Page 53 of Our Song

Katie and Jeanne have both left for work when I get home, and I’m glad because I don’t think I can face anyone right now. Maybe I do want to be one of those hermits after all. I’ll just sit in my room forever, writing music just for me. I won’t be reliant on Tadhg. I won’t be reliant on anyone.

I’m on autopilot as I go into the kitchen and put the kettle on. While I wait for it to boil, I check my email. Maybe there’ll be an amazing job offer that will change everything. Maybe Leafe wants me to be their creative director. Maybe …

There’s an email from Tara Kelleher entitled ‘Minidisc Recordings’.

I stare at it for a minute before I open it. With everything that’s happened over the past few days, I had forgotten all about those files being digitised. But here they are. A WeTransfer link to my past. To my and Tadhg’s past.

I make the tea. I sit at the table and drink it. And I think.

Then I go upstairs, get my laptop and download the files.

They’re not dated and of course there’s no way to know what’s on each file, so I click on one at random.

The first thing I hear is laughter. My and Tadhg’s laughter. Then his voice, sounding just a little bit lighter, or younger, than it does now, saying, ‘Come on, Lol! Be serious!’

And there’s me, still laughing, saying, ‘Sorry! Sorry. I’ll behave myself now.’

Then I hear the opening guitar line of ‘Anyone But You’.

Except it’s not. At least, not the final version.

In this version, the end of the guitar line goes down instead of up.

I hear my twenty-one-year-old self play the line twice, then stop and say, ‘I think it might be better this way,’ before playing the version I would go on to play countless times over the next nine months.

The version I’ve played a few times over the last week.

‘That’s better,’ says Joanna, and I feel a pang at the sound of her voice. I haven’t talked to her in so long. How did I let her drift out of my life too? How did I let so many things drift out of my life?

‘Definitely,’ says twenty-one-year-old Tadhg. ‘And then this for the chorus?’

He plays a chord sequence and sings a familiar melody.

‘Oh yeah,’ says younger me. ‘That’s really good.’

I realise this was the moment we wrote it. The actual moment we wrote one of our best songs. Together. As a team.

We really were a team.

I stop the recording and close my eyes, just for a moment. Then I click on another file.

This time it starts with me playing a keyboard line, one that I recognise as the melody of the chorus of ‘Midnight Feast’. I hear Tadhg saying, ‘Come on, Laura! This is ridiculous! Just sing it!’

And there’s me calling back, ‘Never!’

When that recording finishes I click on another file.

A sequence of crunchy guitar chords. Then me saying, ‘What if you play A minor at the end instead of D minor?’, followed by Tadhg doing just that and saying, ‘That’s it!’

Another file.

A shimmer of jangling guitar, a bouncing bassline, syncopated drums, Tadhg improvising a melody over it all, no words, just da-da-da sounds, and then me going, ‘You genius! That’s perfect.’

Another file.

The opening chords of the song. Our song.

My heart is in my mouth. Sixteen years ago, our younger selves play through the song. There are no drums, no bass. It’s just me and Tadhg. Which means I know when and where we recorded this.

I hear us finish the second chorus and twenty-one-year-old Tadhg says, ‘Fuck, Lol, this is good.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ says twenty-one-year-old me. ‘I mean, I wasn’t deluding myself.’

‘Definitely not,’ he says. ‘Let’s play it again.’

Sixteen years ago, the two of us play it again.

‘The chorus feels a bit short,’ says younger me. ‘And we need to come up with a middle eight.’

‘We will,’ says Tadhg. ‘What about adding this to the chorus to make it longer?’ He sings a lilting wordless vocal.

I freeze. I wrote that bit. Didn’t I?

But there he is, in 2002, singing it for the first time.

And there I am saying, ‘Oh yeah, that works.’

The recording ends. I don’t move. That was the first time I played the song for him, in his childhood bedroom. The day after he told me about him and Jess. I sound totally normal in the recording. You’d never know how I was feeling that day. I really was a good actor.

I have such a strong memory of that day. At least I thought I had. But I had totally forgotten Tadhg coming up with that bit of the song. Over the years I told myself that song was all me. And it was mostly me.

But it was also, just a little bit, us.

I get up from my bed, walk across the room and pick up the guitar. I sit on the wicker chair, the one Tadhg sat on just a few days ago, and play the opening chords of our song. I start singing the melody.

Then, for the first time, I write a song about Tadhg.

I write lyrics from the perspective of my younger self, about how crushed I was by how things turned out.

