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.
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
