Page 41 of The Key to My Heart

Priya nods deeply, like she’s listening to a sermon, her hand in a huge plastic family bucket of ready-to-eat chicken wings that smell so strongly of paprika, I know I’ll be smelling it on her until closing.

‘You two need to stop.’

‘Natalie,’ Jodie says sternly. ‘He gave you hisphone number.He asked you for coffee. He’s hot.’

‘And you’re also hot. It’s done. Signed, sealed, delivered,’ adds Priya, and Jodie raises her sandwich to the chicken wing in Priya’s hand, like two wise wizards clinking goblets.

It’s been almost a week since music therapy, and meeting Joe. The therapy session had been beautiful in parts. Sort of … affirming. Moving. A woman had watched wordlessly as I played, and simply said thank you, when I finished, and left. Someone sang something she’d written, while Devaj played notes on a guitar, to match it. That was moving, and I felt I could’ve even cried, right there, in front of everyone. Some people didn’t play anything at all – just sat, in small groups, listening, talking, and not. But it helped, just being there. And Joe. I like talking to Joe. We’d talked for a lot of the session, and then he’d gone into the main room, sat, watched, listened to others. And it was as I was leaving, that he trotted out after me, pulling a hoodie over his head, swiping a hand through his hair, and asked formy number. It was casual. It was very friend-to-friend. It was ‘if you ever wanna talk. Or, you know – hear French horn like you’ve never heard it before …’ And I’d walked away feeling like the sun was glowing brighter in the sky. Lighter. Warmer.

‘Seriously,’ I say to Priya and her gooey smile. ‘I know it sort of sounds like it, like I’ve picked up some poor soul at a grief group, but it isn’t like that. If you were there, you’d see. He was just friendly. Funny. Sort of – deep and a bit shy.’

‘Because he fancies you and was gearing up to ask you out,’ offers Jodie. ‘Of course he was shy.’

‘No, it was more,’ I quickly chew and swallow the Wotsit in my mouth, ‘I see you’re as fucked up as me, so maybe we can buddy up?’

Priya, with a chicken wing between her fingers, pauses with it halfway to her lips. ‘Oh, stop it,’ she says. ‘I doubt he thought that. You’re not fucked up.’

‘Well, whatever he thought, it doesn’t matter. We’re meeting next week, after the session, for coffee, and he seems really nice. I always thought Notebook Guy seemed weird but … he’s not. Not at all.’

‘I just thought,’ says Priya, mouth full of chicken, ‘what a story. You know, to tell, at your wedding. In the speeches …’

‘Jesus, Priya.’

‘What?’

‘Cor, imagine him in a suit,’ says Jodie, turning to me. ‘Like, can you imagine? He’ll make a gorgeous groom.’ As predicted, I knew Jodie would crush on him. I’dshown her his photo after she asked yesterday – sent her a screenshot of his WhatsApp photo. A picture of him and two other men, around his age, somewhere with snow in the background, ski goggles on their heads. I wondered if one was his brother but didn’t feel I could ask. I was at Russ’s tree in the crematorium when he messaged. He sent me a funny GIF of a man puffing his cheeks up around a tuba and with the words ‘lest we forget’ and for the first time, in probably forever, I felt completely comfortable telling him where I was. ‘Tanner’s over at a natural burial place in Poole,’ he’d replied. ‘But his girlfriend visits most weeks. She actually took him a slice of Domino’s pizza last month (his fave). Anything that naturally decays can stay. And apparently that includes Texan barbecue pizza with extra sweetcorn.’

‘He’d actually suit white, wouldn’t he?’ carries on Priya as if she’s one of Gok Wan’s advisors. ‘He has the face for it. Not everyone has the face for a white suit.’

‘Totally.’

‘Okay, I’m afraid you’re both deluded and I must depart.’ I screw up the empty bag of Wotsits in my fist, and stand up, stride over to the big black barrel of a bin by the shop’s back entrance and drop it in. ‘I’ve got to go out in ten minutes and I do not want to hear another word about how hot poor Joe would look in a tux, white, black, bloody mustard yellow with spots on …’

Priya laughs, reaches over and holds onto my hand. ‘You’re our only source of excitement, Nat. We live boring lives. Go easy on us.’

‘Raise the bar, my fine friend,’ I say, leaning and planting a kiss on her head. Her hair smells like strawberry shampoo. ‘Raise the bar.’

‘I’m serious,’ says Priya. ‘The piano music was enough, and now this.’

‘Yeah, well, did I tell you there was none ofthatleft yesterday? Again. Not very exciting now, is it?’ There’s still been no music left for me since my birthday, and I can’t help but think it’s over. That whatever it was, has come to an end, and I feel ashamed that it actually makes me feel a bit lost. Like a friend has suddenly stopped texting me back, or something. Ghosted me without explanation.

‘God, really?’ Priya sags in her chair and I sort of want to do the same. I loved the spark of finding it. I loved the spark of wondering. And I’m just hoping there’s a little lag – an interval – before it starts again.

‘Tom checked yesterday, too,’ I say, ‘on his way back from work, and nothing. He texted. He’s checking today too, so we’ll find out soon. He’ll be here in a bit.’

‘Interesting,’ says Jodie. ‘Does he text you a lot then? Tom.’

Priya looks over at Jodie, yet another chicken wing in her grip, and bites her lip to suppress a smile that spreads into her cheeks anyway (beside a heart-shaped blob of barbecue sauce).

‘Now what?’

‘Nothing,’ says Jodie.

‘No, why were you both looking at each other like that?’

Priya giggles, but stops when she slaps Jodie’s hovering hand away from her beloved bucket of chicken wings. ‘Nothing really, just – well, Tom. You’re seeing a bit of him, aren’t you?’

‘Right?’

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