Page 12 of The Key to My Heart

‘With your mates.’

‘Oh! Yeah. Totally bought it, every last one of them. You’re officially a total arsehole in their eyes. Congratulations.’

Tom laughs, a flash of white teeth, dark stubble, that lovely angular jaw … Jesus, I really do wish I’d at least put on some mascara. I might not fancy him, but I don’t really want this face squirrelled away in his handsome memory. ‘Well, if it helps the cause …’

‘Oh, it does.’

‘Good.’

I give a weak and, I’m sure, rain-stained and ruddy-cheeked smile. ‘So … work. How’s it going? Adam Driver stopping by?’ I deflect, pull my glasses down from my head and wear them, as if it’ll make a difference, as if it’s a mask of prosthetics, and not two transparent discs. (I’ve run out of contacts.)

‘Ah. Not today. Doing some corporate headshots. Over in Shepherd’s Bush. Friend of a friend. Bloke’s a bit of a knob, but the price is right. And what about you?’

‘Me?’

‘No, that bloke over there with his head buried in a McDonald’s breakfast.’ He smiles. ‘Yes you.Where’re you off to?’

‘Just … everywhere, nowhere. Around.’

‘Wow.’ He raises both eyebrows with a laugh. ‘AKA, mind your own business, Tom.’

‘I didn’tquitesay that.’

‘It’s okay. I’m a stand-in. I can take it.’

And I don’t know what it is. But I see him standing there – Tom, in his smart black overcoat, his styled,dark hair, a perfect five-o’clock shadow, and his box of cupcakes destined for a woman somewhere who’ll watch him come into the room and feel like her heart might burst into confetti, and I suddenly want to flee. Again. Exactly like the girl he met in Avocado Clash. ‘I’m off to play piano to nobody,’ I cannot possibly admit, ‘and eat croissants to stop me drinking too much wine because it’s my dead husband’s birthday and highly sexed foxes kept me awake, so, you know – it’s going rather well, you might say. Hashtag blessed.’

‘I better go,’ I say instead, doing a pretend glance at the huge gold clock on the wall, in the distance. ‘I’ve got stuff to, uh … somewhere to be.’

‘Everywhere, nowhere …’

‘Exactly,’ I give a weak laugh and turn away but shoot him a grimace over my shoulder – a quick and wordless ‘so sorry, can’t stop, isn’t life justso mad and busy!?’, and I walk away from him. And from Goode’s. I have no idea where I’m going, but I can’t now turn back …

‘See you, then, Natalie,’ he calls after me.

‘Bye,’ I call back, throwing another quick glance over my shoulder, and he’s still looking – kind, nice, together, awake, handsome Tom with the cupcakes and smart overcoat, and I don’t stop walking until I’m at the other end of the station, at another escalator. I turn around, but Tom’s gone now, and for a moment, I stand just staring at the spot we spoke at, my hands gripping the cool rail of the balcony.

‘Oh my God, you bumped into the guy from the bar again,’ says Lucy’s voice in my head. ‘You do realise what that means, don’t you, Nat? It’s meant to be!’

I roll my eyes at her imaginary voice and lean against the rail. Rain hammers down on the glass ceiling, a thrum of a million raindrops. A whistle echoes from a distant train platform. And there, right in front of me, on the digital kiosk on the tiles, lit up, a bold red rectangle, is Edie’s poster.Oh, Harold! The cult musical.The musical she’s working on now – the path she chose instead of workshopping her own musical.Ourmusical. She plays a teacher inOh, Harold!apparently. Has a full verse in a song, according to Lucy, belts it out in a skirt suit and spectacles and sounds ‘totally phenomenal’. ‘Not that I’ve been to see it, Nat,’ Lucy had added quickly, ‘just saw it on Facebook.’ And I believe her, but Lucy has a short memory. She sometimes acts as if Edie and I no longer speak because she chose a part in an established show over our own project, when of course it isn’t just that. It’s not even ten per cent that. And when I remind Lucy of the ninety per cent, of Edie’s big, fat, horrible lie and the fact she chose to come clean with it at Russ’sfuneralof all times, there’s always an air of ‘it was a long time ago’ and ‘everyone makes mistakes’.Mistakes.Edie did not make a mistake. Edie detonated a gigantic, selfish bomb, and left me with it.

