Page 98 of The Key to My Heart

‘Tom? Tom, sorry, could I just—’ A woman in a beautiful tuxedo dress takes his arm. She’s holding an iPad, its screen lit with what looks like a spreadsheet. ‘Sorry. There’s someone here from a – journal? Said you’re expecting them?’

‘Oh, erm – Nat, do you want to—’

‘No, no, go! Go on. I’ve not finished looking at the photos, or catching up with Shauna yet, so …’

He smiles then, a graze of those lovely white teeth on his bottom lip. ‘I’ll come steal you away soon,’ he says.

I move through the crowds, towards the photos I haven’t seen, and I feel on fire. Does he feel it too? That was – that was heavy, right? That intangible, thick, loaded atmosphere between us. It’s never been like that before. Maybe he knows. Maybe he already knows how I feel. A woman cuts in front of me with a giant, grey-wrapped gift. She rests it upon a table in the corner, against the exposed brick wall, nestled in amongst a sea of other gifts.

My gift. I can’t wait to give him my gift. I reach into my bag for the sealed congratulations card (one with an avocado on the front, of course) in my hand, and—Oh shit. No way. No, no, no. It’s not there. I had it. I had it.Argh!Black hole. It’ll be this bloody black-hole bag.

I skid over to the gift table, rest my handbag on top and I riffle through it, desperately, like I’m Mary Poppins searching for a table lamp.

No. No, it’s not here.

I bet I dropped it. I bet I bloody dropped it and the security guard has found it, thrown it away, chucked it in a lost-property bucket, pulled the shutters down for the night. I put the card on the table full of gift bags and cards and bottles of champagne, and I slink out into the freezing cold December night.

‘It’s a USB stick,’ I say to the security guard. ‘It’s red and it’s got a little rounded edge, a little silver band around it.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve not seen it.’

‘But it’s not in my bag and I know I had it.’

‘Yeah, it’s strange,’ says the security guard. He’s using a torch on his phone to look on the concrete ground. ‘But it definitely isn’t here. What about the street?’

‘Oh! The street! Thestreet,yes. Good thinking!’

The security guard unlocks the gate and watches me, almost sadly, as I crouch, phone torch to the ground, like he’s watching animals scavenge in a bin.

‘The thing is, you’ve only got to get a road sweeper—’ starts the security guard.

‘No, no,’ I say. ‘I mean, what are the odds, that the second I arrive, in the tiny little slot of time that I’ve been up there, at the exhibition, that a road sweeper would have come along and swept thisexact—’

‘Natalie?’

I turn on the pavement, still crouched, my shoes crunching on the concrete. It’s Tom, sprinting across the courtyard, to the street outside, where I’m squatting on the floor with a phone, a security guard watching me the way someone watches, waiting for their dog to take a shit.

‘Hi,’ I smile. ‘Er, I’m just … I’m just out here.’

‘I can see that. You’re not going already?’ Tom gives a nod to the security guy as he joins us. ‘I’mnotletting you walk out of here after two bloody seconds.’

I look at the security guard and widen my eyes, just a little. He gets it. ‘Ah,’ he says. And there is so much in that sound. There’s ‘good luck, love,’ there’s ‘so this is the bloke you like, is it, who has you scrabbling about on an East London pavement? I see. I see indeed.’ And he walks off, leaving the gate ajar, just a crack.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I say, standing up.

‘Then what are you doing out here? On the street?’ He laughs. ‘I didn’t get to steal you away yet.’ Music emanates from a distant bar across the road and a taxi pulls up. Someone, in jogging gear, gets out of it.

‘You can steal me away now,’ I say, ‘or any time’ – and saying that, feels a little daring. That little flirtation. But I’m sure I see it in his eyes too. That things have changed between us – shifted. From friends to … something else. And even if I’m wrong, if it’s just banter to Tom, just him being Tom, Tom with the cheek, Tom with the charm, I don’t care. Because I am falling in love with him. And even if that ends tonight, when he knows everything, as much as it’ll hurt, it’s enough. To feel this. For my heart to be beating this beat again after so long of it being broken.

‘They’re all for you,’ he says, his words clouding in the air.

I freeze on the pavement. ‘What?’

‘The photos. Every single one of those photos is for you. Every photo is someone watching you play. At the station.’

Breath leaves my body, in one gust. A reverse gasp. My hands fly to my chest, as if to keep my heart in place.

‘I wanted to walk with you, show you each one. Because I wanted you to see the effect your music has on people – thatyouhave on people.’

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