Keys

Keys

T HE TYPEWRITER IS

a sea green. Or sea foam, I can’t decide. The dust cover was in such bad nick, I was not expecting the typewriter to emerge from it in perfect condition.

The keys have yellowed with time, but when I put a piece of printer paper in, it types out a friendly greeting.

Hello, Eddie Winston

I wonder what words this typewriter has typed, love letters or court orders or song lyrics. I wish it could tell me, but now we have greeted one another, it has fallen silent. My phone, however, has not. It buzzes in my pocket to tell me that Grace has sent me an email with a photograph attached. You’re famous, Eddie Winston!

she writes. And there I am, laughing, on the wall of an art gallery in Oxford, lit by an overhead spotlight.

You’re the best one! x

Bella is searching through the rails to find me an outfit for Saturday. ‘Let me see.’ She takes my phone from my outstretched hand and stares at the email intently. ‘You know, I think Saturday might

be a date,’ she says.

‘Do you really think?’

‘I do

think,’ Bella says, picking up a purple shirt, holding it vaguely near me and then thinking better of it and returning it to the rail. ‘I think she likes you.’

‘Oh.’ My face feels hot.

‘It’s good to be nervous.’ Bella turns and begins flicking through a rail of lightweight men’s jumpers.

‘Is it?’

‘It means it matters.’ She pulls out a navy cable knit and tucks it over her arm for me to try.

‘Suddenly, it seems so huge,’ I tell her. My mouth is dry. ‘Looking for love. What am I doing?’

‘It’s not as big as it seems,’ Bella says.

‘It isn’t?’

‘Love is really just two people who can’t keep away from each other.’