Free The Silence by Sarah Rayne

She leaned against the window recess, enjoying the music and the faint scents of old polish and oak brought out by the afternoon sunshine.
    The music seemed to be reaching its end, and Nell went down to the hall and pushed open the music-room door. Sunlight poured through these windows, as well, momentarily dazzling her vision, but through it, it was possible to see the small figure at the piano, silhouetted against the oblong of the French windows – a figure so small it had had to pile up several cushions on the stool to reach the keyboard.
    Nell blinked and put up a hand to shield her eyes from the strong sunshine. It was Beth, of course, and yet . . .
    And yet it somehow seemed wrong for Beth. There was the silky brown hair and there was the familiar tilt of the head which meant Beth was concentrating on something important. She was concentrating fiercely on the music now – so much that she had not heard Nell come in.
    Behind her the door swung in on its worn hinges, and at the sound, the music stopped abruptly. There was a blur of movement within the sunlight. The small figure jumped down and ran towards the open French windows, then paused and looked back, straight at Nell.
    It was not Beth. It was a young boy, about Beth’s age, with the same colour hair as Beth’s. He paused in the doorway, looked back at her, then darted into the gardens.
    Without realizing she had been going to speak, Nell said, ‘Brad . . .’ The name came out like a ghost-whisper, like the cobwebs of old memories, not quite frayed to insignificance yet still capable of hurting. It lay sadly on the old room, then Nell was running through the French windows and across the small terrace outside, half falling down the moss steps. She stopped at the foot, trying to see into the overgrown tangle of garden, but there was nothing. The boy had vanished, as completely and as suddenly as the rain-figure last night. Nell came back into the room, trying to calm her tumbling thoughts.
    She closed the French windows, turning the key in the lock.
    ‘Beth, were you playing the piano earlier this afternoon?’
    It was half past six and Beth was helping to make sandwiches which they would have for supper, with tinned soup.
    Beth was buttering the bread, not looking at Nell. ‘I found some old music so I tried a bit of it. It was quite hard, though, so I didn’t play much. And it was a bit cold in there so I took my book into your room with the gas fire. Why?’
    As far as Nell knew, Beth was completely truthful, so she accepted this at face value. And since mention of an unknown child being in the house might frighten Beth, she said, ‘I thought I heard you playing. You’re improving by leaps and bounds.’
    ‘Am I really?’ Beth looked pleased. After they had eaten, she went back to the little sitting room to finish the Enid Blyton book. It was pretty good, she said, when Nell asked what she thought of it. ‘Only they’re so gross, some of those girls. They talk about having maids at home. I don’t know
anyone
who has maids, do you? Well, except at Oxford, and that’s not the same, is it?’
    ‘Oxford’s a law unto itself.’
    ‘I’ll finish it though, on account of wanting to know what happens.’
    ‘While you do I’ll go up to make some notes about the rest of the books,’ said Nell.
    ‘Are they worth a lot of money?’
    ‘Some of them might be. So don’t spill anything on that one. Call if you want me. I won’t stay up there long, though. It’s already starting to get dark.’
    As Nell sorted through the books, the image of the boy at the piano was strongly with her. Michael had recently been absorbed in Longfellow’s poems, and there had been a line he had liked and had quoted: ‘All houses wherein men have lived and died/Are haunted houses . . .’ And then something about, ‘The stranger at my fireside I cannot see . . . There are more guests at table than the hosts invited . . .’
    It was an unnerving idea however you looked