Page 49 of Our Song

I wake up laughing.

I’d been having a lovely dream, a dream that’s now fading from my consciousness, leaving nothing but a vague feeling of happiness and something to do with Tadhg.

I float right out of it into happy wakefulness and it takes a moment before I realise where I am.

I try to fall back asleep again, but after a while I accept my wakeful state.

I wait for the post-big-night psychic hangover to hit me.

I’m expecting all yesterday’s conversations with Tadhg to start replaying in my mind.

I’m expecting to cringe at all the stupid, embarrassing or overly revealing things I said.

But the hit never comes. Yesterday really was a good day.

I mean, seeing Dave wasn’t great, but how we dealt with it was good.

Spending all that time with Tadhg was good.

I don’t even regret my little rant about not having kids.

I feel I can be myself with him. Apart from, of course, the inconvenient unrequited-love aspect.

I left my phone charging overnight after texting Katie to say I wasn’t coming home. Just as I lean out of bed and pick it up, she sends a reply that’s essentially all emojis.

I smile and ring her.

‘You dirty stop-out!’ says Katie gleefully.

‘I’m in the spare room!’ I say.

‘Still, this is all very cosy,’ she says. ‘You really are okay with being friends with him again, aren’t you? And seeing him when this fortnight is over? Because I want to hold him to that dinner invitation. I need to see his fancy house.’

‘Of course we’re friends. And actually,’ I say, ‘I didn’t tell you before because I got distracted with Dave and, well, everything but …’ And I tell her about the Moveable Feast offer.

I expect her to sympathise with my dilemma, but instead there’s a moment of silence and then she says, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Lol, don’t tell me you’re not going to do it. Are you seriously dithering about this?’

I’m taken aback. ‘It’s not that simple!’

‘Lol, he’s not asking you to go on tour with him for a year.’ Katie’s tone is pure exasperation. ‘It’s just a few months of weekly band practices and then one gig! One amazing gig! You can totally handle that. You’ve made it clear you’ve been fine working with him for the last two weeks.’

When she puts it like that, it does sound reasonable. But still …

‘It’s a gig in front of thousands of people!’ I say. ‘Possibly millions if you count the live stream!’

‘So what?’ says Katie. ‘You won’t be able to see most of them. You have to do this, Lol. You can’t keep drifting away from music.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You let music just drift out of your life after college,’ says Katie. ‘You can’t do that again. I’m not letting you.’

I’m getting annoyed now. ‘You’re talking like I had loads of options back then. It’s not that easy to find another band. I never found another Tadhg!’

‘Yes, and he never found another you !’ says Katie. ‘Didn’t he say you’re the only person he could write with? But he kept going anyway. And you didn’t!’

Her words hit me like a blow.

I sit up in the bed. ‘He could play solo gigs!’ I protest. ‘I couldn’t. I can’t sing.’

‘You keep telling yourself that because you don’t sing like the star of a school choir,’ says Katie. ‘But loads of your favourite singers don’t sound like that either! You could have tried singing. You could have delivered your songs in your own way.’

It’s almost exactly what Tadhg said to me last week.

‘I’m not saying all this to make you feel bad.’ Katie’s tone is more gentle now. ‘I’m saying it because I remember how good you were on stage. How much you loved it. And I think you owe it to yourself to at least, at the very least, just play one more gig.’

Just one gig. How I can turn down the opportunity to play just one gig? The opportunity to keep music in my life for a few hours a week? Of course I can handle it.

‘Fuck, you’re right.’ I take a deep breath. ‘You’re right. Okay. I’m going to tell him I’ll do it.’

It’s only half seven when I hang up and Tadhg said he was setting his alarm for nine, so he won’t be up yet.

I’ll just pop down and make a cup of tea and take it back here.

Then I can have a shower and face the day properly.

I head down the stairs, past that poster with my name on it and down the hall. I open the kitchen door.

And there, sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of tea and a book in front of him, his hair sticking up in tufts, looking more bleary than I’ve seen him since 2003, is Tadhg.

He sits up straight and runs his hand through his hair when I come in.

There’s something so familiar, so Tadhg about that gesture that it pulls at my heart.

