Page 1 of The Key to My Heart

Chapter One

I know exactly who Lucy’s going to choose. I’ve known for the last half an hour actually – could smell it a bloody mile away. Even before the third round of drinks had been brought unsteadily back to the table, and even before Roxanne started waffling, as she always does around two cocktails and an appetiser in, about the different ways she’d assassinate her boss if it were only legal. Because my friends always choose me the same types. Dark-haired, because all three of my exes were dark-haired. Tall, because almost every crush I’ve ever had since the age of fourteen has been tall and with the height and shoulder combo that promises a decent house-fire rescue should you ever need it – Adam Driver, Vince Vaughn, that massive built-like-a-brick-shithouse bloke who dressed as Lurch at Roxanne’s Halloween party in 2007. ‘Not facially,’ I remember slurring to his blank, prosthetic face, ‘but your frame, sir.C’est parfait.You’re sturdy. You know. Like a ship. Like a … aMegabus.’ And very much alive. That’s the clincher actually. The man they choose must be alive, and with plans to be for many, many years to come (if possible).

‘See that guy, Natalie,’ Lucy shouts over the music, setting a round, sticky tray down onto the table. Four cocktails on its surface wobble like drunks. ‘The one with the arms at the bar. Messy hair, white T-shirt …’

‘Yep,’ I say, and I even throw a faux-glance over my shoulder for effect. ‘Arms, hair, clothes, yep, I see him.’

‘Name’s Tom.Single.And has been for eight months.’

Beside me, Roxanne makes a noise in her throat – a ‘well, there we are then, I suppose,’ in a singlehm, and over a pile of guacamole, Priya adds, ‘Oh, Iwould. Well, I would if, you know, I hadn’t just signed my life away to matrimonial monogs.’

‘And pregnancy,’ adds Roxanne.

‘Oh shit, yeah, that too,’ says Priya as Lucy slides into the booth beside her and beams over at me.

‘You should go over there, Natalie,’ she says. ‘He wassochatty and lovely. Nice teeth too. I said I’d send you over!’

And it’s always around this time of the night that I have to squash down the urge to do what I really want to when I find myself on nights out like these with my friends – sprint.Bolt.Stick a rocket up my arse, propel upwards, burst through the ceiling. Or, at least, grab Lucy by the lapels, drag her across the table and say,‘When are you going to stop this? When are you going to stop looking at me with the eyes of a slimy car salesman who’s sure they’re finally about to flog that van with half a bumper and a dead body in the trunk, and let me fester? I’m not interested in dating. I willneverbe interested.’And the urge is even stronger tonight. I knew it wouldbe, the second I woke up this morning thinking only about Russ. It was the sheet music from yesterday that did it – that singular, oddly glossy page of comforting symbols and notations, left anonymously, at the piano. For me. Or for someone else. Or, of course, for absolutely nobody and for no reason at all. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it. It could be nothing – probablyisnothing altogether. Plus, I’m sure if I did mention it, drop a casual ‘so, someone left me some music at the public piano I secretly play at, and I think it might be from my husband. Yes, that’s right! Russ! The dead one,’ over cocktails and tortillas, Lucy would send up an instant smoke signal to alert my parents I was finally full-blown mad. Roxanne would probably start recommending that bereavement therapist again too – the one with the bongo drums.

‘Did I tell you I had an orgasm?’ asks Priya, over the music. ‘In my sleep again.’ Thank God (and Priya) for the clapperboard cut of a subject change. ‘It must be the hormones. I was dreaming about the scaffolder.’

‘Again?’ I laugh.

‘Yup. The one next door.Clive.And I wouldn’t mind, but he isn’t even hot. He has really spiteful features actually, poor soul. I mean, it can’t be helped, can it? The features you’re dealt. Anyway, in this dream, though, cor, you should’ve seen him. He wasso—’

‘Natalie, are you going?’ barges in Lucy.

‘Am I …?’

‘Going.Are you going over there, to the bar?’

‘To Tom,’ adds Roxanne.

‘Oh. Right. Um …’

They stare at me, my friends. Six eyes, round and hopeful. And I throw them a smile. A bone, to three hungry dogs. A big, bright, wholly convincing, ‘what a great idea’ smile. ‘Well, I suppose I could just go over and order another drink …’

‘Yes,’ says Lucy.

‘Say hi, suss him out …’

‘Totally.’

And in one go, I stand and down my cocktail, my friends looking up at me proudly, like I just got called up on stage to accept a Brit Award. International Breakthrough Act. Best British Single.

‘Bloody hell, he’s looking over,’ giggles Priya as I slide out of the booth, stumble a little. The downed margarita is already tasering my brain cells.

‘Oh my God,look at him. He actually is,’ cheeps Lucy, and I flash them yet another smile that drops off my face and hits the floor the second I turn my back to them.

I don’t want to go over there. I really don’t want to go over to that sticky, busy bar and talk to some tall bloke called bloodyTomwho probably opens dating app comms at two a.m. with ‘hi babe, got any kinks lol.’ I can think of nothing worse. Well, I can actually.Lotsof things.Some I’m on first-name terms with these days. But the thing is, the alternative is worse –somuch worse. Because if I don’t go over to this earmarked guy with the hair and the arms and the steady pulse, they’ll give me that look again. That look they give me sometimes, my friends, like I’m a new gazebo that justkeeps slowly and sadly sagging at a garden party and leaking rain all over the cheese scones. That ‘Oh, Natalie. What are we going to do with you?’ look. The one that is wordless but so obviously, ‘We all loved Russ, we really did, but it’s been over two years. He’s gone. And we’re worried about you. We’re all very worried.’ And that look is something I hate far more than listening to single pervs at the sticky, busy bars of tacky Mexican restaurants. And so, tonight, I choose the lesser of two evils. I choose Tom.

I make my way through too-close-together tables, through flustered waitstaff, and gaggles of diners, perfume-skinned and garlic-breathed, my head swirling a bit now. That’ll be the three margaritas, definitely, without a doubt. But it’s also too hot, and far too jubilant, if you ask me, for somewhere that charges fifteen quid for a bowl of guacamole served in the ceramic stomach cavity of a smiling cartoon avocado. Ugh. I shouldn’t have come tonight. I should have cancelled instead – made up some disgusting-sounding stomach flu. (Or licked a few shoe-soles and purposely contracted one.)

‘Sorry.’ A waiter steps aside, makes way for me, and I nod a thank you, and pass him, and the huge platter that balances on his open palm. A single, mutilated, eaten chicken carcass sits on it. I feel you, knackered, little, pecked-at carcass. I feel exactly the same.

‘Why is it you bother going out with them if you dislike it so much?’ my sister Jodie asked a few weeks ago, and I’d brushed it off, said, ‘Oh don’t listen tome,Jode, I do enjoy it sometimes.’ But the true answer tothat question is the same as why I’m approaching this stranger at the bar. The alternative is worse. The alternative is those looks of pity I avoid like cracks in the pavement and crisps made out of anything that isn’t a potato. The alternative is sitting at home with the cat, drinking frozen cocktails to numb the repetitive doom of ‘I am alone’ that churns over and over in my tummy. It’s wasting entire evenings watching re-runs of TV shows I’ve already seen so I don’t have to concentrate, and wondering whether the cat would miss me if I suddenly just vaporised from beneath his chubby, furry body.

A gap parts in the crowd at the bar, and I slide in, right next to Tom with the hair and the arms and T-shirt, and like an actor on cue, he looks at me and smiles.

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