The night I called herat 3am.

I was barefoot in the kitchen. The kettle had gone cold an hour ago and I hadn't noticed. There was a melody in my head that wouldn't sit still - two notes I could keep, a third that slipped every time I tried to touch it.

I tried to record it on my phone. The recording sounded nothing like the thing in my head. So I called her.

She didn't pick up the first time. The second time she said what, like a statement, not a question. I held the phone out and hummed it down the line. The silence after was long enough that I thought she'd hung up.

Then come over. Then nothing.

I walked. Five minutes, jeans and a shirt and nothing else, the pavement cold and rough under the soles of my feet. The studio sits under her flat. She opened the door barefoot too. Hair down, eyeliner left over from the night before, the lights inside already low. She didn't say hello. She just walked back to the keys.

The heating was on low. The floor was warm. I sat on the rug against the wall and watched her rebuild what she'd heard through the phone, slower than mine, lower, the third note finally sitting where it was supposed to. By the second pass I could feel it in my chest before I could hear it.

When she turned and asked if I wanted to try a vocal, I sat at the desk. She came round and sat on the floor next to my chair, her back against my leg. I could feel her shoulder shift every time she breathed. I sang the line three times. The third one was the one we kept.

Neither of us spoke after that for maybe an hour. Just her hands on the keys and mine on the desk and the room getting smaller around us in a way I can't explain.

We finished it at six. The first light was coming through the blinds while she was bouncing the file down. When it saved, she stood up and stretched and didn't look at me. I think we were both a bit shy of what we'd just made.

We lay on the studio floor afterwards, both of us with our feet up on the chair, the bounce playing through the monitors. Her foot crossed over mine at some point. Neither of us moved it. The song ran out and started again on its own and we didn't fix it.

That song was on the hard drive for a long time. Not on a streaming service. Not on the album. We didn't know who to give it to.

It's one of the three you have now. Listen to it last. You'll know which one. - S

She still calls me at 3am. I still pick up. - L