Page 30 of The Key to My Heart

‘I asked to meet him for lunch, and we went to this Italian place near work, in Camden, and firstly, he ordered ussalad—’

‘Salad?’ asks Tom. ‘What a piece of shit.’

I burst out laughing.

I love that Tom is funny, andactuallyfunny. Hard to come by, I’ve always thought, funny guys, but then again, I’ve not got to know a man since Russ, really. Priya isalways saying, ‘You’ll have no idea what’s out there if you don’t keep your eyes open, Nat,’ and I always ask her whether she’s talking about new life experiences or vintage bargains buried deep in tatty boxes at car-boot sales.

‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘I asked Maxwell outright.’

‘If it was him leaving the music?’

‘Yep. And he said no. Then looked at me like I’d just squatted naked on the table over the breadsticks or something, so that was nice. And I knew for sure then, that it wasn’t him.’

Tom laughs, unexpectedly, his chin tipped back. ‘And what sort of look is that, by the way?’ he says. ‘The squatted naked on a table over breadsticks one. Sorry, but I like to have all the visuals when I’m being told a story. I like an immersive experience.’

‘It was like …’ I look up at him and scrunch my forehead up into a scared, confused frown.

‘Interesting. I was thinking more …’ Tom stops on the leafy path and pulls his face into a horrified, horror-movie grimace.

‘Close.’ I laugh, and we carry on walking. ‘Uncanny actually. That was like looking right at him.’

‘Shit,’ he says. ‘So Maxwell thinks you’re mad.’

‘As a hatter. But how else am I supposed to feel? It’s music, you know … left for me. Or at least it seems that way. Surely, anyone normal would at least wonder. And I’ve enjoyed it really. The excitement of it. The spark.’

‘The spark,’ repeats Tom. ‘I get it. And, plus, this Maxwell dude, he can’t judge, right? A man that orders salad in an Italian restaurant …’

‘And he wears really bad curly shoes, too.’

‘Ah.’ Tom’s hand flies up to his chest and it lands with a thump. ‘The man is a villain, the devil himself.’

‘Shoes and salad,’ I say. ‘Says a lot about someone.’

‘All you need to know.’

We come to a gap in the overgrowth and slow. A bench shaped like a giant concrete staple sits on the mulchy ground, overlooking the murky canal, trees arching above it, like reaching hands.

‘Shall we sit?’ asks Tom.

Narrowboats sit moored up opposite us, a little chimney of one of them, painted burgundy and blue, plumes a haze of smoke into the air. They’re cooking inside, I think. I can smell bacon and burnt toast. Memories flood my head, like a thumb removed from the opening of a hose. Out of nowhere. Clear and as vivid as a movie.

‘We used to go on a narrowboat holiday every year,’ I say.

‘You and Russ?’ asks Tom. He’s holding an old, amber-coloured leaf, ironing it out between his fingers.

‘Yep. Every October, without fail. I booked one when he was in hospital. A sort of – message to the universe that wewouldbe going and hewouldbe getting out of that bed and out of that hospital. We didn’t end up going, of course, but … I have nice memories of them, narrowboats.’

Tom nods slowly. ‘What happened to him? The accident. I mean, you don’t have to say of course, just—’

‘No, it’s fine.’ There’s something freeing about talking about the accident itself. Almost as if the more I talk about it, the realer it becomes. Like the lines of the drawing getting darker and darker the more it’s gone over and over. And the realer it becomes, the easier, slowly but surely, it gets to look it in the eye. Accept it. ‘He was cycling to work. I was taking the car, and he said he’d take his bike. Said he’d go the scenic route – the A roads. And … we’ll never know everything that happened, but someone, from what they could tell, veered into him, mounted this tiny kerb, and he was thrown off his bike. Then they drove away.’

‘Shit,’ says Tom. ‘God, I’m so sorry, Natalie, that’s … awful.’

I nod. Because it is. It’s not the accident so much as someone drove away. I comfort myself sometimes, imagining them frightened,terrified, crying just as much as I was. Driving off like it was nothing is what I can’t stand the thought of. Because he was everything.

‘He was put into an induced coma, for a while. That was awful. Like some sort of hellish limbo, you know? I had no idea if I was going to lose him or not, and if I didn’t, when he came around, would he still even be Russ? Would he remember me? What state would he be in? Not just then, but – forever. It was … it was like being trapped in purgatory. Time didn’t exist, seasons, other people, life. Just – him.’

‘And did he wake up?’ asks Tom softly.

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