Page 29 of The Key to My Heart

‘Only if you’re lucky.’

A few steps on the damp pavement, and the nature reserve swallows us up, envelops us, from the bustle. It’s beautiful and messy and wild – one of those places that makes you want to say, ‘You could be anywhere, couldn’t you?’ And Russ would love this. Russ loved nature, and,of course, as comes naturally to gardeners, loved plants and flowers – anything that grows. He loved getting lost somewhere new, too, and not so much heaving cities, or coastal towns, like me, but somewhere like this. Quiet and slow and hidden. And although mud and wet leaves and weird scratchy animal sounds aren’t really my thing, today, I’m glad to be here, amongst it all. The air smells like last night’s rain and wet soil, and the sun streams through the canopy of trees above our heads, creating lacy shadows at our feet.

Already, hidden here, among the trees and leaves and tiny cubbies, of reeds and murky water, my head feels clearer, and I feel like a bit of a dick really, for crying on Tom. At a public piano. Like a strange modern art installation.You see here, a woman trapped by her past, being taunted by the only thing she ever trusted in: music.

‘So.’ Tom slots his hands in his jeans pockets, beside me on the path. ‘Your birthday …’

‘My birthday,’ I repeat. ‘Lucky thirty-three. Not sure how that happened to be honest. I feel like one minute I was twenty-one and the next –poof. Here I am.’

Tom gives a slow smile. ‘It was lucky thirty-four for me this year,’ he says. ‘Not sure how that happened either.’

‘I was sort of hoping to ignore it, actually.’

‘And then I bought you a cake,’ says Tom. ‘Rubbed your nose in it. Sorry about that.’

‘And called me tragic.’

Tom laughs. ‘A birthday full-house.’

‘Plus, my friends remembered,’ I say. ‘And I had the world’s weirdest and shittiest birthday brunch.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ I say as we follow an overgrown path, deeper into the reserve, brushing by nettles, the air thick with the oniony smell of cut grass and wet plants.

‘You gonna give me any more than that?’ asks Tom.

‘Do youwantany more than that?’

‘Um.’ Tom laughs, says nothing, but holds his hands out in front of him, a gesture to the damp, leafy surroundings, as if to say, ‘Well, I’m here, in a nature reserve with you on a Thursday morning, aren’t I, wise guy?’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Pity party it is.’

‘Good. Beats a birthday party, in my opinion,’ shrugs Tom. ‘You always know what you’re getting with a pity party. They’re at least nice and reliable.’

And as I walk along with Tom, beneath the shade of the trees, pebbles and twigs and old leaves crunching beneath our feet, I let all the words spill out of me. I tell him about the piano music. And then I tell him about Russ, and the hospital and the communal piano I’d play as he listened in his bed. And how finding the music has sparked something in me – something new, something unknown, and exciting – until brunches, like this morning, that make me feel like I’m living the world’s most sad life. I tell him about the present then too – Lucy and Roxanne treating me like a project they just need to get off the ground, and I tell him about falling out with Edie, and how my friends have seen her – had bloodycoffeewith her. And I don’t even think I’ve been talking all that long until I realise I’ve seen the same class of pond-dipping children, twice.

‘The piano music thing is …’ Tom blows a long breath through his lips.

‘You think I’m mad, right? That I’m losing the plot.’

‘No way,’ he replies, strolling beside me. ‘I mean – what do people think, you’re …miragingthese pieces of music or something?’

‘I think maybe some people might think so. That I needed hope and excitement so I … dreamed it up.’

Tom shakes his head. ‘Seriously …’

‘Maxwell thinks it. I think he thinks I’ve crossed over. That I’m a hop, skip and a jump away from talking to myself on the bus, dressing my twenty cats in wedding dresses—’

‘Who the bloody hell’s Maxwell?’

‘Oh, Russ’s best friend,’ I say. ‘I thought it might be him. You know, that maybe Russ had organised it in hospital or something, when things started to deteriorate. In case the worst happened. Like it did.’

Tom nods slowly. ‘And he knew nothing about it?’

‘Nothing.’

Up ahead, a couple walk slowly, a toddler in a fire-engine-red raincoat, between them, their hands, paper-chained, in a row.

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