Page 69 of The Key to My Heart

Chapter Twenty-One

‘Electric Light Orchestra,’ Shauna reads, straightening the page on the tabletop with her hand. I found another piece of music this morning, sitting in the stool, waiting for me. ‘You a fan of them, are you? I’ve not heard of them, I’m afraid, but then again, I only like ABBA.’

‘I’ve not ever listened to them,’ I say. ‘But the song’s extremely apt. I play in a train station, the song isabouttrains leaving London, so …’

Shauna smiles, lifts her tea to her lips. ‘Well, it’s nice to see you smiling, my love,’ she says. ‘You seemed sad, Tuesday, when I called.’

It’s been almost a week since the gig in Camden, and I’d spent the few days after it, holed up at Three Sycamore for the first time in a long time. But I needed it, I think, like medicine. I slept a lot, drank a lot of tea, cuddled the cat and took a lot of baths. I skipped music therapy, I even skipped the station and crematorium visits. And instead of texting my words to Tom, I wrote them down, in a notebook I’d found that I’d got a few Christmases ago and hadn’t written in yet. I always kept diaries as a teenager and it was nice, to purge to the page. And so much of it wasincoherent really, mad scribblings – emotions mostly, random notes, random feelings, memories. But words flowed when I wrote about the gig with Joe, and everything I felt watching those musicians on stage. A total thrill. But, mainly, nostalgia, like when you hear an old hymn you used to sing along to at primary school. And no urge, really, to do it again, like Edie and I used to. I sat staring at that sentence for a while on Tuesday morning:I don’t want to play like I used to.And the question I’d written after it:And maybe that’s okay?Then Shauna had called to say there’d been no music left, and she’d heard it in my voice, I think. That sort of blind-sidedness that knocks the wind from you when you realise something.

‘So, how was your weekend?’ asks Shauna. ‘What was yoursurprise? I was thinking about you all Saturday night. Don took me to dinner. After much nagging. I even told him about it, you and Joe.’

I laugh. ‘Did you?’

‘I said to Don, I reckon it’ll be something like a picnic. Candles, strawberries, stars. He’s a poet, they’re romantic, aren’t they?’

‘Ah. Well, I might disappoint you a bit. It was a gig. In Camden.’

‘A band?’

I nod, and Shauna raises her eyebrows.

‘Oh. Well, not quite a starlit picnic, I suppose, but how was it?’

‘Erm. It was … good in parts, but …’ I hug my mug with my hands, pull it towards me, the warm ceramicagainst my midriff. ‘I don’t know, it was all a bit overwhelming. I haven’t been to a gig for years, and even then, I used to only go with Russ, so … it conjured a lot of stuff. Which is good. It’s welcome really. But just not really much of a—’

‘Surprise,’ Shauna says.

‘Exactly.’

She takes a sip of tea, leans back in her chair and smiles as a family bundle past our table – two tired-looking men, two tiny children, straddling those little pull-along suitcases that double up as ride-on toys. They screech with delight, as their parents pull them along and sip from takeaway coffees, like they’re cups full of the elixir of life.

‘Natalie, does it make you happy?’ asks Shauna as a fresh, early autumn breeze swirls through the station. ‘Spending time with Joe. No judgement, just a question. Friend to friend.’

Something sinks in my chest, as she says it, even though I know the answer. I even asked myself this, as Joe and I texted on Sunday morning, to see how I was, and when Tom called on Sunday night to check in.‘You heard from Little Surfer Dude? Tell him I said to go easy on the next surprise. No helicopter trips to the opera in Naples. No 6am mud runs.’He’s been texting, checking in every day since the tube platform.

I look over at Shauna. ‘It does,’ I reply. ‘Hanging out with Joe does make me happy. He understands me – the grief – like nobody else does.’

‘But? Is there a but?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Maybe it’s just that – it feels a bit … one-sided or something?’

‘Like he’s trying to woo you?’

I wince. ‘I don’t know about wooing me, but I was sort of hoping the surprise was just – dinner somewhere. I even dressed for it. Wore heels.’ I smile, almost ashamed, but Shauna doesn’t flinch. ‘Which probably sounds a bit selfish because the gig was such a nice idea—’

‘It’s not selfish towantsomething, Natalie,’ says Shauna. ‘But what I often forget is that we can’t really expect other people to know what we want without saying it out loud. People are barely tuned in to what they want for themselves, let alone what other people want. You know?’

I nod.

A muffled announcement comes on the station tannoy. A late departure by the sounds of things, to Nottingham, although the person sounds like they’re speaking through a sock.

‘So, you’d like to have dinner with Joe. Not concerts, not shopping, not bumping into ex-friends and eating silly boxes of spaghetti and flowers in fields.’ Shauna chuckles then. ‘Then – why not ask him? You want it. Make it happen.’

‘So – what, invite him out to dinner?’

‘Invite him out to dinner.’ Shauna nods firmly. ‘I know a perfect place. The place Don and I went to at the weekend. It’s by the river, in Kingston. Not too expensive but very cute and quiet, tucked away. Don’s always going there for work. He only ever seems to bethere when I call the office, and he’s a fuss pot. So, I nagged. And he’s right to love it.Sublime.’

I smile, although what I want to say is that Don should be going out of his way to wine and dine Shauna, after everything he’s put her through. What he’s done to his sons. ‘Nagged,’ I say instead. ‘You mean you asked for what you wanted, what you deserve.’

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