Page 8 of Our Song

The next morning is my first day of freedom or unemployment, depending on how you want to look at it, but I don’t have a lie-in.

I wake up at seven thinking about how I’m going to reply to that stupid email.

I don’t have to say yes, I remind myself.

I’ve survived without any contact with Tadhg for over a decade. I don’t need to see him again.

But I know that if I don’t say yes, the thought of what that meeting might have been like will drive me mad.

And so, while the kettle is still boiling, I start writing.

Dear Tara,

Thanks for your email.

Why am I thanking her? No, keep it brusque and professional. Polite but not too eager. Keep an air of mystery. Or at least unavailability. Oh God, why is this so hard?

Half an hour and two cups of tea later, I have this:

Dear Tara,

I can make time to meet Tadhg this week to discuss the song. Somewhere in the city centre on Wednesday or Thursday around lunchtime would be good for me. If you need to get in touch with me urgently you can contact me on the number below.

Yours,

Laura

Katie rushes into the room. ‘Did I leave my runners in here?’

‘Under the table,’ I say. ‘Can you take a look at this?’

Katie shoves her feet into her runners and takes my phone. ‘Very good,’ she says. ‘Short and to the point.’

‘I didn’t want to say “I have no other obligations because I’m unemployed and desperate so I’m free all week and I’ll travel anywhere”,’ I say.

‘Yes, I got that,’ says Katie. ‘Now, I’m sorry but I’m late and I’ve got to teach some ungrateful brats about executions in the Civil War.’

But I don’t hit send until Jeanne comes in, looking cool and collected as ever. I show her the email.

‘But why Wednesday and Thursday?’ she says. ‘Do you have anything on today or tomorrow? Or Friday?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘But I didn’t want to seem too keen.’

‘You’re overthinking this, Laura,’ she says. ‘It is ridiculous. Just send the email.’

So I do.

An hour later, I’m alone in the house trying to distract myself by doing one of my favourite YouTube yoga videos. I’m breathing lots of love in and lots of love out when my phone rings. An unknown number.

This is it.

I answer the call. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello, is that Laura McDermott?’ says an unfamiliar voice. Female, Cork accent.

‘It is,’ I say cautiously.

‘This is Tara Kelleher,’ says the stranger. ‘I’m ringing on behalf of Tadhg Hennessy.’

‘Oh,’ I say, as nonchalantly as I can. Which I suspect is not that nonchalant. My voice sounds slightly higher than usual. ‘Yes. You got my email?’

‘Yes, thanks for getting back to me,’ she says. ‘Tadhg would like to invite you to lunch on Wednesday for a chat, if that still suits you.’ She names a restaurant. ‘Do you know it?’

Yes, Tara, of course I know it. It made the national news last year when it got a second Michelin star and the tasting menu costs three hundred quid. I hope that when she says Tadhg’s inviting me to lunch it means he’s paying for it.

But of course I don’t say this. I say, ‘I know it,’ and hope this implies that I am a regular patron.

‘Brilliant,’ she says. ‘So is one o’clock on Wednesday okay?’

It’s famously hard to get a table in this place, but I suppose things are different for the likes of Tadhg Hennessy.

‘Yes, it should be,’ I say.

‘Great,’ she says. ‘Thanks so much for this. I know Tadhg is really looking forward to seeing you.’

She sounds totally sincere, but I find this information hard to believe, given how Tadhg and I left things the last time we saw each other.

‘No problem,’ I say.

After I say goodbye to Tara and hang up, I try to go back to my downward-facing dog but my nerves are beyond yoga now.

Why didn’t I say I was free tomorrow? Or even today?

Now I have to wait over forty-eight hours and it’s not like I have a job to go to.

How will I keep myself occupied? There’s only so much yoga I can do.

But I get through those forty-eight hours.

I email friendly acquaintances in other ad agencies, asking them if there’s any freelance work going.

I meet Aoife for coffee and manage to be genuinely happy for her when she tells me she’s been offered maternity cover at a good agency.

I go for walks and listen to podcasts. I ring Annie in London and she commiserates with me over our parents’ annoyingness.

I have silly conversations in various group chats, though I don’t tell anyone about Tadhg getting in touch, not even my group with Katie, Sarah and our friend Aisling (it’s just called The Birthday Party because we set it up to arrange Aisling’s birthday drinks in the early, unimaginative days of WhatsApp).

I feel a bit guilty not telling Annie, Sarah and Aisling, but I’m afraid any more fuss might make me panic even more about the meeting.

Aisling doesn’t even know about me and Tadhg – she didn’t meet the rest of us until we’d left college and she and Katie started teaching at the same school.

Then, to my amazement, I get offered a job.

When my phone rings, my initial reaction is to wonder if it’s Tara cancelling the meeting the next day.

But it’s not Tara.

‘Laura McDermott?’ says an unfamiliar voice. ‘This is Rachel O’Connor. I’m calling from the Leafe Agency. I heard you were one of Zenith’s victims.’

‘That’s right.’ I feel a tingle of excitement. Everyone in advertising in Dublin knows who Rachel O’Connor is.

