Page 15 of Our Song

We approached that mini-gig at Coláiste Laoise with the seriousness and dedication of Beyoncé preparing for a stadium tour.

The mini-concert would take place before a ‘disco’, which was replacing the usual céilí on the last night of the course.

We’d play three songs, the choice of which we deliberated over as if we were negotiating a peace treaty.

Then we practised. And practised. And practised.

Throughout it all, I was always aware of Caoimhe and the way she glanced at Tadhg when she thought he wasn’t looking.

Had he ever held her hand a little too long?

In the evenings I’d look at them whenever they danced together at the céilís, my heart twisting every time she made him laugh.

I couldn’t hate her, though. She still had head-girl energy but I liked her.

We were friends now. How could I blame her for being in love with him too?

On the last night, I was so full of adrenalin I kept bouncing on the balls of my feet to try and shake it off.

‘Oh shit.’ I grabbed Katie’s arm. ‘I don’t think I can do it.’

‘Certainly you can!’ said Katie. ‘It’ll be fun!’

But all I could think of, once we were up on the stage, was that I was going to play my first-ever gig and I was terrified of messing it up. I looked at my bandmates. Caoimhe looked like she was going to be sick. Brían was taking deep breaths. Only Tadhg and Katie looked unconcerned.

Everything suddenly went very, very quiet.

Then I looked out at the packed hall, at all those expectant faces, and I felt something I hadn’t expected to feel. The energy surging through my body no longer felt like anxiety.

It felt like power.

We were a band . And we were going to give them a proper show.

‘ A haon, a dó, a haon, dó, trí! ’ shouted Brían, and we were off.

At first, I thought my fears were going to be realised.

Brían was drumming slightly too fast, which threw us all off.

Caoimhe tried to speed up the first line and had trouble breathing at the right moment.

I could see people in the front row exchange sympathetic looks.

I could almost hear their thoughts: Jaysus, after all that practising you’d think they’d be better than this.

But something happens when a band plays together, even after just a few weeks. You learn to communicate without words, you learn to sync up by catching each other’s eyes, by looking at each other’s hands. And that’s what we started doing.

Now the song was back on track, and the awareness of this, combined with the palpable relief of the audience that we weren’t going to crash and burn embarrassingly before their eyes, filled us all with a fresh wave of confidence.

Suddenly we weren’t just playing – we were performing .

And we were, perhaps to our own amazement, kind of good at it.

Without being conscious I was doing it, my whole body was moving with the music, not just my hands.

I looked straight down at the audience with a confidence that would have been unimaginable two weeks earlier.

Some of the boys I’d been hanging around with for the last fortnight were looking back up at me as if they’d never seen me before.

When we finished the first song there was a split second of silence and then a roar of applause so loud it felt like we really were headlining a stadium.

By the time we got to our Kinks cover, ‘An t-Am ar Fad’ , the audience was dancing and singing along to the chorus.

From the opening chords on, I was locked into the riff.

When the song built up towards Tadhg’s big solo, I threw my head back and held the guitar low, and as I looked down at the crowd, I felt like a fucking goddess.

I was almost eighteen, playing my very first gig. I was sweating, under the hot lights and the exertion of playing, and I knew my unruly hair must look even wilder now but I didn’t care.

I thought, I want to feel this way forever .

When it was over, the crowd roared their approval and we all felt high as kites.

Caoimhe flung her arms around me with such enthusiasm I nearly fell off the low stage.

I hugged her back, then she was hugging Tadhg, and I was embracing Katie, and then Tadhg jumped down from the stage and I found myself facing him.

The stage was only about a foot or so high and for the first time our faces were at the same level.

Up close, the greeny-brown colour of his eyes was even more beautiful.

Suddenly his hands were on my face, his face was close to mine. ‘You were brilliant, Laura!’ Bhí tú go híontach, Laura!

And then he kissed me.

I was almost but not quite sure, never quite sure, that he was aiming for my cheek.

But just for a second, his lips brushed mine.

Then he drew back, looking faintly surprised at what he had done.

We both kind of laughed but my mind was racing.

Was that meant to be a proper kiss? Like, a kiss kiss?

Was that the start of something? Or was it the sort of spontaneous kiss you’d plant on the cheek of a little kid or an extremely platonic friend?

