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‘Go on, give us one more,’ said Tom, resting back on the sofa now. He put one leg across the other to show he was in no hurry whatsoever.
Matthew was almost green with envy.
‘It’s almost three thirty, Tom,’ he said, really peeved now. ‘We could make a start before the others arrive? I really want to go over some poster ideas for our new dates and we’ve a press pack to pull together.’
Matthew looked at his watch, but Tom was still looking at me.
‘I think we should wait on the others instead of having to repeat yourself, Matt,’ he said, grinning my way. ‘Plus, I want to see if Charlie is a one-hit wonder, or if there’s more to come from such a genius mind. Go on, give us one more song, Charlie.’
And so, I sang another one, and then another, neither of us noticing that Matthew had by now left the room, leaving us to it as we got lost in the music. I was singing for him. I was actually singing my very own songs for this beautiful stranger who was making me feel like I was the most important person in his world right now.
‘Hang on,’ Tom said while I was just about to finish a chorus. ‘Gimme that again.’
He grabbed my brother’s guitar from the corner of the room and strummed along with me, then harmonized when he caught on to the chorus. All the time when we sang together, our eyes were locked and I felt like my heart might burst.
‘Keep singing that part,’ he said to me at one point. ‘I wanna try something here.’
And so I did what he said and it made perfect sense. We were making music together. It was the most thrilling rush ever and this was shaping up to be the best day of my life.
‘You’ve blown my mind, Charlie,’ Tom said to me after the third song. He sat the guitar to the side and shook his head. ‘I could seriously listen to you, and look at you, all day. You’ve got it, Charlie. You’ve just got it!’
He was in genuine disbelief. I tried to absorb all this unexpected praise from him.
‘And you know what? The most beautiful thing is you have no freakin’ idea just how good you are!’
I tried to catch my breath in the intensity of it all as we stood there in the middle of this tiny, smelly, hormone-filled student sitting room, our breath patterns moving to the same rhythm. As Monday to Friday university accommodation to my brother, me and our friend Kirsty, the room had hosted many booze-filled parties and late nights over the past four years, but never had I experienced electricity in the air as I did right then with him.
‘You can sing too and play guitar as well as drums,’ I managed to stutter. ‘You’re a mighty fine talent in yourself, so I can’t take all the credit for what just happened.’
I tried to divert the compliment back to him, but he wasn’t having it.
‘No, no, Charlie Taylor. I can play, yes, but you have star quality. You’re on a totally different level and I don’t say that lightly. You’re amazing.’
My bottom lip quivered, and I pushed my hair behind my ears.
‘You really think so?’
‘I really know so,’ he said, holding my gaze. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at all this attention from someone so gorgeous and talented who seemed to be so much in awe of me.
Matthew had always been known as the creative one in our family. He was the colourful one who wanted to sing in a band as well as study to be an architect, so he was the one we all looked up to, cheering him on along the way. I was going to be a teacher and any musical notions I had were brushed under the carpet when we were growing up. It just wasn’t how my family saw me. Matthew was the cool, talented one, Emily was the middle child, the quiet, sensible one who obeyed all the rules, and I was the quirky, hippy dippy baby, the rebellious clever kid, and the one with brains to burn whose way with words would be best suited to a classroom where others would benefit from my wisdom. I just dressed a little funny and sometimes found myself in hot water, but that could all be fixed. Or so my parents hoped.
‘I’ve never properly sung these songs for anyone before,’ I confessed to Tom. It was dropping dark now outside, so I walked past him and pulled the curtains closed.
He gently took my hand on the way back.
‘You have magic, I mean it,’ he whispered. ‘Please believe me, Charlie. You can’t ignore what happened just now.’
We stood there, frozen in the moment. I could barely catch my breath.
‘I think I’m going to get you into trouble,’ I told him.
His eyes widened. ‘I think so too,’ he said.
‘With the band, I mean!’ I retorted quickly. ‘I mean, I hope I don’t get you into trouble with the band. Sounds like the others are here now.’
Our hands parted and he rubbed his forehead, which told me he’d been thinking of a totally different kind of trouble.
‘Yeah, yeah, the band. That’s what you meant,’ he said, then looked at the ceiling and blew out a long breath.
