Page 16 of The Key to My Heart

‘Oh, the norm, please. White americano. I’ll go and order, shall I—’

‘Jason?’ she calls. ‘A camomile and an americano, white, please, darling. Both large.’ Shauna turns to me. ‘Go on, settle down. And tell me where the fire is.’

‘The fire?’

‘You look like you’ve seen aghoul, Natalie. Like you need some sugar in your veins.’

‘Ifeellike I’ve seen a ghoul. A … good ghoul though.’

Shauna nods gently, as if she already understands everything I don’t even know I feel myself, and with a jangle, the keys still in the lock, she pushes the back door open wider, and I follow her out, onto a concrete courtyard. It’s dominated mostly by bins, by chairs and stacked-up crates outside the back-ends of shops, but in a window of reluctant sunshine on the tarmac, Shauna gestures for me to sit down at a white plastic garden set. An ashtray sits on the top of it, full of old rainwater.

‘So.’ Shauna smiles, taking a seat opposite me. She looks tired today, her usual pink lipstick and hoop earrings absent, her hair scooped back roughly and pinned into place with a brown crocodile clip. Shauna reminds me of a hamster on a wheel sometimes. Never taking a moment to stop, take a breath. It’s why dancing, I think, makes her so happy. It’s for her and only her. Not her boys, not Don, not the shop. Just her. ‘The fire,’ she says. ‘The ghoul. Tell me.’

‘Someone’s been leaving me something,’ I tell her. ‘And I think it’s Russ.’

Shauna hesitates. ‘Russ? Your Russ?’

‘That’s right. So, the piano downstairs, the stool, it—’

‘Er, Shauna?’

She widens her eyes with irritation, clumps of old mascara on the ends of her lashes. ‘Sorry, love, hold on a minute – yes, Jason?’

He ducks his head around the door. ‘Your spawn’s here. For the car keys, or something?’

‘Oh, God, I almost forgot. Family bloody admin. A minute. Then I’m all yours.’

Shauna disappears inside, and I sit outside below the dome of crystal-clear blue sky, listening to the sound of London bustling below, down on the street. Traffic and trains pulling away, the horns of cars, chatter and distant music, from a restaurant maybe, or even an event. A band, rehearsing possibly. Sound-checking. I wonder if I’d be here, or somewhere close by, if things had been different. Would I be working nearby, with Edie,Dotted Line, our slaved-over co-written musical? Would she have got me in atOh, Harold!, and would that be my poster too? Would I whisk in, and then out again, of Goode’s, ordering coffee before jetting off to work, too busy to stop, too busy to get to know strangers, like Shauna and Jason? I can’t imagine that – not knowing them.

Shauna’s voice drifts through the kitchen and out into the spring sunshine now, followed by the distant, deep voice of who I gather is one of her sons. There’s laughter, then I hear her say I love you, and I hear him say it too, and I lean back on my chair, to try to catch sight of him. I get the tiniest blur of a glimpse. Tall, broad shoulders. She’s right. Her sons aren’t total gorgons – well, if going by the back of them is anythingto go by, and in my experience, and as Priya says, ‘you can usually tell hotty from the back.’

After a few moments, Shauna appears in the doorway, our drinks on a tray, and a ruddy, flustered look on her face. ‘Right. That’s them sorted. My twins are borrowing the car, getting it MOT’d for me.Now.Tell me everything,’ she says, ‘and from the top.’

‘Well, I say you stake it out,’ says Shauna opposite me, a chunk of carrot cake sponge between her fingers, like a pincer.

‘Stake it out?’

‘Exactly that. I can help you,’ Shauna says with a victorious glint in her eye. I told her excitedly about the music, told hereverything,and she listened, all peach-cheeked and wide-eyed and I loved how it felt. In that moment beneath that high, blue sky, on that white, plastic garden chair, I was just the woman with an exciting little story – amystery.I wasn’t just Natalie. Natalie Fincher whose husband went and died far too young, poor soul. Natalie Fincher who eats pudding basins of Coco Pops so she doesn’t drink pudding bowls of frozen cocktails, and Natalie Fincher who thaws out her rusty old house’s pipes with a hair-dryer most mornings and, usually, in nothing but a hoodie and a pair of knickers that have seen better days, while her neighbour Roy likely considers, cordless phone to his ear, reporting her for indecent exposure.

‘Do you mean just sit and watch it? The piano? Like a mad spy or something—’

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ replies Shauna. ‘Why not? I mean, they’re obviously coming here often enough, and I know I can’t see the piano from the shop, but I could always make a few trips a day, have a little stake-out of my own when the customers allow.’

‘I could do,’ I say, tingles peppering my skin. Possibility. Excitement. This feeling – it’s like slipping on a warm, cosy jumper after a lifetime of being too cold. ‘And I know on Wednesdays I’m at work, but I don’t have to go home straight away after we close, do I? I could detour.’

‘Exactly.’

‘It isn’t far and, to be honest, lately I’m never in any rush to get home so—’

‘The house getting you down?’ asks Shauna gently, and normally, people asking me about the cottage makes my hackles rise. But Shauna. Shauna means well, she asks for the right reasons – for me. Not to gauge if I’m getting better, if I’m moving on. She just simply wants to know.

‘A little bit … A lot actually.’ I lean forward as if I’m sharing my most hidden secret. And that’s because it always feels like I am. ‘Is it bad I feel guilty? About saying shitty things about it andmoaningabout it and sometimes wishing I didn’t live there …’

Shauna’s brow wrinkles beneath her wispy, sandy fringe. ‘Absolutely not. Your home is so important. It’s where you go to feel safe, to let your guard down. If it doesn’t feel like that for you then—’

‘It doesn’t,’ I admit. ‘I mean, it did. But it was Russ’s dream really, the cottage, and …ourproject. Ours.’

‘And now it’s just yours,’ says Shauna. ‘And you don’t know if you want it to be?’

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