Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

“I’m sorry if I upset you. I’m not quite sure how to tell people what it is their families would want me to say.” I twisted my watch around as we walked, wanting to turn back the time that kept ticking on around my wrist.

Helena’s eyes opened and I could see a layer of tears settling on her lower lashes, building up in an invisible reservoir. “Don’t think that about yourself, Sandy. I felt soothed by your words, how could I not be?” Her face brightened. “I woke up knowing I had a mother out there still minding me. Today I feel protected, like I’m swaddled in an invisible blanket. You know, you’re not the only one whose lifelong questions have been answered I now have photographs in my mind that I never had before; an entire catalog has been filed and stored, all in one night.”

I just nodded. There was nothing to say.

“You will be fine with these people; I know you will be more than fine. The people on the list you have given will be arriving in how long?”

I looked at my watch. “An hour and a half.”

“Right, in ninety minutes they’ll all be there with the full intention of spending a short while of their lives calling Romeo from a balcony or reenacting the great escape through the art of mime.”

I laughed.

“Anything more you tell them will be a bonus, no matter how you phrase it.”

“Thank you, Helena.”

“No problem.” She gave my arm a comforting pat and I tried to stop myself from stiffening.

I looked down at my clothes. “There’s just one more problem. I’ve been wearing this tracksuit for days and I would really love a change of clothes. Is there anything you have that I could borrow?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Helena said walking off in the direction of the trees. “You wait here; I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just a minute…” Her voice disappeared, along with her short salt-and-pepper hair and billowing lemon pashmina, into the darkness.

I tapped my foot impatiently, wondering and worrying about where she’d gone. I couldn’t lose Helena now. Up ahead I spotted the towering figure of Joseph leaving the woods, carrying logs in one hand, an axe in the other.

“Joseph!” I called.

He looked up and waved with the axe, a motion that wasn’t particularly heartwarming, and he made his way toward me. His bald head shone like a polished marble, his flawless skin making him appear younger than his years.

“Everything OK?” he asked with concern.

“Yes, I think so. Well, I don’t know,” I added with confusion. “Helena just disappeared into the woods and-”

“What?” His eyes darkened.

I realized my error. “I don’t mean disappeared . She walked, walked into the woods a few minutes ago.” Disappearing from here was impossible, so no wonder Joseph was alarmed. “She told me to wait here for her.”

He set the axe down and watched the woods. “She will return, kipepeo girl.” His voice was gentle.

“What does that mean?”

“It means she will come back,” he said with a smile.

“Not that, what does the Kenyan word mean?”

“It is what you are,” he said lazily, his eyes not moving from the trees.

“Which is?”

Before he had a chance to answer the question, Helena reappeared tugging what appeared to be luggage behind her. “Found this for you. Oh, hi, sweetheart, I thought I heard you tapping away at the trees. Name on the bag says Barbara Langley from Ohio. Hope for your sake Barbara from Ohio has long legs.” She dropped the bag by my feet and dusted off her hands.

“What is this?” I asked open-mouthed, studying the baggage ticket on the handle. “This was bound for New York over twenty years ago.”

“Great, you’ll have a nice retro look,” Helena joked.

“I can’t wear someone else’s clothes,” I protested.

“Why not? You were going to wear mine.” Helena laughed.

“But I know you!”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t have known the person who wore them before me,” she teased, heading off before me. “Come now, how much time have we left? We’re going to the auditions now,” she explained to Joseph, who nodded solemnly and picked up his axe again.

I looked at my wrist. My watch was gone.

“Oh, damnit,” I grumbled, dropping the bag back down on the ground and searching around my legs.

“What’s wrong?” Helena and Joseph stopped walking and turned around.

“My watch fell off my wrist again,” I grumbled, standing back and scouring the ground.

“Again?”

“The fastener on it is broken. Sometimes it just opens and falls onto the ground.” My voice was muffled as I went down on my knees and searched closer to the ground.

“Well, you were wearing it just a minute ago so it can’t have gone far. Just lift the bag,” Helena said calmly.

I looked under the bag.

“That’s funny.” Helena came over to where I stood and leaned over to get a closer look at the ground. “Did you go anywhere when I went into the trees?”

“No, nowhere. I was waiting right here with Joseph.” I began crawling around the dusty ground.

“It can’t have gone missing,” Helena said, not at all worried about the situation. “We’ll find it, we always do, here.”

We all stood still as we looked around the small area I hadn’t moved from for over five minutes. There was nowhere else it could have fallen. I shook out my sleeves, emptied my pockets, and checked the bag to see if the watch had got caught up. Nothing, no sign, nowhere.

“Where on earth did it roll to?” Helena muttered, examining the ground.

Joseph, who had barely said a word since he’d joined us, stood still in the same place he had been standing all along. His eyes, as black as coal, appeared to have absorbed all light from around him. They were on me the whole time.

Just watching.

I spent the next half hour searching the road for my watch, retracing my steps over and over again in my usual obsessive way. I combed the long grass by the sides of the uncultivated fields and dug my hands deep into the soil lining the forest. The watch was nowhere to be seen but this brought a strange kind of comfort to me. My mind instantly erased where I was and all that had happened, and for those few moments I was me again with one goal. Finding. As a ten-year-old I would hunt for a single sock as though it had the value of the rarest diamond in the world, but this time it was different; the watch was worth far more.

Joseph and Helena watched over me worriedly as I uprooted grass followed by sods, in order to find the precious jewel that had clung to my wrist for thirteen years. Its inability to remain where it should have been for too much of that time pretty much tallied with the inconsistency of the relationship with the person who had given it to me. But even those times when it released itself from my clutches and flew off, drawn in the opposite direction to the one I was heading, I always looked out for it and wanted to be near it. That way too, exactly like the relationship.

Helena and Joseph didn’t pretend, as my parents used to when I had a hunting episode. They looked worried and they were right to, because for people who said nothing could or ever had gone missing in this place, they were finding it difficult having to munch on and digest their own words. At least that’s what the obsessive side of me thought. The rational side of me reckoned the more obvious cause for their concern may have just been me, on my hands and knees, covered in dust, dirt, grass stains, and muck.

“I think you should stop looking now,” Helena said with a hint of amusement on her face. “You have lots of people to meet at the Community Hall, not to mention now needing a shower and change of clothes.”