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Sunday night. The train back from Cardiff, the sky turning black, the realisation that he hadn't done what I asked him to. Outside Kings Cross station, gulps of breath, stinging eyes, the phonecall, protestations, no apologies, my voice raising and raising and the finger on the cancel button, the fuck you as I did it, the storm whirling me up York Way. Emily meeting me at Kings Place, the friend I'd give anything for, the friend who knew exactly how it felt, the dark room, the cold seats, Susanna and the Magical Orchestra slowly digging their fingernails into us, lifting our hearts out, cutting them up with the shining piano strings, her ghostly voice and the silence our surgeons for the night.
Lay All Your Love On Me finished me. The lyrics – spread out against the sky, anaesthetised upon a table – the words of a woman, grown-up, asking for one last chance, her desperation moving into numbness, a cold blast of acceptance. The reminders of our insane early days ("I was sitting like a shooting duck/A little smalltalk, a smile, and baby, I was stuck"). The madness when I met him ("I still don't know what you've done with me" – the "with", rather than a "to", showing how completely your mind can be taken away). The need for him to be there ("don't go wasting your emotions/lay all your love on me"); the soft, icy terror of it ending again ("I feel a kind of fear/When I don't have you near"). Turning round to Emily, her seeing my eyes, us both knowing what was coming.
Six weeks after I told him to go, there I was, in the back of a minicab, coming home to an empty house after a Christmas party, and suddenly ABBA's original was coming out of the radio. I heard hope in its heart for a moment, hope springing eternal, until the magic started to fade, and the real world returned. Then the fare, the closed door, my return to our ghosts.
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