Everyone was thinking about the fire and Mr Layton. Alice was worried. Tilly was worried too. Mr Layton wouldn’t desert them. He would come back.
Was it lying if Tilly said nothing about her father and Mrs Layton? What if it was all mixed up together? The fire had rushed through eating up everything, even Mr Layton in some way, but all the torrid urgency of her secret was still there. Maybe now it was worse.
She left the house, creeping out into a world that felt all enlarged and imbued with the scorched remains and the disappearance of Mr Layton. She went to Daisy Cavallo’s.
‘I have a plan,’ Daisy whispered, at the door. She held up one finger. ‘We’re going to lie back and just listen for a while. Come in. I’ll put a record on. No, you put it on. You choose? Anything. But not the nocturnes. I’m too melancholic already. Is there any news on Joe Layton?’ Daisy flopped on the couch, like a fainted Victorian.
Tilly paused. She wished Daisy had not mentioned Mr Layton. And she didn’t know which record to choose. Daisy’s records weren’t what you would expect for a piano teacher: Jimi Hendrix, Bach, Thelonius Monk, Nina Simone, but also Neneh Cherry, Hank Williams. They were just names to Tilly.
‘It’s terrible that we don’t make a practice of listening. Just to fill ourselves with a beautiful song? Everything is too intentional now. Did I tell you, next week I’m going to a women’s peace camp at Pine Gap. I’m taking my accordion.’
Tilly felt immediately ashamed of her own escape plan.
‘Can I come?’
‘Well, you could, but it’s a long way. I’m flying there. Make me a sign though and I’ll carry it for you. Surprise me!’ Daisy sang. Tilly chose Dollar Brand, slipped the record out of its inner envelope. She didn’t know who Dollar Brand was. When it started, Daisy smiled, closed her eyes.
‘See I knew you would make a perfect choice. Close your eyes. It helps. Let’s listen together.’
Together. Daisy was her secret companion, Dollar Brand their accomplice. Dollar Brand played the piano. Tilly lay over the armchair, let her arm dangle. She tried to rid her head of plans.
Daisy opened her lazy eyes. ‘Are you listening, chicken? Doesn’t he make it sing?’
‘Yes, I’m listening.’
‘And?’
‘Well, I’m going ice skating.’
Daisy sat up. She stretched her lovely neck. ‘Oh, now that it’s cooled down…’
Dollar Brand kept playing. The music was lilting, like something running up and down a hill.
‘If I was your age,’ Daisy said. And then she stopped speaking, and kept listening. Tilly waited for her to continue. It was odd just waiting there with the piano and everything languorous and damp, as if ready to take flight. She felt like a seed wedged in the earth just beginning to push up.
Daisy let out a long sigh. ‘Whatever you do, you must do it all before your legs get stiff and arthritic.’ Daisy twirled her bare feet in front of her.
Tilly watched Daisy’s feet. They seemed anything but stiff.
‘It’s a wonder to have a life, really,’ Daisy continued.
‘I’ve decided I want to study music.’
‘Exactly! And so you should. And when you travel you can switch from piano to violin.’ Daisy clapped her hands. ‘You know, Raff is in the city. I can give you his address. He is staying with his cousin.’
It was what Tilly wanted, though she never would have asked for it.
Daisy sat up. ‘Come, let’s play the piano now. We will channel Dollar Brand. African piano.’
Having Raff’s address was like holding a ticket out of town far away from the disappearance of Mr Layton and the creeping fear that she might know something about it.
Her life was ready to get going all on its own without her pleading with it to move. Soon her results would arrive, her future would be decided, but now, for a moment, everything had parted just enough for her to slip through. Tilly could go to the city without telling anyone. She left a note for her parents, saying she was staying with Alice.
She gave her backpack a little heave, patting the small weight fondly. It was just she and it.
She should have told Alice what she was doing. But she wasn’t sure anymore where the feeling of having to leave had started and she began to doubt its integrity, because it had possibly started as a very small idea, and then it had grown inside her. It was shaped like a little arrow and it had flung her towards an elsewhere.