I didn’t know, I couldn’t know, and there was no time to analyse it because I had to get off the stage and we had to make our way through the crowd of unashamedly surprised friends and well-wishers and take our instruments back to the music room.

Fuck it , I thought. I don’t care how cheesy it is. I don’t even care if he says no. If there’s a slow set tonight I’ll ask him to dance with me. I’ll find out if that kiss meant something real, whatever it takes.

Two hours of goofy dancing to chart hits later, it was almost the end of the night and there still hadn’t been a slow set. Maybe I was never destined to dance with Tadhg like that. Maybe I would have to wait until we were back in Dublin to find out what that almost-kiss meant.

Then the first notes of ‘My Heart Will Go On’ rang out and everyone groaned theatrically.

‘Oh no, they’re actually doing it,’ said Sarah.

Then one of the rugby lads came over and asked her to dance and she seemed quite pleased and said yes. Brían, looking extremely nervous, asked Katie.

Now I had no excuse for not asking Tadhg. I took a deep breath. Right. Where was he?

Hang on, seriously, where was he?

I scanned the room – Brían and Katie were shifting now, good for them – but there was no sign of Tadhg. And with a lurch, I realised there was no sign of Caoimhe either.

A few boys asked me to dance – ‘I didn’t know you could play like that!

That was so cool!’ said one – but I said no.

The song seemed to last forever, and after a few minutes I couldn’t take standing there on my own trying to hide how upset I was starting to feel, so I headed out to the loo, inconveniently situated at the end of a long corridor.

Maybe I was being ridiculous. Maybe I’d go to the girls’ bathroom and find Caoimhe there. Maybe …

I was almost at the bathroom when I saw the door of the band room was ajar. There was no light on inside. I went over to shut it and saw that someone was in there.

Two someones.

Tadhg and Caoimhe were sitting on the bench that ran down one side of the room. Their heads were close together, close enough to kiss if they just moved an inch.

And his hand was clasped in hers.

They didn’t look up. I didn’t know if they’d seen me.

I just backed away and then ran down the corridor.

I stayed in the bathroom so long that when I eventually returned to the hall, the slow set was finishing up and the night was ending.

Tadhg and Caoimhe were already there, Tadhg standing with Ciarán, Caoimhe with her school friends.

I avoided both of them. áine gave a speech about what a great group we’d been and how she wished us all the best in our Leaving Certs.

Around me, girls were wiping tears away, which was a good thing because no one thought anything when I wiped away a few tears too.

I forced myself to look at Caoimhe, but her back was to me now.

Tadhg was standing behind me, but I refused to turn around and look at him.

When we were filing out of the hall, he came over to me.

‘There you are!’ he said. ‘We need to arrange our first Dublin band practice. You’re all getting the train home tomorrow, aren’t you?’

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I just nodded. It hurt my heart to look at him.

‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Me too.’

Everyone was subdued the next morning when we gathered at the coláiste to get the buses to Galway.

Now we would return to the full horror of Leaving Cert study, and exams, and then the torturous wait to see if and where we’d got into college.

But while we were waiting, we could still have the band. If I could bear it.

Brían and the rugby lads were on our bus again, but Tadhg, Ciarán and Caoimhe and her friends were on múinteoir Pól’s bus, so after we’d all stowed our luggage in the holds, we went over to say we’d see them at the station in Galway.

But when we arrived at the station in Galway there was no sign of Tadhg, or Ciarán or Caoimhe, or anyone who’d been on that bus.

‘They’re just running late,’ said Katie. ‘The train isn’t going for twenty minutes.’

Then we saw áine talking on her mobile, and when she had hung up she said, ‘That was Pól. His bus broke down so they won’t get here in time for our train.’

‘But …’ I said. The implications of this were dawning on me in slow horror. We hadn’t exchanged phone numbers yet. We’d assumed we could do that during the long train journey. And now …

‘It’s okay, they can make the next one,’ áine said cheerfully.

On the train, I asked around to see if anyone had got Caoimhe’s or Tadhg’s or Ciarán’s contact details earlier, a feeling of rising panic spreading through me. But no one had.

Tadhg was gone. I had no phone number. No email address. And, pre-social media, I had no way of finding him.

I wouldn’t see him again for nearly four years.