Read Losing Nicola for Free Online Page B

smiled the same way Ava had. ‘People call it The Curse, but it’s not really because it means that you’ll be able to have children now.’
    â€˜But I don’t
want
to,’ I said. ‘Not
now
.’
    â€˜You don’t have to.’ She gave me a short lecture in her embarrassing Wise Woman voice about being careful what I did with boys that left me none the wiser. I was fairly sure I didn’t like being a woman. I felt dirty. The string chafed the skin of my stomach, the pad felt awkward. I was sure that everyone could see it bulging inside my shorts. I’d never kept anything from Orlando before, but I felt instinctively that this was something I wouldn’t share with him.
    Perhaps it was because I was now a woman that Fiona decided I was to take piano lessons. Perhaps she thought I was becoming too much of a tomboy, or perhaps she simply wanted to help the lonely young refugee who was living up the road in Mrs Sheffield’s house. Grown-ups didn’t explain very much to us in those days but I vaguely understood that Mr Elias had escaped from Germany before the war.
    â€˜I don’t want to waste the holidays on beastly music lessons.’ I kicked at the big Chesterfield sofa in our shabby drawing-room. Orlando had been learning the piano for years, along with several other instruments, but I’d never felt any desire to do so too.
    â€˜Some of your friends are already going to him,’ Fiona said. ‘Mary Stephens. Rosemary Geoffreye. And that strange child from the North End – Nicola Stone.’
    â€˜Nicola?’ I brightened. If Nicola went to him, it put a different complexion on things. ‘She never said anything about it.’
    â€˜Well, she began in the Easter holidays, and goes once a week. She’ll be taking lessons at school from next term and her mother wants her to get a head start.’
    So it was with reasonable grace that I found myself on the stone doorstep of Number Seventeen, five houses down from Glenfield, lifting the green-tarnished brass knocker shaped like a bull’s head. When Mrs Sheffield opened the door, she let loose the smell of mould and damp stone and lack of upkeep, which was familiar from my own home.
    â€˜Good afternoon, Alice,’ she said in her high-pitched, well-bred voice.
    â€˜It’s for piano lessons,’ I said quickly, afraid that she might otherwise think this was a social call.
    â€˜Of course. Your mother said you would be coming.’ From upstairs, we could hear something sad and beautiful being played on the piano. Mrs Sheffield’s face lifted to the sound like a sunflower. She sighed. ‘He’s such a talented boy. I wish my husband could have heard . . .’
    A boy? I found this strange. None of the boys I knew could have taught someone to play the piano, not even Orlando, and he was already preparing to take Grade 8. ‘Should I go up?’ I wondered.
    â€˜Of course, dear. I’m sure Mr Elias is expecting you. First door on the right. Just knock.’
    I climbed the curving staircase while the music swelled. Another brass knocker, polished this time, in the shape of a trumpet-blowing angel, was attached to the middle panel of the door, and I lifted it, let it fall again with a small thud.
    The door opened, and Mr Elias stood there, staring gravely at me for a moment.
    â€˜You are Miss Alice Beecham?’ He had a foreign accent and wore a pullover with holes in the elbows. His teeth were very white.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Then please to come in.’ He stood aside and motioned me in with a bow.
    Immediately I felt lifted out of my usual self. A bow! This was not how I was normally treated. I floated past him and stared around me. The cluttered room smelled of coffee and wool and aniseed; it was an alien smell, and curiously exciting. After the austerities of my own home, it seemed exotic beyond compare. Heavy velvet curtains hung from floor to ceiling