It was almost dusk by the time she got there. Shop interiors sang out as bright as beating hearts in the coming night. Cars swished by. People marched homewards. Tilly waited momentarily on a busy corner, leaning back against a lamppost. She would just watch what it was that rushed around her, steady herself in the evening’s swell.
The lights changed, and Tilly crossed the road. She had a pencil-drawn map of where Raff lived. She planned to show him who she could be. When he had driven her home in the rain, he had said, ‘You’re so shy, aren’t you? It’s like you’re still a kid.’ And she had flushed. She should have risen up and shown her tiger teeth. She could have laughed, like he did, with that sort of submerged contempt. No wonder he hadn’t tried to kiss her again. She had bleached herself blank and dived down in shame. She would unfold herself right to the bone now. She would show him.
Raff’s cousin’s house was in Carlton, a single-fronted terrace. A tall thin boy in a blue T-shirt answered the door. His arms hung down by his sides. He seemed lank. Or long. Or in limbo… hovering.
‘I’m looking for Raff?’ she said.
‘Cavallo?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He’s not here. Is he expecting you?’ He shook his head, looped a thumb in his jean pocket.
She hadn’t expected this.
‘Oh, no. I just wanted to say hello.’
‘Tilly.’ She had nothing to add to it. She saw he expected more. And then she remembered. ‘We were at school together.’
‘Well, I guess you can come in and wait a bit? I’m Steve. We’re cousins.’ She didn’t want to go in. But she wasn’t sure what else to do.
‘Okay. Thanks. I don’t want to disturb you, though.’
‘No worries. I’m having a beer. Want one?’
‘Okay.’
She followed him down a dark hall into a small ugly room. There was little furniture: a couch, a small side table, a record player, milk crates full of records, a mantelpiece above an empty fireplace and above that a poster of Bob Dylan, which said, ‘Don’t look back’. She stared at the one window, through which the evening light slanted in. She sat next to Steve on the couch.
He passed her the bottle of beer. ‘Should I get a glass?’
‘I can drink it like this.’ She felt suddenly very unsure about everything. She drank the beer. Steve watched her. He was waiting for her to talk, perhaps. She smiled at him.
He lunged forward, picking up her wrist, as if it was something of his that he had dropped. She took it back.
‘So, how old are you?’ He wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe he was already drunk.
‘Old enough.’ She laughed.
‘I can take you to the nightclub where Raff will be if you want?’ he said.
‘Did Raff mention me?’ She wished she hadn’t asked.
‘Nope. But Raff’s got a lot of girls on the go.’ Steve smirked. Perhaps he knew it went in like a knife. She was nothing to Raff. That was what he meant. If she were alone, she could let this go in and beat around inside her head till she was nothing but sorrow. She wanted to leave. She wanted Ada. She wanted this all to be over. But she couldn’t show this to Steve.
‘Shall we go then?’ she said.
Inside the nightclub he bought her a drink. The music was loud and the air shadowy. Everything was half-hidden, half-revealed. She was heavy and sinking, and she kept looking out as if Raff might appear, as if Steve might disappear and instead it would be Raff dancing in front of her face. If he saw her, would he choose her? Nothing could be certain in there, nothing would hold. Even Tilly had disappeared from herself.
She took Steve’s hand and led him towards the dance floor. If Raff could see her he would see she wasn’t such a child, she was taking the lead, unfolding to the bone. The mirror ball showered them with flickering light. Her hands wove through the spinning lights.
Later they stumbled home as if the world was still a whirling mirror ball. In bed he put his hands on the bones of her hip. Go ahead, she thought. She wanted every bit of her to break open, every tightly held fear to be unwound, every buried hope or rising whim to be set free. She wanted oblivion. She would surface, blank as an unwritten page, even if it hurt.
A sudden knocking on the door woke her early in the morning. Raff called out. He said his mother was on the phone. Tilly threw on her dress. The door opened, and Raff stared at her as if she was still a child, a dirty child.
‘Your parents are worried about you,’ he said, ignoring Steve.
So she hadn’t been rubbed out after all. Nothing had changed. She was still susceptible. Regrets gripped her. Raff turned back and said there was bad news too.
‘What?’ She squeezed the word out.
‘They found Mr Layton’s body at the bottom of the well. Where we threw the fox.’