Page 17 of Our Song

When I was eighteen, I got my heart’s desire for Christmas.

After years of hoping and sometimes begging, my parents gave me an electric guitar. And not just any electric guitar, a beautiful Danelectro, bought at a bargain price from my dad’s friend’s son. When I saw it under the Christmas tree, along with a miniature amplifier, I burst into tears of joy.

‘Now, you’d better not let this distract you from your college work,’ said my mam, when I’d stopped hugging her.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. For three years, I didn’t spend nearly as much time playing that guitar as I’d hoped.

For months after we left Coláiste Laoise, I yearned to see Tadhg again.

I looked out for him on Grafton Street every time I went into town, but he was never busking there.

He’d said he wanted to study music in university, and when Katie and I started at Trinity that autumn, me studying English and French and her studying history, I was convinced we would find him there.

But we didn’t. Dublin feels small sometimes, but it’s also possible to go for a very long time without bumping into someone.

I settled in quickly at college. I made new friends.

I developed an unspoken crush on a hot boy who sat near me in the library every day.

I even briefly joined a classmate’s band, the dreadfully named Fennel, a month after I got my Danelectro.

That was when I discovered there’s an alchemy to creating a good band.

You need the right mix of people, and it’s harder to find than you might think.

But we did play one gig before I left the band, and that night I got proof of something I’d only suspected when I played that gig in Coláiste Laoise and saw how boys looked at me on stage: if you are a pleasantly average-looking person and you want to, if only briefly, know what it’s like to be really, really hot, then just play a gig, act like you’re confident and don’t be totally terrible.

After I left the stage that night, more boys than I could count came up to tell me how good I’d been or just to give me their phone number, and I was so unused to this sort of thing I didn’t know what to say to any of them.

Then my library crush, who had shown no signs of being aware of my existence until that night, came up and asked if he could buy me a drink and, to cut a long story short, his name was Fiachra and we went out for the following nine months.

Over the next few years I’d sometimes think of our band at Coláiste Laoise, and Tadhg, and how lucky I’d been to find, even briefly, a band that worked so well, and I’d wonder what might have happened, on many different levels, if that bus hadn’t broken down.

It almost became a joke between me and Katie – the boy who got away and the band that got away.

Her romance with Brían, or Brian as we called him now, had fizzled out by the time we started college, but he was studying science in Trinity now and we’d stayed friends.

Then, in the spring of third year, Brian got a drum kit from his cousin, and I discovered Katie’s classmate Joanna could play the bass, so the three of us started messing around in Brian’s family’s garage every week.

Katie declined our offer to join the band because she was already working on Trinity News , the college paper.

She’d also just got together with Tina, her first girlfriend, and between the paper and her love life she didn’t have time for music.

The only problem with this new band was the fact none of us could sing. I wrote vocal parts for all the songs, but there was no one to sing them. And so, by the time I arrived back in college in the autumn of 2002 for the fourth and final year of my degree, I was in a band and also not in a band.

‘I’m basically Schrodinger’s guitarist,’ I said to my friend Ruairí, who was studying philosophy and psychology and so would hopefully appreciate such highfalutin references.

‘Do you know who you should talk to?’ said Ruairí. He was one of life’s fixers – he was involved in a bunch of college societies and was always organising things. ‘My old friend Tim.’

‘Um, why?’ We were sitting on the big felt-covered blocks in the Arts Block that everyone inexplicably called the chocolate boxes.

‘He’s a really good musician,’ said Ruairí. ‘He’s just moved back to Dublin to do the Music and Technology master’s.’

I’d heard of this new postgrad degree in Trinity. It was very hard to get into, and the students worked with prestigious composers. But being an expert in experimental plinky-plonk music didn’t mean he was right for an indie rock band.

‘Can Tim actually sing?’ I asked cautiously.

Ruairí laughed. ‘He definitely can. He started a band when he was, like, sixteen.’

‘Why didn’t you introduce me to this genius last year? I needed a singer then.’

‘I told you, he just moved back here,’ said Ruairí.

‘He’s been doing a music degree down in Cork for the last three years.

And his gorgeous Cork girlfriend dumped him just before he left, so he’ll need some cheering up.

