Twenty minutes later, now wearing my favourite retro flared pale blue jeans, a crisp, clean grey vest top and with my long, bleached curly hair hanging down round my shoulders, I strummed the last chord on my guitar.
The song I’d carefully chosen to sing for him was called ‘By Myself’ (a song I’d written about the very first break-up I’d experienced but he didn’t need to know that) and I’d picked it out from my humble collection knowing the deep rhythm and sultry lyrics would be just enough to get his attention.
As the final pluck of the guitar strings echoed around us in the little room, I waited for his reaction. I looked up slowly, half closed my eyes and, when I opened them, I realized my hands were shaking.
‘I can’t believe I remembered the words,’ I said, a string of apologies going through my head for making his ears bleed, but I was worrying in vain because when I looked in his direction, he didn’t look disappointed or bored at all. He was, in fact, wide-eyed in awe, shaking his head, looking at my face, then at my hands, then at my mouth, and back to my eyes.
‘Wow,’ he said eventually, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and then he applauded slowly. ‘I mean wow! I’m literally drooling here! That, young lady, was bloody awesome!’
We laughed in relief – at exactly the same time. And then we stopped laughing in disbelief – at exactly the same time. Matthew was not laughing.
‘Matthew Taylor, what the hell!’ said Tom. ‘Your little sister has absolute, magic in her words and melodies! Seriously!’
I smirked at Matthew, feeling his pain and discomfort at the tangible harmony and the intense meeting of minds that had beautifully backfired on him.
‘Well, I’m – I’m glad you think so,’ stuttered Matthew. ‘But you should try living with her. She’s—’
‘She’s incredible,’ Tom said, and I fleetingly felt sorry for Matthew who was so removed from this moment between us. ‘Matt, you told me she could sing but you didn’t tell me we’d the next Stevie Nicks on our hands! She even looks like her, too. And as for those lyrics! Did you write that, Charlie? Really?’
He called me Charlie again.
‘Yes, I wrote it. All of me, all by myself,’ I said to him, quoting my very own lyrics. I sat up straight and put down my guitar then flicked back my hair. It’s wonderful how a quick wash, a lick of mascara, a spray of perfume and a change of clothing can help up your game, plus I was feeding off his hunger and energy. ‘Oh, and Stevie Nicks? I’ll take that. Thank you, Tom.’
I should say that I absolutely loved that he called me Charlie and that I loved saying his name too. Tom. It was manly enough to make me flutter inside and if I was Stevie Nicks to him, to me he was a scruffy, unkempt young Bradley Cooper. Those eyes could stop the world.
Later I would look up the name Tom online to see what it meant and find out that it translated as ‘twin’, which wasn’t as romantic as I hoped it might be, but then I decided that he was my soul twin. Yes, I liked that. We were kindred spirits, meant to be.
‘I’d really like to hear more of your work,’ Tom said, still shaking his head in awe. ‘Please tell me there’s more where that came from?’
I gasped at his approval. No one had ever said that to me before. No one had ever really listened to my songs, not even my mother who, despite being quite cool in so many ways, was totally convinced that for me music was a hobby for behind closed doors and not something I would ever pursue in the real world. With a super-talented big brother like Matthew and a perfectly turned-out sister like Emily, I was never quite sure what to do to get my parents’ attention, and any efforts I made didn’t always turn out in my favour, you might say.
‘You sure you want to hear more?’ I asked Tom.
I was shaking inside but doing my best to look cool and confident on the outside.
‘For sure I’m sure!’ he said, standing up from the sofa. ‘Look, you need to get those songs out there, big time, Charlie.’
I could feel my brother wince every time he called me Charlie now. At home and to everyone I knew, I was Charlotte Jane Taylor, named after the Brontë sister of the same name and as a nod to my mother’s favourite novel of all time, Jane Eyre. My older sister was Emily Maria and Matthew James, the first born, often joked that he just about escaped being named Heathcliff as my dad got to choose his name.
‘I mean, why are you even busting your ass with university?’ Tom asked me. ‘You’re gifted, girl. You don’t need a degree! Your qualifications are all in there already.’
He pointed at his temple to emphasize how I already had all the accolades I needed in my creative brain.
‘But I’m going to be a teacher,’ I told him. ‘So, as much as I love what you’re saying, in the real world I kind of need a degree.’
Tom hunkered down in front of me and looked me right in the eye. His hands were on either side of me, on the arms of the chair. I could feel his breath on my skin. I could smell his woody, aromatic cologne. I thought I might explode.
‘No, no, no!’ he said, looking up at me. ‘You, Charlie Taylor, aren’t going to be a teacher. You are going to be a huge star.’
My heart rose into my mouth. He had a presence, a charm, and the electricity between us was filling me up and making me feel weak at the same time. He was so close to me now his arms were almost touching my legs.
And you’re going to be my muse, I wanted to say in return, wishing he would just stay there right in front of me forever.
He stood up, pushed his hair from his face and, when he sat down again on the couch, I silently thanked my brother for bringing Tom Farley into my life. He was everything. The way he looked at me and the way he just made me feel was nothing like I’ve ever felt before. I was dizzy with lust and sheer admiration. I was brimming with confidence, more than I’d ever been in my whole twenty-two years on this planet.
‘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.