Grey Lace by Lesley Whyte

"I like the yellow one," six-year-old me said, pointing.

"No, no, no. The yellow one used to be white."

"So?"

"So it's no good."

"Why not?" I remember pouting. My grandmother pulled a similar expression, though she wasn't mocking me. We were picking out doilies, she had some ladies coming for tea that afternoon, and had spent the morning at the beautiful black piano in the drawing room. When my mother had dropped me off, my grandmother had looked me up and down with her lips pursed, judging me. Once she'd had me change into one of my mother's childhood dresses - it had ruffles, the less said the better - she'd plunked me down at the piano and instructed me to play.

I remember staring up at her, mouth agape. I didn't know what she wanted me to do. My life hadn't exactly featured a lot of pianos prior to that point, and she was livid. Her watery grey eyes bulged out of her head, but she sat down beside me on the bench and started to play, ordering me to watch closely. I couldn't take my eyes off her fingers as they flew across the ivory keys, the most wonderful sound I had ever heard seeming to pour out from under the grey lace cuffs of her dress.

I thought about nothing else all afternoon. The ladies, all of them ancient and wiry and as judgmental as my grandmother, thought me simple. I just stood there, slack-jawed, with no real sense of what was going on. When my mother returned for me, not coming up to the house but honking the car horn from the bottom of the drive, I was dismissed with a command uttered through those pursed lips.

I didn't see my grandmother for many years after that. She and my mother had fallen out about something years earlier, and the latter's refusal to explain what it was convinced me that it was my fault. I was about fifteen the next time I went to the house. It no longer seemed huge and majestic, it had lost its magic, but I couldn't believe the same would have happened to the piano. I let myself in using the key hidden inside the casing of the porch light and called out to my grandmother. No response. Unable to stop myself, I headed for the drawing room.

The smell hit me from several paces away. I frowned and pushed the door open fully. Someone was slumped at the piano. Someone who, judging by the stench, had been dead for quite some time. I couldn't go near her. I couldn't bear to look at the tainted piano, but I caught a glimpse of grey lace cuffs.

White lace turns yellow with age. Grey lace stays grey.