Glitter (11 page)

After
Air on a G String
I put on a CD with music written by a man called Tchaikovsky. The piece is called
None but the Lonely Heart
and the title is true. It’s like the greyest day in history and the saddest face in the world and the lost little doggy, sitting alone in a boat that has washed forever out to the roughest sea. I’m washed out to sea and there’s no lifeboat in sight. I lay back on my dad’s bed, close my eyes and let the music wash over me, wave after wave after wave.

Seeing pictures of my mum’s face all around me, and feeling the silkiness of her beautiful dresses, makes me wish I could remember her. But however hard I try to rummage
around in my brain looking for a memory, even just a teeny-weeny one. I don’t have any luck. Having her things here makes me realise what I’ve missed. I’d like to be able to cuddle her and eat with her and go to the shops and do normal stuff like that. If I could have her back I wouldn’t even mind having an argument with her. I’d like anything at all. Just to hear her voice say “Liberty, I’ve had enough of your mess, now will you please clean up your room?” Or “Liberty, can you go and get ready for bed please?” I don’t even know what her voice was like. When your mum’s not with you, it’s not the special things you miss or the exciting things, it’s the everyday things, the normal things. It’s the things that make you feel close to her.

For a moment I imagine my mum is alive and real and in this room with me, playing her violin. She’s playing our special tune, the one that she plays me every night before I go to sleep. Her music is kissing my cheek goodnight and tucking me in so I’m safe and warm. Then just before I fall asleep she pulls me up, out of my bed and we dance around my room to a CD that she’s just recorded in New York. She loves me so much that she can’t bear it when I go to sleep, because she says that she misses my smile.

If a glittering fairy godmother would magically swoop
out of the sky, land in my room and give me one wish, it would be to have my mum back for just one day. Just to see her and have her see me one more time. I mean I’ve grown up so much since she last saw me! I’ve changed from a chubby baby into a twelve-year-old girl and I wonder if I passed her in the street if she’d even remember me. If I could have her back for just one day, then maybe I could let her go again. Maybe she would play the sad violin music and fly high up and up and away. And we might cry and stretch our hands out for each other, wanting to stay near. But she’d say, “Liberty, I’m so sorry I have to go. I want to stay with you a million times over and if I had just
one
wish, then
you
would be my wish come true. Dying is a part of life, just like being born. And I’m so sad that I had to leave you before you were all grown up and ready for such a thing. But never forget that I love you, always and always, for ever and ever and if ever you need me you’ll always find me tucked safely away in your heart and glittering under your skin.” I stroke my freckly arms to feel her and when I hold my hands together it’s as if I’m holding hers.

I shuffle through the CDs deciding what to put on next when I see one called
Bach Double (Concerto for Two
Violins)
and my eyes nearly pop out of my head when I see a photo on the front of not only my mum, but my dad as well! And he’s wearing the shirt that I found in the box with the black bow tie! I put the CD in the laptop and listen. The sound of the two violins swirling and leaping and dancing all over me makes me dizzy. I stare at the photo and can’t believe my eyes. My dad hates music! He won’t even listen to the radio! And he can’t even play the violin…can he? He hates the violin! He won’t even let
me
play!

I rush back to the trunk and my eyes find so much more inside. There are trophies and faded dried flowers and thousands of “good luck” and “well done” and “missing you” cards from my dad to my mum and my mum to my dad and bits of ribbon and stacks of sheet music from every composer you could ever imagine. Right at the bottom are a pile of programmes from concerts all over the world. Most of them are covered in my mum’s name, but on some of them is my dad’s. My dad has played in Russia and Paris and London and Australia and even on TV. I leaf through the magazines and find out more and more about my past. Like the fact that my mum and dad met each other at music college when they were
only eighteen and that they had a “passionate and volatile relationship” whatever that means.

Angry feelings start bubbling inside and they bubble right up and turn into fat angry tears that make little salty rivers run down my cheeks. I want to hold all of these treasures I’ve found and keep them safe for ever and yet at the same time I want to tear them all up and throw them in the bin and forget I ever found them. How did my dad think he was going to keep this massive secret from me for ever? And why would he even want to? I have a right to know! And does Sebastian know? And why didn’t my granny tell me? That’s why he keeps her away from me as much as he can. That’s why they don’t get on. It all makes sense now. That’s why he never wants her around and never wants her to get involved in anything; he’s been scared that she’ll let the cat out of the bag. But she never would. I’ve asked her about my past so many times before and she never told me any of this stuff. Why has everyone in my life been keeping a big fat secret from me? Did my dad really plan to lie to me for the whole of my life?

