Our Song

by Dani Atkins

  ‘Ally.’

  He said her name.

  He said her name.

  I froze, incapable of movement or speech, even breathing was an effort. And then, just to be certain that my misery was complete, he said it again. ‘Ally.’

  I lay back on the pillow, biting my lower lip so that my tears made no sound. Our wedding was less than six weeks away. I’d had my final dress fitting, menus were finalised, the flowers were ordered, the venue had been paid. Everything was in place. We were ready, finally blissfully ready, for the next exciting adventure in our lives to begin.

  And then, wherever his dream had taken him, whatever he was seeing behind those closed lids. He said her name.

  Ally

  It was inevitable that just moments after Charlotte left, the door to the small darkened room would be edged open. A nurse I hadn’t seen before stuck her head through the opening.

  ‘Mrs Williams?’

  No, but I got pretty close. ‘She’s just stepped out for a minute. I’m Mrs Taylor. Do you have an update yet on my husband, Joe?’

  The nurse shook her head regretfully. ‘Sorry. I’m afraid not. It’s Mrs Williams the doctors would like to talk to.’ She looked anxiously down the length of the corridor. ‘Do you know which way she went?’ There was concern in her eyes, which I didn’t want to acknowledge. I heard the words forming before I could stop them.

  ‘Is something wrong with David? Er, I mean Mr Williams. Has something happened?’

  ‘Are you close family? A relative?’

  I almost was didn’t count as an appropriate response, and our complicated interwoven back stories were of no interest or relevance to anyone except us.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we aren’t able to discuss the condition of patients with friends.’

  Not one of those either, I thought. The nurse paused, clearly uncomfortable. ‘I’ll pop back in a few minutes when Mrs Williams returns.’

  I paced a little as I waited. When that didn’t work I stared unseeingly through the window, watching small flakes of snow hitting the pane like kamikaze pilots and dissolving like fallen tears down the glass. I kept glancing anxiously at the door, waiting for Charlotte to return. I didn’t want to be holding on to the burden of worrying about anything or anyone except Joe. This weight was his wife’s to shoulder, not mine, but somehow memories of David and what he had once meant to me were forcing their way back up the well down which I’d thrown them. I didn’t want to feel these thoughts, remember these emotions, the ones that might just, even after all these years, have the power to undo me.

  I jumped when Charlotte’s shadow fell across the door, startled even though I had been expecting her. Equally startling were the two cups of coffee she was carrying. She held one out to me, awkwardly, as the door clicked shut behind her.

  ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t remember how you take it. It’s . . . it’s been a while.’

  I looked at her outstretched hand, no olive branch, just a Styrofoam cup that trembled slightly as if she was uncertain of my reaction. It wasn’t an apology; we were many years too late for that. But we were going through something that was drawing us back together, re-stitching the seams we had ripped apart. On this one terrible life-changing night, we had been tossed together like survivors in a lifeboat, and had no one to turn to except each other.

  Ally – Eight Years Earlier

  The crazy thing was, the first time I met Charlotte I really liked her. Instantly. It was practically the friendship equivalent of love at first sight. We connected in a way I had never done with another girl, either at school or university. There was something about her that was so appealing; she was funny, quick and self-deprecating. It was the first time, ever, I had found anyone other than Max who I felt could be a true and lasting friend, not just a drive-by acquaintance. It was only a long time later that I realised one of the reasons I’d been so drawn to Charlotte was that she was – in almost every way – a female version of David. Opposites attract, that’s what people say, isn’t it? And for a very long time, David and I proved that old maxim to be true. But sometimes like is drawn to like just as powerfully. David and Charlotte proved that.

  The first time we met she had been struggling up the path to David’s new rental property, her entire upper body obscured behind an enormous cardboard box. All I could see was a pair of slim legs covered in faded denim jeans and sparkly jewelled flip-flops which revealed her perfectly painted toenails.

  ‘Hi there,’ she said, her voice muffled as her mouth was pressed against the side of the box. ‘Please tell me this is number sixty-three and I haven’t just walked up the drive of my new next-door neighbour.’

