Page 25 of The Key to My Heart

Lucy shakes her head, her perfect, sandy micro-bladed eyebrows knitting together. ‘No, no, she’s not like that. She’s honest. Really normal, down-to-earth and … Hang on, are these fortune cookies?’

‘Yep,’ says Priya. ‘I opened mine. It said,Teach a man to fish.That was it. So, I guess I should get to that …’

Lucy cracks hers open with one hand. ‘Mine’s …’ Lucy looks up at us, like a wounded puppy. ‘Empty. Completely hollow.’

Priya laughs. ‘A meaner person than I would sayfigures.’

‘Piss off,’ Lucy smirks, then she yelps at her phone and says, ‘Oh em gee. My architect hasfinallyemailed.’ Lucy is exactly where I always thought she would bein life at twenty-nine. I met her through her big sister, Roxanne, who was my housemate at uni. Lucy went straight to college to study hair design, and would breeze into our university house parties at age eighteen straight off the train like a polished TV presenter of a reality cleaning show. Immaculately beautiful and obliviously hypnotising everyone she met, but more interested in criticising the state of our bins and ‘sleep hygiene’. Lucy plans. She planned her career trajectory; she planned the age at which she would be engaged. (She met Carlie, her wife, within days of turning that age, on a dating app.) She also planned her home, which they are renovating now, and she’s even planning what she wants hertapsto ‘say about’ them. She’s obsessed with taps at the moment, and has a spreadsheet of front-runners and introduces them, like guests at a party – ‘This is the Hanbury X5. It has five settings, an elegant swan neck and enjoys billiards and sushi at the weekends.’ Lucy’s life is full. Busy. And she’ll say, ‘I planned it that way.’ And sometimes it feels cruel. Because I did too. It’s just my plan wasn’t too keen on following itself through.

‘And she’s having triplets,’ Lucy carries on now, pouring a sachet of sweetener into her coffee. ‘Naturally conceived, too, I believe.’

‘Who?’

She tuts. ‘Sarah May-Be-Baeby, Natalie, play bloody attention.’

Priya crunches a shard of cookie. ‘Blimey, this tastes like bunions. Does yours taste like bunions?’

‘I was so happy for her,’ beams Lucy, ignoring us both. She’s still on the Insta-celeb. She’s obsessed with some of them, forgets we don’t actuallyknow them. ‘And the way she announced her pregnancy wassoadorable. So classic. I think we’d do the same.’

‘I don’t even think I’m going to announce ours,’ says Priya. ‘Will’s mum’s the type to offer me a perineum massage and think that’s completely normal.’

‘Did you see it, Nat?’

I stop downing my coffee and meet Lucy’s eyes. ‘Did I see …’ God, my brain today. I mean, it’s always like it’s been zapped in the microwave these days, boiled with cloves for Christmas lunch. But even more so today, I can’t focus. All I keep thinking about is where I might’ve been on my birthday, if things had been different. Russ was so good at birthdays. Ignored his own, but mine – he always made me feel like the world’s spotlight was on me, for one day. Amazing gifts, surprise holidays, gig tickets, messages from celebrities I used to love in the nineties …

‘The post,’ carries on Lucy, ‘Sarah-May Baeliss, the Instagrammer. I sent it to you this morning. It’s her birthday today too.’

‘Oh, no, sorry, I haven’t even checked Instagram yet. I was running so late this morning.’ In truth, I have quite a strict Instagram habit. A quick scroll of the feed, and then a delicious, escapist check of the #musicians hash tag, all those geniuses, playing and singing like angels in their bedrooms. That’s what Instagram is to me really. That, and quick meals I’ll never ever try.

‘Pipe probs?’ asks Priya.

‘No, no. Train probs actually. I was coming from the crem, and the usual train was—’

‘The crematorium?’ asks Lucy, and her eyes stay on me, like they’re prised open with matchsticks.

‘Yeah,’ I nod. ‘The crematorium.’

‘Oh, right,’ says Lucy. ‘I just – I didn’t realise you’d been.’

‘Yep. It’d feel … weird not seeing him today.’

‘Course it would,’ says Priya, at the same time Lucy says, ‘Do you still go a lot then?’

Lucy still watches me, teacup at her perfect, pink mouth, steam wisping in front of her face, as Priya pretends to have seen something very important on the large, greasy, laminated menu on the table.

‘I do. Every week usually, sometimes every two.’

‘Gosh,’ says Lucy. ‘I mean, I wasn’t saying anything, you know … just …’ She clears her throat. ‘Anyway.Shall we have gifts? I’msoexcited about my gift.’

My heart sinks, like someone dropping a shotput in a lake. She thinks I shouldn’t still be going. I know she does, and shame wraps itself around me, like a heavy, invisible cloak, and shrinks me, right here on the chair.

‘Gifts? I didn’t think we did gifts anymore, just cards,’ says Priya. ‘God, I’ve only brought a card with me.’

‘Iknow, Pree, but Roxanne suggested it and then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and – it isn’t much.’ Lucy wrinkles her nose at me and pushes an envelope across the table. ‘But I think it’s just what you need, Nat.’

The envelope is thick and square, like a bathroom tile, and my brain does a lightning-speed roll call of allthe things it could be, as I run a finger under the paper seam. A spa voucher? A gift certificate for Lucy’s salon? Oh, a gift voucher for askip?A plumber? God, that’d be nice, actually—

‘Read it,’ squeaks Lucy, as I open a folded piece of A4 paper inside a golden birthday card with bubbling champagne glasses on the front.

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