Alfie Evans had grown used to the silence in his grandmother's house on Priory Road. Not the peace of a contented home but a hush that weighed on him where once there had been music.
The bay-fronted terrace opened into a cool hallway. Outside, traffic rumbled and gulls shrieked over the docks, but here time held its breath in the dappled light from the stained-glass window. The tiles were worn by a century of footsteps, though Grandad Dai's heavy boots no longer trailed mud across them. Off the hall, the sitting room was a time capsule of the eighties: flock wallpaper, pink velour, and a glass-fronted teak cabinet of knick-knacks gathering dust. Against one wall stood the piano. Its polished walnut still glowed, but the lid stayed shut, the runner across it like a careful little shroud. On top sat the photos — Alfie and Chloe grinning awkwardly in bright blue school uniforms; their mum as a freckled child; and Nanny and Grandad Dai on their wedding day — the beginning of a life now reduced to a handful of fading things.
Alfie and Chloe lived with their mum on Precelly Place, five minutes' walk away, past the chip shop and the funeral home. Mum tried to stay cheerful, though most nights, she ended up at the kitchen table with a mug of Nescafé going cold between her hands.
A few times a week — when Mum worked late and Chloe was too busy to babysit — Alfie ended up at Nanny's house. Chloe was seventeen, too cool to give her little brother much time. Mostly she was sharp with him — quick to sigh, calling him Onion Boy because the tuft on his crown never lay flat. Sometimes, though, she was just quieter, as if she was carrying something heavier than her school bag. He still remembered when they sat cross-legged on the hearth rug, watching cartoons, or singing along as Nanny played from the Disney songbook.
When she was about twelve, Chloe fancied herself a West End star. She would stand on the sofa and throw herself into Let It Go with her head back, lost in the chorus, until Nanny said, ‘Alright Elsa, that's enough now — you're rattling the windows.' Alfie sniggered as Chloe turned scarlet, then she kicked him in the back.
Alfie couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Chloe sing. These days she even mouthed the hymns in chapel. Sometimes, Alfie watched her silent lips and thought how much he missed her voice.
Grandad Dai was often in his thoughts, too — not in that silent room, but out in Castle Pill woods, where the air smelled of mud and seaweed from the tidal creek below. With a walking stick in hand and binoculars over one shoulder, he'd lead the way through paths he'd tramped a thousand times. He could name every tree and bird along the way. To Alfie's delight, he would whistle a willow warbler so well that sometimes the birds answered back. He always tucked a bag of hard-boiled eggs and a saltshaker in his satchel. Sitting on a fallen tree, he'd magically pull an egg from Alfie's ear, peel it and say, ‘If you're going to play for Swansea, boy, you'll need your protein.' Then he’d pop the shell into his pocket, promising he’d bin it later and always forgetting until Nanny kicked off about bits of shell stuck to all her clean washing.
Alfie could still hear his laughter in the trees when he walked the path alone, wearing Grandad's old tweed cap and hoping nobody saw — Chloe had already joked that no hat on Earth could keep his tuft down.
‘Keeps the old grey matter warm,' Grandad used to say, tapping his head. Alfie would laugh, even though he never really knew what it meant.
Around his neck hung the small silver St Christopher medallion Grandad had given him on his tenth birthday. ‘For safe journeys,' he said, as he clasped it around Alfie's neck. In sad or lonely moments, he would squeeze it as if willing Grandad to help him cross a river too wide to ford alone.
*
When her husband of fifty-eight years slipped away one February morning, frost still on the garden wall, Nanny sat at the piano with her family around her and, lip trembling, played Abide with Me. Then she closed the lid, locked it, and never opened it again.
The radio in the kitchen fell silent; the hi-fi needle stayed in its cradle.
Nosing through the cabinet drawers one afternoon, Alfie came across the little brass key among the buttons and batteries. Unsure of what to do, he held it for a moment like a relic, then slipped it into his pocket.
One Friday, when his mum had a late shift at Tesco and Chloe did whatever teenage girls did, Alfie stayed over. While Nanny watched the wrestling, he shifted on the piano stool, weighing the moment, and asked, ‘Nanny… why don't you play anymore?'
