Page 122 of The Stranger

“I give a f—I care. I need to fix this before the morning.”

“Let me see.” I hold out my hand.

She edges her way in, the frame hugged to her sternum the way you’d clutch something you’re worried might explode. She comes to stand next to me by the piano stool.

“It’s the photo of her mum.” Her gaze is everywhere but on me. “I was checking on Sylvie when I knocked the frame off her nightstand with my bum.”

She sounds so distressed, and as our eyes meet, she looks as though she’s expecting the worst. My anger, my pain, who knows. “I’m sorry.”

“Accidents… they do have a way of happening.” My voice is gruff as I take the thing from her white-knuckled grip.

“I’m so sorry.”

“So you said.” I smile to soften my words. “Anyone would think I’m an ogre.” I look up when she doesn’t reply.

“You really don’t want me to answer that.”

I suppose I am. I suppose I have been to her. My attention dips to the frame again as I run my thumb over the fractured joint. Cracks radiate across the glass from the same corner, webbing across the glass like a spider’s masterpiece. It strikes me as odd that the image of my wife and child in the garden is the second thing I register, though I’m glad the photo remains untouched by the unintentional violence.

“Someone will order a new frame.”

“No, I’ll fix it,” she says. “I mean, I’ll fix it before she wakes up. I don’t want her to…” She shrugs.

“You can’t fix the glass. It’s fine,” I add, rubbing my thumb over the frame.

“I’ll go into the village in the morning,” she says, taking it from my hands. “There’s bound to be⁠—”

“Primrose,” I say, touching her hand briefly. Ignoring the way it feels. “Sylvie will survive. Jose will source glass or a new frame. She’s not going to be upset.”

“You don’t know that. She misses her mother.”

“She doesn’t really remember her.” That fact used to make me sad but now I think it’s probably a blessing.

“She doesn’t need to remember to still feel her absence.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.” My heart knows that’s true. “Please, leave this with me.” I gently pry it from her hands and place it on the top of the piano. “I’ll find the glue and fix it. She probably won’t even notice, and if she does. Well, that’s okay also. We can explain.” We.

“Thank you.” Her lips part—a tiny pearl of a yawn—but she clamps it back.

I make her leaving easier for us both by putting my fingers to the keys, providing her with the perfect excuse. But she doesn’t. Not as I play mindlessly for a couple of beats.

“What was the song you were playing when I came in? It sounded like an old Elvis song.” I angle my gaze her way, and her mouth hooks up, as though she’s embarrassed. “It sort of sounded like it, anyway.”

Almost of their own accord, my fingers run over the opening bars of “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, which I immediately regret, so I launch into the song I’d been playing just before she appeared. Plaisir d'amour. “It’s an even older song.”

“It’s lovely.”

“Sit,” I add, though manage to curtail the instinct to say, I won’t bite this time. I’m repaid for my efforts when she perches on the end of the double bench stool. We’re not touching, more is the pity, as my fingers run over the keys.

She smells so enticing, like jasmine and warm skin, with a trace of something that’s harder to define. Temptation, my mind unhelpfully supplies. Forbidden fruits and their marketing.

She isn’t looking at me, rather watching my hands move over the keys. I become aware, quite suddenly, of the numerous bones in my hand, and the elegant mechanics of their movement in order to form the notes, and the melody. This as I ignore how my body hums thanks to her proximity.

The last time I felt this pinch of nerves I was twelve. I had a minor crush on my piano teacher. She’d study the placement of my fingers, which made them feel oversized and clumsy. My heart would beat in my chest so hard, I was convinced she could hear it. That she’d look at me, then look into my lap. And know. And then, at least in my mind, my fingers would be much less cumbersome, the lesson twisting into something much more lurid.

Seems I haven’t changed all that much. I then find myself thinking of Felix. Twelve, also.

Watching porn. Merde. Now there is a conversation I’m not looking forward to.