What if!’ hissed Daisy, obviously referring to an earlier conversation.
Avery looked scared and piped down.
‘What if what?’ said Huckle, in an amused voice.
Daisy shook her head, shushing him, with a very distinct ‘not in front of the children’ expression on her tiny face.
‘What if what?’ persisted her father.
‘What if Mr BatBAYar brings his BEAR FRIENDS,’ hissed Daisy in a stage whisper as Avery took on a hunted expression very similar to his father’s only a moment or so before.
At that moment the blue door swung open. The music teacher stepped out, without looking to where Marisa was. She shrank back in the door frame, inside the safety of her own four walls once more, hidden from view.
‘Aha! My favourite pupils who are . . .’
It was clear he didn’t know the word for twins.
‘. . . being born on one day that is the same day,’ he finished triumphantly.
‘You mean “twins”,’ said Daisy seriously. ‘We’re twins.’
‘Tweens.’
‘Twins.’
‘I say that.’
Avery was trying to see round Mr Batbayar, which wasn’t easy as he took up the entire doorway. Mr Batbayar looked behind him.
‘Just me,’ he said. ‘No—’
‘Don’t say it!’ said Daisy.
Mr Batbayar raised his huge hands and beamed at Huckle.
‘You stay?’
‘You don’t need to stay, Daddy,’ said Avery.
‘I will,’ said Huckle. ‘But I’ll just take a call outside, okay, you guys? I’m right here.’
The two little ones scampered into the house and Mr Batbayar left the door ajar and disappeared with them into the house.
Huckle smiled apologetically at Marisa.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re one of Reuben’s newbies. How’s it going?’
Marisa froze. All she could think of was ‘Oh, you’re American’ which was a fairly ridiculous thing to say to someone who presumably already knew they were American. A bright flush stole over her.
But he seemed very nice and gentle. She could . . . She was standing in her own doorway. She was safe. She was fine. She forced herself to stay put.
‘Uh . . . it’s good,’ she said. ‘Bit noisy.’
Huckle frowned and looked around. It wasn’t like Mount Polbearne to have noise issues; they weren’t on any flight paths, and there were very few cars. The masts clattered in the harbour from time to time, that was about it.
Marisa nodded towards next door.