Page 79 of The Key to My Heart

Tom frowns, his eyes narrowing. ‘When you kissed?’

‘He kissed me. At dinner. And … I felt absolutely nothing. Nothing.So.How’s that for moving on?’ I give a tight laugh.

Tom shakes his head. ‘Natalie, maybe – maybe he’s just not for you.’

‘But I worry,’ I whisper, tears gathering in my throat. ‘That there’s something wrong with me. That … that I’m like some broken part on the side of a road. Heart, fucked. Heart, empty.’

‘There is nothing empty about your heart, Natalie.’

‘But say I don’t ever –get there –where I do feel something.’

Tom looks at me, his eyes, darkening. ‘Maybe … maybe it’s just not time yet,’ he says. ‘And you’ll know. When it is.’

‘Will I?’

‘It’s unmistakable when you know.’ He moves his hand until it touches mine and, slowly, gently links his little finger, around my pinkie. ‘That’s a promise.’

A tear slides down my face. And I can’t speak. Instead, I lean, press a long, slow kiss to his stubbly cheek. I don’t want to leave him. I don’t want to move from this step. But I do.

I leave Tom on the steps, the moon looking over him, and as soon as I get into my car, I burst into tears.

Chapter Twenty-Four

WhatsAppfrom Joe:I can’t make music therapy Tues, Nat, but do you fancy coffee after? I’ll meet you there. I think we should talk. Noon?

We’ve hardly spoken, Joe and me. I got home from Shauna and Don’s anniversary, and a text came through from him, about meeting after music therapy, and I knew, at those words, it would be about us. Our friendship. Joe either likes me and senses I didn’t ‘feel it’ when he kissed me. Or he felt the same.Nothing.Either way, it feels tarnished. Like it’ll forever be weird between us: me and my new friend. I didn’t reply to him until the morning. Instead, I climbed into bed in my dress, the zip halfway undone down my back, and I cried. For Shauna. For Tom. For Joe. For me.

And today, I have to face it. Today, I have to meet Joe outside music therapy, and have that awkward conversation with him. And today, I have to pass Goode’s, and pass Shauna. All the while knowing what I know. Knowing I need to say something, but having no idea how to arrange the words I need to say into a sentence that’ll probably, regardless, totally break a family …

I drag myself out of bed and to the bathroom, and catch myself in the mirror.God.I look awful. Like someone has sucked the life out of me with a vacuum. Like I need sleep. (And perhaps, a vegetable or two.)

I wash my face, brush my teeth, my eyes fixed on my defeated reflection as I do.

Hopeless. Hopeless would be the word I sent to Tom now, if I could. But I don’t. He’d call, he’d worry. And I know that next time I talk to him, I’ll have to tell him about his dad, and I’m avoiding it. Putting it off, like a tax return or a trip to the post office, even though the magnitude of it is enough to send someone’s life spinning off down the toilet. I sometimes think I should tell Shauna first. I always feel so safe with Shauna, but this – this is abouther.This isn’t one of my problems I need her to listen to. This isn’t Lucy’s attempted project management of my life. This isn’t mystery music. This is her life. Her marriage. And how do you even say such a thing over back-hander blondies and coffee?‘So, listen, Shauna, I saw your husband of thirty years kissing another woman, and I have no idea who she is, but she had hair like a Pink Lady and an arse like kneaded sour-dough, so you know, who knows, maybe you could track her down?’

I sit on the edge of my bed, pull on jeans still warm from the radiator. How did everything go so wrong? In the space of one silly, small weekend?

