Page 38 of The Key to My Heart

‘It’s in the bible that,’ says Tom, dryly. ‘Under home improvements.’

When Tom leaves, I thank him, and I’m surprised when he hesitates, then puts his arms around me on the path and hugs me. He’s warm and muscular and smells like wood and fresh paint and sun-kissed skin.

‘Tell Toast I’ll miss him’ he says. ‘I’ll bring him some Shreddies next time I come if he’s good.’

‘What a romantic,’ I say. ‘He’d like that.’

And as I close the door, I’m hit by how bloodyniceit’s been to have seen him. To have had someone here, to talk about everything and nothing and to just –be.

Plus the house – the house looks a thousand times better, and did almost instantly. I don’t know if it’s the lick of paint, but it feels brighter and airier. Like the air’s clearer to breathe. Like it’s no longer a deserted island, cut off from the rest of the world.Ifeel lighter.

I clean up, wash the paintbrushes, vacuum, then make a cup of coffee and take it outside to the cast-iron bench. Sawdust sits on the petals of purple wildflowers Russ planted, like new fallen snow. I close my eyes. Listen. Silence. Leaves rustling in trees. Birdsong. A distant passing car. I imagine Three Sycamore cleared of all clutter, of all damp, of all shabbiness, and painted clean, plain, calming colours throughout. I imagine living in it. I imagine the for sale sign. I imagine driving away from it, to somewhere new, my car full of boxes, the cat mewing in his carrier. My eyes are damp when I open them again.

Inside, I find my phone, the text on the screen is blurred through tears that just keep coming.

‘Guilty,’ I type and send. ‘Scared,’ I send again.

Tom replies quickly. ‘You found two,’ he simply types back.

I stare at them, two huge words in two tiny bubbles.

And Iamfeeling guilty. Guilty at the idea of walking away from our home, after all the hard work it took getting it, after all the planning. And I’m scared of what that might mean – what my future might hold if I do sell up. What does it mean, if I walk away, from our life? What does the future hold? For just me?

Another reply from Tom comes quickly. A single padlock emoji. My words, safe in here.

Chapter Thirteen

I don’t often get nervous. When Edie and I first started out and we’d performed at open mic nights and unsigned band events, hell-bent on record deals and impressing slick (and often chauvinistic) A and R scouts, it was Edie who’d be hunkered down in the loo. ‘I won’t be able to go on,’ she’d say, every single time. ‘Honestly, I need to go home, Nat, my stomach has lost the plot. It’s balls deep in fear. Interror,’ and I’d pep-talk her through the door, like a cut-price Tony Robbins, without the shovel hands. ‘What the crowd thinks of you is none of your business, Eeds!’ I’d say, and ‘One day you’ll be ninety-eight eating pease pudding and you won’t give a shit about what a gang of randoms drunk on flat beer thought of you seventy years ago. You’ll just be the cool grandma who played in bands. Think of her. Think of cool granny Edie!’

But today, like Edie,I’mnervous. Proper churning, stomach-is-in-a-state-of-terror, palms-sweating, heart-thumping nerves, and it’s ridiculous that I am. It’s a music therapy group. It’s a group of people turning to music for therapy, through grief, through depression, through illness. It is not a public execution. And yet, my entire body is acting as though it is.

I’d made the decision to come here first thing this morning. I was awake early, and I sat at the breakfast bar watching the sun come up, bathing Russ’s wild garden in golden light, and I kept thinking about those words I sent to Tom. Scared. Guilty. And I mulled and mulled them over in my head, kneaded them, like dough. Then I flicked to the photo of the Music Therapy leaflet in my phone, and there was something comforting about the idea of a group of people, probably with words like mine – painful words, too small, too big, to look at in the eye – gathering somewhere, together, all a little broken, to feel a little more understood. And with music. I got dressed and pushed myself out of the door before I could talk myself out of it.

Now, I follow the directions on Google Maps, the robotic, matter-of-fact voice dictating in my ear which way to go, like an emotionless friend. It sends me down multiple quiet streets, nothing but alleyways and occasional backstreet garages, and I wonder for a moment, if I’ve actually gone the wrong way and will end up on murky CCTV footage on the ten o’clock news. But then it comes into view. ‘Kennedy Place’. It looks like a brick-built factory. Its entrance is nothing but a heavy metal door, the colour of cranberry juice, and the sign on the brickwork next to it, reads ‘Red Door Rehearsal Rooms’. And just like that, a thrill, like a crackle of electricity surges through me.Rehearsal rooms.It’s like something from another life. Like coming across an old photo, or old song you forgot about. Strange and new and familiar all at once. This is all Edie and I did onceupon a time. Rehearsed and wrote and played. I knew every rehearsal space in London. Not this one though. This must be new.

I knock. Nothing.

I try the door, and it opens easily, into a tiny lobby and a flight of thin-carpeted stairs. It smells like a doctor’s surgery in here – that clinical, industrial-strength floor-cleaner smell – and I can hear music, from multiple angles. The rumble of a bass guitar from upstairs. A clarinet somewhere behind me. Some laughter from the top of the stairs. On the wall is a silver embossed sign, divided into a list of floors, and next to the heading ‘Floor three’ is ‘NMT’, the therapy group I’m looking for.

My stomach turns over, like a barrel, as I climb the stairs – oh, God, say if I walk in and everyone’s in a circle sharing tragic stories, heaving sobs into tissues. Like Weight Watchers. ‘I’ve lost two and a half pounds, and my will to live, ha ha. How about you?’

‘Hi!’ A man stands at an open door on the third floor, his back leaning against the slice of safety glass. ‘Another early one today, I see. Aren’t we lucky?’

‘Is this the right place for music therapy? I saw a flyer—’

‘Yes, yes, that’s us. Is this your first time?’ This man looks like a bird. Tall, gangly, with pointed, sharp features, but a smile that softens them all instantly. He reminds me of every cool new English teacher, straight out of teaching college, jolly and as-yet unjaded with the system.

I nod. ‘First time,’ I repeat.

‘Cool, cool. I’m James. I’m one of the therapists, and there’s Devaj, too, my partner in crime. We run the programme together. He’s inside with a couple of our team if you want to go on in, make yourself at home. We’ve got a few early birds inside already.’ He jerks with his head to the entrance. ‘And sorry, forgive me, I didn’t get your name …’

‘Natalie.’

‘Natalie. Great. Welcome.’

There’s a small landing past James – a tiny kitchen, the sort you find in soulless offices – grey countertops and light-faux-wood doors, and that hospitally white lino on the floor, with weird flecks of glitter in – followed by an open door to a huge open space. One wall is completely exposed brick, like one of those backstreet dance studios or youth clubs, and there are chairs and people and instrument cases scattered about the room. It smells a bit like churches.

‘Is that the Vox amp?’ someone asks, and something warm fizzes inside of me at the buzz of electric guitar meeting the metal of the cord.

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