‘Morning.’ He’s wearing pyjama bottoms and a navy T-shirt with a clean but tatty hoodie over it. It might even be the hoodie he lent me back in 2002.

‘Hey,’ I say. I am suddenly very conscious of my own bedhead, which I suspect is considerably less flattering than his. And the fact that I’m wearing pyjamas that don’t really fit me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think you’d be up yet.’

‘I woke up half an hour ago and couldn’t get back to sleep.’ He yawns. ‘Fancy some breakfast?’

‘I’d love some tea first,’ I say. ‘No, you stay there and finish your own. I’ll make it.’

I fill the kettle and get out a mug – I already have a favourite mug in his house, one of the ochre seventies-style ones I used on the first day.

‘Sleep okay?’ says Tadhg. He’s put down his book – Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, I notice – and turned around to face me.

‘Really well, thanks,’ I say. ‘It’s a very comfy bed.’

This is the first time Tadhg and I have been together first thing in the morning and I’m struck by the weird intimacy of it all.

Our messy hair. Our nightwear. The fact that I’m wearing my glasses.

The fact that he hasn’t shaved for a few days now.

This is not the polished Tadhg that I met in the restaurant with Tara – wow, two weeks ago.

It’s all weird, but not in a bad way. At least, not as far as I’m concerned.

‘If you want to have your tea in peace, I’ll take this back to bed.’ I point at my mug. ‘That’s what I was planning on doing.’

‘No, stay here!’ he says. ‘I mean, unless you want to go back to bed.’

I suddenly imagine hearing those last words in a very different context. ‘Um. Cool! I mean, I will. Stay, I mean. It’s closer to the toaster down here, after all,’ I add, because once I start babbling it’s hard to stop.

‘So,’ says Tadhg, ‘are you still up for playing with Sam today? Because if you don’t fancy seeing anyone, we can cancel. He’ll understand.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s grand. And after all … well, we’ve only got two days left in the studio.’

I’m about to tell him that I’ve decided to do the festival when Tadhg says, ‘Yeah. About that …’

I brace myself. I’m not sure what I want him to say.

‘How would you feel,’ says Tadhg, ‘about keeping this going for a bit longer?’

‘Keeping what going, exactly?’ I say carefully.

‘You and me,’ he says. ‘Writing together. Playing together.’

‘You mean do another week later this year? To make up for the time we lost over the last few days?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I mean we could … keep going. Open-ended.’

‘But what about Nashville? Aren’t you going there on, like, Monday?’

‘Fuck Nashville!’ he says. ‘I can reschedule.’

‘But I’ve got a job lined up!’

‘Fuck the job!’ says Tadhg. ‘Seriously, Lol, I meant it the other day when I said I couldn’t remember the last time I wrote so many good songs in such a short space of time. We shouldn’t stop now!’

‘So you mean you want to work on songs for your next album?’ I say.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I mean we should write songs for our next album.’

I stare at him. ‘What?’

‘We should start a new band, Lol,’ says Tadhg. ‘That’s what I mean.’

And there it is. He wants to keep making music with me. He doesn’t want this to end. He doesn’t want the bubble to burst.

Yes , says my heart. Yes, yes, yes. Yes to all of it!

And I almost say pretty much that, when something stops me. A part of me, a self-protective, sensible part of me, is aware that it’s really, really not as simple as that.

What would it mean, in reality, to keep working with Tadhg?

I’ve just about been able to handle this songwriting situation when I thought that it was finite.

This has stopped me, to some extent, overindulging in wild, stupid fantasies.

This was just two intensive weeks with Tadhg, then he’d go to America and I’d start a new job and life would go back to normal.

Even the festival would just be a band practice a week and then a one-off show.

But what if there were no back to normal?

What if I could have the life I used to dream of?

What if I could be a full-time musician?

What if me and Tadhg could really be bandmates again? How would I deal with that?

Because I’m in love with him. It’s not just a chemical response to his undeniable hotness or whatever I told myself at the start of this fortnight.

I’m in love with him, even more in love with him than I ever was when we were both young and stupid.

His life has been so different to mine over the last sixteen years, and sometimes it shows, but it still feels so right being with him.

I want to see him every day, for always, forever, but not if it’s just as friends.

I did that before, when I was much younger and much more willing to suffer. Never again.