Ava’s days are shaped by The Times cryptic crossword. She begins it in the morning, unfolding the paper as she sits with her cup of milky Earl Grey and marmalade scraped thinly over slightly burnt toast. While drinking the tea and nibbling the toast, Ava scans the little black-and-white squares, digesting each of the clues. By the time her cup and plate are empty, she’s usually filled out three or four answers. And the rest of the unanswered questions have soaked into her mind and memory, allowing her to revisit them throughout the day.
Words float up at unexpected moments. Ava will be washing dishes when she hears: Bemuse – 7 Down: Play goddess to stupefy (6). She’ll be checking in library books when: Bittern – 14 Across: Bird pecked bird (7) pops up. She’ll be running for the bus when she’ll realise: Rayon – 10 Down: Light shed on synthetic material (5). And each time Ava will smile, a secret little smile, then make a mental note of what to fill in later … In truth, though Ava tells herself she’s driven by the desire to finish the crossword as fast as possible – the competition with oneself being the point – actually an ideal day is when the final answer arrives at bedtime. This way she can spend most of her moments concealed in the comfortable confines of her own mind, almost able to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist at all.
Ava’s other hobby is gardening. She enjoys being with her plants whatever the weather. She loves springtime, of course, witnessing the resurrection of so many of her beautiful flowers, coaxing them on with soft words, gently touching the light-green leaves of new shoots as they push their way through the wet, dark earth and into the cool sunlight. But she loves the winter as well. On even the coldest mornings Ava wraps herself in thick wool, slips her socked feet into sheepskin boots, curls her fingers around a large mug of coffee and ventures out onto crisp, crunchy grass. She’ll take a few crossword clues – tucked safely and snugly into the corners of her mind – out into the frosty air and mull them over as she slowly circles the frozen lawn. Ava doesn’t touch the solid earth during the coldest months but she brings the warmth of her body into the garden and stays with her plants for as long as she can. She strokes a bare finger along the stripped branches of the bushes and trees, reminding their hibernating leaves of the warmth of life to which they will one day return.
But, of all the seasons and all the months, May is Ava’s favourite. When a symphony of bluebells explodes across her flower beds, she can’t stop smiling. Sometimes she’ll stare at them for hours. She’ll be preparing dinner, or doing the washing-up and just look out of the window. Then, finally, she’ll tear her gaze away, catch sight of the clock and realise an hour has disappeared. And, during the months when her garden is plump with colour, the combination of the beauty and silence is so soothing that Ava often forgets to think about her crossword puzzles at all.
Today, as she steps outside in stockinged feet, Ava senses a shift in the air. She sniffs her cup of lukewarm peppermint tea, shivering slightly in the cool morning breeze as she glances around her garden. She should probably slip on a pair of shoes – the soles of her stockings will soon be damp from the dewy grass – but something stops her and Ava walks onto the soft wet lawn. Instead of circling the garden she stands in the middle, shuts her eyes and wonders what feels different. It takes a while before she can pinpoint it. It feels as if something is about to happen.
And then, in the next moment, it does. A sound, like Ava has never heard before in her life, soars through the air – a flood of notes from a violin. It pierces Ava’s heart, stopping her breath in her throat. Then the sound dies and the air is still again. But, after a few minutes the music begins again and, as it plays, something inside Ava stirs, as if her heart is a hibernating bear slumbering all her life and only just now waking up.
Finn O’Connor was three years old when he heard his first concerto. It was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Finn was absolutely transfixed. He was a boy who loved to run and jump. He’d never been able to sit still for more than a second – his mother having to employ great skills of persuasion whenever she sat him down for a meal – but as he’d watched the musicians and their instruments he hadn’t shifted from his chair for a moment. Through every bar of spring, summer and autumn Finn stayed glued, still as a statue, while the notes of a dozen instruments soared above, around and vibrated within him. But when winter arrived and the violin solo came to a crescendo, Finn was literally capsized by the music. He fell off his chair.
Six days later, finally exhausted by his unrelenting begging, Finn’s mother spent the family’s weekly shopping budget on a second-hand violin. Then after he lived, breathed and slept with it for another two weeks, she took two extra cleaning shifts at the school to pay for lessons. He hadn’t been able to read by sight or play pieces perfectly without practising, but what he lacked in innate talent Finn made up for in tenacity. His enthusiasm only increased as he grew. He practised all day, each day, every moment he could. He woke early and stayed up late. He pelted into the living room after school, snatching up his violin, his most precious, prized possession and holding it against his heart. He stood with it, whispering his secrets into the wood before cocking his ear to the bridge to better hear the soft replies.
‘Finn, please. Not at the dinner table,’ his mother would protest, half-heartedly. ‘Can’t you let go of that instrument just long enough to eat?’