The
Bach Double
finishes and I put on a CD called
Beethoven: Romance for Violin
and listen while I pull the empty trunk on to the floor and open the last one
underneath. In it are a million photo albums of my mum and dad and Sebastian. I hate Sebastian; why does he always have all the luck? The three of them are all over the world smiling and laughing together. And there are all these other people in the albums as well that I don’t even know.

I turn the music up as loud as it will go, so it’s crashing through my ears, blocking out the world and look through the photo album pages one by one. I’m not anywhere. There’s no sign of me. No one would even know that I was a part of this family too. It’s not fair! I’m just about to put them all back and close the lid when I spy a pink photo album hiding in the bottom of the trunk. I pull it out and blow off the dust. On the front of the cover in shining sequins are the words, “Liberty, my darling girl”. I touch the sequins with my finger and trace the words and wonder if it was my mum who stuck these on? I open up the album and there I am! I’m so small and cute and my hair is so red and there’s Sebastian and my mum and dad all smiling together. And there I am again sitting up with a toy in my hand and there I am laughing with mushy food dribbling down my face. And there I am and there I am again and again until the last photo at the end of the
book, which is of my dad and me. It’s my first birthday, so my mum was already dead, and he’s holding me up to blow my birthday candles out. I look so smiley and happy; I couldn’t help it, I didn’t know that such terrible things had happened. I lie back on the bed and hold the album tight. I’m so tired and angry and happy and sad from it all that I close my eyes and let the music take me away. And I’m just floating to a place where I think I can see my mum waving to me and smiling when…

“Liberty!” my dad booms. “Whatever are you doing?”

I freeze. My dad is towering over me. His face is white. I’m wriggling around in my mum’s dress trying to climb out of it but I can’t so I let it fall back down around me and leap up and scrabble about in the messy piles of CDs and magazines and photographs and cards, quickly trying to put them all back without spoiling them. I wish more than anything that I could climb into the trunk and close the lid on myself and never come out again. I promised that I wouldn’t get into trouble today; I promised and I’ve gone and messed up. Again!

“Please answer me, Liberty!” he shouts, “and tell me just what you think you’re doing in here?”

I try to speak but my mouth won’t work. I just stare at him, waiting for something to happen.

“Liberty,” he persists, “I demand an explanation! Right now!”

“I…I…I…” I stutter. “I found the CD in the bookshelf last night, Daddy, and I didn’t mean any harm…I just…”

“Just what, Liberty?” he boils. “Just what? Just thought you’d help yourself to my room and put your grubby mitts all over my things, did you?” He lunges towards me, trying to grab me.

“Daddy, “ I scream, pulling away. “Daddy, don’t hurt me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he shouts, pulling at the purple dress, “I just want you to take that dress off! Now! It’s not yours, Liberty!”

I pull at the dress. It’s hard to get it over my head fast enough and I’m pulling and my dad’s pulling and then a terrible tearing sound splits the air. We both gasp. The CD is playing on and on but my dad and I are frozen in time. I’m stuck. I can’t stay like this for ever but if I move just one millimetre more I know the dress will tear again.

“I’m stuck,” I say. I’m shaking all over and not knowing
what to do. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

And I should have known that sorry was the worst thing ever to say, because he just whooshed it up in flames again.

“It’s always sorry, with you, Liberty. Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Is that the only word you know? I was beginning to think you’d improved lately, that we’d got over the teething problems. We were learning to get on fine together. But no, you have to push and push and push, just like your mother. Well, this is one push too far, young lady.”

I can’t breathe properly because the dress is half over my face and my arms are stuck in the air and beginning to feel tired. I try a little wriggle to see if I can set myself free, but I can feel that the fabric pulling and know it’s about to tear.

“I need your help, Daddy,” I say. “Please, I don’t want to tear it any more.”

He sighs, he’s fuming mad, but when his hands touch the fabric of the dress, like magic, his anger dissolves into a puddle of tears. He crumples the dress to his face and breathes it in, urgently searching for something that might be left of my mum. He sniffs and sniffs, hoping. But it smells of musty old attics and cardboard boxes. He starts weeping and weeping into the purple and silver threads
and then collapses on the bed, still clinging to the hem. He’s trembling because all of the sadness that’s been trapped inside him for years is escaping like air from a punctured balloon. He’s left soggy and wrinkled. I’m about to topple over. I can’t balance any more with him hanging on to the dress.

“Daddy,” I whisper, “please help?”

Carefully, as if he were handling a newborn baby or a puppy, my dad manoeuvres the dress over my head and slips it away from my arms. He pulls it on to his lap, nursing it, stroking it, loving it like a long-lost friend. His eyes glaze over and he’s staring into space, gently rocking backwards and forwards. I scuffle around getting myself back into my clothes, trying to cover myself up, trying to get rid of the bad feeling that is clinging to my skin. I eject the CD, put it back in its case and start putting all the things gently back in the trunk.

