Page 16 of Our Song

No pressure, no emotional baggage. Cover versions turn out to be the perfect way to ease back into playing music with Tadhg.

After about an hour, when we finish playing ‘Random Rules’, he raises his arms over his head and stretches, leaning over to one side.

The hem of his olive-green T-shirt rises above the waistband of his jeans and I carefully avert my gaze.

‘Wow, Lol,’ he says. ‘You’re even better than I remembered.’

The neck of my guitar almost slips out of my hands. ‘Sorry?’

‘Oof, I’ve been hunched over the bass for too long,’ he says, stretching over to the other side. ‘You’re an even better guitarist than I remembered.’

‘Oh. Um, thanks.’

He’s definitely a better musician now than he used to be.

He should be, I suppose, seeing as he’s been able to do nothing but play music for the last decade or so.

Lucky him, I think, but I try to push those thoughts out too, because if I start feeling bitter about all this, well, it’ll eat me alive.

‘Do you think we can justify taking a tea break?’ says Tadhg.

‘Definitely.’ My arms and fingers are aching, as is my back. Shit, I really am getting old. In the kitchen, I rinse out the mugs and Tadhg takes over tea-making duties.

‘So,’ says Tadhg, ‘how do you feel that went?’

‘Good?’ And I suppose I mean it. ‘I feel musically warmed up now.’

‘Me too.’ There’s silence as he finishes making the tea. After he’s handed me my mug, he says, a little awkwardly, ‘Do you want to try any of our old stuff? Band stuff? If you remember the chords?’

I do remember the chords of most of our band’s songs, but I don’t want to admit it in front of him. ‘Do you remember them?’

‘Well, yeah,’ he says. ‘I mean, I did write them.’

I stare at him in disbelief. Is that how he remembers it? Seriously? ‘Oh, did you?’

‘Shit, that came out wrong,’ he says. ‘I meant I co-wrote them. With you.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘With me.’

‘Sorry, Lol,’ says Tadhg. ‘I’m not trying to … Sorry.’

I know I should probably just accept his apology and move on but I can’t let it go. ‘You didn’t write a single song for that band on your own.’ I sound bitchier that I intended. ‘Not one .’

‘Okay, you’ve made your point!’ There’s a pause and he says, ‘You know I’m actually capable of writing songs on my own, right?’

‘I never said you weren’t capable of writing songs on your own!’

‘Didn’t you?’ he says.

There’s a very uncomfortable silence.

I clear my throat and say, ‘Okay, so you do remember all of the old songs.’

‘Maybe not everything,’ says Tadhg. He takes a deep breath. ‘But, like, ‘Tourniquet’ and ‘Midnight Feast’—’

A laugh escapes me despite myself. ‘God, they were terrible song names, weren’t they?’

He grins. ‘Terrible’s a bit harsh. But yeah …’

“Midnight Feast’ is definitely a terrible name,’ I say firmly. ‘And I can say it because I wrote the terrible lyrics.’

‘Okay then, yes, I’ll admit it. It’s absolutely godawful.’

‘Says the man who called a hit single ‘End of My Garden’.’

‘Ouch!’ says Tadhg. But he’s laughing. ‘Fair point.’

Okay. This is getting a bit more normal. It’s good that we can take the piss out of each other again, right?

‘Every time it came on the radio Katie and I used to say the title sounded like a hideous euphemism.’ I put on a creepy old man voice. “‘Would you like to see the end of my garden, little girl?’”

This time his laugh sounds a tiny bit forced. I think I might have struck a nerve.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I definitely can’t blame you for that.’

My cheeks flush as I realise what I’ve done.

A joke about a bad song title is one thing, especially after I’ve just mocked my own efforts.

But I’ve basically just told him that Katie and I, two people who used to be his friends, have been sniggering about his song together behind his back.

It sounds way more cruel than I meant it to be, especially given how he and I left things back in 2003.

‘It’s still a good song,’ I say. My cheerful tone sounds fake even to me.

‘Ah well,’ says Tadhg with a wry smile. ‘Maybe not one of my best.’

The silence that follows feels actively painful. I’m worried he thinks I hate him. I’m worried he’s regretting asking Tara to send that email. I’m worried this isn’t going to work.

And I want this to work, I realise. I really want this to work.

I want to make music again. I want things to be okay with Tadhg again.

But so far I’m still aware of a distance between us.

Every so often we forget things are weird, just for a few minutes, but then there’ll be a moment that reminds me we’ve essentially been estranged for sixteen years.

Fuck it, I have to do something about it or this whole working-together thing is going to be unbearable.

‘Tadhg …’ I say hesitantly. ‘We’re … we’re cool, right?’

Tadhg’s laugh definitely doesn’t feel forced this time. ‘Well, I think we’ve just established our lyric-writing skills leave a lot to be desired.’

‘No, I mean … things between you and me. Are they cool? I know stuff … I mean …’ I’m stumbling over my words, and a part of me wishes I’d never started speaking, but I can’t stop now.

