Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

“It’s a missing persons agency.”

“Oh, Jack,” she whispered, hand flying to her mouth.

“Well, what harm could it do, Jude? What’s the damage in one more person having a look?”

“This is the damage, Jack. You, taking one more week off from work, Gloria ringing me looking for you.”

“She rang?”

“Ten o’clock last night.”

“Oh.”

“So go on, tell me about the agency.”

“No.” He leaned back in his chair, frustrated. “No, I couldn’t be bothered now.”

“Jack, don’t be such a child and tell me.”

He waited to cool down before speaking again. “I came across the ad in the Yellow Pages and I gave her a call.”

“Who?”

“Sandy Shortt. I explained the case to her and she told me she’d solved cases like this before. We spoke on the phone until late every night last week. She used to be a garda and she got her hands on a few reports we’d never seen.”

Judith raised her eyebrows.

“She wasn’t asking for a penny, Judith, and I believed her. I believed she wanted to help and I believed she could find Donal. She was legit, there’s no doubt about it.”

“Why are you speaking about her like she’s dead?” She smiled and then stopped quickly, looking alarmed. “She’s not dead, is she?”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “But I don’t know where she is. We arranged to meet on Sunday morning in Glin, we passed one another at a petrol station but I didn’t know it was her until after.”

Judith’s forehead wrinkled.

“We’d only ever spoken on the phone, you see.”

“So how do you know it was her?”

“I found her car down by the estuary.”

Judith looked even more flummoxed.

“Look, we were supposed to meet and she left a voice message the night before saying she was on her way over from Dublin, but she didn’t show up. So I looked around the town, asked for her in all the B &Bs and when I couldn’t find her, I went for a walk by the estuary. That’s when I found the car.”

“How can you be sure it was her car?”

Jack opened the bag beside him. “Because this was on the dashboard.” He placed the file on the kitchen table. “So was this,” he said, and placed her diary down. “And this.” Her charged mobile phone. “She labels everything , absolutely everything, I went through her bag, all her clothes, her socks, all labeled. It’s like she’s afraid of losing things.”

Judith was quiet. “You went through her bag?” She shook her head, confused. “But how did you get these from the car? Maybe she was just taking a walk, Jack. What if she returns to her car and all her stuff is missing? Are you crazy taking all this?”

“Then I’ll have some apologizing to do, but it’s been two whole days. That’s a long walk.”

Silence while they both remembered how their mother had been desperately worried after two days of Donal’s silence.

“I rang Graham Turner.”

“What did he say?” she asked, hands holding her face. The same scenario all over again.

“He said that as it had only been over twenty-four hours and because it was in keeping with her usual behavior that he didn’t think there was any cause to worry.”

“Why, what’s her usual behavior?”

“That she comes and goes as she pleases, keeps to herself and doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going,” Jack rattled off tiredly.

“Oh.” Judith looked relieved.

“But that doesn’t mean you park your car in the middle of trees by the estuary and desert it for two days. That’s slightly different from coming and going as she pleases.”

“So let me get this straight,” Judith said slowly. “The missing-persons person is missing?”

Silence.

Judith allowed that thought to roll around in her head, shifting it until it found a place it was comfortable to settle in. She looked contemplative as she moved her jaw from side to side.

Then she snorted and burst out laughing.

Jack sat back in his chair and folded his arms, feeling offended as Judith shook uncontrollably before him. Rachel stopped suckling and watched her bouncing mother, who was now wiping tears from her eyes. Nathan stopped playing with his blocks, stood to watch his mother. His face broke into a gummy smile and he began laughing, clapping his pudgy hands and bouncing his body with delight from the knees up. Eventually, Jack felt the corners of his lips tickle and he joined in, laughing deliriously at the ridiculousness of the situation and feeling such relief to let go after so long, even if only momentarily. Once they’d settled down, Judith began rubbing Rachel gently on her back, so soothingly it made Jack’s eyes feel heavy.

“Look, Judith, maybe Graham is right. Maybe she did just walk away. Maybe she just thought to hell with all this and left her car, left her phone, her diary, her life, and gave up. Maybe she’s this mad, loony woman who does it all the time with the intention of coming back after a while. Maybe she walked away completely but I’m going to find her, she’s going to find Donal, and then she can quit. Then I’ll let her walk away.”

“You really think this woman could find Donal?” Judith was contemplative.

“She believed she could.”

“What do you think?”

He nodded.

“So if you find her, you’ll be helping to find Donal.” She was deep in thought. “You know, Willie and I were going through the photo album last night with the kids and Katie pointed to Donal and asked who he was.” Her eyes filled. “Neither Katie or Nathan remember him, they’ll never have a memory of him and Rachel”-she looked down at her baby in her arms-“she doesn’t even know he existed. Life is going on without him and he’s missing all this.” She shook her head.

Jack couldn’t think of anything to say, didn’t think there was anything to say. The same thoughts ran through his head every second of every day.

“What makes you so sure that a woman you’ve never even met, a woman you don’t know anything about, has the ability to find Donal?”

“Blind faith.” He smiled.

“Since when did you ever have that?”

“Since I spoke to Sandy on the phone,” he replied earnestly.

“There was nothing…” She paused and decided to ask it anyway. “There was nothing between you two, was there?”

“There was something but it was nothing.”

“When is something ever nothing?”

He sighed and decided to avoid the question. “Gloria doesn’t know about Sandy, not that there’s anything to know, but I don’t want her or the rest of the family knowing about the agency.”

Judith didn’t look happy.

“Please, Jude.” He grabbed her hand. “I don’t want to bring everyone through all this again, I just want to try by myself. I need to.”

“OK, OK.” She let go, holding her hand up in defense. “So what are you going to do now?”

“Simple.” He put the file, diary, and phone back into his bag. “I’m going to start looking for her.”

I was sixteen years old, in Mr. Burton’s office. I was sitting on one of the burst velvet chairs, the same since the day I’d arrived over two years ago, but for the extra foam on display. I was staring at the same posters on the walls of the cramped room. The bricked walls had been clumsily painted white, some holes still black and naked of paint, others holding clumps of white. It was all or nothing in this room, never even. Blu-Tack clung to parts of the walls, corners of old posters still hung on to the Blu-Tack. Somewhere in the school I imagined a room fully stocked with cornerless posters.

“What are you thinking about?” Mr. Burton finally spoke.