I write about how I tried to forget him and stop loving him.

I keep some of the words of the old chorus, to remind myself why I wrote it, but I twist them a little.

Then I reach the point where a middle eight should be, and after all these years and all these attempts, I finally find myself coming up with a new chord sequence that flows perfectly after the chorus, and singing a melody that fits perfectly on top of that.

That’s when I stop writing about my younger self.

I start writing for me. I start writing about what I want now, what I yearn for, what I dream of, even if I know I can’t have it.

I write about how I wish we were meant to be together.

I write about how I can’t help hoping it’s not too late for us.

I write about getting a second chance. Back in the day, Tadhg’s lyrics were always better than mine because he wasn’t restraining himself.

Now I owe it to my younger self, who started writing a song this good when her heart was breaking, to finally, at long last, make something honest. Even if the words are stupid.

Even if no one else ever hears it. Even if it’s just for me.

So that’s what I do.

I finish our song.

And then the doorbell rings.

I know it’s him even before I see that tall silhouette through the stained-glass panel in the front door.

I seriously consider not opening the door. I might be ready to be honest about him in a song that no one else has heard, but I’m not ready to be honest with him. To his face. And I still need to think about his offer.

Then I remember how I totally erased the songwriting he did in the past from my mind, and maybe I feel a pang of guilt about that because I open the door.

He’s still wearing the navy T-shirt and old hoodie from this morning, though he’s wearing jeans instead of the pyjama bottoms.

‘I’m sorry for turning up here,’ he says. ‘If you want me to go, just say. I’ll leave.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Come in.’

He follows me into the kitchen.

‘I want to apologise,’ he says. ‘For making you feel like that. For making assumptions. For being a spoiled brat. For all of it.’

‘Okay,’ I say.

‘You were right, I’ve got too used to things going my way,’ he says. ‘Which is shitty of me. I suppose that’s why I was surprised when you didn’t say yes straight away. And that’s really shitty of me. So I’m sorry, Lol. I’m really sorry.’

I believe him. But what he just said is the crux of the problem. The imbalance between us. I’m in love with him. I don’t think he’s in love with me. He is the gorgeous rock star with the studio. I’m the hired help.

‘I do want to work with you,’ I say. ‘But I need more time to think about it. Because I don’t know if it’ll work.’

‘Okay,’ says Tadhg. ‘Um, why not?’

‘Because you’re you!’ I say. ‘And I’m me!’

‘Well, yeah.’ Tadhg runs a hand through his hair, pushing the waves into tufts. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Tadhg,’ I say. ‘You’ve won two Grammys and the Mercury Prize and you live in a Georgian townhouse. I’m living in my friend’s spare room and I write ads about pension plans.’

‘So?’ says Tadhg.

‘Come on, Tadhg, don’t be obtuse,’ I say. ‘You must see the difference!’

‘I’m not being obtuse!’ he says. ‘I just don’t see what this has to do with us actually writing songs together.’

‘I just … I don’t think working together can work if there’s this imbalance between us,’ I say. ‘If we’re not proper equals. I can’t bear it if you expect me to be, I don’t know, grateful to you.’

‘Grateful to me ?’ says Tadhg. ‘Laura, I’m incredibly grateful to you !

I always have been!’ He takes a deep breath.

‘You asked if I thought I was doing you a favour, and yeah, I did want to do you a favour. I wanted to give you the chance to work on music full-time, and I shouldn’t have assumed you’d want it, but as far as I’m concerned, I was just repaying all the favours you’ve done for me.

Jesus, if there’s an imbalance between us it goes the other way! ’

I look at him, so tall, so handsome, so successful. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘You’re ridiculously talented, that’s what I’m talking about,’ says Tadhg. ‘You always have been. Much more talented than I am.’

‘Our careers beg to differ,’ I say. ‘You’re an incredible songwriter, Tadhg. You must know you are.’

‘If I’m any good,’ says Tadhg, ‘it’s because I’ve kept working at it.

And that’s because of you. I owe you so much, Lol.

So much. You always made my songs better.

You knew just what they needed. You taught me to be a better songwriter.

You’re still teaching me. You’re the single biggest influence on my music, you know that?

To this day I’ve never written a song without thinking What would Lol add to this?

I always knew I could never be as good as you, but I kept trying.

I keep trying.’ He runs both hands through his hair, which is a total mess by now.

‘And besides all that, I owe you my career! If it wasn’t for you I’d never have written ‘Winter Without You’. ’