The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(60)

Hi Kris, it’s Lydia, remember from the dating night?



I huff as I delete it. How many Lydias is he likely to know? And if he’s forgotten me already, then maybe I’d be better not bothering anyway.

Hey you



God no, that’s terrible.

Hi there



Bloody hell! How hard can this be?

Hi Kris, thought I might take you up on that vegan chai-latte-skinnydip sometime, if the offer still stands? Lydia



I don’t think I can do better than that. It’s brief, light-hearted, take it or leave it. I type his number in and press ‘send’ before I can chicken out. And then I lay my head on the table and groan.

It doesn’t take him long to reply, ten minutes at most. I appreciate the speed – it tells me that he’s not someone who plays games for the sake of it.

Hey Lydia, glad to hear from you. I work from home so I’m pretty free. Let me know when and where’s good, I’ll be there. K





Monday 17 June


‘He’s running late at work,’ Jonah says, placing a coffee mug down for me on the coffee table.

‘Did he just text you?’ I say.

He nods. ‘He said to get started without him.’

I roll my eyes, both because Freddie is late and because he’s taken the easy route of letting Jonah tell me. It’s after eight in the evening, for God’s sake. ‘Get started without me’ means he’s not going to make it. It’s infuriating. We’ve had tonight pencilled in on the kitchen calendar for weeks now, at Jonah’s rather than ours, to organize our wedding music. I’m relieved he hasn’t moved in with Dee yet. It was supposed to happen weeks ago, but his landlady pretty much begged him to stay for an extra couple of months until she can find a new tenant. It’s so Jonah to put his plans on hold for someone else; she’s an elderly woman who pops up from her basement flat every now and then to listen to him play.

I don’t come here very often, he’s always been so at home in our living room.

It’s a very Jonah space: uncluttered, one wall lined with books and vinyl records, a piano in the ground-floor bay window. It’s restful. Or else it would be, if I wasn’t pissed off with Freddie for leaving yet another of the wedding details to me.

‘How’s Dee?’ I ask, to change the subject.

‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Already excited for your hen night. Plans are afoot, I think.’

‘Should I ask?’

He grins and shakes his head. ‘I’m sworn to secrecy.’

I’m not sure what to make of that so I don’t press him.

‘So nothing religious for the music,’ I say. ‘It’s a humanist ceremony.’

‘Okay,’ Jonah says, browsing the wall of records as he speaks, coffee mug in his hand. He’s barefoot and wearing a battered Rolling Stones T-shirt, like a rock star at a retreat. ‘Traditional or …?’

I shake my head. ‘No, more personal. Definitely not “Here comes the bride” or anything like that.’

Jonah rests his coffee cup on the low windowsill and takes a seat at the piano to knock out a few perfect bars of the wedding march. I curl my bare feet underneath me on his taupe-and-white-striped linen sofa and groan.

‘Don’t, it makes me nervous.’

He laughs and segues faultlessly into ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, raising his eyebrows at me in question. I look down into the depths of my coffee mug, caught unaware by emotion because there’s something painfully apt about the song. Too apt, so I shake my head.

‘The Beach Boys?’ he says.

‘I don’t think I know any,’ I say. When it comes to music, Jonah should really have been around in the sixties. He loves Elvis and the Stones, but he always comes back to the Beatles.

‘You know this one, surely?’ he says, playing the opening bars of something I instantly recognize.

‘I do know that,’ I say, reaching for the pad and pen I’ve got ready to make notes. ‘I like it. What’s it called?’

‘“God Only Knows”,’ Jonah says.

My shoulders sag. ‘Nothing God-related.’

‘It isn’t, really,’ Jonah says, but I’m not convinced.

‘How about something from the Beatles?’ he asks. I don’t think an occasion exists where Jonah wouldn’t think the Beatles to be the most appropriate choice.

‘“Help”?’ I smile.

He picks out the melody with one finger, coffee mug still in his other hand. There’s no place Jonah looks more at home than at a piano. ‘Maybe not entirely appropriate,’ he says. ‘“All You Need is Love”?’ He puts his mug down and plays the intro beautifully, but all I can see is the wedding scene from Love Actually.

‘I don’t want anything that reminds Freddie of Keira Knightley on our wedding day,’ I laugh.

Jonah grins too, aware of Freddie’s crush. ‘Fair enough,’ he shrugs.

‘Oh God, what if we don’t find anything?’ I say, scraping my hair up into a bun on top of my head.

Jonah chews the inside of his lip. ‘Can I try something?’

I nod, grateful for any suggestions.

He plays a few bars of something then stops, shakes his hands out and starts again. It’s another Beatles track I think, one I kind of know but not very well, so I really pay attention to the lyrics. He sings of bright stars in dark skies and of a love that will never die, and a tear slides down my cheek because it’s absolutely perfect.