I’d lain in the dark on this bed, all night after the anniversary party, unable to sleep, and scrolled Instagram – nights out, holidays and wines and sunsets and date nights, and I felt pathetic right there in my creaky, oldbed. Joe. Gentle, sweet Joe, spilling everything to me, that weight on his shoulders about his brother – it had taken guts. Not only to tell me, but also, to kiss me. And my body reacted like nothing had happened. Like it was a big jellyfish at a dinner table. Nerveless, heartless and soulless. And it was a lovely kiss. I’ve had bad kisses, believe me. Snake Mark in school and that tall guy I met when Edie and I went to France after our first year at uni. I can’t remember his name – not sure I ever learned it – but the spit was so plentiful, Edie heard me yelp and burst into the hostel bedroom like I was in there with someone who had just removed their mask to reveal the ghost of Christmas past. Joe was nothing like any bad kiss I’ve ever had. He was soft and sexy, he was just that perfect rhythm. But I had felt nothing. And combine that with the party – Don entering the bloody stage like a cartoon villain. Tom, on those steps. That finger hooking around mine. ‘I don’t have to be scared of crocodiles.’ And the way he said ‘maybe it’s just not time’ – all of it, gathered, and flooded through my bloody eyeballs in endless tears. I eventually fell asleep at four a.m. , the ghost of the Natalie who got dressed for that dinner by the river, buzzing with excitement, lying next to me in the dark, saying ‘Well. What a shitty weekend we’ve made for ourselves.’

And I don’t know what to do. There’s a small part of me that wants to stay here in my tiny, wonky bedroom, hide my head under the duvet, keep all the curtains closed. But what good will thatactuallydo? I’ve done so much of that over the last three years, and it neverhelps. It isn’t me.RealNatalie. Because these things never just disappear, or fade away, I know that. They just get put off. Preserved until you have no choice but to crack open the lid, and finally look at it – deal with it. (And it’s always best to do that before it’s a big, old, smelly, concentrated, fermented mess.) Rip off the plaster. Step out on stage. Play the first note. ‘Facing it is always easier than the moment before you actually do.’I used to say this all the time to Edie before we went on stage. And this hesitation, this feeling, is just that uncertain, nerve-racking moment before.

I turn off the heating and the lights in Three Sycamore, and step out into the cold, menthol morning. I head for the station.

Music therapy goes quickly. I spend most of it in the smelly room, playing, and I’m grateful really that Joe couldn’t make it today. There’s no pressure to talk or to catch up. Just – what it should be when I come here. Music and healing. A woman called Marcia wanders in and sits with me for a while, too, and asks me, hands kneading a pink and white striped handkerchief in her lap, to play a song by Barbra Streisand. ‘It reminds me of my mum,’ she says thickly. ‘Always calms me down. Makes me feel safe.’

And as she leaves, she sniffs the air like a police dog, one booted foot out of the room, and says, ‘that smell …’

‘Oh, I know,’ I laugh. ‘Sorry. We don’t know what it is. I’ve been trying to investigate like some sort of smell detective but—’

‘It’ll be the electrics,’ she says. ‘We had the same back at the house. Thought all sorts – rotten fish hidden somewhere by a narky tenant, sewn into the curtains or something, the lot. But it was something burning. Something overheating. They’ll want to sort that if you ask me. Really ruins the mood.’

Electrics.I smile to myself, as she closes the door. Joe will freak when I’ve told him I’ve solved it. I told him I would. Made a vow, on that deckchair, under the hot summer sun. (On an edible flower, no less.)Ugh.I so hope we can still be friends after today.Pleasesay he felt the same jellyfish nothingness and we can just chalk it up to – I don’t know. Something we can just pretend never, ever happened.

After the session, I stay to help clean up, and to discuss Devaj and James’s song-writing therapy class with them again. We stack chairs one on top of the other, in towers, like you find in an unused local theatre hall, and wipe the coffee stains from the refreshments table. Rain hammers at the studio’s windows, the sky now a heavy blue-grey plume. I’m so glad I came. I’m always so glad I came here, to NMT. And perhaps that’s because therapy works. Who knew?‘Er, I knew,’says Roxanne’s voice in my head.‘I kept bloody telling you, didn’t I, Nat? Didn’t I?’

‘Right,’ says Devaj, clapping his hands together. ‘Natalie, shall we sit?’

He unstacks two red, plastic chairs, the sort with a circular hole on the back rest, like in school, and spreads them a few feet apart on the shiny, polished floor, likeinterviewer and interviewee. Therapist and counsellor. From his back pocket, he slides a folded piece of paper. ‘I’ve made some notes,’ he says laughingly. ‘If I don’t make notes, my brain works against me, I’m embarrassed to say,’ and within seconds, Devaj launches into his pitch – his vision – with so much passion, it’s infectious. It rubs off on me, as he speaks, like static electricity. Goosebumps on my skin, the hairs on my arms standing on end.

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