  I laughed and went quickly down the front steps towards her. ‘Here, let me help you with that,’ I offered, taking the weight of one side of the box. ‘And yes, this is number sixty-three. Are you moving in?’

  It was a pretty stupid question, but she didn’t call me on it.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ she said and peered around one corner of the box to see me. ‘Hi. I’m Charlotte Butler.’ She grinned. ‘I’d shake your hand, but then a box full of Ikea’s finest crockery is going to go crashing to the ground at our feet. Are you moving in too?’

  I shook my head, but I don’t think she could see me behind the box of kitchenware. ‘No. But my boyfriend is. I’m just helping him.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said on a comprehending sigh, as we carefully negotiated the step and shuffled backwards into the hall. ‘Which way now?’

  ‘The kitchen’s to the right,’ I said, groping behind me for the door handle to let us into that room. It wasn’t until we had deposited her box onto the large, slightly scratched pine table, that I saw all of her for the first time. I had thought she was pretty when I had glimpsed her outside the house on the path, but I was wrong. She was way beyond that. She was gorgeous. She was tall and slim with model-perfect features, and her long blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail which was meant to look casual, but was so immaculate she could have walked down a red carpet and not looked out of place. Her t-shirt was plain black, its capped sleeves showing off a deep golden tan that I very much doubted she’d acquired over the rainy UK summer. It stopped short of the waistband of her jeans and left a gap of several centimetres, just enough to show that the tan was an all-over affair.

  ‘Phew, that’s better,’ she said with a grin. ‘I don’t know why I have so much kitchen stuff, because I never cook anything anyway. Sorry, what did you say your name was?’

  I realised then, that I hadn’t even told her. ‘Alexandra. Well, Ally to all my friends.’

  ‘Then I hope that I will definitely be calling you Ally,’ she said with easy charm. ‘I am well down on my friend quota at the moment – I may have to advertise for some! So which one of my housemates – who I haven’t met yet – are you going out with: Andrew, Pete, David or . . . oh no, I’ve forgotten the other one.’

  ‘Mike is the one you’re missing. And I’m with David,’ I replied, aware that my smile became softer and my eyes warmer as I said his name. ‘So you haven’t met any of them yet?’

  ‘No,’ she said, going around the kitchen and opening drawers and cupboard doors and peering inside. Finally she found a couple of empty ones. ‘I was on the university’s overseas exchange last year, so I’ve been studying in California for the last twelve months.’ That explained the tan. ‘It was great, but I’ve kind of lost touch with the people I knew in first year, and I hadn’t got a place to live. Then a friend of Pete’s told me that they needed one more for this place. So I took it.’

  ‘Without seeing the house first or meeting them?’ It sounded such a rash decision to have made so lightly, and one I wouldn’t have contemplated in a million years.

  Charlotte just shrugged. ‘Hell yeah, why not. They’re just a group of guys, how hard is it going to be to get along with them?’

  As it turned out, particularly for one member of her new household, not that hard at all. But I was
a long, long way from knowing that yet.

  I helped Charlotte unload the rest of her belongings from her car. I think that’s when I first suspected her background was far more like the rest of David’s friends than mine. Her car was new, and the suitcases buried beneath a layer of boxes and files bore a famous designer’s insignia. Not your typical student after all, I realised, remembering how I had transported the final load of my clothes in a black bin bag. But at least I hadn’t had to struggle to do it single-handedly, as my new friend was having to do. My parents had dutifully driven up to assist me every single time I’d moved: from first year’s hall of residence, to my second-year property and finally to the house I was sharing for this, my final year.

  It just seemed natural to help her unpack when we had finally brought all of her belongings into the house and up to her room. It was the one directly opposite David’s, a nice bright sunny double which looked out onto a small and neatly tended back garden. The house was far from being a typical student rental, and that was well reflected in the price I knew David was paying for it. It was almost double my own rent – and I’d thought that was expensive. But David had just shrugged when I commented on it, and I knew that here again was yet another small difference between us. I was always going to be the type of person to look at a price tag and then decide whether or not to buy, and he would always do it the other way around.