That accent of his was a killer and could get me into trouble any day, I thought. I closed my eyes for a second. I wanted him to reach out and touch me again, to tell me that he didn’t care if he got into trouble. He said I had magic. He said I was amazing. He said so many things I’d never been told before and I wanted to pause this moment so that we didn’t have to just leave it at this.
I wanted more of Tom Farley and when I opened my eyes I could see from the pain in his face that he wanted more of me, too.
‘I suppose I should make a move,’ he said, but his eyes told me he didn’t want to go. I didn’t want him to go either.
Now that we’d stopped singing, I could hear the rest of the band members chatting in the kitchen. Matthew was going to kill me. Not only had I taken up so much of Tom’s time and attention, but I’d also taken over the living room with our unplanned mini concert which was totally stealing his thunder.
Tom whispered to me.
‘Look, Charlie, between you and me,’ he said. ‘I know some people who aren’t a million miles away right now who would die to have just an ounce of the talent you have. You can’t just hide these songs away or ignore this gift you have. You must send your songs out to some record companies. Believe me, you’d be signed up in seconds.’
Record companies? I’d never even thought of doing such a thing, yet I felt a wave of imagination flood my mind. I laughed out loud at the idea.
‘You mean, do this for a living?’ I asked him. ‘Write songs? As a job?’
I laughed again, but he nodded as if it was just as simple as that.
‘As a career,’ he emphasized. ‘Long term. Go to London, Charlie! Go to New York City or somewhere else in the States like Texas or Nashville. They’d eat you up out there, I just know it. Music and lyrics are in your blood, I’m telling you. I have total faith in you. Your songs are totally mesmerizing. You are mesmerizing.’
The room spun a bit and I felt a hot flush overcome me as I imagined little old me in a big city, far away from Ireland and all that I’d known all my life. In my mind, for just a second, I saw myself sitting at a big window seat in a new city, looking out on a mix of sunshine and flashes of colour and sounds I’d never seen or heard before. The very thought made me both dizzy and excited. A rush filled me from head to toe as I imagined someone singing my songs, my actual words to a packed auditorium with a drummer like Tom Farley thumping out the beat and—
‘OK, meeting time!’ announced Matthew, bursting my bubble entirely with his bellowing voice as he returned into the living room. ‘And someone called Lexi is here?’
His voice drew my eyes in the direction of the door where I saw the most beautiful, exotic creature – small, pale, oriental and gothic – and Tom’s eyes diverted briefly from mine for the first time since he’d got here.
My afternoon of heaven was just about to turn into an evening of hell as reality punched me right in the heart.
‘Honey!’ said Lexi in a raspy, posh Dublin accent. ‘Sorry I’m late, babe, but I couldn’t find this house for ages! You should have told me it was the one with the letter box hanging off … Students!’
She made a face that on anyone else would have looked very unattractive, but she still managed to look like a supermodel compared to me, who looked like I was chewing a wasp at the shock of her arrival. My mouth dropped open as she breezed right past me, then wrapped her arms around Tom and kissed him full on the mouth in front of us, giving me just enough time to quickly pick up my guitar and make my swift exit before my brother, complete with smug face, could say ‘I told you so.’
‘Charlie!’ Tom called after me, pushing his girlfriend off his face as gently as he could.
I tried not to look at them again and, when I did, regretted it instantly as I saw her whisper into his ear, almost eating it at the same time. She threw her black, shiny bobbed hair back, showing off a tattoo of Asian text on her long, slender neck, and I touched my own neck which felt boring and bare in comparison.
‘My name’s Charlotte,’ I said to him, hearing my voice quiver. ‘Not Charlie!’ He caught my eye and I felt my lip wobble, then stomped upstairs with my guitar in my hand, my stupid lyrics in my head, my pride trailing on the floor and tears bursting from my eyes.
‘Write a song about it, sister!’ I heard Matthew shout to me when they all finally left after what seemed like hours later. ‘And don’t worry, Charlotte. Everyone who meets Tom Farley falls in love with him. In fact, I might even love him a little bit myself.’
‘Oh, give it a rest, Matthew!’ I shouted, kicking my bedroom door closed.
