It Started With a Kiss (12 page)

Every now and again at a wedding, we witness something truly lovely – and this gig turned out to be just that. It’s like the very edge of a curtain is lifted up to allow you a rare glimpse of real-life magic. Andrew and Sarah were obviously in love – but the scene we witnessed was far more than just a happy couple taking to the floor for their first dance. It was as if the whole space was filled with a rush of love, not only from the couple waltzing slowly to the Dinah Washington song, but also from every wedding guest standing silently around the room watching them. I’ll never know if the guests were party to information about this couple that made this moment so poignant, but the atmosphere in the high, vaulted interior of the sixteenth-century building was so full of heartfelt emotion, it almost stole my voice.

Singing someone’s first dance song is one of the most nerve-racking, adrenalin-pumped experiences I think you can have as a vocalist. There are no second chances: if you make a mistake you can never go back and do it again. Not to mention the fact that, with so many camera phones recording the moment, any slip-ups you make will be recorded for posterity and probably immortalised in perennial playback hell on YouTube and Facebook. But perform it right and you know you’ll pass into history as the soundtrack to one of the most precious moments a couple can share. The song choice is immaterial – and, trust me, some of the requests we get are inexplicably odd, from the theme tune to
Shrek
, to ‘The Chapel of Love’, to ‘Sex on Fire’. At the end of the day, it’s all about what it means to the two people dancing together as you sing.

As I reached the end of the first refrain, I could feel a mass of unexpected emotion building in my throat, and I struggled to contain it as Jack played an instrumental run of the song. Casting my gaze around the band, I could see the others sensed it, too; all eyes were reverently trained on the handsome, dark-haired groom and his beautiful auburn-haired bride in her exquisite silk taffeta and lace gown, as they traversed the floor as if on air.

Watching the way Andrew held Sarah – as if cradling a priceless diamond in his arms – my thoughts inevitably drifted back to the sensation of being surrounded by PK’s strong arms in the Christmas Market. Suddenly, my memories brilliantly returned, clear as light through a prism: prickling my senses into life. I could smell his cologne, see the colours from the twinkling lights over our heads reflected in his wavy hair, hear the beating of my own heart as the crowd noise fell away to a pin-drop. I could hear his voice, see the way he looked at me: as if he had found what he’d been searching for his whole life. It was the same expression the groom dancing in front of me now wore as he gazed upon his bride.

I closed my eyes as I reached the end of the refrain for the second time, and my handsome stranger was there, holding me again, my whole world becoming the size of his embrace as his lips fell on mine …

When I find him again
, I made a silent promise in the ancient building warmly lit by candles and fairy lights,
I’ll run back into those arms and never leave
.

After the icy numbness of December and January, an unexpectedly warm February came as a welcome surprise. For two weeks almost spring-like weather bathed everything, soothing away the stress of winter. Mornings were lighter, birds seemed to sing louder and people smiled more when you passed them in the street.

On the second Saturday of the month, Uncle Dudley, Auntie Mags and Elvis made the twenty-eight-mile journey from
Our Pol
’s Kingsbury mooring to visit me at home in Stourbridge. When they arrived, Elvis was a far more confident version of himself than his waterborne alter-ego.

I love it when people visit my home. Somehow it feels more alive when it’s filled with people. I’ve always loved my little house. From the moment I first walked through the archway from the small car park by the canal and entered Number 83b, Harvest Court, I knew I was home. The small estate where I live consists mostly of largely unremarkable early nineties buildings, but the corner of the courtyard where my maisonette stands has a distinct charm about it. From the deep green ivy draping itself around the entrance, to the small circular stained glass window to the right of the bright purple front door, every detail is perfect in my eyes. I’ve often laughed at those property search programmes on TV when misty-eyed house hunters declare a house to be a perfect home – but when I laid eyes on this place four years ago, I finally understood the feeling they were describing.

‘Now, we’ve something rather fantastic to report,’ Uncle Dudley said, perched so far on the edge of the sofa seat that he looked as if he could fly off it at any moment. ‘A bit of a breakthrough, you could say.’

This set butterflies cavorting around my stomach. Since my flash of memory at the beautiful tithe barn wedding, I had thought of little else but finding the handsome stranger. ‘What’s happened?’

Uncle Dudley and Auntie Mags exchanged Cheshire Cat grins and faced me like overexcited bookends on my sofa. ‘I had a call from a mate of mine I used to work with at Rover. His wife heard about your blog and told him to get in touch. Been ten years since I last saw him, can you believe it?’

Auntie Mags tutted. ‘For heaven’s sake, get to the good stuff, Dudley!’

‘I’m sorry, my beloved. You know me – getting carried away and everything. Anyway,’ his pale blue eyes twinkled, ‘Barry is now working as a security guard and you’ll never guess where …’

‘He mans the CCTV cameras in the city centre!’ Auntie Mags cut in. ‘Including one by the Town Hall, near where you met your handsome chap. Can you believe it?’

Now I was the one on the edge of my seat – or as much as anyone can be in a beanbag. ‘Now that
is
interesting.’ My heart had begun beating like a troupe of Irish dancers doing Riverdance on fast-forward.

‘So, he’s had a word with his boss, who, it turns out, is a bit of an old romantic himself.’ Uncle Dudley took a deep breath, beaming like a 500kw spotlight. ‘And they’re going to go through the security camera logs for the day you met Mystery Man!’

My heart jumped into my mouth. ‘Seriously? Can they do that?’

Auntie Mags chuckled. ‘Legally, it’s probably dubious, but when there’s a former Rover man involved, things can happen that wouldn’t otherwise. You just trust your Uncle Dudley, sweetheart.’

