Page 19 of Our Song

When I reach the Crescent the next day, I keep an eye out for potential amateur paparazzi.

Though they won’t be able to see much of me, given that the weather is hideous and the hood is up on my parka.

There is a large-ish bunch of young people hanging around the park in the drizzle, all looking over at Tadhg’s house.

Before I go through the gate, I look back and see all the fans watching me.

It’s unnerving, that feeling of being observed.

I wonder, not for the first time, how Tadhg deals with it.

The front door is already open as I hurry up the steps.

‘Come in! What a miserable day.’ He’s wearing a Pavement band T-shirt and jeans and a navy hoodie, and he hasn’t shaved again today. He looks more like himself – or at least the Tadhg I remember – in his own house than he did in that fancy restaurant.

‘You’ve got a little fan club out there in the Crescent,’ I say.

‘They didn’t bother you, did they?’ Tadhg looks concerned.

‘No, not at all.’ I pause. ‘Do they ever bother people? Visitors, I mean?’

‘Not usually,’ says Tadhg. I follow him into the kitchen where the kettle is just boiling. He starts making the tea. ‘They’re generally pretty respectful. But you never know … Sorry, I really should have warned you before we started all this that there might be people out there.’

‘It’s fine, I kind of guessed there would be.’ I sit at the kitchen table. ‘Have any of them ever, well, done anything weird? Like tried to get in here? Oh my God, do you have bodyguards hidden around here somewhere?’

Tadhg hands me a cup of tea. ‘Yes, there have been one or two weird moments but nothing too terrifying. A girl did try to get in here once but didn’t succeed. And no, I don’t, but a security company does monitor the cameras twenty-four hours a day.’

I sip my tea. Perfect. ‘What do the neighbours think of all this?’

Tadhg groans. ‘They’re not exactly my biggest fans, I can tell you that much.’

I suppose I can’t really blame them. It must be a massive pain in the arse having a megastar living next door. I don’t say this to Tadhg, though. Instead I say, ‘What do you want to do today? In the studio, I mean.’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I was thinking we could try the song. Our song. See if either of us has any fresh ideas for how to finish it.’

My heart sinks, just a little. I’ve been enjoying our new-found harmony. Trying to work on the song might add a sour note. We might find ourselves thinking about why we never got round to finishing it in the first place.

But that’s what I’m here for, so I say, ‘Sure! Will we take our tea out to the studio?’

I spend a little too long setting up, but all too soon we’re both sitting there, our instruments in our laps. When we wrote songs for the band back in the day we’d sit facing each other like this. Except not exactly like this.

Tadhg says, ‘Do you remember the chords?’

‘Of course I do!’ The I wrote them is silent but heavily implied.

‘Sorry, I didn’t want to presume …’ he says. ‘I mean, it’s been a very long time …’

‘Do you remember the words?’

‘Yeah, of course.’ Tadhg takes a deep breath. He’s tense too.

‘Well then,’ I say. ‘Let’s play it.’

I start the chords that begin the song, and after a few bars Tadhg comes in, playing the bassline, and when he starts singing the melody in his beautiful honey-and-gravel voice, a wave of nostalgia hits me with such force that I almost gasp.

‘Here we are

We’ve been talking through the night’

I try not to think about the last time we played this song together.

I try and fail not to think about what happened next, everything we did, everything we said to each other.

I wonder if he’s thinking of it too. I wonder if he’s forgotten all about it.

Could you forget something like that? I certainly can’t.

I can’t even look at him. My fingers almost stumble over the strings and I curse myself for getting distracted by stupid, painful memories.

I need to stake my claim to this song and that means being actually able to play the bloody thing.

We play a verse and a chorus and another verse and then we finally catch each other’s eyes.

This is as far as the song ever got. We never wrote a middle eight.

We never wrote a lead-guitar line. And the second verse never even had any lyrics, so Tadhg just repeated the first verse.

In fact, the few lyrics I wrote for this song back in the day were just what we used to call ‘placeholders’, words that would do for now until I wrote proper ones; the chorus was something vague and silly and meaningless about how someone was going to be Tadhg’s ‘summer girl’.

I wasn’t good at writing lyrics that year.

The only subject I wanted to write about was my feelings about Tadhg, and that was obviously out of the question.

Besides, Tadhg was always better at writing lyrics than I was. I’d always given him that.

But still, even with the vague lyrics, the song works. What there is of it. Tadhg plays one loud chord and we stop.

‘Was it just me,’ he says, ‘or did that sound pretty great?’

‘It didn’t sound terrible,’ I say.

