Dad never let me play on the grand piano. Said no, it wasn't for children, and it wasn't for other grown ups either. Nobody except for him. Not even Mum or Auntie Hattie were allowed to play on it.
I could play on the normal sized one though, he said, whenever I wanted.
It wasn't the same, though.
My urge to play on the grand piano overtook me the day after the funny famous piano man who loved to hug people and had a movie made about him had played on it when he came to visit. And so I played on it when Dad went out. And the sun shone right in the room and stabbed me in the back of the head. Our upstairs was just the right height so that I could see right into Mrs Purvis's backyard and right as I was looking in it she ran out to the clothesline butt naked with her fat boobies swinging and her hairy lady bit and everything and grabbed a dress off the line and ran back inside.
It was like perfect timing.
Whenever Dad went out, I went into his big room and took the sheet music for whatever song I was learning and I would play it on the grand. And Mum knew, and she never mentioned it to Dad ever and that made it our secret, and a delicious one that was like the best bubblegum flavoured ice cream ever.
Ice cream was a naughty thing that I stole from out of the freezer every day I could. Just a bit so you didn't know any had been stolen because our house bought a LOT of ice cream and so it was hard to tell.
When I was 21 Dad gave me a card and inside it were smeared these purply blue smears everywhere. And he wrote, "I always knew when you played the piano because there were always these kinds of marks on the keys. Happy birthday. Now it's yours."
Which was the best present. Except now it's mine, when I go to play it, it's just not the lustre of childhood missing. It's also the lustre of illicit activity gone.
Dad runs a piano school still. The grand piano he played when he toured sits, pride of place in front of the art deco windows. It was much easier than I thought to get a key cut and to find out the deactivation code for the alarm. And so now I sit and play, in the dark, at 2am, looking out onto late-leaving couples from restaurants.
I never play as well or as light-fingered as these times when I'm stealing the sound.
Today's freewrite prompt is grand piano.