Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

I woke up in my Dublin bedsit to the shrill sound of a telephone ringing in my ear. I put the pillow over my head and prayed for the noise to stop, I had a terrible hangover. I peeked over the side of my bed and caught a glimpse of my crumpled garda uniform lying in a ball on the ground. I’d worked a late shift and then gone for a few drinks. A few had clearly turned into a few too many and I had absolutely no memory of coming home. The ringing finally stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief, although it echoed in my head for a few seconds longer. And then it started again. I grabbed the phone from the side of the bed and brought it back under the pillow to my ear.

“Hello,” I croaked.

“Happy birthday to yoooou, happy birthday to yoooou, happy birthday dear Sandeeeee, happy birthday to yooou.” It was my mother singing so sweetly as though she was in a church choir.

“Hip, hip…”

“Hooray!” That was Dad.

“Hip hip…”

“Hooray!” He blew a party blower down the receiver, which I instantly held far away from my ear, allowing my arm to hang off the bed. I could still hear them celebrating from under the pillow as I drifted off again.

“Happy twenty-first, honey,” Mum said proudly. “Honey? Are you there?”

I put the phone back to my ear. “Thanks, Mum,” I mumbled.

“I wish you’d have let us throw you a party,” she said wistfully. “It’s not every day my baby girl is twenty-one.”

“It is, actually,” I said tiredly. “I have three hundred and sixty-four more days of being twenty-one, so we’ve lots of time to celebrate.”

“Oh, you know it’s not the same.”

“You know what I’m like at those things,” I said, referring to the party idea.

“I know, I know. Well, I want you to enjoy your day. Would you think about coming home for dinner at all? At the weekend, maybe? We could just do a small thing, just me, you and your dad. We won’t even mention the birthday word.”

I paused and decided to lie. “No, I can’t this weekend, sorry. Things are really busy at work.”

“Oh, OK, well, what about if I come to Dublin for a few hours? I won’t even stay over; we can have a coffee or something. A quick chat and I’ll be gone, I promise.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I just want to mark the day with you in some way. I’d love to see you.”

“I can’t, Mum, sorry.”

There was a silence. For far too long.

Dad came on the phone cheerily. “Happy birthday, love. We understand you’re busy so we’ll let you get back to doing what you were doing.”

“Where’s Mum?”

“Oh, she, eh, had to answer the door.” He was as bad at lying as I was.

She was crying, I knew it.

“OK, well, have a great day, honey. Try to enjoy yourself, OK?” he added softly.

“OK,” I said quietly, and the phone clicked and went dead.

I groaned, hung the phone back up on my bedside locker, and threw the pillow off my head. I allowed my eyes to adjust to the bright light my cheap curtains were incapable of keeping out. It was ten A.M. on a Monday morning and I finally had a day off. What I was going to do with it, I had no idea. I would have preferred to work on my birthday, although I would busy myself with working on a missing case that had recently run into a dead end. A little girl named Robin Geraghty had disappeared while playing in her front garden. All the signs were implicating her middle-aged neighbor next door. However, no matter how hard we’d dug into this case, we weren’t hitting the treasure chest at the bottom. Recently I had started following up on such cases by myself, unable to switch off the file that was locked away in a cabinet.

I turned to lie on my back and noticed from the corner of my eye a lump beside me in the bed. The lump was on its side, a tousle of dark brown hair lying on the pillow. I jumped, gathering my bedclothes and wrapping them around me tighter. The lump began to move to face me, his eyes opened. Bloodshot, tired eyes.

“I thought you were never going to answer that phone,” he said croakily.

“Who are you?” I asked in disgust, clambering out of bed and taking the covers with me, leaving him lying on the bed spread-eagled and naked. He smiled, rested his hands behind his head sleepily, and winked.

I groaned. It was meant to be a silent, inward groan but it forced its way out of my mouth. “I’m going to the bathroom and when I get back you will be gone.” I picked up what I assumed were his clothes and threw them onto the bed. I picked up my own stray clothes that were resting on a chair, hugged them close to me and banged the door shut. Almost immediately I returned and grabbed my wallet, much to his disgust. I wasn’t about to leave that there.

Not after the last time.

I stayed in the bathroom down the hall for as long as I could until Mr. Rankin from next door began pounding on the door and telling me and everyone else in the building how he was going to burst an area of his body that I didn’t care to think much about. I opened the door immediately and went back to my bedsit hoping the hairy stranger had vanished. No such luck. He was closing the door behind him.

I walked toward him slowly, not knowing what to say. He didn’t seem to know either, but nor did he care, his smirk still on his face.

“Did we…?” I asked.

“Twice.” He winked and my insides churned. “By the way, before you throw me out of your building, some guy came by when you were in the bathroom. I told him he could wait if he wanted, but you probably wouldn’t recognize him when you saw him.” He grinned again.

“What guy?” I racked my brain.

“See, I told him you wouldn’t remember him.”

“Is he in there?” I looked toward the closed door.

“No, I guess he didn’t feel like hanging around a bedsit with a naked hairy man.”

“You answered the door naked?” I asked angrily.

“I thought it was you.” He shrugged. “Anyway, he left this card for you.” He handed me the business card. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in me giving you my number?”

I shook my head, took the card from his hand. “Thanks, eh…” I began weakly.

“Steve,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Nice to meet you.” I smiled and he laughed. He was kind of cute but still I watched him walk down the stairs.

“We met before, by the way,” he called up to me, not turning around as he made his way down the steps.

I was silent while I tried to remember.

“At Louise Drummond’s Christmas party last year?” He stopped and looked up hopefully.

I frowned.

“Ah, it doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand dismissively. “You didn’t remember the next morning then, either.” Then he smiled and was gone.

There was a moment of guilt until I remembered the business card in my hand and the bad feelings vanished. My knees went weak when I saw the name.

It seemed Mr. Burton had set up a clinic in Dublin, Scathach House on Leeson Street. Wait a minute, Dr . Burton; he’d passed his exams at last.

I danced around excitedly on the spot. I heard the toilet flush and Mr. Rankin left with a newspaper in his hand and caught me dancing.

“You need to go again? I wouldn’t go back in there for a while.” He wafted the newspaper.

I ignored him and went back into my bedsit. Mr. Burton was here now. He’d found me three years after I’d moved away and that’s all that mattered. At last, one odd sock had showed up.

Oh, Dr. Burton.” Jack sat up in the car seat and pressed the phone closer to his ear. “I remember why I’d made a note of it now. Actually it’s not me that I’m enquiring about. It’s about a friend of mine who had an appointment yesterday with Doctor…” He stopped, already forgetting the surname.