Finn’s answer to this plea was always the same. He’d cast a reproachful glance out from under furrowed brows and tighten the fingers of his left hand around the scroll of his violin.
‘You’re spilling your peas,’ his mother would object.
In response, Finn would press his lips to the table and inhale the offending peas, to which his mother would sigh and mumble something unintelligible. Then she’d start muttering about their father.
‘It’s all my fault … I’m not enough … If only your father hadn’t left, you wouldn’t be so …’ And tears would fill her eyes and Finn would pretend not to see them.
‘Don’t be stupid, Mum,’ Byrne – Finn’s older brother – would snap then. ‘Dad left cos he’s a bastard philanderer. And Finn would still be a weirdo, even if that man, or any man, was here. I’d just consider yourself lucky you’ve got one normal son.’
At eleven years old, Byrne didn’t have any slightly strange obsessions. He didn’t even have any passions – excepting video games and spaghetti. He viewed the world through the jaded eyes of someone who knew what he liked and what he didn’t – most things in life falling into the latter category. So when Finn serenaded him at bedtime with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Byrne slammed the door and stuffed his head under his pillow. And when Finn trundled along the pavement to school, humming the violin solo from Aida, Byrne told him to ‘shut the hell up’.
But, despite all her concerns and half-hearted protests, for the most part Mary O’Connor took great delight in her younger son and his music. She asked him to play when she did the dishes every night and while she was making breakfast every morning. At other times, when she was scrubbing someone else’s linoleum floors, for example, she found herself humming along as if Finn were standing beside her, bow in hand. His music seeped into her dreams so she woke smiling, even though her bed was bare and bereft of the man she wished was still sleeping beside her.
It was only when Mary most longed for that man and turned to her youngest son instead, that she hated the violin. When she read to Finn at night and felt the sudden urge to cuddle him close and squeeze him tight, she glared at the instrument wedged between them, momentarily wishing it would spontaneously combust. Of course, she never said anything against it. Indeed, Mary was eternally grateful that Finn had something he loved so dearly he might not miss an absent father quite so much.
Finn was twelve when a tragedy occurred. As he ran across the road on his way home from school, clutching the violin under his arm, he stumbled and dropped the case. A car blasted its horn and Finn sprang away. He survived. The violin didn’t.
‘I’ll buy you another one,’ his mother promised. ‘As soon as I can find another job. It won’t be long, don’t worry. I’ve got another interview next week.’
She’d been let go from the cleaning job at the school after the council had made budget cuts. Sadly, for both Finn and Mary, it took her an entire year to find a new job. During this time, while he couldn’t play, Finn took to scratching at scabs on his skin until they bled, over and over again, until they scarred. He sucked his thumb so fiercely it got blisters and twisted his hair so hard it shed in clumps. When, at last, his mother was gainfully employed and quickly saved to buy him another violin, Finn clutched it to his chest so tightly he could barely breathe and wept with relief.
Finn plays every morning at daybreak. Sometimes he serenades the birds singing outside his bedroom window, other times he accompanies them and, occasionally, he lets them take the lead. It’s his meditation, his inner settling before being thrown into the fray of the day. Finn doesn’t do well with people. He’s okay with kids, which is why he teaches music four days a week at the secondary school across town. He relies on the stable income, as well as enjoying the biweekly injection of unadulterated enthusiasm the kids give him.
Today, Finn steps over piles of cardboard boxes to reach his open window. It’s all new to him: the house, the window and the little garden beneath. He’d moved in the day before but it already felt like home. Really, all Finn needed was his violin to feel at home. He could have been pitched up in a tent in a field or in a sleeping bag under a bridge and, as long as he had the sweetest part of him, he’d be all right.
Cool spring air blows through Finn’s fingers as he plays, warming up with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – autumn and winter – as he always does, before mixing in a little Mozart and Beethoven, then letting himself go into a free style of his own making. As he plays Finn glances out of the window onto his garden below. It’s a bit of a mess – the previous tenant clearly hadn’t cared much for gardening – but the garden next door to his is absolutely glorious. He keeps playing as he lets his eyes flit from one flower to the next until, finally, they alight on a woman standing at the edge of the lawn, holding a cup of tea, staring up at him. She’s beautiful, with long black hair and big dark eyes. Instinctively, Finn darts away from the open window, clutching his violin tight to his chest, as if the woman had been intending on snatching it from him. He waits in the shadows behind his curtains for a while, before finally peeking out of the window again.
This time he sees something else entirely. The woman with the long black hair has gone but, as Finn glances around, he sees another woman standing at the bottom of his other neighbour’s garden. This woman has red hair that curls and spirals in the wind, freckles scattered across her bare skin – of which there is quite a lot – and an air of serenity he’s rarely seen in another person. Indeed, Finn is so mesmerised by this woman, so enchanted, that it takes him a while to realise that she isn’t actually standing on the lawn but hovering a few inches above it.