’ His face brightened. ‘Why don’t I text and ask him to meet us in the Buttery later? ’

I shrugged. ‘Sure.’ It couldn’t hurt.

It was the first Thursday of term, and the Buttery bar was busy enough when I arrived. Ruairí was there before me; he’d bagged a corner table and already had a pint in front of him. The mysterious Tim had yet to arrive, but Ruairí promised me he’d be there.

‘I didn’t tell him about you being here, though,’ he said.

‘What?’ I stared at him.

‘I didn’t want him to think he was auditioning!’ said Ruairí. ‘I just asked if he wanted to have a drink. And said some of my friends might join us.’

‘Well, I hope he’s not too disappointed not to have a cosy tête-à-tête with you!’ I said with a laugh. ‘Right, I’m going to the bar.’

The bar was busy and I had to wait for ages to get served.

While I waited, I texted Brian and Joanna and suggested we get together the next afternoon.

If the mysterious Tim seemed promising, I could invite him along to meet them.

I finally got my pint and fought my way through the crowd to our table.

‘At last!’ said Ruairí. ‘Laura, meet Tim. Tim, meet Laura.’

Startled hazel eyes met mine. My pint slid from my fingers and smashed on the tiled floor, to the whoops of a gang of second years.

Because Ruairí’s old friend Tim was, unmistakably, Tadhg.

‘ Laura? ’ he said.

‘Hang on, you know each other? Brilliant!’ said Ruairí. ‘Let me get Tim a drink and generously replace that pint, Laura, while you get over the shock.’

He headed to the bar and I sank into a chair opposite Tadhg.

‘I’m sorry, I had no idea …’ I said. ‘Ruairí said his friend’s name was Tim.’

‘My name is Tim,’ said Tadhg.

‘What?’ I said. ‘No it isn’t!’

‘Well, I was called Tadhg in the Gaeltacht every summer,’ said Tadhg. ‘But usually I’m Tim. Hang on, did you really not know?’

‘No!’ Even though Katie had been called Cáit, and Brian had been Brían, somehow I had always just assumed that Tadhg was, well, always Tadhg. It never crossed my mind it could be an Irish version of another name. ‘So you mean … everyone calls you Tim? All the time?’

He laughed. I’d forgotten what a lovely laugh he had. ‘Pretty much. I mean, it is my name.’

I shook my head. ‘This is so weird. It’s like finding out Ruairí is really called Roderick or something.’

‘Well, you can still call me Tadhg if you like,’ he said. ‘It’s a better name than Tim. Anyway.’ He smiled at me across the battered black-painted table. ‘It’s really good to see you again.’

And I smiled back at him. ‘You too.’

By the time the generous Ruairí got back with pints, Tadhg (I couldn’t think of him as Tim yet) and I were catching up.

‘I felt so bad when I realised we weren’t going to see all of you on the train,’ said Tadhg. ‘I always hoped we’d bump into each other again.’

‘Well, we finally have.’ I couldn’t stop smiling.

‘So,’ said Ruairí, sliding into the seat beside Tadhg, ‘have you asked Tim yet?’

Tadhg looked intrigued. ‘Asked me what?’

‘So …’ Now I realised that I was asking Tadhg, the Tadhg, my ultimate teenage crush who’d played that dazzling guitar solo at our Coláiste Laoise gig, to be in my band, it felt like a bigger deal than when I was just asking Ruairí’s random friend Tim.

‘I’m in a band. With Brian – I mean Brían, from Laoise. ’

‘No way!’ said Tadhg. ‘And Cáit? Although isn’t her name usually Katie?’

‘It is Katie,’ I confirmed. How did he know her name was Katie and I had no idea his real name was Tim ? ‘But she’s not in the band.’

‘So what do you need me for?’

I told him, and he immediately said, ‘Okay, I’m in.’

‘Seriously? You don’t need to think about it?’

‘Of course I don’t!’ said Tadhg. ‘It feels like fate, doesn’t it? If it wasn’t for that bus breaking down, we’d have been in a band since 1999.’

‘Good point,’ I said. ‘Okay, brilliant! I’ll tell the others.’

Ruairí was absolutely delighted with himself.

‘See, Laura?’ he said, raising his pint in a toast. ‘I told you Tim would be perfect for you!’