For a Song [#Wattys 2015]

Chapter 1

Hilly

Yes, I was positive the song was Izzy's after six seconds.

It was in the six seconds before the bass kicked in, then the drums after that, when it was just her simple chord progression. I swear six seconds was all it took to feel her close by. Like I could have turned around and seen her; clutching her brown notebook with her fingernails painted turquoise, guitar slung over the back of her shoulders like always and laughing at me.

Surprise, she'd say.

Grief does weird things to people's heads, I know that. That's what the counsellor I was seeing at the time told me. It's normal to see a girl in a crowd, dressed in baggy denim shirts with long twiggy legs poking out underneath and think, just for a minute, that it could be Izzy. Dr. Eliott called it 'pining', said it was all part of the process of coming to terms with my loss.

But this- this was different. No one can argue that it wasn't.

This wasn't just a glimpse out of the corner of my eye or a twinge in the pit of my stomach or going a bit loopy.

This was Izzy's song. Playing on the radio, as clear as anything. More than a year after we'd scattered her ashes from the edge of the Clifton Suspension Bridge and watched the wind carry her down towards The River Avon.

It was Saturday. 12th March and I was at my weekend job like I was every Saturday. I've been over this day so many times I can prattle off random, minute, detail so easily. It was overcast, I was wearing skinny jeans, a white blouse and a cardigan. For breakfast I'd eaten cereal and I'm still not sure why any of it's relevant but I'm still supposed to remember it all.

But I guess there are worse days that I'll have to remember before all of this done.

Technically, I know we aren't supposed to play music at work. The clothing store was small and didn't have a proper licence for it but it was usually quiet and we always did to pass the time. Mel, the owner, would bring in old CDs of Northern Soul music that were well loved and scratched enough to get stuck and jump in places. It would set my teeth on edge hearing the music get all warped like that but Mel and Sylvia who worked with me too hardly seemed to notice it at all.

Sylvia was a chemistry student at Bristol University, she spoke with a thick Northen accent and had the undersized of her head shaved, with loose dreadlocks tied up into a ponytail parked on top of it. She played experimental, electronic stuff from her iphone when she got to pick the music, but wasn't a snob about it. She'd happily sing along to the top forty on the radio when she was out of battery. Like it was that day.

"Turn it up," I heard someone urge. It was my voice, though I wasn't consciously aware of speaking. Sylvia didn't twig anything was wrong, leaning on the counter doodling idly around the edges of a crossword puzzle she'd given up on. But she reached over and turned up the volume dial of the old radio we'd dug up from the stockroom set now to BBC Radio 1.

It's just a coincidence, said something balanced and rational inside of me. Lots of songs sound the same, don't they? There are only a limited number of ways to play a limited number of notes to make a halfway decent melody and that's just what this could have been. A big coincidence.

A big fat, shitty- sorry- sucky coincidence that hurt way worse than being stabbed in the chest but at least- in my experience- that feeling would dull. It wouldn't go away- not entirely. Izzy was dead forever and I couldn't do a damn thing about that. But I'd start to be able to breathe through it eventually.

When the verse started, a little fuzzy from the quality of the radio and the Bristol winds interfering with the signal, by all rights I should have been relieved. It wasn't the ghost of Izzy, singing in the high, breathy, breaking voice I used to love but it was still a voice I knew.