Page 93 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

It feels wrong being out late with Lowe, like we’re lost in another country. Like someone might tell on us. Moments like this make me all the more grateful for my sobriety. I know tomorrow I will just feel tired – not shit.

He says, ‘Do you want to come and see the studio?’

We stroll, arm in arm, past the booming nightclubs of Vauxhall roundabout, past the speeding cars and traffic lights. There are loads of people on the streets, drinking and chatting in clusters. I love watching people gather outside pubs on warm nights. He asks me about my new book. It’s been over ten years since I last published anything.

‘And where do you want to be in the next ten years?’ he asks.

‘Awright job interview!’ We laugh. ‘To be happy? To be a good mum?’

‘I think you’d make an amazing mum.’ He squeezes my hand. Stitch by stitch I feel myself undo.

His studio is beside a derelict car park, cornered off by a barrier. There’s only one car in there: a banged-up silver dad-car.

‘That’s my car. Don’t laugh.’

I like that’s it’s not showy-off or flashy.

Shrubs of grass, crates and flattened boxes, graffitied walls and overflowing bins. There is a church next door, signs that GOD WANTS TO TALK. Pyramids of broken mirror. The studio door is protected by a silver metal cage with a chunky padlock; bit by bit the door becomes looser and looser.

The lights aren’t working down here so he switches on his phone torch. I see cold white cement walls, the grey shiny slap of marked lino. We begin climbing stairs. It’s cold, but the air is so warm outside still, it’s OK, like entering a damp cave in a hot climate. There are no windows in the stairwell. I feel myself bumping into boxes, passing a bike. He holds my hand firmly as we go up. ‘OK, here we are.’ I have to step over a ledge. ‘Just one sec,’ he says. ‘I have to turn on the power.’

And it’s like being inside a spaceship. The whole room sparks into power. The studio is open, all on one floor but split into sections divided by plants, sofas and artwork creating little pockets: vocal booths, pianos, writing areas – guitars – everywhere. An old-school carpet overlapped with patterned rugs. It’s natural and worn and lived in but clean. Full of makeshift improvised seating areas made from old cinema chairs and upturned boxes. Handmade unpainted shelves filled with instruments. I recognize the old doll’s house from Lowe’s childhood home. I don’t want to touch anything in case my fingerprints remain eternal, in case I break anything, in case I have to protect myself by pretending I was never here, in case we don’t see each other for another ten years, and that makes me want to touch it all in case I never get the chance to come back. I’m not gonna lie – it would make the most impressive apartment. The windows are HUGE. Spread out and up high, on a slant, with a view of London. To me, this is a holy place. A wonder of the world.

‘Wow.’

We play music. Nostalgic music we used to listen to before it all got serious. We sing as loud as we want, knowing every word and equally resenting and praising our brains for remembering it all. Lowe scrunches up his face and sings along with the same dedication he’d sing any of his own songs. We crack up at how much effort he puts in.

‘D’you want a cup of tea?’

We sit on an old trunk, leg to leg, sipping our teas from chipped True Love mugs. How I would have waited ten more years to feel this feeling. Of me and him. All grown up. Together in this special room.

Sitting, I’m able to see the stacked boxes.

‘Just some stuff I’m storing from the house.’

The reality that there are still ties to another life – thin ties but ties all the same. There’s no real reason why we can’t roll around on the floor but it doesn’t feel right. Not tonight. I finish my tea and stand to leave.

‘This was really nice,’ I say. ‘It was really nice to see you.’

‘Yeah. It really was.’

Chapter 38

For the first time in my whole life I don’t sleep at all for an entire night. Not one wink. I watch the trains rush and rattle past until they don’t and then when they do again in the morning. I can’t eat. I can’t even hold down tea. I open one of the warm mini bottles of tonic water Mum keeps down by the tumble dryer and sip it because I’m pretty sure doctors prescribed it like medicine in the Victorian days, when lovesickness was an actual real disorder. It’s six in the morning. I should wait it out, until at least eight, but it’s clear, warm and light. I can’t stop the clubbing palpitations in my chest, this heart-dropping feeling. My thoughts are taking my body hostage; I’m completely in debt to my emotions.

I shove on the first pair of shoes I can find, throw on a hoodie over my pyjamas, and walk. I just open the door and begin to walk, then I speed up to a bit of a run … I’m following my heart. I can’t stop now; I don’t know what I’m doing; I’m fucking crazy. I’ve completely lost my mind. HERE I AM. I run down the high street, and I can see us, that night he cycled me home when we were kids, my arms wrapped around his chest, my palms over his beating heart; that was all that mattered then. Past the train station where we’d bunk tickets in the rain. Through the common where we’d chat shit on the swings until we were just silhouettes and our faces were outlines, where time was a half-pipe dream, an exhale, a cloud of smoke, a polaroid picture. Where we’d share drinks, lips wet with fizzy sugar. We were in love. I can taste it now. I’m reversing the spell. At the traffic lights I stop for a second. What am I doing? This is insane. Red. Amber. Green. And off I am again, running into the present, to the sweet little street and the early risers and the flower market. And I’m there. At his dad’s house on Orchard Road.

Quiet. The blinds down. I’m here. Just one mad woman on the street.

I ring his phone.

‘Hello … ?’

‘Hello … ’ I pant, breathlessly. ‘I’m outside.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘No, I’m not.’

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