Chapter 5

The hope went out of their eyes.

Dad's jaw moved but he didn't speak.

Mum's tears came harder.

Jamie looked at me with something close to despair.

I didn't respond to any of it. I crossed the room to the piano on the stage.

The keys were cool and clean under my fingers. The engraving was precise: S.S.

I stood there and didn't play.

"You know what I wanted when I was ten?" I said, quietly. "Not a theme park. I wanted ten minutes of your time to watch the fireworks. That's all."

"At twelve — I didn't want a dress. I wanted to see your faces in the audience at the end-of-term concert. You'd promised. You didn't come."

"At fifteen—" I paused. "I didn't wish for a family photo. I wished that one of you would call on my birthday. I sat by my phone until midnight. It never rang."

I wasn't crying. I was just saying it — the factual record of years that were already gone.

Mum made a sound like something tearing.

Dad's shoulders went down, and in that moment he looked ten years older.

"We thought..." He started and stopped. "We thought things could make up for time."

"They can't," I said. "They never can."

I turned to face them.

"You gave me a life with everything in it. I know that. I'm grateful. But you also dug a hole in me with ten years of not showing up. Tonight you tried to fill that hole with a grand piano and a party and a screen full of home footage. And I understand why. I can see the love in it."

"But love isn't a set design. You can't produce your way to it."

"And you still did this your way. With planning and staging and a hired actress. The same way you always did things your way — too busy, too certain you knew best, too convinced the outcome would justify the method."

I looked at each of them in turn.

"I'm tired."

And I left.

I didn't look back. I could feel three pairs of eyes on me. I didn't stop.

Outside, the evening had come on cold. I was crying before I'd reached the pavement. I hadn't noticed it happening.