Page 50 of The Key to My Heart

‘I know,’ I say, and it’s that I think about on the train home. Joe and I in the sunshine, and just a few miles away, someone leaving music for me, about blue skies and perfect days.

Chapter Sixteen

I whoosh open the front door. ‘Come in, come in!’

‘Er—’

‘I’ve made coffee.And—’ I angle the wooden spoon in my hand to point at Tom. ‘I’ve made breakfast.’

A smile spreads across Tom’s face. ‘You have, have you?’

‘Yup.Eggs. Toast. Actual mashed avocado – thought it could represent our first ever meeting. I even bought chilli flakes to sprinkle over it. Like all those wanky cafés do.’

Tom laughs, ducking to come inside through my low-framed rickety little front door. ‘No sausages?’

‘I’m afraid not, Thomas. I hate sausages. This is a sausage-free zone. It’s all mashed-up meat jammed into a weird, phallic case. I don’t see what there is to like.’

‘Phallic case,’ says Tom. ‘Scathing. Anyway. It’s not as nice, but,’ he holds up a bucket, ‘I bought the grout.’

‘Perfect. Come in. Let me feed you up as payment.’

After tile shopping and drinks, Tom and I had arranged that he would come over in two Saturdays to tile the splashback in the bathroom. I’d sent a text three times asking for a price, and he ignored them, buteventually texted back: ‘Coffee, and perhaps, a biscuit?’ followed by, ‘See you at 10?’. And, of course, as ever, Tom is bang on time. Ten a.m. exactly. And something that is not so much ‘as ever’,I’mawake, rested, dressed, and have been since eight. I’ve cleaned, I’ve put washing on, I’ve filled the dishwasher, and even found the time to dash to the little Londis on the corner, for avocados and fresh sourdough. (Andthe wanky chilli flakes of course.) I couldn’t wait to see him. To tell him about Joe, and the endless afternoon we spent by the canal on the grass verge, with ice cream and drink after drink. And to tell him that there was more music left. (And how I frightened poor Joe, when I shoved it in his pretty face.)

Tom follows me through to the kitchen, where, before I answered the door, I was whisking eggs in a big mixing bowl. I have only ever used it once in my life, and that was on Lucy’s birthday, when I baked her a cake (and fucked it up so badly that Russ and I ate it – the entire thing – in giant chunks in front of the TV after).

‘I hope you’re hungry …’

Tom puts down his rucksack and the bucket of grout neatly on the floor. ‘I’malwayshungry.’

‘Good. Because I’ve whisked like a hundred dozen eggs. I’m like … Gaston or something.’ I look up at him and smile. ‘Sit. I’ll put the coffee on.’

Tom takes a seat, and while I fuss with the coffee machine, I can feel him looking at me, and it makes me almost too self-conscious to turn around. Tom looks good today, but then he always does. Clean and fresh, his muscular arms tanned, a five-o’clock shadow justperfectly so. And his smell … it’s always the same. Like clean washing and hot showers …

‘So, you’re looking—’

‘Alive?’ I offer. ‘Awake?’

Tom leans his forearms to rest on the breakfast bar and laces his fingers together. ‘I was actually going to say you look extremely – pretty today.’

‘Really?’ And I’m so glad I’m facing the coffee machine, because my face is suddenly so hot, I feel like I have pizza stones for cheeks. I’m blushing, for God’s sake. I’m actually blushing. ‘Probably … just make-up. And sleep.’

‘And you seem happy,’ he says. ‘I can see it on your face.’

‘Can you?’ I turn, hand him his mug of coffee.

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘And yeah. You’ll be surprised what you can see when you look. It’s always the eyes.’

‘Right,’ I reply. ‘And the photographer in the room is saying my eyes say … happy?’

‘Yeah,happy and maybe even …’ He cocks an eyebrow. ‘Excited about something?’

I can’t help but smile, and it’s one of those smiles that just keeps on going, the type that you can’t stop, that spreads into your cheeks and screws your whole face up without permission. ‘Maybe.’

He chuckles. ‘Maybe?’

And before I laugh in his face, give myself away, hand myself to Tom for an afternoon of piss-taking when he finds out I had a giddily good day with Joe, I turn around and put an oiled pan on the heat. Scrambled eggs. One of the only things I can do without setting myself onfire. That, cereal, and also Super Noodles. ‘Just – things are good, I suppose,’ I say. ‘Plus, I slept well last night. And the night before actually. The foxes are all shagged out, it seems. Sexual appetites officially satisfied.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ Tom says. ‘Good for you. And definitely them.’

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