"Memory is the diary we all carry about with us." Oscar Wilde

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VII. Give Me a Minute

"What do you mean she is like you?" Sophie asked, still absolutely overwhelmed after her marathon of a morning. Sophie could not comprehend any sort of explanation that led her to believe that Maddie was exceptionally bright.

However much she would want this for Maddie, she had just been told by three seasoned educators that Maddie needed to see a paediatrician and a psychologist for suspected autism!

"Look, I can't be sure, and I don't want to get your hopes up, but Maddie reminds me so much of myself as a kid," Noah replied.

"How?" pressed Sophie.

"Look at what she's doing," Noah gestured to Maddie at the piano. "Has she ever had a lesson?"

Sophie shook her head. Maddie had never even expressed interest in taking music lessons. She saw that piano every day and had never even asked to have a play with it.

And now she was playing it, knowing exactly which keys to press to complete her song.

"Have you ever heard of an eidetic memory before?"

"Is that sort of like a photographic memory?" Sophie asked.

"Not sort of, exactly," clarified Noah. "I have an eidetic memory. What that means for me is anything I see, anything I read or watch or notice, once I understand it, I never forget it," he explained quietly.

Sophie had heard of people with a memory like that. They were able to pass examinations without studying. What Sophie would have done to get through her GCSE's with an eidetic memory.

But was Noah actually suggesting that Maddie could have a memory like that? Wouldn't Sophie have noticed? Wouldn't that mean that she could know her readers without having to look back at the pages?

"I also have an auditory eidetic memory," Noah continued. "It's helped me a lot in my career as a musician. Anything I hear, any conversation I have, any sound, any tune, any melody, anything I come up with, I'm never at risk of losing it in my short-term memory. I don't forget it."

"Well, that's extraordinary, Noah, but I don't understand how Maddie could have something like this without me knowing," Sophie said, shaking her head.

Noah crossed his arms across his chest and called out to Maddie. "Hey, kid."

Maddie stopped playing and turned to look at Noah.

"Play your mom the song I was working on today. The one that you liked," Noah encouraged.

Maddie nodded excitedly as she turned back to the keys, her little tongue sticking out of her mouth as she concentrated. She found the right notes, and she began to play a proper, professional piece of music.

If Sophie's jaw could hit the ground, it would have. She fumbled getting her phone out of her back pocket so that she could take a video. She needed to show this to Maddie's teacher.

"She doesn't know the notes yet. She can't read the music. But she saw what my hands were doing. She remembered the tune, and she understood the process. That is how she's able to reproduce it now," Noah said proudly. "When you have this ability, it's very easy to become overwhelmed, to lash out, and to definitely check out. You're smarter than a lot of people, and it takes something really interesting to draw you out of your head."

The piece of music was short, and Maddie finished with a delighted grin.

"Take a bow, kid," Noah instructed, demonstrating from next to Sophie how it should look.

Maddie climbed off of the stool and took an excited bow. "Was I good, Mummy?" Maddie asked as she jumped off of the stage.

Sophie voice broke with emotion as she said, "You were excellent, sweetheart. How talented you are! It is about lunch time though, so why don't you sit down and eat your sandwich."

Maddie bounced back to the table where her things were laid out and fished her lunchbox from her backpack.

"I just sat in a meeting where I was told that my daughter might have autism, and that her teachers were going to do everything they could to keep Maddie from falling even further behind than she already is," Sophie told Noah.

It seemed strange really, to have such a sudden rapport with this relative stranger. Sophie did not even know Noah's surname. And yet this man had managed to make Maddie smile bigger than Sophie had seen in months with something as simple as a music lesson.

After that meeting this morning, and her horrid argument with her mother, Sophie felt just about as run down and defeated as a person could.

Noah was dangling hope in front of Sophie's eyes, like a carrot on a string, and she was desperate to bite down. What she would give for such a simple solution, and to believe Maddie was brilliant.

"I'm not a professional shrink or anything. I'm not a parent. I don't even have a pet," Noah replied. "But I think there's something pretty special about your kid, Sophie. I know it's none of my business, and you'll do what you've got to do." Taking a deep breath, he finished with, "A piano lesson literally drew me out of my head, and it started a lifelong passion in music. I was able to channel my ability, and nobody ever had the balls to call me dumb again."

***

For the rest of the day, Sophie felt like she had millions of images and memories filling her head as she tried to comprehend what an actual clusterfuckof a day it had been!

She watched Maddie like a hawk, having urges to show her copies of Pete's menus and then quiz her of what the seventeenth word in the first section was to test Noah's theory.

But then, the issue still was that Maddie couldn't read.

Or could she? Could it be true that she was just bored?

As the night shift started, Sophie heated Maddie a chicken and leek pie and set her up in the backroom like usual. She needed to stop thinking about this if she was going to get through the next five hours with her sanity still intact.

Holly and Amy arrived, chatting about their days, and Sophie did her best to sound interested. Tony and Charlie, Pete's bouncers, also arrived, ready for the usual business of a Friday night.

Sophie got on well with the bouncers, and they looked after the girls inside.

"Alright, Sophie?" asked Tony. Both Tony and Charlie played rugby at the weekends, and had the perfect, muscular, stocky builds to be chucking drunks out of the pub of an evening.

"Alright, Tony." Sophie smiled. "Let's get on with it."

Friday nights were always very busy. Even at five o'clock, the tables were filling, the floor was busy, and the barstools were occupied. There were people dressed for the theatre, people dressed in their work attire, and people who just came to Pete's for a good time.

