Picture Perfect

Chapter Thirty-Two - Elliot

Hi loves! Hope you're all having a lovely winter and have started to see all the new shoots and sprouts coming out of the ground! Spring is coming and it will be lovely.

Love, Cam

♡

Chapter Twenty-Eight

"Gotta say," Sorcha grinned at me. "Not sure what the best part of this evening is - Elliot playing the harp, Saskie gluing sequins to her crutches, or Siobhan turning up in a dress."

Siobhan overheard her from a couple of metres away and glared at her.

"Clearly, Siobhan in a dress," I teased quietly, hoping that she wouldn't hear me as I readjusted the harp against my thigh. "Although I have to say, Saskie is a creative one."

"I just think we did a good job with the chairs," Sorcha mused, looking at the chairs. "You think anyone's noticed they're a bit bashed up?"

"It's rustic," I replied, grinning. Sorcha had woven fairy lights round the wooden chairs that we had borrowed from the café down the road. They looked very pretty, if a little mismatched with the rest of the gallery. It worked well enough for people to ignore it. "Very pretty."

"You also look pretty!" Sorcha told me, examining the suit I was wearing. "I hope that's not too uncomfortable to play in."

"No one learns to play the harp with comfort in mind," I reassured her. "Having twenty kilos of harp pressing into your lap for two hours isn't the most relaxing experience."

Sorcha pulled a face and patted me on the arm. "Thanks for doing it."

She left me to get back to it, and I relaxed into playing some of the most chilled-out music I knew. I wasn't a huge classical music fan, but on the harp even some of the heaviest rock music sounded pretty calm. After Rowan had lost our game night and was bartending, I kept trying to make her laugh with my song selection while she attended people. Switching to Baby One More Time by Britney Spears made her snort-laugh.

"Eli! Eli!"

I grinned as Saskie ran over. It was later than she'd usually be up, but we had promised she was allowed to attend as long as she went to bed if she got tired. She had gotten her hands on a Red Bull somehow, and was currently bouncing off pretty much every surface in the gallery. Ignoring the harp, she tried to climb into my lap and my rendition of Britney came to a bit of a halt.

"Sorry, sorry," Andrew rushed over, grabbing hold of Saskie and picking her up. "Sask, Elliot's trying to play for the event! You can't just climb all over him!"

Saskie pulled a face that clearly demonstrated that she thought herself perfectly at liberty to climb all over anyone she wanted to, and wriggled out of his grip. Frankly, it was impressive given the leg cast.

"Sask," Andrew sighed, and she practically tutted at him, folding her arms across her chest. "Saskie, what's wrong? You've been icing me out for hours."

"Whatever," Saskie muttered, turned on her heel, and hobbled off in the direction of Siobhan.

I exchanged a look with Andrew while I got back to the playing of a less amusing song. "That was... tense."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Andrew looked quite knackered, actually. His usual intense beauty wasn't quite flooring everyone around him like usual. He had dark semicircles under his eyes, and I could see that he wasn't pristine as usual. "She's been ignoring me all day."