She looked away. ‘Because… I just don't.' She inhaled as if holding herself together. ‘Now be a good boy and finish your homework,' she said. ‘Then I'll find you a Mars Bar.' That was the end of it. She turned back to the telly where two American giants in spandex slammed each other into the mat.
A shy boy of thirteen, Alfie wasn't one to argue. But he wasn't the sort to forget. Every time he walked past the piano, memories stirred in him — singing Happy Birthday and Silent Night, or Sunday afternoons when Nanny played everything from hymns to ABBA, her bright vibrato filling the house with sunlight.
That sunlight had dimmed; the living room felt shuttered up, as if it were holding their breath. Alfie wanted it back.
*
One drizzly November Saturday, he found a pile of old records in the cabinet. Among them was an Everly Brothers single, Let It Be Me. On the sleeve was a note in his grandfather's hand: My darling Doreen. Will you let it be me? David.
Alfie froze. David. Not Grandad. Not Dai. Simply a young man writing to his sweetheart.
His chest tightened as he realised his tired old Nanny — with her silver perm, thick glasses, and comfortable cardigans — had once been a girl someone longed for. The kind of girl he was beginning to notice at school. Will you let it be me? He heard the line in Dai's voice then tried it out in his own, imagining his pretty classmate Emily smiling as he said it. The thought made his ears tingle.
He placed the record back carefully. In the spare bedroom, he tapped the title into YouTube. The voices of the Everly Brothers poured out of his phone — tender, intimate, full of promise and yearning. He swiped through different versions, until he happened upon a piano tutorial.
A plan formed. I can learn this, he thought. I will play it and bring the sunlight back.
But where could he find a piano?
He knew. He pulled on his coat and walked through the chilly evening, litter swirling around his trainers, until he reached the chapel. The vestry door was open, as it usually was, and a battered upright lay waiting. Inside, the air was warm from an ancient radiator and musty with old hymnbooks, as if the air itself remembered hymns long past. The yellowing piano keys were chipped and out of tune, but it was enough.
Reverend Hughes, the minister, came in and caught him squinting at his phone, picking out the right-hand line. Alfie instinctively sat up straight and smoothed down his tuft. The Reverend simply smiled and peered over his half-moon spectacles at the screen. ‘Good choice, Alfie, boy. Learning it for your girlfriend, are you?'
Alfie blushed. ‘It's for Nanny. But... you mustn't tell — it's a secret.'
Reverend Hughes nodded as if he understood and patted Alfie on the shoulder. Then he brought him an orange squash and a KitKat — ‘provisions' as he called them, as if this were a military exercise — and left him to stumble through the notes.
It wasn't easy — his fingers slipped; the left hand never seemed to follow. But with Reverend Hughes's patient help, tuneless humming, and biscuit tin, he kept at it, every week through the winter. He didn't tell another soul.
At times he wanted to give up. It was easier to lie on his bed and play Nintendo as the cold rain lashed his window. But every time he thought of his grandad's note, he kept going. He saw how a light had gone out in Nanny, and not only her — Mum too, Chloe too, all of them a little more distant and dimmer since Grandad Dai had gone. That thought carried him back to the chapel vestry, week after week.
*
One evening, a few days before Christmas, he caught Chloe in the kitchen eating a mince pie and checking her reflection in the microwave door.
‘Hey Chloe,' he said. ‘Do you remember when Nanny played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and we sang it so loud the neighbours came round and gave us a fiver?'
Chloe rolled her eyes, but the pause before she spoke gave her away — she twisted a strand of pink hair round her finger, as she often did when holding something inside. ‘God, yeah. Embarrassing.'
Alfie shot her a look. ‘Not as cringey as Grandad's magic show when he made you dress up like Princess Jasmine and sawed you in half.'
‘Shut up or I'll chop you in half!'
She slipped into her coat, then reached out and ruffled his tuft, her hand lingering for a moment. ‘Nan was good, though. They both were.'
And then she was gone, the door banging behind her. But the warmth of her hand, and her parting words gave him hope.
*
By early spring, he had almost mastered Let It Be Me. Nanny's birthday fell on a mild April day. The daffodils by the garden wall nodded in the breeze off the estuary. Alfie helped her put the shopping away and gave her a box of Black Magic chocolates he'd saved his pocket money to buy.
‘Well now,' she said. ‘Aren't you a little gent?'
