Cecelia Ahern - Cecelia Ahern Untitled Novel 1

‘Well, off you go, can’t have you missing it again. I’ll make the tea.’

‘Thank you.’ I hand him the teapot. ‘Do you mind giving them my apologies that I had to leave?’

‘Not at all,’ he says.

I back away in the direction of the front door. I can easily make my escape. But something about his movements stops me and I watch him.

He opens a cupboard and then another. Scratches his head. ‘Tea, you say?’ he says, pulling open a drawer. He scratches his head. ‘I’m not sure …’ he mumbles as he searches.

I step back closer to him, reach to the cupboard above the kettle and open the door, revealing the box of tea. ‘Here it is.’

‘Ah,’ he says, sliding closed the bottom drawer containing pots and pans. ‘That’s where that is. Joy always makes the tea. They’ll probably want the sugar bowl too.’ He starts opening more cupboards. He looks back at me. ‘Off you go now, don’t want you missing that appointment.’

I open the cupboard again. It’s beside the tea. ‘Found it.’

He turns suddenly and knocks over a vase of flowers. I hurry to help him and mop up the water with a dishcloth. When I’ve finished, the dishcloth is unusable. ‘Where’s your washing machine?’

‘Oh, I’d say that it’s …’ he looks around again.

I open the wooden cupboard beside the dishwasher and find the washing machine.

‘There it is,’ he says. ‘You know your way around here better than I do. Truth be told, it’s Joy that does everything in here,’ he admits guiltily as if I couldn’t have guessed. ‘Always said I’d be lost without her.’ It feels like something he’s always said, and now it has real meaning. Life without Joy, as he knows her, is nearing. It’s real.

‘How is she doing?’ I ask. ‘She seems very positive.’

‘Joy is always upbeat, to others anyway, but it’s got harder for her. She went through a period where nothing changed, she didn’t worsen. We thought that was it, but then it advanced – and it’s when it advances that the body declines.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say softly. ‘For you both.’

He purses his lips and nods. ‘But I do know where the milk is,’ he says, perking up and pulling open a door.

A broom falls out.

We both start laughing.

‘You’d best be off to your appointment,’ he says again. ‘I know how they can be. Waiting list after waiting list, life is one big waiting room.’

‘It’s OK.’ I pick the broom up from the floor, the desire to run gone. I sigh to myself. ‘It can wait.’

When I return to the group with the replenished tea, Bert has faded. Whatever burst of energy his medication gave him for the hour has worn off, leaving him exhausted. As if anticipating this, his carer has arrived to collect him.

‘Why don’t we talk about this in detail the next time we meet,’ Bert taps his nose in a secretive but terribly obvious manner, and jerks his head towards the sound of his carer speaking with Joe in the hallway. His chin wobbles as he moves. ‘And not in my house, because Rita will be suspicious.’

‘Here,’ Joy says. ‘We can all meet here again.’

‘That’s unfair on you, Joy,’ Paul says.

‘I can take over from where Angela left off. I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ she says firmly, and it’s clear, at least to me, that it suits Joy in more ways than one to remain in her home.

‘Good for me,’ Bert says. ‘How about two days from now, same time? If we meet tomorrow, Rita will be jealous of Joy.’ He chuckles and winks. ‘Will you come back to us, Holly?’

Everyone looks at me again.

I should not get involved in this club. I do not want to get involved in this club. It can’t be healthy.

But everyone is looking at me, hopeful and expectant. Ginika’s baby Jewel lets out a sound, as if she’s joining in, trying to convince me along with the group. She makes happy bubbling sounds. She is six months old, she could be a one-year-old when her mother dies.

I look around at them all, this motley crew. Bert is struggling to breathe, Joy is barely holding herself together. I’ve been here before, I know how short six months can be, how quickly everything can change, how health can deteriorate in two weeks, how twenty-four hours can change it all.

I read an article on how the clocks stand still to keep our time in sync with the universe. It’s called the leap second: a one-second adjustment applied to the coordinated universal time because the Earth’s rotation speed changes irregularly. A positive leap second is inserted between second 23:59:59 and second 00:00:00 of the following date, offering an extra second in our lives. News articles and magazine features have posed the question, what can happen in a second? What can we achieve with this extra time?

In one second, almost two and a half million emails are sent, the universe expands fifteen kilometres and thirty stars explode, a honey bee can flap its wings two hundred times, the fastest snail travels 1.3 centimetres, objects can fall sixteen feet, and ‘Will you marry me?’ can change a life.

Four babies are born. Two people die.

One second can be the difference between life and death.

Their expectant faces peer up at me, waiting, hoping.

‘Let’s give her time to think about it,’ Joy says softly, but her disappointment is obvious. They all back off.

Rage has returned and it rushes through me. I am angry, I am seething. I want to scream. I need to shout it off, cry it off, exorcise it before I cycle home. My bicycle could surely not take the extra weight, couldn’t cope with the ever-shifting emotional imbalance. I cycle out of sight of Joy’s home, dismount, lazily discard the bike on the ground, and hunker down, leaning against a painted white popcorn wall that digs into my back. The PS, I Love You Club are not Gerry but they do represent him, his journey, his struggles, his intent. I always felt in my heart that the point of Gerry’s letters was to guide me, and yet the motivation for these people is fear of being forgotten. It breaks my heart and makes me furious. Because, Gerry, my love, how could you ever feel that I’d forget you, that I could forget you?

Perhaps the root of my rage is that I lied to Ciara about not still feeling his presence. I could never forget him, but Gerry is blurring. Though he lives on in the stories we share and in my memory, it is becoming harder to summon the vivid living, moving, fluid, animated Gerry to mind. I don’t want to forget him, but the more I move on and the more new experiences I have, the more the old memories get pushed aside. Selling the house, moving in with Gabriel … Life won’t let me stay still and remember. No. I made a decision that I wouldn’t allow myself to stay still and remember. Waiting … waiting for what, a reunion in death that I don’t even know will happen?

‘Hi.’ I hear a voice beside me and I jump to my feet, startled.

‘Ginika, hi, you gave me a fright.’

She examines my bike, where I’m standing, the way I’m standing. Perhaps she recognises a hiding place when she sees one. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’

‘I said that I’d think about it,’ I reply weakly. I’m pissed off, I’m agitated. I don’t know what the hell I want.