‘Are you sure I can’t persuade you to sing harmonies?’ Back in the day, we’d enlisted Joanna to sing the harmony I wrote for the chorus.

I shake my head. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘You know the whole ‘would you go back in time and shoot Hitler’ thing?’ says Tadhg. ‘Well, first I’d go back in time and shoot that teacher who told you you couldn’t sing before she had a chance to say it. Or I’d threaten her with a gun anyway.’

‘You should have made me sign that NDA,’ I say. ‘I’m going straight to the tabloids. I can see the headlines now: ‘Saint Tadhg’s shocking gun threat!”

Tadhg laughs and then groans. ‘God, those Saint Tadhg headlines. I do come across as a sanctimonious dickhead sometimes, don’t I?’

‘Meh, better a sanctimonious dickhead than just a dickhead. At least it shows you have principles,’ I say, and immediately regret it because, while things are definitely better between us, I’m pretty sure we’re not quite back to the point where we can do affectionate slagging.

‘I’m joking! You’re not sanctimonious! Or a dickhead,’ I add hastily.

‘Oh, I’m definitely a sanctimonious dickhead sometimes,’ says Tadhg. ‘But I try not to be.’

‘You clearly believe in stuff,’ I say. ‘That’s not a bad thing.’ And I mean it.

‘Eh, I suppose,’ he says. ‘But I’m not sure what difference I make to the world. Unlike Aideen. My ex. I think she thought I was a bit of a dilettante sometimes.’

I’d forgotten about her. The brilliant human rights lawyer who presumably got all As in her Leaving. ‘Are you still … How are things with her?’

He sighs. ‘Ah, grand, I suppose. We’re sort of still in contact. The odd text, that sort of thing.’

‘Did it …’ I’m wary of overstepping boundaries. This is the first time we’ve talked about anything vaguely personal in our current lives. ‘Did it all end badly?’

Tadhg shrugs. ‘It just kind of … fizzled out. We were both always so busy and travelling all the time. And then when things calmed down and we eventually did spend more time together, well … I suppose we had less to say to each other than I thought we would.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. But I must confess that it does make me feel a bit, shamefully, happy to know that although I’m not a high-powered glamorous lawyer, Tadhg and I always had plenty to say to each other.

Then I remember Katie’s invitation. ‘Katie says hi, by the way.’

His face lights up. ‘Tell her I say hi back. God, I’d love to see Katie again. How is she?’

‘She’s very good,’ I say. ‘She actually wondered if you’d like to come over on Saturday for dinner?

’ I’m struck by sudden nervousness. Maybe this is all a bit too much.

No, it’s definitely too much. This is only my second day here and I’m inviting him over to my home.

Why didn’t I tell Katie we should wait until next week?

‘I’m staying with her at the moment and – obviously she’d understand if you’d find it too weird … ’

‘Not at all!’ Tadhg looks genuinely delighted. ‘That’d be brilliant.’

‘Cool,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell her. And Katie’s wife Jeanne will be there, of course. She’s lovely. And French,’ I add impressively.

‘ Formidable ,’ says Tadhg. ‘How long have you been staying with them?’

‘Since last summer. It’s just temporary, though.’

‘Oh yeah? How come?’ Tadhg looks genuinely interested.

I take a deep breath. I might as well tell him. ‘My ex-fiancé and I split up last year. So I had to move out of our apartment.’

‘Ah,’ says Tadhg. ‘I’m sorry.’ He pauses. ‘Or should I say congratulations?’

I laugh despite myself. ‘A bit of both? He broke up with me. But I …’ The next words to come out of my mouth take me by surprise. ‘I’m glad he did.’

And I realise I genuinely am.

We go back to playing our song, but once we’ve run through those two verses we hit a block again. We try various chords and melodies for a middle eight, but nothing we come up with is right.

I groan in frustration. ‘Why isn’t this working?’

‘Let’s take a tea break,’ says Tadhg.

Once we’re in the kitchen and the kettle is on, Tadhg leans back against the counter and says, ‘D’you know what, I think we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves.’

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘But finishing this song is literally why I’m here.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ says Tadhg. ‘But why don’t we approach it by, I dunno, a circuitous route?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Okay,’ says Tadhg. ‘This song was our … white whale. The song that kept getting away from us. Correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘So finishing it became a big deal. We both really did want to finish it, right?’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘But it’s been years since we wrote music together,’ Tadhg continues, ‘so maybe starting again with the white whale isn’t the best approach. Maybe we need to try writing something new from scratch. To get used to being songwriting partners again before we tackle the song.’