If he was trying to make me feel better, it wasn’t working. I’d fallen for Tom, hook, line and sinker, not knowing he’d a girlfriend all along. How could I be so stupid and assuming? How could two people have such magic, like he said, yet one of them just walk away and be in the arms of another? I couldn’t understand it. I was young and naïve and didn’t know life could present you with someone so perfect one minute, and then shove you off in a different direction the next.
I tried to shake away his memory, but I couldn’t and, although I didn’t see Tom Farley except from a safe distance when he was behind a drum kit at his gigs, he never really did leave my mind from that day on.
Morning, noon and night I dreamed of him and even though it’s a bit clichéd and predictable, I did put him in a song, just as my brother advised me to. Well, I put him in about twenty songs if I’m being perfectly honest.
I was twenty-two years and nine months old when I first fell in love with Tom Farley, and I was exactly the same age when he first broke my heart.
Life, for all of us, was never going to be the same again.
Chapter One
Dublin, December 2015
Today is my last day of term at St Patrick’s National School, meaning it’s officially the season to be jolly, and jolly I am.
I’ve tinsel round my neck, a Santa hat on my head and I’m celebrating at a local watering hole with some of my favourite people in the world. Life is good.
‘I’ll be right back,’ I say to the gorgeous guy at the bar who is buying me a drink.
My sister Emily is very uncharacteristically dancing on a wobbly table held up only by her brand-new husband Kevin, my roommate Kirsty is snogging a random stranger in a booth and the Black Eyed Peas tell me that tonight’s going to be a really good night. So, with all looking pretty in my humble little world and just enough time to do so before the bar closes, I steal away out the back of the pub for a sneaky cigarette. I don’t normally smoke, but slipping off like this all by myself to do something I know I shouldn’t is as rebellious as my life gets these days.
Pip’s Bar, on a side street near the house that Kirsty and I share in north Dublin, is the type of place you normally wouldn’t drink out of the glass, only the bottle. But with a blanket of snow thick on the ground and the option to skate home and avoid taxis, it’s becoming more and more fun as the beer goes down.
‘Wooo hoo!’ I sing out loud, dancing as I reach for the cigarette in my purse, ignoring a leering look from some dodgy old guy playing a poker machine by the back door.
Being a teacher is fun and fulfilling but on nights like this when school’s out for Christmas, there’s nothing I love more than to cut loose and just be Charlotte Taylor who loves to sing at the top of her voice, instead of ‘Miss Taylor’ who sometimes has to shout at the top of her voice when my seven-year-old pupils get rowdy.
‘Toilets are dat way, me lady,’ says the man at the poker machine in a thick Dublin accent and I hold up my cigarette to show him that tonight I’m a nicotine addict who doesn’t care that it’s minus seventeen or so outside. I push the heavy grey ‘Emergency’ back door open and then shiver in the chill that greets me, asking myself if leaving the heat and the prospect of a snog with gorgeous Jimmy or John or whoever his name was, who I just left holding a beer for me, is really worth it.
The door slams closed behind me and I realize that I’m locked out but I’m in no mood to panic. Mr Poker Player will hopefully come to my rescue if I bang loud enough once I’m done.
I can still hear the music from inside, I’m more than a little bit tipsy and I’ve decided that this Christmas is going to be the best one ever, so I keep dancing like there’s no one watching. And there is no one watching.
It’s almost midnight in a little yard out the back of Pip’s where no one my age ever goes unless they’ve no choice, which is the case for us tonight. I search my pockets for a lighter.
‘Ah man, now you’ve just locked us both out! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting out here for someone to open that damn door?’
‘Sweet Jesus, you scared me!’ I gasp in reply to my companion who I now realize is sitting in the shadows.
‘Sorry, but we’re going to have to wait now until the next smoker comes out if we want to go inside.’
I get my breath back and turn towards the husky American accent that comes from my right. My unlit cigarette waves around and points to the heavens, my feet are still dancing a little bit too ambitiously. I’m in slippery electric blue cowboy boots, which I now know are certainly not the best footwear when there’s snow on the ground, but I should be more concerned that I’m stuck in a back yard with a stranger who seems more than a little pissed off at me right now.