  ‘This is really nice,’ I said, looking around the room with the newly laid carpet, large double bed and vast wall of wardrobes. The room was large enough to have a desk and a deep bookcase in one corner and still not look cramped.

  David had hired a van and gone with the other guys to collect the items they had put in storage over the summer, and as I had nothing to do until he returned, I stayed chatting to Charlotte as she unpacked. I even made the bed for her, while she hung her very un-student-budget clothing away in the wardrobe. Everything I unpacked or opened was new. From the thick, pillow-like duvet to the Egyptian cotton high-thread-count sheets. ‘That’s my mother’s contribution to my house move,’ she commented, and although it was said as a joke, I thought I could hear a trace of bitterness in her words. ‘Every item lovingly handpicked . . . by a personal shopper.’

  I didn’t know how to reply to that, and fortunately I didn’t have to, because just then I heard the sound of the front door opening in the hall below as the rest of the occupants of the house returned. I ran down the stairs to greet them, and it was almost comical watching Pete, Mike and Andrew crane their necks to see past me to the beautiful blonde girl lightly descending the steps behind me.

  I opened my mouth to introduce her, but she beat me to it.

  ‘Hello there,’ she said, and then surprised them all by going up and kissing each one of them on the cheek in greeting. Was that how they did things in California, or was that just her? ‘It’s great to meet you all. I’m Charlotte.’

  Pete, Mike and Andrew shared a look which was pantomime obvious. ‘I think we may have just won the housemate lottery,’ declared Mike solemnly, before identifying themselves with matching grins.

  A moment later a small rattling noise sounded from beyond the front door as a key was inserted into the lock and David entered the hall.

  ‘Aha, so you must be David,’ Charlotte declared, her voice warm and teasing. ‘The final man I’m going to be living with for the next year.’ And with that, despite the fact that I was standing right there, she reached up and laid her hands on his shoulders to kiss his surprised, although clearly not disappointed, face. And that was the moment I first began to lose him.

  Someone once told me that relationships break up in one of two ways: either little by little, like water gradually eroding away and disintegrating a rock, or in a huge explosion like an erupting comet. For David and me, it wasn’t either/or – it was both.

  Charlotte – Eight Years Earlier

  There’s an old song I remember, where they talk about meeting the man of your dreams . . . and then meeting the woman who married him. Well, that was what happened to me the day I moved into 63, Warwick Road – but kind of in reverse. I found a friend – or a potential one, anyway, and then met her boyfriend, who turned out to be the man of my dreams, a position he had held unchallenged for five years. And the worst thing of all, was that he didn’t even remember me.

  I knew him instantly as I stood in the hallway of my new home, surrounded by my housemates. The other three all seemed pleasant enough, and I was prepared to overlook the slightly lustful look on Mike’s face as he did that uncomfortable top-to-toe appraisal thing men do, as though you’ve suddenly been struck blind or have no problem with being assessed like a bit of meat on a hook. I had no intention of getting romantically involved with any of the three guys I had just met; life could get complicated enough without forming relationships with people you shared with. And then the door opened, I turned towards it and there he was, looking even better than I remembered. I could feel the shock draining the blood from my face, and to conceal my fairly blatant reaction I leant up rapidly to kiss his cheek, buying me a few more precious seconds to compose myself. But damn it . . . he even smelled just the way I remembered. I suddenly recalled one sad afternoon a few months after we’d met, when I’d trawled through every single male fragrance in a department store, trying – and failing – to find the exact brand of cologne he had worn.

  Of course, when I stepped out of David’s rather startled embrace I could see the changes that the last five years had brought. He was broader in the shoulders, maybe even a little taller. His hair was shorter now than it had been back then, although for most of the time it had been concealed beneath a dark woollen beanie. The most startling difference was on his face, where the softness of boyhood had been honed and chiselled into the features of the man he had become. But his eyes . . . his eyes were the same ones I had seen over and over again in my dreams. Oh God, I felt sick, actually physically I-bet-I-am-going-to-throw-up-in-a-minute sick. In order to escape, I made some silly comment about wanting to make them a cup of tea to say ‘hello’ and darted into the kitchen, leaving the four men and Ally standing in a bemused cluster in the hall. I leant back against the kitchen door as though trying to barricade myself in against the onslaught of memories that were tumbling almost as viciously as the avalanche which had precipitated our meeting. I buried my face in my hands, and felt the burn of my flushed cheeks beneath my palms. How was this possible? What weird and sadistic stroke of fate was responsible for bringing me back into the life of the person who I’d last seen halfway up a Swiss mountain? I shut my eyes and remembered my final glimpse of him through the closing ambulance doors, his face still shadowed with concern as they drove me away.

