At school, when she had managed to get there, she had been silent and serene, unemotional, a remarkable musical talent. The bullies hadn’t understood her so had left her alone. At music college, she had taken on a similar persona, staying in her room at halls and avoiding communal areas like the students’ union and bar. She had gone only to the lessons that she had been obliged to go to and spent excessive hours in the practice rooms.

Now, she strikes a chord. She’s playing Chopin, Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9, No. 2. It was her mother’s favourite piece and she wants to get it right. Not that she’ll ever be able to play as well as her mother used to do. Her mother could have been a concert pianist if her life had turned out differently. If she hadn’t experienced the horror of persecution in the Second World War. Even after she had escaped Poland and come to London, life had never been a bed of roses.

Roses. A memory tugs. A face. The curve of a cheek.

Eva shivers and plays more notes. She misses her mother. No one gets over losing their mother. That’s the truth. What will she do? Move away? Stay in the flat? She strikes another chord. And then another. She thinks of the woman downstairs. Maybe it was her hair that had unsettled her. Dark like Eva’s mother’s. Like Eva’s. Mind you, the last time she had spoken to a doctor, he had told her if she didn’t eat properly, her hair would fall out before she was thirty-five. An exaggeration, of course, but even so.

She plays again, her fingers running lightly across the keys. Better. Standing, she heads to the kitchen to make coffee. She has a rule. One coffee a day. No milk. Late afternoon to pick up her spirits.

There is a light knock on the door. Eva hesitates. She is expecting a pupil, but Toby is young and he hammers on the door. Besides, it’s too early. It’s not him. She steps forward, her breath rising and falling. She has a second rule that she only opens the door when she knows who is there and a third rule that she never invites people into her flat unless they have a prior appointment. Since that applies only to her pupils or the occasional plumber or electrician, and Ron of course when she was seeing him, she rarely speaks to anyone.

Edging closer, she listens. The person knocks again, a little more loudly. Eva steadies herself, fingers on the doorframe for balance. The footsteps retreat; she can hear a light tread on the stairs.

Moments pass. Gently she opens the door. Voices float upwards from the landing on the floor below and she knows without seeing that one of them belongs to the beautiful woman downstairs.

7

Connie

May 1964