Page 100 of The Key to My Heart

‘Gone to get you a drink. And how are you, Natty, darling?’ says Mum, reaching over, giving my arm a kind rub. ‘How are you feeling? Good? Bad? Runny tummy?’

‘Fine, Mum. Shh. Can you not with the – you know. Not here.’

Nick chuckles beside Dad. ‘Runny tummy,’ he repeats. ‘This family are seriously obsessed with bowels. It’smental.’

‘Oi, you,’ says Mum. ‘But I suppose you’re not wrong really, Nick. Your grandad’s even got a chart, haven’t you, Colin? He’ll have to show you it one day. It’s in a scroll and everything.’

Dad nods sagely. ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘A scroll.’

Behind me, a hand lands on my shoulder. ‘My dear heart.’ And I’d recognise that voice anywhere, in a crowd of a thousand others. The voice that comforted me every single week. Soothed me, over coffee and defect cake. I turn to see her lovely smiling, pink face.

‘Shauna,’ I say, as she squashes two kisses on my cheeks. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’

‘Oh, we’re ever so excited. Aren’t we?’ Shauna has arrived with her dancing partner tonight. Kenny. Shy, chuckling, gold-chain wearing Kenny. Someone she swears is just that, a dance partner, but he seems to us, and everyone else, totally infatuated by her. Tom keeps secretly referring to him as ‘step-papa’, which makes us both laugh every single time he says it.

People file in, every row, filling up. Strangers. Students. And the people I love most in the world.

Jodie and Carl, making their way down the aisle to us, with drinks, Priya, Lucy and Roxanne in row six, all losing themselves laughing at something on Priya’s phone. And up in the circle – there’s Joe. I wonder how he found the busy lobby, the close proximity of the queueing.Lips to necks.He sits next to Hollie, his arm slung around her, as she talks as she did all that time ago at the gig. Excitedly and quickly and with no spaces in between the words. Joe moved back to London in the summer, after a year at home, with his parents by the beach. He and Hollie have been together ever since. There’s just one person missing, and I think it’ll always feel they are, in some way – Russ. But over the last eighteen months, I’ve gradually been able to let him go. Small steps, that have slowly led to bigger and bigger ones. The biggest one recently, being Tom and I moving in together, and after viewing what felt like a billion tiny flats, we settled on something even smaller, but perfect for us. A narrow boat. I can’t quite believeit’s ours, this cosy, blue and beige home on the canal, right in the heart of London. The Heron, Tom wants to name it, whereas I want to call it The Fox and the Button. We’re currently running a poll, between our friends and family. (I’m winning by two points so far.)

A warm hand slides around my waist now.

‘Hey, baby,’ Tom smiles into my ear – and he still makes my knees go to jelly. Every. Single. Time.

‘Hi.’ I turn, plant a slow kiss on his lips.

‘Got you a drink,’ he says, handing me a flimsy, plastic cup. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Shitting it,’ I whisper as we take our seats. ‘Two words for you there, Thomas. Shitting. Andit.’

Tom smiles. ‘It’s gonna be great,’ he says. ‘I swear it. I promise it.’

‘Do you?’ And as I reach over, find his hand, hook my finger around his pinkie, he takes my whole hand in his.

‘Three words,’ he says, bringing my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles. ‘I love you.’

‘And I love you,’ I whisper.

The lights go down. The curtains go up.

The show begins.