Heart-Shaped Bruise by Tanya Byrne Page B

when he lifted his other to reach for mine, his fingers were rougher than I expected. I remember the shock I felt when the calluses on the tips of his fingers brushed against my own. Until then, all I could hear were the aunts cackling and the swish swish swish of petticoats and taffeta as the girls spun around next to us, but then I couldn’t hear a thing my heart was beating so hard.
    He must have felt the shock as well, because he smiled. ‘You play the guitar, too.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The guitar,’ he said, running his thumb over the callus on my right index finger.
    I had to gulp down a breath before I could speak. ‘The cello.’
    ‘The cello?’
    ‘I’m no Rostropovich, but I almost played at the Royal Albert Hall once.’
    ‘Really?’ His eyes went from brown to black. ‘Why didn’t you?’
    I thought about Dad, the trial, the newspapers and realised what I’d said.
    ‘I—’ started to say, as a voice in my head screamed at me to pull my hand away so he couldn’t feel it shaking, but I couldn’t let go. ‘Something came up.’
    When I turned my face away, he held my hand a little tighter, but he didn’t push it.
    We didn’t speak again for the rest of the song. When ‘Mack the Knife’ came on, I waited for him to take a step back, but he didn’t, he twirled me and I giggled. I giggled again as one of the page boys skidded past us on his knees. Sid laughed, too, and I’ll never forget how it felt, how his whole body trembled. It made my heart throw itself against my ribs like a rubber ball. He must have felt it.
    ‘Why the cello?’ he asked, pulling me closer, so close that I could feel the chill of his belt buckle through my dress. He said it with a whisper, his breath warm against my ear, and it was enough to make one of the locks in me buckle and fall apart.
    ‘My dad,’ I whispered back. I lifted my eyelashes to look at him again. His eyes were still black. ‘I wanted to learn how to play the guitar but he’s kind of old fashioned. He left school at fourteen so he’s obsessed with me getting a
good education
.’
    ‘What’s that, then?’
    ‘Proper A levels like physics and economics.’
    ‘Not art.’ Sid grinned.
    I shook my head with a small smile. ‘Not art.’
    ‘And no guitar.’
    ‘When I told him I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, he bought me a cello.’
    ‘But you’re doing art now,’ he whispered, looking at me like he was waiting for me to tell him about the epic battle I’d had with my dad, how I’d gone against him and won.
    I looked over at Juliet. She was still fiddling with her phone. ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Hello,’ a voice said, and I turned my head to find a woman about Eve’s age – maybe a little younger – smiling at me.
    ‘I thought I’d better introduce myself,’ she said, shooting Sid a filthy look. ‘Well, you’re not going to do it, are you?’
    He took a step back. ‘Not now,’ he said, lowering his voice.
    But she didn’t listen and put her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers were cold. ‘Hello,’ she said, stopping to kiss me on both cheeks. She smelt of cigarettes and hairspray. ‘I’m Gina, Sid’s mum.’
    ‘Oh,’ I gasped, blushing a little. ‘Hello, Mrs King. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’
    She held up her glass of white wine. ‘Lovely to meet you too, sweetheart.’ She winked at me and, in that moment, she looked just like Sid. They had the same dark hair and eyes, the same honey-coloured skin. You could tell that, when she was my age, she was stunning. I imagined her at seventeen, her eyes thick with eyeliner, curls tumbling over her shoulders. I bet she could have broken a boy’s heart with a wink.
    But that day at the wedding she looked exhausted, the skin under her eyes dark with some misery that wasn’t letting hersleep. Her make-up was smudged, her leopard-print dress too tight. She had a tattoo of a Chinese symbol on her left arm and it made me think of Olivia’s sister. She’d got a similar tattoo on her