My Lies, Your Lies - Susan Lewis Page 0,18

quiet. Sir is sitting beside me at the piano showing me how to find middle C and explaining its importance. His voice is soft and low, and I wonder if he knows the real reason I’ve asked for these lessons.

I listen closely to what he’s telling me, catching the words in a web of understanding that is uncomplicated and complex at the same time. I ask questions such as ‘Is middle C always played with the right thumb,’ and ‘Why does the scale begin with C and not A?’

He smiles at that and says, ‘I’ve never tried to find out the reasoning behind the keyboard being set up the way it is, but I can tell you it was invented by an Italian, Bartolomeo Cristofori in the sixteen hundreds.’

‘Bartolomeo Cristofori,’ I echo in a whispery attempt at an accent, and as my eyes go to his a smile remains on his lips even though he blushes and looks away.

I’m not sure why he blushes, but I think I do too.

He puts a sheet of music on the stand in front of me and points out middle C so that I can see how it appears between the five lines. I look at his hand, his long fingers and short, clean nails. I follow it as he reaches across me to begin playing a scale, his hand cupping as though, he explains, he is holding a ball. I can feel his chest close to my arm, his breath on my hair. My heart is beating hard, and I wonder if he can hear it over the notes he’s playing. On E he tucks his thumb under his fingers to reach F, and on the way he back he crosses his middle finger over his thumb at the same place to end smoothly back on C. It’s simple and almost tuneless, and yet this is the foundation, the start of everything he is going to teach me.

He encourages me to play the scale myself, and a hint of humour comes into his voice as he tells me to relax my thumb. I press the keys awkwardly at first, but then experience a childlike pleasure as I travel steadily through the eight notes and back again.

I hope he’s pleased by my dexterity. As I look at him to check the door opens and Mrs Green, the new English teacher comes in. She asks if she can have a word with him out in the corridor, so he tells me to practise the scale again until he comes back.

I’m not worried that there might be something going on between them because Mrs Green is at least as old as my grandma and has a hairy wart on her chin. And she’s married, although that probably wouldn’t count for anything if she were young and attractive.

I think about asking Sir if he’s married, but I know I won’t. Mandy Gibbons is sure he has a girlfriend, but I think she’s making it up, because how would she know?

I play the C major scale again, slowly at first, bringing flexibility into my fingers and thumb, then I go faster and faster making my fingers fly over the keys like a practised musician. When I stop abruptly the notes take a moment to fade into silence, which isn’t silence at all, because many sounds are drifting in through the open windows. A netball game in the distance, a car driving away, girls laughing, footsteps, a radio playing ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’. I can smell the grass, fresh and sweet, and feel the penetrating gaze of classical composers watching me from the walls of the room. Mozart appearing pleased with himself; Beethoven looking slightly mad; Vivaldi a bit female; Debussy handsome and not unlike Sir.

I wonder what’s taking so long, but then the door opens and he comes back apologizing and making a joke that I don’t really understand, but I laugh because he does.

He returns to the chair that’s next to my stool and I play the scale again, quickly and fluidly as though I’ve known it all along.

‘You’re a natural,’ he tells me and we laugh again.

I want to touch him, and at the same time I’m terrified that he might touch me. If he does I shall start to shake and the sensations throbbing like bass notes at the join of my thighs will explode.

‘Will you play?’ I ask him.

He looks surprised.

‘I don’t mean scales, I mean something by one of them.’ I wave towards the