It’s only natural that someone with an ear trained by playing the piano from childhood would develop a far greater acuity than someone who grew up ignorant of the highest-quality music.

But that wasn’t what bothered me. I felt tripped up by Mr Akino’s words, about to stumble and fall.

Did I really hope to have a world-class concert pianist play a piano that I myself had tuned? No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t picture it.

Even Pianos Deserve Second Chances

That evening, Mr Yanagi received a call. After hanging up he came over. ‘They cancelled on me.’ He was frowning, which was out of character for him. We often had cancellations, but I’d not seen him react this way before.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked. And then it hit me. ‘Was that the Sakuras?’

Yuni and Kazune’s home.

‘Yes, the twins’ place,’ he said.

‘Maybe they had exams to study for.’

Or perhaps they had a performance coming up. There were times when they had to practise and couldn’t spare the two hours it would take for a tuning. It was entirely possible they wanted to use the time to rehearse and so had put off the appointment.

‘No, that doesn’t seem to be the case,’ he said. ‘They didn’t postpone it. They cancelled entirely.’

I felt my heart flutter a little. ‘Maybe they were in an accident.’

The words came out without me thinking, and Mr Yanagi reacted harshly.

‘Don’t even joke about it.’

I couldn’t help it.

‘Do you want to call them?’ he asked me.

I shook my head. I was too scared. Frightened I might hear something devastating.

Mr Yanagi walked away from his desk. He looked as if he might ring their home directly from his mobile. I didn’t want to know. I’d realized there was another possible reason. Yuni and Kazune were perfectly fine and still playing every day. Perhaps they simply didn’t want us to tune their piano any more. They’d decided to ask another firm of tuners to do it.

Sadly, that wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. But as long as Yuni and Kazune were both fine, well, that was far better than the alternative.

Mr Yanagi came back a little later. ‘She can’t play any more.’

I couldn’t believe it. ‘Can’t play? Who can’t?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t say. It seemed too awkward to ask.’

Yuni or Kazune – one of them – could no longer play the piano? Why?

‘Their mother said, “My daughter’s at a place where she can’t play for a while, so we’re going to leave the tuning for now.”’