Page 18 of Our Song

‘Tell me everything!’

Katie is waiting for me in the hall when I get home from Tadhg’s place, bouncing up and down with excitement.

‘Have you been standing here since you got in from work?’ I say.

‘Of course not, I’m not that unhinged,’ she says. ‘I was correcting essays in the front room and I saw you come up the path. So how was it? I was expecting lots of messages from you and I got nothing!’

‘Let me put my guitar down first,’ I say.

In the kitchen, Katie puts the kettle on. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll let you make your own,’ she says. ‘So why didn’t I get minute-by-minute updates all day?’

I laugh. ‘I was with Tadhg pretty much the entire time! I couldn’t keep taking out my phone.’

‘You could have taken it to the loo,’ says Katie. ‘Anyway, come on! Tell me everything! Was it really weird? What’s the house like? How was the whole day?’

‘It was …’ Awkward? Fun? Painful? Kind of magical? ‘It was grand. Mostly. He hasn’t changed as much as you might think.’

‘Well, that’s good to hear,’ says Katie.

‘I think he finds being famous kind of embarrassing,’ I say.

‘As well he might,’ says Katie. ‘Remember that Vanity Fair thing in that ruined castle?’

‘I won’t forget that in a hurry.’ It had been a cover story full of cringeworthy Irish clichés. The Vanity Fair team had him posing on a bit of rampart, gazing off into the distance. He wasn’t wearing a cloak fastened with a Celtic brooch, but he might as well have been.

‘I hope you didn’t mention that,’ says Katie.

‘No, I didn’t!’

‘And you didn’t react to his music the way you usually do, did you?’

‘Jesus, of course not!’ I cry. ‘I do have some manners!’

Because here’s the thing about Tadhg’s music: it drives me mad.

Not, by the way, because I’m still madly in love with its creator and find it too painful to hear his voice.

But because every single time I hear one of his solo songs, ever since the first time I saw the ‘Winter Without You’ video, I want to change it.

It’s not that the songs are bad or anything.

They’re actually great. It’s that I know exactly what I’d have added to them if we’d written them together.

I want to adjust the melodies, I want to change the intros just a tiny bit, I want to tweak the middle eights.

It’s like a terrible, terrible itch I can’t scratch.

‘So,’ says Katie, ‘what did you do all day?’

I tell her almost everything. I don’t tell her about my shameful pangs of lust. But I tell her everything else.

Including the fact that towards the end of the day we ended up playing some of Tadhg’s solo songs.

It was me who suggested doing the latter, to Tadhg’s mortification and Katie’s amazement.

‘Seriously?’ she says. ‘The songs you always say could be better?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I think it was because I felt guilty about the ‘End of My Garden’ thing.’

‘And how was it?’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘I think. No, definitely good.’

‘And you’re sure there wasn’t a hint of … you know. The old magic between you? Because seriously, I don’t want you to risk being upset again …’

‘There was absolutely no old magic!’ I protest. And I mean it. The magic was in the hope. And that hope is long gone.

Katie insists on cooking dinner, and even though it’s a Monday, Jeanne opens a bottle of wine ‘to toast your musical adventure’. It started raining just after I got home and now the beautifully designed kitchen feels very cosy. I twirl more bucatini onto my fork.

‘You know, this house is even nicer than Tadhg’s fancy Georgian gaff,’ I say.

‘I know we can’t just arrange to meet him in a local pub or anything,’ says Katie. ‘But do you think … Could we invite him over some evening? Would that be inappropriate?’

A week ago the idea of Tadhg Hennessy calling over to Katie and Jeanne’s Edwardian terrace would have been laughable.

Unthinkable. But now … maybe? Yes, I’d feel a bit odd asking him.

But I think about how well he and Katie got on back in the day.

I’ve always felt bad that my and Tadhg’s bust-up torpedoed that friendship. I owe this to Katie.

‘I don’t think it’d be inappropriate,’ I say.

‘Of course not,’ says Jeanne. ‘There you go. Invite him!’

‘But will it be weird for you?’ Katie asks me.

‘I mean, this whole thing is weird,’ I say truthfully. ‘But actually, maybe all of us hanging out together rather than it just being him and me alone in a studio would make it … slightly less weird.’

‘Excellent,’ says Katie cheerfully. ‘Check if he’s free on Saturday. I want to see him ASAP in case the two of you have another fight and I don’t get another chance for twenty years.’

I throw her a look but I say, ‘I’ll ask. And thanks, both of you. For everything.’

‘No need to say thanks.’ Jeanne waves a hand dismissively. ‘We’re now living vicariously through you! It’s like we’re all having a little adventure.’

I laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’

‘Today you played music with Tadhg Hennessy,’ says Jeanne. ‘I spent the day trying to persuade a client that we couldn’t put ‘just a few centimetres’ of her extension in her neighbour’s garden.’

‘And I had to talk about 1923 prisoners of war all day,’ says Katie. ‘You’re adding some glamour to our lives! Ooh, were there paparazzi outside the house?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Though there were some fans hanging around the Crescent park.’

‘ Attention ,’ warns Jeanne. ‘There are some crazy fans out there. They might think you’re his new girlfriend.’

‘I doubt it,’ I say. ‘I was wearing a parka.’

‘What difference does that make?’ says Katie.

‘Rock stars’ girlfriends don’t wear parkas,’ I say.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ says Katie. ‘Oh my God, did any of those kids take your photo? Or film you? Did you notice them waving their phones at you?’

‘No! I mean, I don’t think so …’

‘How did we not think of this?’ cries Katie. ‘You could be all over the tabloids tomorrow! You could be his next mystery brunette!’

‘Do you really think I could?’ I take a gulp of wine.

Jeanne’s face lights up. ‘Maybe you should wear a disguise tomorrow. I have a wig you can borrow …’

‘I am not going in disguise!’ I say. ‘It’ll be grand.

’ I imagine a photo of me emerging from Tadhg’s front garden appearing on a tabloid website.

I imagine all of the media fuss that would almost certainly follow.

I think of my old colleagues who avoided me when I was let go, and I think of Dave and his new girlfriend and all Dave’s friends who I don’t see anymore since he dumped me.

I imagine them all seeing a perfectly recognisable picture of me under a headline like ‘Tadhg Hennessy’s new mystery woman’.

You know what, maybe I could live with that.