Free Untouchable Things by Tara Guha Page A

window blackened. Catherine took her hands off the keys for a minute to watch the cityscape’s geometric certainty erode to shadows. Her favourite time of day. Or was it just that she was here, at Seth’s, with this piano and this view? In her little flat in Queen’s Park the drawing in of night could feel oppressive, frightening even. That London could squeeze the breath out of you. This London you could inhale like pure oxygen.
    Could I ask where Seth Gardner was at the time?
    Oh – sorry, he was out. At an auction.
    He’d left you alone in his flat?
    No, I’d let myself in. I had a key. He used to let me play the Steinway.
    Did other people have a key to his flat?
    No, not as far as I know. They do now. But at the time it was just me.
    I see. Go on.
    I didn’t abuse it, you know. I always checked first if it was okay. And I only played the piano.
    Of course, Miss Jarret. Do go on. We were talking about Rebecca Laurence.
    She continued sitting, treasuring the silence and the space. The sky was deep blue but not yet navy. Lights from the street were appearing like stars. If she were Michael she would paint the scene with music, but the idea of plucking notes at random panicked her. Other people’s music she could play, play well even, but she had no idea how to write her own.
    She checked her watch: just gone seven. If Seth came back now he might find it strange that she was sitting here in the dark. But she felt rooted to the stool. She looked up and saw herself peeping over the music stand like a child. That bloody mirror. She hated the way she could see herself playing, still hadn’t learned to fully switch off from it. Mawkish and plain, poor little Jane.
    She ran a hand through her drab bob and thought of Rebecca, the beautiful creature who had appeared on Friday, here in this room, all legs and hair and self-assurance.
    Seth had seemed protective towards Rebecca, like he was with her. With Anna he bantered hard, flirted openly, but in a playful sort of way. With her, Catherine, he was different, softer. She had seen his eyes fill with tears as she played for him. He hugged her when she did things for him, sometimes stroked her hair.
    She imagined him stroking Rebecca’s lustrous tresses and felt tight. Soon there would be no room for her. Could she crawl back under that stone, the life from which he had pulled her? Could she survive that darkness again, having felt the warmth of the sun on her face? She knew the answer. The advancing night had become menacing, the trees reaching out thin black arms to coil around her. She shivered, leaned to press the lamp switch. Now she would be illuminated to the outside world. What would passers-by make of the solitary figure motionless at the piano? Perhaps they would see straight through her like a ghost. Perhaps she would blend in with the surroundings.
    Blending in, that’s her trademark. Where Michael is the corner piece of a jigsaw, angled, rigid, crucial, she’s amorphous and shape-shifting, moulding herself to the situation and making herself invisible or at least unnoticed. She can cling around Michael’s sharp corner or slink away to fit somewhere else. Fitting but not fitting in. Like a dog that nestles around its owner’s feet at night, making itself as small as possible to avoid discovery, and then in the glare of morning is kicked out, chastised, discarded.
    But not when she plays. Then she’s solid, she impacts on people. The music gives her conviction, fills her with it. Each press of the foot pedal pumps her fuller, but when the music stops she can’t hold her shape. However hard she tries, the hissing of release begins, accelerates, and then it’s all over.
    Rebecca, she suspects, may be a bit of a chameleon too; she’s an actress after all. But she’s beautiful so it doesn’t matter. No one would look through her. Their eyes would snag on the curve of her cheekbones, the line of her leg, get caught up in the autumn forest of her hair.
    A memory