A Night, A Secret...A Child

When Nicolas had been eleven—and becoming more difficult to control with each passing day—she’d made a dress for a regular client’s sister who was visiting from a small town on the north coast called Rocky Creek.

‘If there was a dressmaker of your skills in my home town,’ the woman had gushed, ‘she’d never be out of work.’

Madeline had often thought about living in the country, but just hadn’t found the courage to make such a big change. She herself had been born in Sydney and had known nothing else but city life. But the problems she was encountering with Nicolas—he was getting in with a gang of boys who roamed the streets at night—forced her to look seriously at getting him away from the bad influences in the less than salubrious suburb where they lived.

Assured that she’d be able to buy a house in Rocky Creek for half of what her Surry Hills place was worth, Madeline made the massive decision to up stakes and move from Sydney to the country.

Nicolas had been furious with her. He was a city boy through and through. He didn’t want to live out in the sticks. He didn’t want to go to a school that had less than sixty children. He complained—and played up—at considerable length.

Till Mrs Johnson—and the piano—came into his life.

Despite being known as Mrs Johnson, the piano teacher was actually a childless spinster who lived in the house next door to the small cottage in Rocky Creek that his mother had bought. She gave private piano lessons for a living and had reputedly once been a not so very famous concert pianist. As fate would have it, her music room was just over the fence from Nicolas’s bedroom. He could not help hearing the music.

For ages, Nicolas had not understood why he liked it so much. Up till then his musical taste had stopped at rock and heavy metal. One day—he’d just turned twelve—he hadn’t been able to resist the pull of the music any longer, so he’d asked his mother if he could have piano lessons.

Despite not having any spare money for music lessons—or a piano—a delighted Madeline Dupre had quickly come to an agreement with Mrs Johnson, who would teach Nicolas for nothing if Madeline made her a dress whenever she needed one. As for a piano, Mrs Johnson had also agreed that Nicolas could practise on hers whenever it was free. Once she’d realised she had a prodigy on her hands, the ecstatic teacher had even gave him a front door key so that he could let himself in when she was out playing bridge.

Soon Nicolas was practising every chance he got. He’d rarely done any of his homework but he’d excelled at the piano. At the age of fifteen he’d passed seventh grade with honours. By seventeen he’d received his Licentiate Diploma of Music, the highest musical exam one could take in Australia. During his last year in high school he’d sat for—and won—a scholarship to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Mrs Johnson had been extremely proud of him, as had been his mother. But no one else in Rocky Creek had cared all that much. Why? Because he was an outsider. He’d always been an outsider, not a true local. At school, he’d never joined in, or played sports, made friends, had a girlfriend. All he’d cared about was playing the piano.

Serina was the only girl he’d ever bothered to speak to.

Serina again…

Nicolas scooped in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly. It was a toss-up, he decided, who had seduced whom that first night. Serina had confessed to him once that she’d had a wild crush on him since their paths had crossed when he was twelve and she was only nine. She’d told him she used to organise her own music lessons so that they came after his. She would arrive early and sit in Mrs Johnson’s lounge room and listen to him play. He’d hardly noticed her back then. Gradually, however, they had exchanged a few words and in the end he’d quite looked forward to their conversations. Once, Mrs Johnson had taught them a duet, which they’d performed at the Rocky Creek annual fete to much applause.

Though not as good as he was, Serina had been an accomplished pianist. It did not surprise him that her daughter was taking piano lessons now. What did surprise him was that Mrs Johnson was her teacher. She’d have to be about a hundred years old by now.

Well, at least over eighty. She must have been about sixty twenty-five years ago. Or so Nicolas had thought at the time. Still, when you’re young, anyone over forty seems old.

Now he was almost forty himself. The years were flying by. And so was this rotten damned road.

Hitting a pothole reminded him to slow down and to put his mind on his driving. He slowed down even further to negotiate a series of hairpin bends, which he knew would take him down into the valley and Rocky Creek.