Page 26 of Sunrise By the Sea

‘And you find you haff piano to make you sad. I see. I suppose you haff find something make you sad.’

‘I’m just . . . trying to work . . .’

He frowned as if completely confused. It was hard to tell whether he was angry or whether it was just the natural timbre of his voice that made him sound very angry indeed.

‘I do not like notes. You send notes complaining about music. Where I come from people used to send notes. They send secret notes. To the police about the people who is livink next door.’

She stared at him, completely horrified that he would think this about her. He turned, slowly, and descended the staircase. Halfway down he turned back and held out his hand.

‘I do not want this note,’ he said stiffly. ‘In the daytime there will be music. Is job. At night-time you must haff what you want. I see.’

He looked at it dismissively.

‘Although your handwriting is very beautiful.’

It was. It was part of her job. He was holding it out.

He didn’t apologise for his angry tone. She didn’t put her hand out for the note; couldn’t reach out of her own front door. He proffered it again, his eyebrows twitching in confusion, but she did nothing.

Finally, as if this was beyond endurance, he ripped the note in half, once, twice, three times, and threw the pieces up like confetti in the air, so they gently floated down and coated her steps.

Then he returned to his own house, closed the door quietly and silence fell.

Chapter Nineteen

It was the easiest place, she figured, hiding out in the little windowless bathroom. It was tiled in a very bland hotel style that she liked, as if she was on holiday somewhere – which she guessed was the point – and the towel rail heated up the entire room. Having no windows made it feel cosy and cocoon-like and cut off from the rest of the world. It felt safe. She lit a candle as the hot water filled the tub and she put far too much bubble bath in it. She took her book, but didn’t read it. Instead she got into the water – even though it was far too hot, the pain felt cleansing somehow, sat with her hands around her knees and let big salty tears run down her face.

She was trembling. He had been so angry with her! It had been a reasonable request. Okay, maybe she should have done it in person but . . . well. She couldn’t. A polite note was perfectly reasonable. Well. Reasonable-ish.

She thought of his face, so animated and cheerful when he thought she was introducing herself to the neighbourhood. She put her head in her hands. She should have done that. She should have found a way to say hello. Baked a cake perhaps. But it had been so long since she’d done anything in the kitchen.

Cooking for friends used to be one of her greatest pleasures. Now she could barely keep herself fed wholesomely. Why must everything be so hard? Everything was hard – she found herself slapping the bubbles with her hand – and nobody understood. And what kind of an idiot thought it was okay to play crunching music all night when you had neighbours anyway?

She remembered belatedly that he hadn’t even realised she’d been there. She’d been so successful at hiding herself away that he hadn’t even realised she was there.

She turned on the tap so he couldn’t hear her sobbing through the paper-thin walls.

All that night, as she tried to follow something on Netflix, she was also keeping an ear out for next door. Part of her desperately wanted him to keep playing – to play louder, if anything. Then he could be the bad guy in this scenario and she could cheerfully reclaim the moral high ground and know she was right in what she did and he was a pig. It wouldn’t solve her next problem but it would make her feel better right now.

Instead, there was no piano playing at all. What there was, all clearly audible, was:

1.stomping up and down the woodenfloors

2.occasional sighs

3.the squeaking open of the balcony door

4.more sighing

5.the lighting of something – a cigarillo? Not a cigarette, but a faint scent of liquorice and cloves drifted over from the balcony – which was puffed noisily for a couple of moments, then extinguished crossly.

6.more muttering

This pattern then repeated. Marisa grew more and more alarmed. What if he was actually insane and was plotting to murder her in her bed? Just because she was in the middle of nowhere, at an address that didn’t appear on Google Maps, on an island that didn’t always connect to the mainland, with very few people knowing she was there, next door to a very grumpy giant whom she had angered . . .

Marisa took her laptop and retired to bed.

She looked at Skype sadly. There was only one person she was interested in hearing from. And he wasn’t around any more. And her grandmother would almost certainly tell her she was an idiot.

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