After tea, Nanny settled into her chair to watch the snooker. Alfie hovered in the doorway, nerves jangling like loose piano wires. It was now or never.
‘Nanny,' he said, ‘I've got another present for you.'
‘You've given me chocolate. That's more than enough.'
Alfie crossed the room to the piano. Before she could stop him, he took the little brass key from his pocket and unlocked the lid. The reveal of the keys was like flicking a switch, the silence breaking into possibility.
‘Alfie!' Her voice was sharp. ‘What are you doing?'
He sat on the stool, heart hammering. ‘Just... listen.'
His fingers trembled as they touched the keys, but the opening chords of Let It Be Me rang out, tender and true. Slowly, haltingly, he played the opening bars.
‘Alfie, no!' Nanny snapped. She rose abruptly and pressed the lid down over the keys, just missing his fingers. The sound jarred like a door slammed in his face. Alfie winced, shame burning his cheeks. For a moment he thought he'd ruined everything.
He slipped from the stool, went to the cabinet, and pulled out the Everly Brothers record.
He held it out with both hands. ‘I know how much he loved you. Please, Nanny. Let me play it for him, at least.'
She pressed a hand to her mouth and took the record from him. She looked at the faded yellow sleeve and Dai's handwriting. Her shoulders sagged. She lifted the lid again with a shaking hand.
‘Go on then,' she whispered.
Alfie closed his eyes and squeezed the St Christopher through his T-shirt. He started again, fumbling but finding the notes. Tentatively, he began to sing. The song filled the room — not polished, not perfect, but alive.
The door burst open, and Alfie stopped playing. Chloe breezed in, glittery top catching the light, coat half-buttoned, bag over her shoulder. She kissed Nanny's cheek.
‘Happy birthday, Nan,' she said, handing over a card.
She paused as Alfie began a third time. Her mouth curled. ‘Looks like Milford's got talent.' The crack hung between them, but her hand stayed on the door as his wavering voice carried on. She looked from Nanny's face to Alfie's, caught for an instant between staying and leaving. She let her bag drop to the floor, slipped off her jacket, and stepped closer. Twisting her now-blue hair round her fingers, she was a little girl again, vulnerable and uncertain.
On the chorus she joined in — silly at first, with a smirking pop-star wobble, eyebrow cocked — then the joke drifted away and her mood seemed to shift. Her voice smoothed out, grew clearer — the way she used to sing.
When the last notes faded, Alfie dared a glance at Nanny. Tears shone on her cheeks.
‘Oh, my boy,' she whispered. ‘My darling children. How did you manage this?'
‘Reverend Hughes helped me,’ he admitted, flushing. ‘I just… I just wanted things to be like they were before Grandad…’
A small, surprising sob escaped before he could say the last word.
For a long moment Nanny said nothing. Then she came and sat beside him on the narrow stool. Her hands faltered as she touched the keys.
‘Your Grandad gave me that record when we were courting,' she said softly. ‘I never thought I'd hear it again except in my dreams.'
Chloe looked at Alfie with something like softness. ‘Thank you,' she mouthed.
Nanny laid her hands on the keys and began to play The Wonder of You, Grandad's favourite song. At first the chords wavered, as though her fingers had forgotten, but then the music steadied, sure and flowing. A grandchild perched on either side of her, their voices blended, and Alfie felt the song vibrate through him. For a moment, Grandad was there behind them, singing in his best Elvis voice, with a can of Guinness in his hand. When they finished, Nanny let out a noise between a laugh and a sob. ‘Grandad would be so proud of you both.'
Resting his head on her shoulder, Alfie said, ‘See, your old fingers do remember. Maybe we could play together more often.'
She reached up to smooth his tuft and nodded.
Alfie looked up — and his mum was standing in the doorway in her Tesco uniform, eyes rimmed with tiredness, tears running down her cheeks. How long had she been there, listening, as if waiting for the silence to lift? She set her handbag down softly and caught Nanny's eye, her face crumpling with the ache of a daughter who missed her dad. ‘Happy birthday, Mum,' she murmured.
Nanny's hands never left the keys. Together they sang, song after song, the music rising like starlings in flight. From the hallway, the clock chimed six. The snooker commentator droned faintly in the background, but none of them noticed.
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