The someone was Holland, a… person in Danny’s year. Claudia had misunderstood about Holland for a number of years, but then she had only been eight when she’d first been introduced to the concept of a person who wasn’t a boy or a girl. She’d thought that Holland actually, physically, switched between being a boy and a girl, which had made far more sense to her than the actual alternative, despite its obvious biological improbabilities. Claudia didn’t really get it, but she didn’t really have to. Holland had always been nice on the few past occasions they had interacted, and was one of Danny’s best friends, so Claudia was okay with them being there.

“Your music sounded lovely,” Holland said. “Have you been playing for very long?”

Claudia blinked as she tried to decide whether Holland was being patronising, or didn’t know music well enough to realise that Claudia hadn’t been playing very proficiently, or - like Claudia herself - didn’t care about perfectionism and had enjoyed the sounds regardless of their inaccuracy. She decided that questioning the compliment would be churlish, so she took it, heedless of its sincerity, and considered the question that had been posed, instead. She thought it was probably more likely that Holland was asking about when Claudia had started learning the instrument, rather than how long she had been playing during that sitting, despite the semantics of the question better lending themselves to the latter scenario. The second year much preferred it when people used less ambiguous language.

“A few years,” Claudia replied, raising and lowering her shoulders a little in the slightest of shrugs. Her pale peach dress had short sleeves, so Claudia had draped a champagne-coloured pashmina over her shoulders for extra warmth while she was seated, which became unsettled in the movement and slipped down her back, its ends over her arms preventing it from falling completely to the floor. “I don’t practise much,” Claudia added the excuse that, combined with her purposefully vague answer, would hopefully excuse her unpolished performance if it did transpire that Holland had a real ear for music. She disentangled herself from her shawl, folded it twice into a relatively neat bundle, and let it drop to the floor beside the piano stool.

Having not expected company, Claudia wasn’t sure whether she should continue playing, or forge ahead with conversation. She didn’t know Holland well, but did not object to them. Although she hadn’t really been done playing, she didn’t especially want to continue playing while Holland was there without knowing whether the original compliment had been genuine or not. It was a conundrum. “Do you play?” she asked, deciding that was a question that could potentially provide an answer to her musings, as well as being a relevant, polite contribution to the conversation she may or may not be having.