‘I know it all ended badly between us back then. But can we decide to just, I dunno, have a fresh start? It was a long time ago, and I’m pretty sure we both did and said things we regret … ’

I pause. I’m coming worryingly close to talking about our last night together in 2003. And while I do regret a lot of things about that night, I really, really don’t want to go into the details of it now with him. I don’t want to think about how I felt that night. Or what I did.

I take a deep breath.

‘Can we start again?’ I say. ‘Pretend we’ve just met? Or at least pretend we never fell out?’

Tadhg looks at me. Those hazel-green eyes, the eyes that must have gazed out from a million teenage fans’ walls, from thousands of billboards and bus posters and album covers, are fixed on mine. I bite my lip nervously. But I don’t look away.

He raises his mug with a smile and I feel my shoulders sag with relief.

‘To new beginnings,’ he says.

I clink my mug off his. ‘New beginnings.’

If we haven’t totally cleared the air – I’m not sure if that will ever be possible now – we’ve at least opened the windows and waved our hands around (figuratively speaking). And it’s just enough to make a difference. When we head back to the studio, I feel a new lightness.

‘What’ll we try first?’ says Tadhg. “Midnight Feast’?’

‘If you can ignore the dreadful lyrics,’ I say. ‘Do you actually remember them?’

‘Oh, I remember them all right,’ says Tadhg with a grin.

I groan. ‘I wish you didn’t.’

‘They were about … What was his name? Darren? No! Dan! That was it!’

I hide my face in my hands. ‘Oh God, I can’t believe I ever told you that.’

‘Did he know?’ Tadhg is highly amused now. ‘Did you ever tell him?’

‘That I wrote a song about him? No, absolutely not! Anyway, it was grand, he never came to any of our gigs so he never heard it. I wrote the lyrics, like, a year after we broke up.’

‘Poor old Dan,’ says Tadhg, though he doesn’t look too sad as he pulls the bass strap over his head. ‘This is for you, Dan, wherever you are!’

He starts playing the bassline that opened ‘Midnight Feast’.

I start playing the choppy chords. I haven’t played this song for over a decade, but my hands still know exactly what to do.

Across from me is Tadhg Hennessy, one of the most famous musicians in the Western world, singing words I wrote about a boy I went out with for a few months seventeen years ago.

It’s so surreal I almost start laughing.

We mess up the chord changes a few times, and at one stage Tadhg stumbles a bit with the lyrics, but the old ease between me and him is back, and I find myself reminded of those first practices in Coláiste Laoise.

How simply fun it all was. How it literally felt like playing .

How right I felt when I was playing an electric guitar.

How can I have let this feeling slip out of my life for so long?

We finish the song with a crashing chord from me, and when we look at each other, I see my own expression of pure happiness reflected back.

‘We’ve still got it!’ says Tadhg.

‘Well,’ I say. ‘As much as we ever did.’

‘It’s a good song!’ Tadhg insists.

I think about it for a second.

‘You know what,’ I say, ‘I think it actually is.’

‘Apart from the lyrics,’ he adds.

‘Well, obviously.’

‘Do you want to play it again?’ he says.

I do. So we do.

At one we take a break for lunch, and Tadhg suggests we get sandwiches from a café on the seafront.

‘I can go and get them,’ I say. Surely Tadhg can’t just stroll into local cafés without attracting attention.

‘There’s no need,’ says Tadhg. ‘They’ll bike them down to us.’

‘But that place doesn’t do deliveries,’ I point out.

‘Yes they do,’ says Tadhg. ‘I order from them pretty much every week. All the cafés around here deliver.’

‘I think,’ I say dryly, ‘they might only deliver to you .’

‘Ah.’ Tadhg looks down at his feet. ‘Um, maybe.’

After lunch we run through all of the band’s old songs, replaying the particularly rusty ones until they shine again.

I can feel the songs coming to life in our hands.

Which shouldn’t be surprising because we wrote most of them together.

And while some of them sound a bit generic – predictable chord sequences, melodies that don’t really go anywhere – some of them really are good.

Like, surprisingly good. We could do something with them, I think, and then I stop that train of thought before it can go any further.

Tadhg doesn’t want to get the old band back together over this fortnight.

He just wants to finish one song. My song.

And after that, I’ll probably never see him again.

Playing our old songs is, I have to admit, really enjoyable, but after a while I’m aware that something’s missing, and eventually I realise what it is. Which means I also know it’s just missing for me, and not for him.

It’s hope.

It’s the hope that all this chemistry between us could mean something on top of the magic of making music.

That hope was always there in the past, whenever we played together, despite everything that was going on in our lives.

The hope that when we caught each other’s eye it meant more than a musical connection.

The hope that every joke, every confidence shared meant more than friendship.

The hope that he felt the same way about me that I felt about him.

And after what happened that night I know for sure he didn’t. He never did.

But that doesn’t matter, I tell myself. The music is enough.

It was always enough. The hope was just the glitter on top.

And yes, I can register that he is still very attractive.

Yes, when he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, the sight of his forearms as he plays the guitar is, to a shocking degree, having the same effect on me as it did twenty years ago.

I still fancy him. But that’s just a basic, chemical response. I can’t help it. It means nothing.

When it comes to Tadhg Hennessy, I have no expectations or hopes at all.