Sunrise By the Sea by Jenny Colgan

Chapter Twelve

Marisa sat, back against the wall, waiting.

Perhaps, she told herself. Perhaps it would be nice – some lovely music, nothing too difficult, a few tunes every night? That would be pleasant, no? Yes. It would be all right. It would be nice, in fact. A little music. Presumably if he was a teacher he’d be good, right? It would be okay. She tried some of the breathing exercises she’d read about. In through the nose, out through the mouth. In through the nose, hold for four: one, two, three—

CRASH!

At first, Marisa thought someone had dropped the piano again. But then there was another powerful crumping noise and two things immediately became obvious: one, that despite the luxury fixtures and fittings and the gorgeous layout, the walls of these buildings were paper-thin (this was entirely correct; Reuben only meant them as holiday homes so hadn’t bothered with soundproofing. In his own house, which had a totally circular bedroom, you could land a helicopter outside without noticing, and in fact this had happened); and two, this was not going to be ‘a little pretty music coming from next door’.

This was incredibly discordant and loud, banging away as if he were trying to hurt the piano rather than play it. Was he even a musician? she found herself wondering. He certainly wasn’t playing like one. It was a horrible sound.

She moved into the bedroom on the other side of the sitting room, but it didn’t change matters at all. The only place that was slightly quieter was the bathroom which didn’t have any windows. She ran a bath. Then she put her own speakers on, very loudly in the bathroom. Unfortunately, the blend of the last Taylor Swift album and the (albeit fainter) racket from next door was even worse.

Close to tears, she sat in the bath. This couldn’t last for ever.

It lasted for three hours.

Any idiot, she knew, would just go and speak to him. Say excuse me, hello, introduce herself and discuss what was sensible to do. You could even get keyboards that didn’t make any noise, she knew, so maybe something like that. Well. There were all sorts of things she could have done.

Unfortunately, over the next few weeks, she found herself completely incapable of any of them. She ordered a very expensive pair of noise-cancelling headphones that cut out absolutely every other piece of noise in the house in a slightly off-putting way, but still let the banging and crashing noise through so she felt like now she was in a world where only the horrible piano existed.

Perhaps it would stop when he went to work, she thought.

She thought wrongly. In fact, one of the reasons Reuben had been so keen to put the music teacher into one of his houses was that he planned to build huge glass arts and music structure effectively hanging off the cliff side of Mount Polbearne, turning it into an ‘international arts destination’ (his words) or ‘a James Bond dystopian carbuncle’ (the views of the planning committee). The plans were still on hold.

So there wasn’t just the piano teacher playing. There were his pupils too, and it was something of a toss-up as to who was worse, in Marisa’s opinion. Because she heard everything.

So every morning the students tripped up the steps, clutching their little music cases, and over and over again Marisa would listen to a reluctant, catastrophic set of scales; followed by ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’, and ‘Camptown Races’, fingers haltingly tripping over every new note.

She could make out, when she was in the main room – or, even clearer, the mezzanine, which she’d set up as her own office, a deep growling voice too, presumably his; never angry, but patient, slow and encouraging. How could he stand it? How could he do that over and over again?

It felt like torture. And the worst of it was, everything else was as good as it could be under the circumstances. She liked the little doll’s house. She could get food delivered; she had her work and an internet connection – although she felt guilt at leaving Nazreen to do all the front office work, working with the public while she did all the admin. She was lonely, but she was safe.

Nazreen liked Marisa very much and, even after the GP’s recommended working from home period elapsed, was happy to let things carry on as they were and to pass on the boring stuff. Meeting the public, admiring the new babies, taking part in the celebratory weddings – that was the stuff of the job that she loved, that Marisa had used to love too, long ago. Even carefully and sensitively handling loss was a part of the job that could give great satisfaction, if you could do it right.

Nazreen more than anyone could see what was happening with Marisa; had advised against the move and pushed her on the therapist. Now she was biding her time, hoping to inch her back little by little, sooner or later.

Marisa was nowhere near even thinking about going out. But she was thinking about going mad. Or, she reflected gloomily, even more mad.

After a full day of little children – and some older ones – hammering their way dementedly through the same three or four pieces and the endless relentless scales, the teacher himself would then sit down – she could, with her headphones off, hear every creak and noise across the floorboards – and play, sometimes with great long scales himself, pounding away, but more often with loud, noisy clanging music that he would play over and over again, long into the night, with absolutely no discernible tune, as far as she could tell.