Page 21 of The Key to My Heart

‘Is it? I—’ Jodie looks down at me. ‘Is it?’ she asks me as if we’re the only sane ones in the street.

‘She’s gone now,’ says Mum, and I can’t work out if she understands or if she is concerned for my mental welfare.

‘Is she?’ I ask pathetically, looking up from the floor at both Mum and Jodie as Mum nods, her eyes closing, as if she wishes she didn’t have to partake in such games. She knows I know Edie was there. She knows why I’m hiding. Of course she does. A baggage scanner in patent shoes.

I stand up slowly and scan the street, like a little mole surveying the land around his silly little hole. Mum’s right. Edie has gone. My cheeks rush with warm relief but, like a change of gear, bloom into embarrassment, when I see both of their faces. Mum’s, concerned, the same way she was when I was sixteen and announced I had a date with the twenty-year-old fire-eater from circus training, and Jodie’s, the way she used to look at Nick when he was three and cried about going to the toilet because he was frightened the flush would melt his arse off. And I suppose, to them, that’s what she is. Edie Matthews is nothing but a toilet flush. But to me – seeing her. It’s scary. Just like it was for Nick. Because seeing Edie, means she might want to talk. And I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear a word of her grovelling, her explaining, her ‘I just had to clear my conscience. I could not comfort you at his funeral and know that I hadn’t told you. But it was so long ago, and meantnothing.To either of us. You weren’teven together yet. I promise, Natalie, It was just sex. Just once. One drunken night …’

‘Right,’ I say eventually. ‘So! Well. We’ve got lots to show you, Mum, haven’t we, Jode? Cardigans, things that aren’t curtains or uni-slippers—’

‘Are you all right?’ Mum asks.

‘Me?Perfect. Fine.’ I dust off my jeans. ‘Are you?’

‘Course, love,’ Mum replies.

‘Good.Erm. Anyway, I have to, er …’ I check my phone. It’s dead, black screen staring back at me again. ‘I have to go. I’m, er, meeting someone for lunch.’

Mum’s eyes glint then – just a little, like a pebble landing in a pond. ‘Who’re you meeting?’

‘An old friend.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not like that, Mum.’

‘I didn’t say it was like that.’

I lean to kiss her cheek. ‘You didn’t have to. Jodie, I’ll be back at two.’

Jodie nods and starts wrapping yet another scarf around plastic Sienna Miller who will likely sweat to death before a paparazzo can get to her, and before Mum can say another word, I duck off in the direction of the little Italian restaurant by the canal.

Maxwell looks exactly like Maxwell always does. Plain but waspy, and like you’re keeping him from something extremely important but he’s trying to hide it for the sake of being polite. He looked like this when he worked nights in Sainsbury’s as he studied. He looked like thiswhen he was organising Russ’s stag do. And he also looked like this – harassed, too busy to stop – when he finally launched his own estate-agenting business that now has four branches in the south-east, and is all white vinyl desks and testosterone.

Maxwell and Russ were opposites.Completely.Maxwell is all suits and camel-coloured jackets and those weird pointed shiny black shoes that curl at the ends that briefcase-holding commuters on the 07:15 fast train on Thursday mornings all seem to wear. But Russ – he was all muddy hands and plaid shirts and torn old jeans he’d wear until they fell apart. But they laughed. That’s the one thing I remember so vividly about their friendship – they laughed, and nothing made me feel happier, or more comforted (and admittedly, slightly annoyed at the time), than falling asleep upstairs at our little cottage to the sounds of Maxwell and Russ howling with laughter after too many beers and old episodes ofThe Young Onesdownstairs. Materialistic entrepreneur with expensive, ugly shoes and a landscape gardener who took too many photos of the moon, but both still losing themselves over toilet humour and slapstick fights.

Maxwell stands up to greet me, brushing a hand down his crisp white shirt. ‘Nat, you look lovely. Really well.’

‘Thank you.’ I lean to kiss his cheek. It’s clammy, and he smells of expensive aftershave and like he might’ve had a secret cigarette on the walk over here. ‘Don’t really feel it most of the time, but – make-up’s a brilliant invention.’

‘Right.’ Maxwell chuckles awkwardly and sits down.

I sit opposite him, the legs of the chair beneath me screeching as I tuck myself under the table. It’s a cute little restaurant, by Camden canal. Round tables with white tablecloths, a little glass of grissini in the centre, next to an old, recycled tin as a vase, purple sweet-peas propped against the edges.

I take a breadstick and reach for the drinks menu.

‘Oh, I ordered us both a drink,’ Maxwell says.

‘Oh. Thanks.’

‘Some mocktail thing they were pushing. Peaches, I think?’

‘A mock and not a cock?’ I say. ‘How tragic,’ and Maxwell laughs, two blotchy pink clouds puffing onto his cheeks, but I know deep down he wishes I hadn’t just said that. (Which is probably why I did.) I always felt I was too much for Maxwell. He would never admit this, but he’s the sort of person that prefers women to be all flowers and perfume and pedicures. To giggle at his crap jokes and know nothing about anything he knows too much about. A sexist, probably. But he loved Russ, and when Russ died, he cried just as much as me – andon me, apologising profusely as he did, like he kept finding himself accidentally pissing on my shoes, and not simply showing emotion.

The mocktails arrive and we sip, and we do what you’re supposed to do when you haven’t seen someone in ages – waffle. We waffle about work, about the weather; we waffle about the holidays we might be planning and what we think of the prime minister and the latest series ofCelebrity MasterChef. And then – there’s silence.Loaded silence where the elephant in the room seems to inflate and inflate, until it’s mere centimetres from flipping tables and crushing all the crunchy grissini to crumbs. Maxwell is wondering why he’s here, with me, on a Friday afternoon. He wants to know what I want.

‘So, er …’ He gently stabs a straw in the cloudy peach liquid in his glass, squashing a mint leaf on the bottom. ‘What, er … what can I do for you? I mean, that’s if there is a reason other than just catching up …’

‘There is,’ I say. ‘Got me there.’

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