Page 50 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

My last-ever busking set passed unremarked by the Covent Garden tourists.

I didn’t have the time these days, what with starting a college course to study music theory and being the perfect dad and supportive boyfriend.

Isaac had encouraged me; I’d developed an annoying habit of listening to my boyfriend’s solid advice. Of trusting him.

Naturally, as soon as Isaac pitched up, I segued from playing Robbie William’s crowd pleaser, Angels, to Dire Straits Sultan’s of Swing because, yeah, trying to impress my man with the trickiest of tricky guitar solos.

Though underappreciated by most of the punters, Isaac knew exactly what I was doing, and for who, and his lips curled into a little smirk.

When that came to an end, still drowning in flutters of happiness, I adjusted my amp, turned down the bass and turned up the mike.

“This one’s for all you pretty blue-eyed boys out there.”

I strummed the opening bars to the tune I’d been working on.

“It’s for nerdy baby brothers, and for cool, moody older ones.

” I paused a beat. “For dads with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts and hairy baked potatoes.” My fingers picked out the notes of a song I could play and sing in my sleep.

I’d never sing it again in public, though.

Openhearted and vulnerable, the lyrics would always be too reminiscent of my raw, all-enveloping teenage angst. Of learning to fly and flying away.

“And for the person who shines the light that is the right one for me. For the only love I’ll ever know.

This one’s for you, babe. My very own Wonderwall. This song’s called Maybe.”

There had been a few other changes recently, the kinds of big events announcing themselves as Important and Life Changing TM .

Such as Isaac buying a house. We’d moved in last month.

I’d even agreed Jonty could have his room painted a hideous purple.

Naturally, he didn’t know he was sitting on a small fortune; that boy couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.

As far as he was concerned, he had the grand sum of seventeen pounds fifty in the bank, saved from last Christmas and his birthday.

For his next birthday, we were surprising him with a puppy.

Event number two was Isaac taking up a non-career post in a hospital emergency department only ten minutes’ walk from our new house.

He reduced his hours down to three days a week with a handful of Saturday nights thrown in, as he still hadn’t mastered the sacred art of saying no.

I was working on him. The new house was a big Victorian semi in leafy Shooters Hill, overlooking a park.

With enough bedrooms for Freya and Pax to stay over and a garage with a charging point for the mid-range electric car, the suburb was posher than our old one by a factor of ten.

Jonty was staying at his old school. It was having an upgrade over the summer, seeing as Isaac, my rich idiot of a baby brother, had bought the bloody tarmac and empty warehouse next door.

There were plans to return it to grass, football posts, and a school garden.

It’s sports facilities would rival the Olympic Park by the time the work was finished.

So yeah, a few big life events, but mixed in were some even more important ones that didn’t announce themselves so loudly.

Ones already filed away as precious memories before you could pause and be impressed by them.

Such as both of us taking Jonty and Freya down to the Cornish coast for a week at half term.

And my reunion with Ed and Saffy, getting to know them and them getting to know me.

I finally met Alaric; the subsequent hangover lasted three days.

We invited Gerald over for dinner and I behaved impeccably.

Isaac got a tattoo of an eagle on his hip, matching mine.

We visited my mum’s grave back in Norfolk where she’d grown up, with Isaac holding my hand.

I sold a bunch of my songs to a couple of major record labels and won a Grammy.

Okay, so the last part didn’t happen, but who knows? One day. Maybe.

Book 2 in the Mis-shapes series coming March 2026!!