‘You really shouldn’t jump out on people like that!’ I reply, straining to get a better look at him, and trying to match his tetchy mood. ‘I could have fallen over and broken my ankle and that would not have been—’
‘Charlie?’
My heart stops. He just called me Charlie. No one ever calls me Charlie except my brother when he’s showing off or …
‘Tom? Tom Farley?’
I must be imagining things. This cannot be real. I take a step back and put my hand to my chest, saying a prayer that this isn’t some prank or messed-up dream like so many I’d had down the years since I last heard his voice.
I walk closer, towards the silhouette, and I lose my breath when I see his face.
That voice – how could I not have recognized it after playing it over in my mind for so long? Those eyes that I’ve imagined staring back at me just once more, those lips, that hair, those arms I’d longed to hold me.
It is him. It can’t be. I don’t understand.
‘Tom Farley?’ I say again.
He nods. ‘How the hell did this happen?’ he asks me, just as flabbergasted as I am.
I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t be that drunk, can I?
I’m locked out of a bar in the back end of nowhere, on a freezing cold night in December, and the one person I find in the same position is the one person I’ve been basing my whole imaginary future for five whole years upon, even though deep down I thought I’d never see him again.
‘This is unbelievable,’ he says, flashing me a very, very sweet smile and obviously just as taken aback as I am. ‘Charlie Taylor!! Man, I thought the next time I saw you would be on some big stage with your name up in lights, not out the back of some poky bar like this place.’
He shakes his head, just the same way as he did so long ago. He looks at me, just the same way, with the same wonder and hunger as he did back then too.
‘I don’t get it,’ I mumble. ‘What on earth are you doing here? Where on earth have you even been all these years? I can’t even—’
‘You need a light?’
Stop the whole world and let me off. Stop the clocks and silence the pianos and all that. It really is Tom Farley, in the yard of Pip’s Bar, in the asshole of nowhere, and there’s no one out here with him – only me. How?
I look at the cigarette and realize that yes, I do indeed need a light, but I’m too stunned to even speak. I’ve stopped dancing, but on the inside I’m still doing a routine to ‘Boom Boom Pow’ which the DJ inside has followed up with in a Black Eyed Peas’ double spin.
I feel like I might faint. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry as a whole movie script of emotion attacks my insides. My mouth is saying words, but my brain isn’t thinking them through. It’s like every part of me is separated, desperately trying to slot together again and make sense of all this.
‘I don’t even smoke so please don’t tell Matthew.’
I’m tongue-tied and I’ve no idea why I said that, as if I’m fourteen years old or something and will get into trouble with my parents or my big brother if I’m caught. I also think I’m about to have a heart attack and it’s nothing to do with cigarette consumption.
‘You sure look like you’re about to smoke.’
‘What I mean is, I don’t normally smoke, only sometimes when I’m drinking, and after tomorrow I’m never touching them again,’ I ramble.
It’s actually him.
‘I don’t think I will be telling Matthew, no fear of that.’
‘In fact, I’m never drinking again after tonight either,’ I rant on. ‘Those are going to be my two big New Year resolutions come January. I actually can’t believe it’s you. It is you, right?’
‘It’s me, yes,’ he laughs. ‘Still me. Still the same Tom.’
Still the same drop-dead gorgeous Tom. Still the love of my life, Tom. Still the one that got away who I’ve fantasized about meeting again one day, Tom. All I know about him is what I’ve found out from my brother since, which isn’t a lot really. The only thing I’ve managed to gather is that they’re no longer friends after the band they formed had a messy break-up.
I lean into the glow of his cupped hands, glad of the quick blast of heat, and chug on the butt, puffing the ash until it turns bright orange on grey, then I flick my hair back for effect as I exhale a long stream of smoke. Tom, in turn, smells like a heavy mix of spearmint chewing gum, tobacco and leather, just like he did on that first day we met.
‘You still smell nice,’ I tell him. ‘Musky.’
‘You still talk a lot,’ he replies with his dazzling smile. ‘Chatty.’
I would argue but I have been told this before, many, many times.
