Page 9 of The Key to My Heart

‘Your mad daydreaming today. Seriously, Nat, you’ve been staring like you’ve been – taxidermised or something. Did you get his number and just not tell me? Have you beentexting? I swear, I won’t tell Lucy. I wish I hadn’t told her about the scaffolder, to be honest. She keeps checking in with me, which is sweet and everything, but it’s like she thinks she might on the off chance catch me on my knees in the footwell of his van.’

I laugh. God, I love Priya. She is one of the only people in the world who can make me laugh without even trying. On the day we met, almost eleven years ago now, she marched right up to me and said, ‘Settle this debate. Would it be weird for me to write to Les Dennis to tell him I think he handled his divorce like a gentleman? Because he did, didn’t he? Bless him.’

‘I mean, I appreciate the discretion,’ I say, ‘but … who’re we talking about? Did I get whose number?’

‘Oh, come on.’ Priya steps aside and puts a hand on her hip. The mannequin judders beside her. ‘Fit bloke from the bar.’

‘Oh.Oh.Tom.’ I smile now thinking of Tom, how we both proclaimed to be repulsed by each other, how he happily nominated himself to be the arsehole who stood me up. If every man could be like Tom, I’d never have to grin and bear being set up ever again. ‘But no. Definitely not thinking of him, Pree. Soz.’

‘Oh.’ Priya’s grin fades, her large eyes widening, brown and puppy-dog. ‘No?’

‘Nope.’

She groans, pulls another ribbon at the back of the mannequin’s neck with too much gusto and its stare-y head rattles again. ‘Seriously.’

‘What?’

‘He was gorgeous. He must’ve crossed your mind at least once since then. He even had a proper shirt on. And his shoes were shiny. Like he’d polished them himself. Really made the effort, you know?’

‘Did hereally?’

Priya, as usual, misses the sarcasm, like a shuttlecock straight over the head, and nods, wide-eyed.

‘Well, in that case,’ I say, ‘we’d better track him down. Alert the authorities. Put an ad in the paper. Is Budgens still doing those local ads in the window?’

Priya groans now, huffs through her nostrils.

‘Have you seen this man?’ I carry on. ‘Tom. Whisky sour drinker. Photographer. Mostly portraits. Nice shirt. Rare ability to polish own shoes.’

‘Piss off,’ laughs Priya.

‘Would very much like to date him, marry him, be with him until his perfect teeth rot and decay and fall out of his head. Please write!’

‘You’re so weird,’ she sighs, going back to the ribbon.

‘My sister? Weird? She’s always weird,’ says Jodie, appearing from the stockroom, an iPad in her hand leaning against her midriff, like a clipboard. Hanging from the collar of her jumper, is a ribbon bow. ‘So, what, she’s being weirder?’

‘Yep,’ nods Priya, observing me like I’m a washing machine that won’t work. ‘Super weird.’

‘How am I being weird?’

‘Natalie, I could’ve dressed this mannequin in a hot dog suit today, and you wouldn’t have even noticed.’

A woman browsing a sale rail of jumpers giggles over at us, and Jodie smiles at her. ‘I can order anything in that you like the sound of,’ she jokes in a low, mock-secret voice. ‘You name it I can get it. Hot dogs. Cheeseburgers. Maybe even a giant prawn.’

My sister is such an adult really. One of those people who is completely at ease with who they are – well, unless we’re talking high-street fashion. She isn’t quite at ease with that yet, but like everything, she’s studying it, like it’s quantum physics, like sourdough starters. But Jodie – she’s a proper grown-up. An adult with a shop and a mortgage and a professor husband and a salad bowl with matching claws. Russ and I felt like we were on our way to that, when we moved into Three Sycamore. Wetriedthings like that – the salad bowl, making marinades, youknow, all the things that adults do, and most of the time it all went wrong. We were chaotic. Eating a takeaway at half-past nine at night while Jodie and Carl probably slept soundly, all hand cream and thick novels and fridges full of marinating meat downstairs. We liked to think, back then, that we’d eventually get there. To organised, domestic, adult bliss. But, deep down, we knew, cottage or no cottage, salad claws or no salad claws, we just weren’t that type of couple. And that was perfect actually. It was us.

‘She’s been daydreaming,’ says Priya as the customer heads out of the warm, vanilla-y scent of the shop, to the busy street outside. ‘Head in the clouds like you would notbelieve.’

‘Oh, about hot Tom?’ says Jodie, tapping away on the iPad. Her nails are a fresh but short French manicure.

‘Wow.’ I move on to a headless mannequin that’s wearing a wrap skirt with flimsy – and quite frankly pathetic – looking ribbon ties. ‘How do you know about Hot Tom?’

‘Ah, so you admit he was hot, then.’

‘Priya, no. Not for me, thank you. And no, I am notdaydreamingabout Hot Tom.’ I’m daydreaming about some more music that was left for me in a piano stool in a busy train station actually, I want to say; about who it could be, about whether it could be – Russ, somehow. Yes! My husband who isn’t here anymore, but hear me out, I’m not mad! I swear! But I don’t. Instead, I say, ‘I’m daydreaming about the huge halloumi baguette thing I’m going to order from next door in about fifteen minutes.’ Which, to be fair, is also true.

Priya laughs and gives an eye roll. ‘Well, I thought he seemed perfect …’

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