‘I’ve been looking at your previous work,’ says Rachel. ‘ Very impressive.’

‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘How would you feel,’ she says, ‘about joining us here for a few months? We need someone good to work on a couple of jobs we’ve got lined up.’

She tells me about the jobs. She tells me what I’d get paid. I close my eyes and mouth ‘thank you’ to the universe. My career isn’t over after all.

‘That sounds great,’ I say.

‘Brilliant!’ says Rachel. ‘We won’t need you for another three weeks – does that suit you?’

‘It absolutely does,’ I say.

Katie and Jeanne are delighted by my news, but although the call has boosted my spirits and my confidence, I’m still a nervous wreck at the prospect of seeing Tadhg.

‘I hate all my clothes,’ I say.

‘Well, I don’t hate all your clothes and I have excellent taste,’ says Katie. She’s perched on my bed, surrounded by half the contents of my wardrobe, which I have spent the last hour trying on and then flinging away in disgust.

‘I know I’m acting like this is a date or something …’

‘It is you who say it,’ says Katie solemnly.

‘But I … Oh God , I know this is pathetic, but I really want to look my absolute best,’ I say. ‘So he doesn’t have a reason to look at me and think, Ah, God love her, the years have not been kind .’

‘First of all, they’ve been very kind, so kind that I’m starting to worry you’ve got a portrait in the attic like Dorian Gray,’ says Katie. ‘And second of all, he will not think that! ’

‘Well, I definitely won’t look like the glitzy celebs he usually hangs out with,’ I say. ‘They all have designer wardrobes and, more importantly, stylists.’

Katie jumps off the bed, heads to the wardrobe and grabs a seventies day dress I got when I went to Paris last year. My last-ever holiday with Dave, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. That doesn’t seem so important now.

‘Wear this,’ she says. ‘It’s gorgeous, it’s flattering and you can never, ever go wrong with vintage. It’s literally priceless.’

‘It cost thirty quid,’ I say, ‘in a kilo shop in the Marais where you pay by weight.’

‘Tadhg won’t know that!’ says Katie. ‘This dress is the sort of thing those celebrities send their stylists out to find. That’s why it’s beyond a mere financial price.

Its value is that there is nothing else like it out in the world.

You can always be confident in vintage, because what vintage says is simply that you have exquisite taste. ’

Well, when she puts it like that …

‘Wow, Katie,’ I say. ‘You should be a stylist or a life coach instead of a history teacher.’

‘No way,’ says Katie. ‘I’d miss the long holidays.’

At one o’clock the next afternoon, I’m nervously pushing open the door of the restaurant.

I’m wearing the Paris dress with black tights and stack-heeled ankle boots, and I spent an embarrassing amount of time on my make-up, trying to make myself look naturally radiant and fresh-faced.

It’s mercifully dim inside, the sort of low, warm light that screams ‘luxury’.

There are booths running down one wall, offering customers a modicum of privacy.

A haughty ma?tre d’ bars my path. ‘Do you have a reservation?’

I draw myself up to my full height (five foot five, thanks to the heels). ‘I’m meeting Tadhg Hennessy.’

His expression doesn’t change. ‘Oh yes? What’s your name?’

I should have known it wouldn’t be that straightforward. Otherwise any randomer who’d heard where a celeb was dining could roll up and claim they were joining them.

I sigh. ‘Laura McDermott.’

The ma?tre d’ checks a list and then his expression does change. ‘Ah. I beg your pardon. This way, please, madam.’

I follow him to the back of the restaurant, careful not to bump into a table in the elegant gloom.

And there, sitting in a booth, wearing a needlecord checked shirt, a navy blue cardigan and a pair of glasses that look like the ones he had in college, is Tadhg.

He’s looking at his phone, thank God, so he doesn’t see me until I’m practically at the table. I want to be cool, calm and sophisticated. I want to stride up there like classic Joan Collins on her way to buy up a rival’s company. I want to just nod curtly, hold out my hand and say, ‘Tadhg.’

Instead, as the ma?tre d’ discreetly melts into the background, I find myself raising my hand in a stupid half-wave and saying, ‘Hey.’

He looks up at me, his face unreadable. And suddenly, for a second that feels like an eternity, I’m back there, I’m back then.

I’m in a practice room in Connemara in 1999, I’m on a stage in 2002, I’m on a table in a flat off Camden Street in 2003, I’m at a bus stop on Westmoreland Street, I’m in all the times and all the places where Tadhg Hennessy and I locked eyes and couldn’t look away from each other.

Then he smiles that slightly awkward smile, straight out of 1999, and shakes his head and sort of laughs as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

‘Wow, Lol,’ he says. He looks down at the table for a brief moment, but when he looks up again the smile is a full-on beam. ‘ Fuck , it’s good to see you.’

And despite the fact that I’d planned to be haughty and aloof, despite the fact that I’m afraid he’s trying to steal my song, despite everything that happened the last time we saw each other, despite all of this, something is happening to my face, I can’t help it, and I realise that, despite all my better instincts, I’m smiling right back at him.

Oh, shit .