Page 63 of Dream a Little Dream

“It’s thewhy, Aaron. We point out thewhypeople rape and murder.”

“Because they like it?”

Kenny shoved the letters on the side windowsill and dumped the Amazon box underneath it. He pointed up ahead. “Kitchen.”

“Should I take my shoes off?” Aaron lifted his tatty All Stars. “This looks like a no-shoe zone.”

“No. Move.”

Aaron stumbled to the back of the house and into the kitchen-slash-diner, where he let out a soft gasp of surprise. The pristine, sleek black-and-white design screamed modern and new, with the bi-folding glass doors like a full-length mirror looking back in on itself because of the dark from outside where, Aaron suspected, was a decent sized garden. The place practically gleamed, spotless and orderly. And in the centre of the breakfast bar stood a fresh bouquet of bright colourful flowers, beside them an envelope with curly cursive writing ofDr Lyons’ shopping listscrawled on the front.

Dr Lyons had a cleaner.

And OCD.

Kenny went to the built in fridge and cracked it open. “Do you want anything to eat?”

Aaron ripped off his hoodie, dumping it on the floor with his bag, then ruffled down his loose T-shirt and stroked back his hair. “What you got?”

“Stuff for a sandwich.”

Aaron perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, spinning it with lazily childlike air. “All right. You can make me a sandwich.”

Kenny moved mechanically, pulling out salad, ham, cheese, butter, everything to assemble a simple meal. Aaron wasn’t getting the slap up steak dinner that Heather got, then. But the way Kenny slapped the bread on the chopping board with his shoulders tense and his jaw clenched, Aaron was under no illusion he was in the same realm as the woman Kenny was dating. Especially as no idle chit chat was forthcoming. Kenny was waiting for him to fill it. Aaron knew what Dr Kenneth Lyons was doing. Making this whole situation as awkward as fuck so Aaron might say something. Might need to fill the silence.

He did, but he wouldn’t do it withwords.

So he checked out the far end of the kitchen, where a tatty wooden piano wedged under the slanting roof of the staircase caught his attention.

“You play?” he asked, almost unconsciously. A little of the real him snuck out with the question. With the hope. With yet another piece of commonality. Something they might share.

“My mum did.” Kenny sliced through the cheddar cheese. “The piano’s hers.”

Aaron slid off the stool, unable to avoid going over to it. He hadn’t played in a long time. When at school, in the sticks of the countryside, he’d used to sneak into the music block at lunch to give himself his fix. But after moving to London, he no longer had access. And playing piano when in a halfway house in Woolwich wasn’t recommended if he wanted to keep his pretty face. But here…here was different. So he lifted the fallboard with a gentleness at odds with the usual sharp-edged demeanour hecarried around and stroked the keys. The smooth feel of real ivory shunted him back in time. To a different place. A happier phase of his life. A safer existence. The irony didn’t escape him, and he could sense Kenny’s eyes on him like a piercing laser. He’d stopped making the sandwich, and it was as though he’d sucked all the air from the room when he held his breath in anticipation.

Aaron cracked his neck from side to side. If Kenny wanted to know him, there was only one way to do that. One way to be absolutely certain. Whether it would ruin him, or them, or whatever chance they could have had, Aaron had to test it. He liked testing boundaries. It had got him into trouble more than once, but somehow, like a moth to a flame, he was always ready to fly right into danger and burn.

Because, as his mother had once said, he was invincible.

Or had she said invisible?

He couldn’t remember, so he dragged out the piano stool, the foam and leather seat cracked and torn, and gazed up at the ceiling light, searching for the recollections long buried. He waited a beat, then, having grasped that elusive memory, took his seat, hovering his fingers over the keys.

Three. Two. One.

He came alive. His whole body. He didn’t just play the piano; herousedit, coaxing every note into existence with an electric energy, a revival of the music his mother had taught him. And the piano, though slightly out of tune, responded to him as if it had been waiting for this moment. Forhim. To bring it to life again.

Aaron threw himself into it. Head bowing. Shoulders dipping. Pressing his foot to the right pedal to lengthen and sustain the notes echoing around the sterile kitchen. And the melody flowed, a seamless, hypnotic current, as though releasing the trapped notes that had been yearning to fill thespace once again. It wasn’t a random tune, either. Not justanysong. But the unmistakable, delicate piano instrumental ofDream a Little Dream of Me.

Why?

Because Aaron liked walking on a knife edge.

Then he stopped. Peeked over at Kenny. Would he say it? Would he ask? Was he wondering, too, who Aaron was? But Kenny was stunned. Lips parted. Frozen and hypnotised. So Aaron slapped his hands on his knees, twisting on the stool, and rose to check the food Kenny still hadn’t assembled. “No tomato,” he said.

“What?” Kenny blinked himself back into the room.

“I don’t like tomato.” Aaron stood and made his way over to the breakfast bar opposite Kenny. “The other salad stuff’s fine. But not tomato. Seepy juices make me gag.”

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