Page 13 of Our Song

The Birthday Party

You : So … guess who I met for lunch today?

Katie : Heads-up, I already know because I live with her, so let us please skip this guessing-game tomfoolery because I don’t trust myself not to blurt it out.

You : Okay fine. I don’t trust you not to blurt it out either.

You : I met Tadhg.

Aisling : What Tadhg?

Sarah : OMG TADHG Tadhg?!!!!! Hennessy?

Aisling : I’m sorry what? You know Tadhg Hennessy?????

You : Yup. We were in a band together in college.

Aisling :

Aisling : WHY DID NONE OF YOU EVER TELL ME LAURA WAS IN A BAND WITH TADHG HENNESSY?

Sarah : They had a big fight! And then we were forbidden to mention his name ever again!

You : He contacted me out of the blue and now I’m going to his house next week to work on some music.

Sarah : WHAT?! This is insane.

You : You’re telling me!

Aisling : How? Why? When?

You : It’s a long story …

Sarah : Please get a photo with him. I need to prove to Ellie that I haven’t been lying about knowing him back in the day. Why did we never take cameras on nights out back then?

You : There will be no photos! They almost made me sign a fucking NDA.

Sarah : WTF?

You : If you’re free to meet at the weekend I’ll tell you all about it!

Sarah : Hell yes. Friday 8pm at the usual place if we can get a table?

Aisling : I’ll have to see if Kev can look after Síofra. But if so then definitely yes!

I roll my eyes when I read this but I don’t say anything in the chat.

It’s not my place to tell Aisling what I think about her husband’s approach to childcare, which is basically that he goes out with his mates whenever he likes without checking with her in advance, but on the rare occasions that she wants to see her friends in the evening she has to ask him to look after his own daughter.

Like he’s doing Aisling a favour. And then he gets all helpless and acts like he doesn’t know how to change a nappy and rings Aisling when she’s in the middle of dinner asking where the wet wipes are.

I’ve always got on really well with Kev, but I’ve seen a new side of him since he and Aisling became parents two years ago.

It’s like she’s married to someone from the fifties.

Not that I would say any of this to Aisling.

She seems happy, and I am very aware it’s none of my business.

I have said it to Katie, though, more than once.

But not Sarah. Three of us talking about Aisling’s marriage would feel really bitchy.

Besides, Sarah could say, with justification, that Katie and I don’t know what parenthood is like.

I don’t think she would say it, but she could.

Sarah’s daughter Ellie is twelve now and a huge Tadhg fan.

Sarah got pregnant with her when she was only twenty-four, very much not planned.

Sarah seriously considered going over to England for an abortion, as Katie had done a year earlier.

But she and her boyfriend Rob decided that they were (just about) able to have a baby, albeit about ten years earlier than they had intended.

Back then, no one we knew had kids, so it was pretty lonely for Sarah.

But over the last couple of years, it feels like almost everyone has had a baby. Everyone except me, obviously.

You never really notice the path society sets out for you until you step off it. One minute I was doing the same acceptable middle-class thirty-something things as most of my friends. I had a long-term relationship and a permanent job. I was about to get married. I was about to have kids.

And now … I’m not.

But I’m about to do something else.

On Friday, Katie and I are the first to arrive at our favourite Korean restaurant, and I’m relieved to have a little breathing room.

Despite the fact that our lives are all quite different now, our gang still gets on as well as ever.

Whenever we’re together we always quickly fall into the easy shorthand of old friendship, full of jokes and confidences.

But since Dave and I split up I’ve been conscious of a sense of …

difference, I suppose. For years we were all in serious relationships, and while both Aisling and Sarah had kids, Katie and I didn’t, so I wasn’t the odd one out.

But since last year I’ve been the only single one.

And not just the single one, the tragically dumped one.

The one living in her friend’s spare room.

The one who no longer says ‘we’ when talking about future plans.

Sometimes I feel that the others are avoiding talking about things they’re doing with their partners because they don’t want me to feel left out, which of course makes me feel even more left out.

I’m aware that this feeling is probably in my head, but I can’t help it.

I can’t bear the thought of them feeling sorry for me. Poor dumped, lonely Laura.

But would anyone feel sorry for someone who was going into a studio to work with a rock star? Hmmm. They would not.

Over delicious dak galbi and bibimbap, I give Aisling a very edited version of my history with Tadhg and tell her and Sarah about Tara and Tadhg and the studio. They make suitable noises of amused amazement and then Sarah says, ‘Do you trust him?’

‘I dunno.’ I take a sip of water. ‘I mean, after talking to him I don’t seriously think he’s got an evil scheme to steal my song from me. He hasn’t changed that much.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ says Aisling.

‘But … do I think he might be keeping his hands clean and his conscience clear while his team play hardball and try to give me a flat fee for the full rights to the song I wrote so he can make a fortune with it and leave me with pennies? Um, maybe. I mean, perhaps you don’t get to be as successful as him without being a bit ruthless. ’

‘Wow, it really is bizarre, isn’t it?’ Katie shakes her head. ‘All this fuss and secrecy about someone we once saw dance to Five’s ‘Everybody Get Up’ in a glorified school hall in Connemara.’

‘I doubt he thinks you’re stupid enough to sell your rights. And he does want to get you involved,’ Aisling points out. ‘If he wanted to steal an ancient song, he could just steal it.’

‘He might,’ says Sarah ‘just really, really want to see you again.’ She looks innocently up at the ceiling as I glower at her. I would rather die than admit it out loud, but that thought has crossed my mind.