‘So, do you still sing as much as you talk, then?’ he asks. ‘Please don’t tell me you ignored my advice, became a teacher and your songs are gathering dust under your bed.’
My songs about you are gathering dust under my bed, I long to admit to him. My breathing is slowing down now, yet I still can’t believe this moment is real.
‘I still love to write and sing,’ I say with a smile, straightening up and fixing my coat up around my chin. ‘But yes, my main collection nowadays does come in the form of “The Farmer Wants a Wife” and other such playground hits.’
‘A teacher then,’ he says. He’s disappointed. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a super career, but I always thought you were destined for even greater things.’
I’m shaking. I’m totally sobered up now. I look around me to make sure there’s really no one else around and clench my nails into my hands tightly to make me feel like it’s real life. I want to scream in delight. I want to jump with joy, but most of all I feel like I could cry with the knowledge that this is indeed, very real.
‘Yes, I teach little people their ABCs and I love it,’ I tell him eventually, trying to keep it sane. ‘I’ve just quit for the Christmas break so I’m out on the lash, but I never, ever thought that I’d bump into you.’
He laughs and flicks his cigarette like he doesn’t know what to say next. He is equally as flummoxed as me. We stare at each other, examining the moment, trying to absorb that so much time has passed, yet here we are still sharing the same breath-taking moment that has hit us right in the heart all over again. Well, at least that’s how I feel, anyhow.
‘And you? Are you still drumming?’ I manage to ask him. I’ve no idea how I’m even holding a conversation right now.
‘Not much since your brother kicked me out of his band four years ago,’ he laughs nervously in response. Then he whispers, ‘How is Matt anyway? Is he OK?’
There’s a big pause and swift change of mood. Oh, if only he was OK. How I wish that my brother was OK.
‘Matthew’s doing as well as he can,’ I say, looking at the ground. I could divulge so many more gory details of how absolutely not OK he has been, but blood is thicker than water and I would never let my only brother down. ‘He doesn’t really talk about those days any more, Tom. He doesn’t talk about any of the band.’
‘I thought as much,’ says Tom, kicking imaginary stones on the slushy ground.
‘I did ask about you all for a long time,’ I confess, ‘but eventually I copped on that it was more or less a closed subject. I’ve a feeling he doesn’t like to talk about you guys very much any more. Sorry.’
Tom bites his lip and looks away.
‘It really all did turn out so terribly wrong,’ he says, his face scrunching into a puzzle as he looks up to the snow-filled sky, giving me an opportunity to drink him in. He still looks like he could be a real rock star in his biker jacket, his dogtooth black and white scarf and his faded blue jeans. He still smells like I want to pull him closer to me. He still sounds like the man who speaks right to my soul and the one who I never could get off my mind, no matter where in the world I’ve been after meeting him for just a few hours some five years ago.
‘So where have you been?’ I ask him, pain leaching into my voice. For so many years I’ve longed for him, pined for him. I travelled the world to try and shake him off, eventually laying his ghost to rest easy in my mind, but he never really ever left my heart. I know that now more than ever.
‘I’ve been …’ he laughs and scratches his head. ‘I’ve been everywhere trying to recreate what Matt and I tried to do all those years ago, ironically. I’ve been trying to make it big in music but every time a door opened for me, another one shut in my face. Maybe you were right to ignore me and my big dreams of music, but I’m happy for you, Charlie. You look happy. You look just as gorgeous as you did that first time I saw you with your guitar, your beautiful songs, your silly pyjamas and DM boots that matched mine.’
He remembers it all. My God, he actually remembers it all, but if only he knew how much it was killing me to see him again. He hasn’t changed a bit and yet he looks so different at the same time. His eyes are a little more tired but still dreamy enough to wash me away. His lips still catch my breath as I watch them move as he speaks. His hair is shorter now but still magnetic enough to make me want to reach out and touch it, and his arms still look like they were meant to hold only me. I’ve so many questions I want to ask him. Did he ever think of me like I did of him? Did he feel what I felt that day in my humble living room five years ago or was it all in my loved-up imagination?
‘What on earth are you doing here, Tom?’ I ask him. It’s the bravest question I can ask him out loud. ‘Like, seriously, how did you even find this place?’
