Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

Joan stirred in her sleeping bag and I snapped out of my trance. My heart began to race in anticipation of finally seeing beyond the woods.

“Good morning, Joan.” Helena sang so loudly she succeeded in waking Bernard, too. He awoke with a start, raising his head and revealing his spaghetti-strip hair hanging to the wrong side. He looked around sleepily, his hand feeling for his glasses.

“Good morning, Bernard,” Helena said so loudly she succeeded in waking both Marcus and Derek.

I stifled a laugh.

“Here you go, a nice hot cup of coffee to wake you up.” She thrust steaming mugs in their faces.

They looked at her sleepily in confusion. As soon as they’d taken their first sip of coffee Helena threw off her blanket and rose to her feet.

“Well, that’s enough hanging around, now. Let’s go, everybody.” She started folding her blanket neatly and packing away the utensils.

“Why are you talking so loudly and what’s the rush?” Joan held her messy bed head and whispered as though she was suffering a hangover.

“It’s a brand-new day so let’s drink up and we’ll head back as soon as you’re all done.”

“Why?” Joan asked, sipping quickly.

“What about breakfast?” Bernard moaned like a child.

“We’ll have that when we get back.” Helena grabbed his mug from him, threw the remainder of the coffee over her shoulder and packed the mug in a bag. I had to look away out of fear of laughing.

“What’s the rush?” Marcus asked. “Is everything OK?” He watched her intently, still unsure of my presence.

“Everything’s fine, Marcus.” She placed a hand on his shoulder caringly. “Sandy just has some work to do.” She smiled at me.

I did?

“Oh, how lovely. Are you staging a play? It’s been such a long time since we’ve done a play,” Joan said excitedly.

“I do hope you give us notice of the auditions well in advance because we’ll need time to prepare. It’s been awhile,” Bernard said worriedly.

“Don’t worry,” Helena jumped in to say, “she will.”

My mouth dropped open but Helena held a hand up to stop me from protesting.

“Have you ever thought of doing a musical?” Derek asked, packing away his guitar. “There would be huge interest in taking part in a musical.”

“That’s a very strong possibility.” Helena spoke as though dismissing a child.

“Will there be group auditions?” Bernard asked, a little panicked.

“No, no,” Helena said, smiling, and I finally knew what she was up to. “I think Sandy will want to spend a little time with everyone alone. Well”-she lifted Bernard’s blanket from off his shoulders and began folding it while he watched open-mouthed-“let’s get ourselves ready so we can show Sandy around. She’ll need to find a good venue for the show.”

How quickly Bernard and Joan got ready.

“By the way, I meant to ask you,” Helena whispered, “were you working when you arrived here?”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“Were you on a job or following the trail of somebody at the time you arrived here? It’s such an important question but I forgot to ask it.”

“Yes and no,” I replied. “I was jogging by Shannon Estuary when I found myself here but my reason for being in Limerick was work-related. I had just taken on a new case five days beforehand.” I thought back to the phone call that I’d received from Jack Ruttle late one night.

“The reason I ask is because I wonder what it was about that person out of all the missing people you’ve searched for, that brought you here. Had you a strong link to him?”

I shook my head but knew I wasn’t quite telling the truth. The late-night phone calls with Jack Ruttle had been very different from all my other cases. They were phone calls I enjoyed receiving, he was someone I could talk with about other things besides business. The more I spoke to the likable Jack, the harder I worked trying to find his brother. There was only one other person in my life who could allow me to feel similarly.

“What was the missing person’s name?”

“Donal Ruttle,” I said, remembering the playful blue eyes from the photograph.

Helena thought about it. “Well, we might as well start now. Anyone here know a Donal Ruttle?” She looked around.

Jack paced alongside the red Ford Fiesta, feeling a mixture of impatience, frustration, and anxiety. Occasionally he would stop, stare in the passenger window, and will the door to open so he could grab the file and hungrily scoff the information on the pages. Then he’d calm down and pace again. He looked around, not wanting to venture far from the car in case Sandy Shortt returned and drove off without him.

He couldn’t believe Sandy was the woman from the petrol station. They had passed by each other as though they were strangers, but just as when he’d been speaking over the phone, he had felt something when he saw her, a bond that linked them. At the time he had thought it was because they were the only two in the place so early in the morning, but now he knew that connection was more. And now, here again, he had come across her in a hidden place. Something was drawing him to her. What he’d give to go back to that moment so he could talk to her about Donal. So she had come to Glin after all. He knew she wouldn’t have let him down, and she had driven through the night just as she’d promised. Finding her car in this desolate spot only raised more questions than he already had. If she was in Glin, where had she been on Sunday when they were due to meet?

He looked at his watch. Three hours had passed since he’d come across the car and there was still no sign of her. A more important question reared its ugly head: Where was she now?

He sat down on the dilapidated curb by the car and did what he had become accustomed to doing over the past year. He waited. And he wasn’t going to budge an inch until Sandy Shortt came back to her car.

I followed the group through the trees, my heart beating so loudly I could barely hear Bernard, who was chatting to me constantly about his previous years’ acting experience. I nodded now and then when I felt his eyes on me. Disappointingly, there had been no reaction to Donal’s name when asked; just shrugged shoulders and mumbles of “I don’t know.” But a reaction had stirred within me as soon as Helena mentioned his name to the others because hearing it made it all become real to me. I would be seeing people I had been searching for for years.

I felt as though all my life’s work led up to this moment. Nights of no sleep, distancing myself from possible friends and caring parents had left me living a solitary life I had been content with, but it was a life haunted by friendships and relationships with people I’d never met. I knew everything about them: their favorite colors, their best friends’ names, their favorite bands-and I felt that with every step I took I was closer to meeting my long-lost friends, my missing parents, uncles, aunts, and family. Recognizing these emotions alerted me to the island I had become. None of those missing people I thought of so fondly would even know me. When their eyes fell upon me they would see a stranger, yet my eyes would see anything but. Though we had never met, family photos of past Christmases, birthdays and weddings, first days of school, debutante balls were firmly imprinted in my memory. I had sat with crying parents and been shown photo album after photo album, yet I couldn’t remember a day when I had shared a couch with my own family and had done the same. The people I lived for didn’t even know of my existence and I hadn’t acknowledged that of the people who lived for me.

I could see up ahead where the trees ended. The stillness of the woods was dissipating and instead there was lots of movement, noise, and color. So many people. I stopped walking with the group and shakily held out my hand to hold on to the trunk of a pine.