Later we move to the bar part of the restaurant, and after we order pints, Aisling and Katie go out to the smoking area, where they will each smoke one cigarette from a packet Katie has been taking on nights out for literally months.

This always happens when we meet up. Both officially gave up years ago, but every so often they smoke just one, ‘just to prove we don’t need to!

’. I’m pretty sure any addiction expert would argue against this, but I’ve given up.

After they leave, Sarah says, ‘Are you still okay to come to Ellie’s birthday party next month?’

‘Of course!’ I say. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘After everything with Dave,’ says Sarah, ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want to do, you know, happy family stuff.’

I smile at her. ‘It’s very good of you to ask. But I’m grand. Seriously.’ And I mean it. I nudge her with my arm. ‘What if I ask Tadhg to film a birthday message for Ellie as a surprise?’

‘That would make her year!’ says Sarah. And then she’s quiet for a moment.

‘Everything okay?’ I say.

She takes a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure I should tell you this tonight but …’

Words like that never mean something good is coming. I brace myself.

‘Dave is seeing someone,’ says Sarah.

I thought I’d known this already. I’d guessed anyway. The girl in his Insta stories. But somehow hearing it confirmed hurts more than I thought it would.

‘Is her name Liz?’ I say.

‘Um, yeah.’ Sarah looks surprised, then sighs. ‘Oh, Laura, I thought you’d have seen sense and blocked him on Insta by now.’

‘How do you know?’ I pause. ‘How long have you known?’

‘Just since last night!’ says Sarah. ‘Rob bumped into them in town. He was out with his old school friends, and Dave and this woman were at the next table.’

‘Oh.’ I have a ridiculous urge to go out and smoke one of Katie’s cigarettes. ‘Did they look … Is it serious?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ says Sarah. ‘Rob couldn’t exactly ask them. I’m so sorry, Laura. I hate being the bringer of shit news.’

I stare down at the table. Dave has a new girlfriend. Instead of Dave and Laura, it’s Dave and Liz. Maybe he just has a thing for women whose names begin with L .

‘Well, I suppose it’s been over eight months.’ I can’t believe I’m almost defending him.

‘If he had any sense, he’d still be mourning letting you slip through his fingers.’

‘It’s better for me that I slipped,’ I say, and I really do believe that, but when Sarah goes to the loo, I unfollow Dave on Instagram. I don’t want to see his happy new life anymore. And I don’t give a shit if he knows that or not.

Because I know – I really do know – that I’m better off without him.

But still, but still, but still. I don’t want to see how much better off he is without me.

When Katie and Aisling return, we all bundle into a taxi and head to Katie’s house because, as Sarah declares every five minutes of the journey, ‘There are preparations to be made!’.

Like choosing an outfit for my first day with Tadhg.

I don’t want to wear polyester vintage frocks in a hot, stuffy studio every day for two weeks, so I’d better set an attainable style standard early on.

I want something casual but also cool. With my friends’ help, I eventually decide on a pair of high-waisted wide-legged jeans and a cotton patterned button-up shirt I bought in the Parisian kilo shop where I got the excellent dress I wore to Tadhg’s lunch.

‘You’ll look like a thirties bohemian crossed with an American housewife in a seventies film,’ says Aisling approvingly.

‘My two biggest fashion inspirations,’ I say honestly.

‘Tadhg will be very impressed,’ says Sarah.

‘Maybe my incredible style will distract him from how rusty my guitar playing is now,’ I say.

‘Well,’ says Katie. ‘There’s something you can do about that …’

A few minutes later, the three of them are bellowing out ‘Wicked Game’ while I play along on guitar. I’m a little awkward at first, but my hands quickly remember what to do.

I’m good at this. How did I forget how good I am at this?

We move on to ‘Jolene’, and soon a wine-fuelled singing session is in full swing.

‘Play one of your band’s old songs!’ cries Aisling, after we open a second bottle.

I shake my head. ‘I can’t. Tadhg was the singer.’

‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re on, like, first-name terms with Tadhg Hennessy.’ Aisling pretends to swoon. ‘But come on, you can sing them now, can’t you?’

Katie and Sarah exchange glances.

‘Lol doesn’t sing in public,’ says Katie.

‘We don’t count as the public!’ protests Aisling.

‘She didn’t even sing in front of her band!’ says Sarah.

‘But how did you write songs?’ Aisling looks confused.

‘When I wrote the vocal melodies I’d sing them at home in my room where no one could hear me,’ I say. ‘Or I’d hum them in my head. And then I’d play the tunes for Tadhg on a keyboard at band practice so he could learn them.’

‘So who wrote the words?’ says Aisling.

‘Both of us,’ I say. ‘But mostly him. The words always came later, after we’d come up with the melodies.’

‘Well, who needs Tadhg,’ says Katie, ‘when you’ve got us? Come on Lol, play ‘I Know Him So Well’.’

‘All right,’ I say. ‘But I’m not singing it.’

I keep playing cover songs, and the others keep singing them, and I realise just how many songs are still inside me, songs I haven’t played for so long. When Jeanne comes home, she joins the session, singing Francoise Hardy songs in her husky, sweet voice.

‘I didn’t know you could sing like that!’ I say. ‘Maybe you should be going round to Tadhg’s studio instead of me.’

Jeanne shakes her head.

‘Absolutely not!’ she says. ‘You’re the only one he wants.’