  I felt the pressure of the kitchen door opening behind me, and leapt away from it. Ally slipped through the crack.

  ‘I thought I’d give you a hand with that tea, seeing as you probably don’t know where everything is kept,’ she said with a kind smile.

  ‘What? Oh, yes, the tea,’ I added hastily, my eyes darting around the kitchen looking for the kettle.

  ‘Are you feeling okay?’ Ally asked, her head tipped quizzically to one side as she studied my face. I found myself looking back at her every bit as intently, as though somewhere within the pretty features, the large oval eyes and the soft pink lips I would find the answer to why David was with her. There was so much I wanted to ask her about him and their relationship. I struggled to think back over the last few hours. Had she mentioned how long they’d been together, how they’d met, or whether their relationship was serious? No, of course she hadn’t. Why would she share any of those intimate and private details with someone she’d only just met?

  I had to be extremely careful here, I realised. I had to make sure I did or said nothing at all that would arouse her suspicions. And giving her the Spanish Inquisition about her love life was certainly not the way to go.

  Oblivious to my inner turmoil, Ally and I made tea together, or rather she made the tea and I stood by
uselessly watching as her long nimble musician fingers ripped cellophane from packets and spooned sugar into mugs. My contribution was to pull a tin of luxury chocolate biscuits from the box of provisions someone had packed for me.

  The lounge was better furnished than most student rentals, but there still weren’t enough seats for all of us. Mike jumped off the settee in a huge show of good manners to offer me his place. I bet the novelty of that wears off soon, I thought, as I smiled my thanks and slid onto the still-warm cushion. David was occupying an oversized armchair on the opposite side of the room, and when Ally had lowered the tray of drinks onto the table he reached for her hand and pulled her gently down onto his lap. I tried to sip my tea, but something the size of a golf ball appeared to be lodged in my throat. The boys were talking animatedly about some club they were keen to try out that night, and I nodded slightly distractedly when they asked if I wanted to join them, all the while unable to tear my eyes away from David’s hand which was absently tracing small circles against the curve of Ally’s waist. She looked up and smiled warmly at me, and I felt like a traitor when I returned it. I allowed my eyes to travel to David, whose arms moved to link around her slender waist, pulling her more securely against him. How could he not recognise me? True I had been younger, just seventeen, on the day of the avalanche, but physically I hadn’t changed that much, had I? We had spent seven long, cold hours huddled together on the side of the mountain, waiting for help to reach us. The arms which were now wound around his pretty dark-haired girlfriend had cradled me against him. The fingers caressing her skin had gently wiped the tears from my eyes and brushed the long blonde hair from my brow when he’d carefully lifted off my ski helmet. As though he could sense the intensity of my scrutiny, David’s unforgettably blue eyes locked on mine. There was nothing in them, no recognition, no memory that once our faces had been so close together, I had felt the brush of his impossibly long dark lashes tickling my cheek every time he blinked. His eyes were unfathomable cobalt pools as he broke our contact and turned his attention back to Ally, who had just finished recounting something – that I had totally missed – to the rest of the group. I guess it must have been funny, because everyone laughed, so I did too. David pulled her closer towards him and kissed her lightly on the curve of her mouth. My lips stung, and it wasn’t just the large mouthful of hot tea that caused that, it was because I too knew the feeling of that mouth on mine. He was hers now, this was no casual thing, that much was obvious. But damn it, those lips had been on mine long before they had known hers. And somehow I was going to have to finally learn how to forget that . . . or find somewhere else to live.