“Lissy,” he cries. “Oh, Lissy. My Lissy” He curls up in a ball on the bed, cradling the purple dress and repeating her name over and over and over again.

I’m full of a million questions that are stomping around inside me, wanting answers,
right now!
I’ve had enough of being lied to; I’ve had enough of not knowing anything
about my past. But I know I have to be careful not to set him off again. He’s become a bomb on the bed that at any moment might explode in my face. I climb on the bed next to him and slowly, carefully, rest my hand on his shoulder. I can’t remember the last time I touched my dad like this. His shoulder feels warm and for the first time ever, he doesn’t shrug me off, instead he moves closer towards me, like a kitten looking for strokes. His tears dry up a little and just when I think he’s feeling better, he starts whimpering my mum’s name again and another huge wave of sadness crashes down over him and washes him away.

“Talk to me, Daddy,” I whisper. “There’s so much I need to know.”

He sniffs, rubs his eyes and stares up at me. “I know, Libby,” he says, “I know.”

“Shall I get us both a coffee?” I ask.

He nods and while I’m making the coffee and finding a packet of our favourite biscuits I hear him shuffling around in the bedroom, searching through the CDs. I feel strange inside. I feel like a heavy oak door, with a thousand locks on it has been in the way of me finding out the truth about my life and now my dad is about to
open the door and let me walk through to the other side. It’s like I’ve been walking through fog for my whole life and now it’s cleared and I can suddenly see the garden in front of me and I wonder if I’ll be different when I know. I’m not feeling excited, I feel more serious, wondering what stories are about to hit my ears. I quickly text Cali and tell her I’m feeling too poorly to visit the old people today. I don’t want her to suddenly barge in on the most important thing that’s ever happened in my life and drag me off to vacuum someone old person’s sitting room.

When I get back to the bedroom my dad has put on some music and is waiting on the bed, still clutching the purple dress. I hand him his coffee, he takes a sip and begins.

“What do you need to know?” he asks.

“Everything,” I whisper, moving closer to him. “Like…is it true that you play the violin as well as my mum?”

He nods. “It is true.”

“Then why did you stop?”

He groans. “Oh, Libby,” he says, stroking my cheek, “it’s such a long, long story.”

“I’ve got all afternoon,” I say, edging closer still, “I’ve
cancelled the old people, so there’s no hurry. Start from the beginning.”

“I loved your mother so much, Libby,” he sighs. “We met when we were young and fell in love over Bach and Tchaikovsky and Mozart and Vivaldi and all of the great composers of the world. We lived for our music. We lived, ate, slept and drowned in it. Music was our life. Your mother was much better than me; of course, I was never going to go as far as her, she was the one with the real talent. It came effortlessly to her; playing the violin was as easy as talking. Then Sebastian came along and it got more difficult to manage our careers and our family life, but your mother wouldn’t give up. She was just like you Liberty, she’d push and push and push until she got what she needed. She’d never give up or compromise. But someone needed to be here for Sebastian, so I stayed at home while your mother travelled the world and became more and more famous and more and more in demand.”

He sips his coffee and stares into the distance, like he’s waiting for the right words to drop into his mouth. I slide a little closer. We’re leaning back on a pile of pillows and our arms are touching. I’ve never sat so close to my dad before. He smiles at me and shakes out the purple dress
and lays it across both our laps to keep us warm. I don’t say one word because I don’t want to break this spell.

“And then you came along,” he smiles, stroking my hair from my eyes. “Liberty, my darling girl. You were so beautiful, Libby, so small and perfect and delicate. It would have been impossible to cart two babies around the world going from concert tour to concert tour so I stopped the travelling completely and decided to play for pleasure only. I stayed at home and cared for the two of you. And I begged your mother to stay too. You needed her, you both did. But she got into such a frenzy with it all she just couldn’t stop. Music was like breath to her, you see and without it she thought that she might just fade away and die.”

And then his voice cracks and he starts crying again and little waves of tears break over him. I start crying too and gently he lifts his arm, wraps it around me and pulls me in close. I’m breathless and I’m not really crying for my mum, more for all the time that I’ve lost with my dad, more for all the moments that we haven’t shared like this. In all my memory my dad has never held me like this before; we have never been so close.

“And you see,” he continues, “if only I hadn’t begged
her, if only I’d just let her be, then none of this would ever have happened.”

I take hold of his hand to let him know that I’m here for him, to let him know that if he carries on with the difficult part of the story, I’m not going to slide away and fall off of the edge of the world.