The Last Standing House

Green baize under the cover, so it wouldn't go THUD. So it was a standing after all. Not a grand. And so out of tune that she was forced to open the lid and peer inside, trying to put her fix-all skills to use. But there were just too many knobs. Too many.
The middle octave said C to B and then an un-note that made her mouth taste sour and the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up and try to run away. She took to playing suspended chords around the middle C, daring not to venture into black-key territory, god only knew how her neck or her mouth would react to crooked semitones.

She remembered her first experiments with sound, the hum of the car engine, the table fan.
Why do they call it the Mozart effect, she thought, and Fur Elise began to play in her head, getting stuck as usual on the first bars - where does it start? She looked around the new house, the house left to her, as if a grand piano would suddenly materialise, as if the inquest had been euphemistic.

The liquor in the cabinet was dusty; spoiled by the Indian heat, not aged by temperate weather. She fiddled with her nose. It felt irritated, like her, at being in this alien place. What colour will your skin be, now, hmm? she said to the baby.

The baby did not seem interested in its impending skin colour, any more than it kicked when its father appeared. She felt cheated. she had always thought her baby would know its father, and pummel away joyously at her insides whenever she saw him. As it happened, Lewis came along, pipe in hand, and puffed in her face, as he always did. She sneezed, loudly, the irritation having reached breaking point, as it were, what with his Highland rubbish and this lowlife dust.

She fiddled with her nose, most unladylike. Sell the bloody place, she declared, with more finality than the poor dead uncle could ever summon in life, let alone in death.

And then she kicked. For suddenly Anna knew, like she had never even known if she loved Lewis, that it was a girl.