Noah was at the piano, once again with his own bits put away. He was playing the instrumental version of "Memory", and Sophie suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be singing tonight. In all her stress during the day, she'd completely forgotten that she was singing. She hadn't packed anything nice to wear. She had not even brought any makeup with her.

She would look like a tired, frumpy mum in the waitress uniform singing a cover of Elaine Page.

"Pete!" hissed Sophie, as she darted around the bar and ran up to him.

Pete was in the middle of flirting with a tradesman in a paint-stained denim shirt and was none too pleased that Sophie had interrupted him in pouring a Guinness. The head was far too big, and Pete had to abandon it.

"I'm ugly!" Sophie whispered.

"And I'm a flaming homosexual," he replied. "But what's that got to do with the price of tea in China?"

"Don't sass me," snapped Sophie, rolling her eyes. "I didn't bring anything with me to wear. I can't go up there looking like I do. I can't sing tonight. Do you mind very much?"

"Jesus, Sophie, you don't need a nice outfit ... excuse me, darling, would you shag her?"

It took Sophie a second to realise that Pete had turned to the tradesman that he had been flirting with and had asked the man to appraise her.

"Yeah, why not? She's fit," he said casually, and Sophie just about wanted to die of embarrassment.

"There you are, problem solved. Make me proud tonight." Pete grinned smugly as he turned his back on Sophie and started to pour another Guinness.

But as she came around the bar with her pen and notepad, the tradesman appeared in front of her, smiling cheekily.

"So, are we going to do this?" he asked excitedly.

Sophie was going to kill Pete. "Lord, no," she said firmly, before she scurried out of his path, and into her section of the pub.

***

For next few hours, Sophie took orders, fetched drinks and nibbles and was as charming as she possibly could be.

She had been hit on four times, three of whom were so drunk that they probably only minded that she had breasts and would have taken anyone. Lovely Tony promptly escorted out anyone who could have gotten remotely handsy.

Just after eight o'clock, the door to the pub opened as new customers strolled in, and Sophie had to hide the urge to groan out loud.

"Bleeding haemorrhoid, one o'clock," whispered Holly as she moved past Sophie with a tray of drinks in her hand.

"I saw him," Sophie replied under her breath.

Beck walked with the confidence of a man six and a half feet tall. In reality, he was just over five foot nine, but compensated for his lack of height with daily gym sessions, and weekly rugby matches.

What Sophie had ever seen in him, she would never understand. It was more likely that she had been suffering from a brain tumour between the months of August and November nearly nine years ago.

Beck worked as a plumber, and him and his mates liked to frequent the West End Piano Bar on a Friday night, though not because they enjoyed musical theatre.

Beck strolled over directly to Sophie's section, and plonked himself down at a table that had only just been vacated by a group of girlfriends off to the theatre.

"Do you want me to take care of him?" Holly asked over Sophie's shoulder. "And by take care of him, I mean spit in his drink and drop an ice bucket on his balls?"

Sophie chuckled. "No, it's alright. I've got it."

Sophie walked over to Beck's table and clicked her pen. "What'll it be?" she asked disinterestedly.

"Nah, come on, Soph," complained Beck. He ran a hand back through his blond hair, deliberately flexing his arm as he did. "Aren't you going to ask me about my week?"

"Are you going to ask me about Maddie's week?" Sophie countered.

Beck's face fell and he huffed, Sophie taking the wind out from under him. His mates beside him were whispering under their breath. Sophie honestly wondered what a man's mates thought when a father refused to step up for his daughter.

"She alright?" Beck muttered.

Sophie could have told him about her meeting that morning. She could have told him about the eighty quid a week for a psychologist that she would need, but in knowing Beck, he would cry poor, even though he would easily drop that amount on beers and take aways this weekend.

In a lot of ways, Sophie did seriously resent Beck for his ability to just shut himself off from Maddie. He saw her occasionally, mostly on holidays when his parents asked to see her around Christmas and Easter, and on school holidays. Beck had never gone out of his way to ask Sophie for any visitation. He had never been to Sophie's flat to see Maddie. He had never read a school report. He would not know the name of any of her teachers.

Beck wouldn't even know that Maddie struggled at school.

And in the same respect, Sophie was glad, because it meant that she didn't need to share her daughter, and that, she knew was selfish. Her poor girl really didn't know what it was like to have a dad.

"She had a piano lesson today," Sophie decided to say. "She loved it."

Beck nodded. "How much are those costing?"

Sophie's eyes flashed up to Noah, whose eyes immediately diverted from her. "I don't know," she replied. "I will have to see."

"Music's expensive, alright? Don't go shelling out if she's just going to drop it five minutes later."

Beck would never volunteer to pay, and Sophie knew better than to ask him.

"Three pints, love," demanded one of Beck's mates impatiently. "On you go."

Beck snapped out of his mood just as soon as his mind got back onto their evening activities, and a cheeky smile spread across his face. "You're looking especially fit in that skirt, Soph," he flirted. "You working out?"

"Yes, I run," Sophie replied facetiously, writing down their order, before turning away from them. "After your eight-year-old twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, you fucking wanker," she added under breath.

Sophie took Beck's order up to Pete, and rested on the bar.

Pete grabbed three pint glasses, before saying, "I hope your pipes are ready, Sophie. You're on."

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One week of daily uploads!! Wahooo I don't think I've ever done that!! 

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