Something bubbles up inside of me, rumbles, like the rain above my head, like the heavy, metal trains coming in and pulling away. In one whip, I take off my scarf and jump on the escalator, taking two, then three steps down. I’m sweating. My cheeks are on fire.

‘You two should see each other,’ I imagine Lucy saying now, ‘Edie wants to see you,’ and I bite back the urge tosay aloud, to nobody, to this whole station of people and to the poor teenager in front of me, ‘Oh, I’m sure youwouldsay that, Imaginary Lucy. I’m sure you would, with your perfect bloody eyebrows and job and perfect bloody life. But do tell me, did your friend ever shag the love of your life? Oh? No, didn’t think so.’

I make my way to the piano, as if it’s a life buoy and I’m at sea, lost, meandering through crowds and crowds of people. I look up through the glass ceiling, the sky one big low smoky cloud, and I imagine what we would’ve been doing today if Russ was still here. Both of us at work, probably, but with plans tonight. That outdoor barbecue restaurant he loved. Or maybe a takeaway at Jodie and Carl’s, the four of us, plus my teenaged nephew Nick, sitting at their long, oak table, candles flickering, glasses of wine, a game of Cards Against Humanity, laughing so much our cheeks ache. The lie, untold, my best friend, Edie, still my best friend. Everything still perfect. It wouldn’t have been this, that’s for sure. Not storming through a train station feeling like I’m standing in the centre of my life that’s imploded.

The piano sits empty under the stairs. I’ll play. Play it all away, everything I feel. Whatever that is. I don’t even know these days. I find it hard to place a feeling, but I know it’ll make more sense as I play. I don’t always know what I feel until I do. I fancy the high notes, and the all-encompassing chorus full of minor chords that make me feel like they are speaking back to me. The heartache, the pain. I’ll play that Foreigner song – one of the first songs I learned by ear on the old, chipped,wooden piano in the cramped hallway when I was nine. Dad’s old boss gave it to him when he couldn’t afford to give Christmas bonuses. It was thrown out at a school they were refurbishing. Three of the keys were broken. Mum hated it at first. The light, churchy wood messed with her lilac and silver décor. But she learned to love it when I did. It was no Steinway grand, but it was mine.

At the piano, I stand for a moment, over the stool. And through the rigid cold of my body, a warm spark shoots through me. Excitement. Hope. I’ve already checked, I know but … just knowing I could check again. And I promised I wouldn’t start this – purposely looking. The hope makes me feel a bit pathetic, like when Russ’s mum kept visiting psychic mediums until she found one who told her exactly what she wanted to hear. But as someone chatters loudly on their mobile phone a stride away from me (‘no, he’s getting veneers, Jonathan,’ she’s saying, ‘not dentures. Yes.Veneers. And honestly, they’re as white as the cliffs of sodding Dover.’), I bend, lift the lid from the stool. And …

Like I was expecting, and absolutely not, all at once, my heart … it freezes. Falls out of my arse, as Jodie would say. There’s a piece of music there. Again.Again.It’s a clean white sheet, newly printed, like before. Proper, thick, office-y paper. But the song. The song is– no.No. It’s our wedding song.

I stare at it in my hand, the paper flapping, not in the breeze, but because of my shaking hand. Our song. The song I always played when he was in hospital and his mood was on the floor, because it reminded us bothof the night we got married. The song we danced to under a canopy of fairy lights, my arms around his neck, our breath hot and sweet from too much cider, eyes scrunched from laughing. We’d eschewed champagne for the wedding. ‘We are not champagne people,’ Russ had said. ‘We are stuffed-crust pizza and cider people and so will our guests be, I’m afraid. Even if it’s against their will.’

I close the lid, and sit slowly down, looking around the station now. People swarm by, all of them busy, with places to go, and it’s like the world is on fast forward, but I’m on pause. Like something is happening, but I don’t understand what.

I look up through the glass ceiling again. A sliver of sunlight, like a repaired tear through the clouds.

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