Page 6 of The Key to My Heart

‘Ummmm …’

‘Not being funny, Jason,’ I say, ‘but I feel like I’m getting whatever hangry is, but for caffeine. Caffiending?Caffuriated?’

‘Okay, okay, I’m going with – it’s an Elton John song, right?’ Jason bites his lip and points at me like a marketstall trader striking a deal. Jason is the likeable naughty boy we all knew in secondary school, but all grown up at twenty-three years old. Always dodging his lectures at art college, always looking like he’s just finished laughing at the best joke he ever heard.

‘Mm, but which song?’

He groans, drags a hand through his long, tawny hair. ‘Ah, shit, I don’t know, I now can’t think of a single one. The one with the … piano?’

‘Wow. An Elton song. With a piano. Narrows it down.’

‘I give up, Nat.’

‘Well I don’t,’ I say. ‘I know which band you went to see.’

‘Nah, you don’t, but go on.’

‘Hyyts?’

Jason gawps at me and stretches his arms up and behind his head, like someone witnessing a football hitting the crossbar. ‘Holy shit.Itwas.How the hell did you know that?’

‘You told me,’ I admit. ‘Last week. I remember because I looked them up afterwards. Followed them on Spotify and thought, okay, maybe he isn’t totally devoid of taste.’

Jason laughs and gives a heavy shrug. ‘Fine, Marple. You win. You get your coffee.’

‘Which I have to pay for, though, which isn’t really a prize at all, is it? Not even a shitty one.’

Shauna chuckles as Jason hits a few buttons on the till.

‘And we get a brownie,’ she says. ‘That’s the deal. Eh, Natalie? And put this one through as a wonky one,Jason. This shop gets enough out of me to warrant the odd dodgy backhander.’

I head for the little round table at the front of the shop, on the station’s vast, shiny mezzanine floor. It’s nothing really. A tiny round silver table with a leg that makes the surface rock. But it’s my favourite. It’s the one that’s in perfect view of the trains leaving to travel up north – from London to Nottingham, in the time it takes to eat a whole overpriced buffet cart sandwich and make up half a story about the weird couple three seats over. It’s also nowhere near the electronic billboard showing theatre posters. Or at least,Edie’sposter, of the musical she’s in at the moment, which I’m happy never to see again. The only ad I can see right now is for denture glue, and that suits me just fine.

‘Here we are. Gonna take my break, have a sandwich.’ Shauna places the brownie in front of me, and a cup of tea the colour of rosé in front of her, and with the zip of a fleece jacket and the scrape of a chair, she joins me. ‘The bloody temperature today …’

‘Bitter.’

‘I’m surprised we can’t see our breath out here.’

‘I know.’ I leave out the bit about how she definitelywould havea few hours ago, when I first got here – and mega early – just to see if there was any more sheet music left for me. There wasn’t. And I’d be lying if I said my disappointed heart didn’t fall like a rock.

‘Your fingers freeze over on that piano this morning?’ she asks, with a warm chuckle.

‘Almost. But I planned ahead. Packed my trusty burglary gloves.’ I wriggle my hands at her, my fingers poking out the top of beige fingerless gloves, and Shauna smiles over at me.

‘She has brains, this girl.’

‘Debatable, that.’

Shauna is the manager of Goode’s – one of eight chain coffee shops in London – and she is all of the dinner ladies I was drawn to in primary school rolled into one sixty-four-year-old Irish woman. I loved her the moment we had our first conversation. Shauna is strong and doesn’t suffer fools, but she’s also the first person to scoop you up in a cuddle when you need it most, even when you don’t think you do. She has that sort of wise intuition – the sort you take to be the truth, without question. She also loves swing dancing and Dwayne Johnson, but not as much as her sons. She has bloody loads (five, I think), and she talks about them all as if they’re patron saints, but with added muscles and DIY skills. I never expected to like her as much as the coffee and its perfect, little table – that was just a bonus, really.

‘How’s the house?’ asks Shauna, sipping at her tea, then straightening it back on the saucer. ‘Any frisky foxes wake you up?’

The question makes me smile. Shauna probably knows more about me than most people these days. Even when she’s busy, we always manage a little chat, out here.

‘None today. They were probably off, shagging the night away somewhere …’

‘And your pipes?’

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