Page 48 of The Key to My Heart

‘Awful states?’ asks Joe, then he shakes his head, presses his pink lips together into a straight line. ‘Nope. Can’t say you’ve ever looked to be in anawful stateto me.’

I smile. ‘Well. That’s because you’re always staring at your notebook, Joe. You haven’t taken enough notice.’

‘Ugh.’ Joe bows his head, two hands gripping the metal railing, a silver ring on his thumb. ‘You’ve seen me and the notebook. Me and mysadnotebook …’

‘Course. You’re Notebook Guy. Well, you were. That’s what I named you.’

‘Shit, really? Notebook Guy, that’s …’ Joe laughs bashfully. No wonder Priya and Jodie want to see him in a white suit. He has that conventionally pretty face. Troubled eyes, full lips. Like a young Brendan Fraser. ‘I’m a writer. Poet actually. Or – I used to be.’Poetry.A jolt of excitement surges through me at the idea of texting Tom to tell him he’s right. He’ll be insufferable. He’ll be so full of ‘I told you so’s that I’ll have to block him. ‘But I haven’t been able to write a single thing for over – two years now?’

‘Since your brother?’ I ask.

Joe nods. ‘Sounds crazy, right? But, seriously, nothing comes out. Well, besidesdrivel.And I try. I even do what all the books say, set by all this time for it, try to encourage it to come. Every week, I volunteer a few streets over, I go for coffee, I sit there, just me and the page and – yeah. Nada.’

‘So – ye olde creative block …’

‘Ye olde guilt, I think,’ says Joe quietly. ‘Everything is guilt for me.’ And he says those words like they’re a question, like he’s used to people, like I am too, exclaiming‘Guilt? Why guilt? But you’ve done nothing wrong!’

‘For me too,’ I say. ‘The guilt is the thing. I’m … basically pickled in it.’

Joe meets my eyes and nods, a soft, understanding smile at one corner of his mouth. ‘Same. Joe Jacobs. Marinaded in guilt. Seasoned heavily with it …’

‘Battered in it.’

‘Deep-fried in it.’

We both laugh, and God, I feel like my blood is warm syrup all of a sudden. He gets it. Joe gets it – getsme.And I feel like I could cry, like I could jump over the sodding moon like the cow in the nursery rhyme, break out into a mad barn dance out here on the street, powered by the pure relief of having someone who understands.

A narrowboat chugs down the canal, and a couple, below, take photos of it on their phones. I think of Tom as it drifts by. Him on his bed, as a child, doing his little sailor-look. He’s coming over next Saturday to tile, Just Tom,and I already can’t wait to tell him abouttoday.‘Nice one, Foxes,’I imagine him saying,‘you and Notebook Joe swapping guilt and stories by the canal, eh?’

‘If it helps you feel any better,’ I say, ‘I get it. The creative block.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Totally. I haven’t played or written properly in almost three years.’

‘You mean – piano?’

‘Yep.’

Joe’s lips part then, the muscles on his face sort of drooping in unison. ‘Seriously? I saw you, a few weeks ago. At the piano at the station.’

‘That’s the only place I do play these days,’ I say, and hearing the words out loud, here, in the summer sun, real and true, makes my heart sag a little, as if it’s let out a little sigh. ‘I used to teach. I wrote a musical with my friend Edie. It was calledDotted Line. I wrote and played every single day. It was my happiness, really, playing music.’

Joe stares at me. ‘Is it since Russ? That you’ve stopped.’

A breeze blows along the canal. Warm and sudden and smelling of seaside sugary doughnuts.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I played for him every day in hospital. For recovery, you know? And I was so sure he was going to get better that all the pain and worry and my life being on hold – it felt temporary. But he didn’t get better. The music didn’t work. And then Edie and I fell out, and playing piano for a reason just became this thing Iusedto do. In fact, everything feels like something I used to do.’

Joe doesn’t say anything, but his eyes stare down at the canal, in deep thought. Eventually, he says, ‘And what did you used to do?’

‘God, everything. I sometimes think that’s maybe the key: doing everything I used to do. Some of my friends definitely think that. Go back to how it was – how I was. But … I don’t know. It seems like another life, doing all that stuff.’ I sip my iced tea. It’s watery, the peach syrup barely detectable now the ice has melted. ‘Russ and I saw a lot of live bands. And he was a proper nature-head, so we went to lots of forests I’d moan my way around because I’d wear stupid sandals and get stung by nettles.’ I laugh, the hot, metal railing like a radiator under my forearm. ‘And we’d find parks and festivals in the summer and stuff, and we shopped for records, tried to find the weirdest, cringiest covers – sat around, made plans for our little cottage …’

Joe smiles. ‘You have a cottage?’

‘Yep. Although it sounds much cuter than it actually is. It’s – a hovel, really. Needs loads of work. We were going to renovate it. But – well, I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘I decorated a beach hut for Tanner,’ says Joe, sliding his phone out of his pocket. ‘I went allDIY SOSon it. We bought it before he died. Parents said I should sell it, but – ah, I dunno. We bought it together, and Tanner worked on that beach, life-guarding. I couldn’t bring myself do it.’ Joe swipes through his phone and shows me some photos. A bright orange beach hut, with graffiti and messages written all over it, sits on the beachfront,an indigo sunset behind it, so perfect, you’d think it was a green screen. ‘So, I kept it. Painted it. For him.’

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