‘Wow,’ I breathed, my head a whirligig of thoughts as I soaked in the news. Of course, I knew that the likelihood of the CCTV camera actually capturing us on the busiest shopping day of the year was nigh on negligible. But the barely perceptible glimmer of possibility caught my eye like a scrap of tin foil in a magpie’s nest.
If
we just happened to be in the right place at the right time,
if
the camera could get a shot, however hazy, it would mean that I would have irrefutable proof that PK existed and I would finally be able to hold an image in my hand as well as the frustratingly sparse one in my head.

‘So when will we know?’

‘They’re going to start looking next weekend. Baz reckons that where you met Mr Mystery was right under the Town Hall security camera. It just depends if it was pointing in the right direction at the time.’

Heart going ten to the dozen, I mentally crossed everything I could find to cross.

‘Let me get this straight: D’Wayne
still
hasn’t said where the venue is?’ Jack’s incredulous expression spoke volumes.

I shook my head as I handed him a mug of coffee. ‘Nope. Wren assures me that he’s on to it, and I hope for his sake she’s right.’

We walked out of the minuscule kitchen above Jack’s studio and teetered down the rickety iron fire escape steps to the warmth of the control room, where we sank into the battered yet immensely comfortable black leather office chairs by the sound desk.

‘After all the effort he’s put in lately, it doesn’t make sense.’ Jack flicked a switch on the desk and a demo arrangement of drums, bass and keys began to play. ‘Surely he’s got to know whereabouts the gig is?’

‘You’d think so, but he’s being very cagey about the whole thing. Anyway, forget D’Wayne. Tell me about this track.’

Jack pulled a face. ‘It’s something I did for this guy who came in last week. He brings his ideas in on a dictaphone and I have to try to make sense of it all. It’s like piecing shattered crockery together: I’m not entirely convinced it’s worth the effort.’

I laughed. ‘Wow, you’re
so
lucky to have your own recording studio, aren’t you?’ It’s a long-running joke among the band that people think Jack has the most glamorous job in the world when, in reality, most of his working life is spent battling with would-be musicians who possess more money than talent.

He grimaced. ‘Livin’ the dream, baby. Livin’ the dream …’

I listened to the chord sequence playing through the large studio speakers and a thought occurred to me. Jack caught it immediately.

‘What?’

He knows me too well. We’ve been songwriting since we were at college – and even though strangely both of us ended up writing music for a living, in a manner of speaking, our own songs have always just been for fun. Now, eight years later, we have an understanding that Jack’s girlfriend Sophie likes to refer to as our ‘married couple’s intuition’. When we’re working together, or talking about music, we often finish each other’s sentences and know instinctively what the other one is thinking, even before we say it. I’m more at home in his studio than almost anywhere else on earth: because here I can be me, unhindered, free, completely able to immerse myself in creativity. There’s no need for explanations or justifications – I just turn up, be who I am and watch magic happen.

Everything in me was buzzing, as if electricity was pumping through every atom of my being. It’s hard to explain, but when something creative starts to happen it feels like my senses shift into another gear entirely. All of a sudden, I’m working almost subconsciously, caught in the slipstream of an idea, letting it take me where it will.

‘These chords – they fit a song idea I’ve had for a while.’

A warm smile made its slow progress across my friend’s lips. ‘Yeah?’

I nodded quickly, my thoughts racing at two hundred miles an hour. ‘Slow it down a little, maybe a relaxed Jack-Johnson-style beat, add close harmonies on the chorus …’

‘Go on.’ He clicked the mouse to loop the sequence as he observed me.

I started to hum, closing my eyes to let the sparse arrangement of the demo track merge with the fully produced song playing in my head. The song had been growing steadily since my encounter with PK and wouldn’t leave me alone. I’d wake up with it playing in my mind and catch myself singing it as I worked on jingles for builders’ merchants and ear-wax drops, absent-mindedly scribbling snippets of lyric ideas down on scraps of paper to hand. Consequently, the song was currently scattered across an eccentric collection of old envelopes, coffee shop serviettes and crumpled till receipts stuffed into my bag.

Without even looking, I knew Jack was feeling it, too – that first spark of an idea beckoning invitingly to us.

After a few runs through the sequence, I opened my eyes and stared at the sound waves running across the screen, allowing my thoughts space to run about in.

‘Fancy singing it through? Got any words yet?’

‘Just a bit of the chorus so far.’

‘Cool, let’s hear that, then.’

Pulse crashing loud in my ears, I launched into the unknown.

‘Be my last first kiss, let’s start forever, you and me, perfectly …’

‘Love it!’ Jack proclaimed, the suddenness of his response making me jump. Grabbing an acoustic guitar from its stand by the desk, he started to play a half-picked, half-strummed rhythm, nodding appreciatively as he played.

We jammed through the chorus a few times, adding bits here and there as we went, Jack’s smile widening with each run. Finally, after five minutes, he hit the stop button on the loop and turned to me. ‘I think we could do something with that one. Put it into our unplugged set, maybe.’ He grinned. ‘Pretty obvious who that little ditty’s about.’

‘It might not be,’ I smiled, failing to look even the slightest bit innocent.

‘Doesn’t matter anyway. I like the new Rom I’m seeing.’

His swift subject change took me aback for a few seconds.

‘I mean it, Rom. Since you’ve started this search of yours you’ve been different. Confident, positive – we’ve all noticed it. Don’t look at me like I’m a nut job, I’m trying to pay you a compliment.’

‘Thanks. But I don’t think I’m any different.’