Page 72 of The Key to My Heart

‘You haven’t.’ I reach over, put a hand on Joe’s hand. ‘And I bet she doesn’t see it, Joe. I could tell by the wayshe was looking at you that Hollie doesn’t see that. She sees bloody –sunbeamsor something.I saw her.’

Joe smiles sadly. ‘I know,’ he says. ‘But when you know if you’d have done things differently, he’d still be here, you see it everywhere. You feel like the world knows you’re … bad or something. And I see it in everyone’s eyes. Even if it isn’t really there.’

I lean over to pick up the wine bottle, fill both of our glasses. Wordlessly, we drink, as if it’s medicine, as if it’s a bottle of calm, but my hand is still on his at the centre of the table. He doesn’t move his, and I don’t move mine.

‘I know it isn’t the same, but I blamed myself for a while, about Russ,’ I say quietly. ‘Why did I have to take the car, why did he have to keep insisting on cycling everywhere? Why didn’t I stop him? Why didn’t I – I don’t know – accidentally poison him with badly cooked chicken the night before so he was too sick to go out? But I try to remember that life is random. And shit just happens and there are no deep meanings to these things, no signs we missed … this is not your fault, Joe. None of it is your fault.’

Joe smiles, weakly. Then he dips his head, brings my hand up, and puts his lips softly to the skin. He kisses it. My heart quickens.

‘Thank you,’ he says.

‘W-what for?’

‘For … being there,’ he says. ‘I don’t deserve you.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ I laugh but he doesn’t, and it’s like the mood has changed between us. It’s thick, loaded …

‘Natalie, can I …’

‘Can you?’

‘I …’ Then he clears his throat, and says, ‘Come on. Just. Tell me something interesting. Something light-hearted. And where’s this bloody moussaka?’

I laugh, and I’m relieved we’re back to the lightness of when we first arrived. To surface deep questions. ‘Erm … er, well, I successfully made a casserole without setting my house on fire last Monday.’

Joe laughs. ‘Whoa, okay, keep it coming…’

‘I know. And it was edible.And …Oh, I know. There was more music.’

‘Not at the piano?’

‘Yep. Some Electric Light Orchestra tune? Song called “Last Train to London”. Which is quite uncreative, considering the piano’s in a train station, but maybe they’re running out of ideas. It’s a great song, though, great fun to play.’

‘Right.’ Joe smiles, but something passes over his face. It’s that look Priya gave me at the shop. It’salmostlike those looks I avoid. The ‘what a shame’, pity faces. Ugh, don’t you dare start gracing Joe’s face, shitty, concerned, feel-sorry-for-me looks. Those looks are bad enough on Lucy and Roxanne’s. ‘Natalie, do you think maybe someone is – I don’t know. Fucking with you?’

‘What? With the music?’ And I’m not surprised at Joe for asking this really. He’s a bit – sceptical. Trusts pasta more than people by his own admission. ‘I don’t think so. I mean, I suppose they are in a way, but … it’s for a nice reason, so I don’t know if that’s classed asfucking with me.’

‘It’s just …’ Joe nibbles at his thumbnail. ‘I don’t really understand who could be doing it. I mean, who would want to? And the thing is, Natalie—’

‘Two moussakas?’ A waitress appears from nowhere, our meals on a circular black tray in her hands. Her nails are bright blue, and there’s an enamel badge on her chest in the shape of a strawberry milkshake.

‘Ooh, yes, that’s us,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

She sets down the steaming, cinnamonny plates in front of us and flits off.

‘This looks amazing,’ I say, and Joe just nods in agreement.

We eat quietly amongst the sound of low chatter and chinking crockery and occasional click of the heaters, and I’m almost relieved when the waitress returns and seats a couple two tables over. It’s a distraction. Somewhere to avert my eyes because the atmosphere has sort of thickened again, between Joe and me, at this table, and I don’t know why. They slide themselves onto the bench seating, sitting beside each other instead of opposite. It’s an older man and a woman with hair like a fifties beehive, and the man’s hand is cupping the beehive woman’s arse, squeezing it, right in my eyeline, like it’s dough.

I raise my eyebrows at Joe, a secret ‘bloody hell, look at these two’, but he doesn’t notice them, he’s just looking at me.

‘So, erm, look.’ He shakes his head, as if shaking himself out of a trance. ‘When I said I wonder if someone is fucking with you …’

‘No, I get it.’

‘It just – You said it stopped. The music.’

‘Yeah.’

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