Page 15 of The Key to My Heart

‘—but I did, and when I lifted the lid, it was just sitting there on the top. Not creased or old or anything. Freshly printed. Look.’ I get up and go and get it from the coffee table in the living room where it sits with the other two pieces, under a heavy, pineapple-shaped candle I’ve never lit. I slide it across the kitchen counter towards her.

‘Jesus,’ says Jodie finally. ‘Fuckin’ hell. Sorry, I keep swearing. God. I just … I dunno.’

‘I know.’

Another clatter from outside in the back garden – a spanner or something similar meeting concrete, followed by a pained grunt. It’s like a hospital drama’s sound effects machine has been left playing on a loop. Jodie calls out to Carl. He calls back, says he’s okay.

‘So, what – do you think it’s him? Russ?’ Jodie closes her eyes, winces, like she’s just pulled out a splinter. ‘I mean, I know that’s bloody mad and stupid to say, but maybe he … I don’t know.’

‘Set it up?’ I offer with relief, because I’ve been feeling like I’m goingmadthinking this is Russ somehow, but if sensible, grown up Jodie thinks it …

‘I’ve got no idea,’ announces Carl suddenly in the doorway of the kitchen, his hair wet from the rain, droplets dangling on the ends like beads. ‘Sorry. I’m a classic nincompoop. A fool. I’ve just got no idea where to begin.’

Jodie smiles warmly, pats the space of counter beside her. ‘Well, you tried, love.’

‘Thanks, Carl,’ I say. ‘Bless your heart, I appreciate it.’

‘See, I only know how to solve one plumbing problem,’ he says, as Jodie leans, starts serving up his dinner. ‘And I was hoping it would be that.’

‘Well, I’m very sorry my pipes and I disappoint you so.’

He laughs, wipes his huge rain-wet hands on a tea towel and drapes it neatly back over the handle of the oven. ‘So, what’re we on about? What’s the news in camp today?’

Nick appears then, shrugging, and says, ‘Sorted. I think. The Wi-Fi settings were a bit mad. It was all a bit weird and fucked up so—’

‘Nick.’

‘Sorry, Mum. It was, erm – bollocksed?’ he offers, like a salesman presenting a cheaper package. ‘Buggered?Screwed.’

‘How about,’ Jodie pauses, fork in hand, ‘in disrepair?’

‘How about: I’m not a priest,’ laughs Nick as he takes a seat next to me, folding his long skinny legs under the counter. ‘Anyway, what were you all talking about? I heard Mum swearing, the hypocrite. And more than once.’

And in that moment, I give a tiny little headshake over the breakfast bar towards Jodie – a wordless ‘don’t tell them.’ Because if even sensible, logical Jodie thinks it could be Russ setting it up, it somehow feels like it could be, and that has sparked a little hopeful flame in my stomach. I don’t want to risk hearing a sceptic tonight. Especially when the biggest one of all sits at this counter covered in crumbs.

Chapter Seven

It’s there. Another piece of music. It’s not even been a week since Russ’s birthday andthere it is.Bold as brass. Sitting there as if it’s always been. Fresh and glossy.

I tear up the escalator towards Goode’s like someone racing down a hospital corridor in a soap opera, like a child waking up and storming downstairs on Christmas morning. But when I burst through the heavy wooden door, Shauna isn’t there, and Jason looks up at me from buffing a yellow cloth on the counter, like I’m a grenade that’s just gone off in front of him. Even Piercings Girl and Notebook Guy look up from their drinks.

‘You all right there, Natalie?’

‘Is Shauna around?’ I ask breathlessly, heat and excitement pounding my cheeks.

‘Out back. Inventory duty. And, God, has she got thehumptoday.’ He grins, nibbles at the silver ring at the side of his mouth. ‘Wanna head out back?’

‘Would she mind?’

‘Don’t see why,’ Jason says with a frown, and he gestures with a twist of his head to circle the long, teak counter.

I find Shauna out the back with the door ajar, daylight flooding in, looking down at an iPad like it’s a new Egyptian artefact recently exhumed at her very feet. I’ve never been ‘out the back’ before. Not when I cried after seeing theOh, Harold!poster for the first time. Not when I spilled a whole neon-green kiwi smoothie on myself. Not even when I broke down on my birthday last year when a pigeon shat in my coffee and then on my new cardigan and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Shauna ushered me into the tiny little toilet then and sponged it out with a faded J-cloth, saying, ‘Better pigeon shit than any sort of dairy, I say, Natalie. If it were dairy, you’d be kicking up a stink on that train home, and nobody wants to sit next to someone who stinks like the underbelly of a cow.’

‘Oh, hello, darling,’ she says, casually. ‘Jason let you through, did he?’

‘Broke in,’ I smile. ‘Is this okay? I’m not going to get you like … fired or something.’

‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’ She smiles. ‘You can break in any time. Rob the food by all means, I won’t tell. Just don’t rob the till. That’d be a lot of ball-ache admin for me and I can’t be bothered.’ She rubs her hands down her top, a baggy burgundy blouse covered in biscuit-coloured butterflies, and blows out a breath. ‘I was about to make a tea and sit outside in the sunshine for my break. It’s a bloody concrete jungle out there, but the sun hasfinallygraced us with its presence. Wanna join? What do you fancy?’

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