Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

Just as he was about to dial another number, his phone rang.

“Is that Jack?” a woman asked quietly.

“Yes,” he replied. “Who is this?”

“This is Mary Stanley. You left a message on my phone about Sandy Shortt.”

“Oh, yes, Mary, hello. Thank you so much for returning my call. It was a peculiar message, I know.”

“Yes.” She was guarded, just as the others had been, unsure of this strange man who was looking for their friend without any viable reason whatsoever.

“You can trust me, Mary. I mean no harm to Sandy. I don’t know how well you know her, if you’re a relative or friend, but let me explain myself first.” He told the story of how he contacted Sandy, arranged to meet her, passed her at the petrol station, and his efforts since he had lost contact with her. He left out the reason for his meeting her, feeling that wasn’t relevant. “I don’t want to raise any alarm bells,” he continued, “but I’ve been calling people she seems to have maintained close contact with, just to see if they’ve seen or heard from her lately.”

“I received a phone call from a Garda Graham Turner this morning,” Mary said, and Jack wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. It was probably both.

“Yes, I contacted him, I’m concerned for Sandy.” Jack had called Garda Turner that morning and told him about discovering Sandy’s watch, hoping it would make him sit up and take notice. It obviously had.

“I’m worried too,” Mary said, and Jack’s ears pricked to attention.

“How did he know to call you?” Jack asked, meaning, Who are you? How do you know Sandy?

“Who else was on your call list?” she asked, ignoring his question, sounding lost in thought.

He flicked open his notepad. “Peter Dempsey, Clara Keane, Ailish O’Brien, Tony Watts-do you want me to keep going?”

“No, that’s enough. You got your hands on a list of Sandy’s?”

“She left her phone and address book behind. They were the only ways I could look for her.” Jack tried not to sound guilty.

“Did somebody you know go missing?” Her tone wasn’t soft but it wasn’t harsh either. He was taken aback by the question, asked so directly as though missing people happened all the time.

“Yes, my brother Donal.” A lump swelled in Jack’s throat every time he mentioned his brother.

“Donal Ruttle, yes, that’s right. I remember reading that in the paper,” she said, and was quiet again in thought. “All those you’ve mentioned are people whose family members have gone missing,” Mary explained, “including me. My son, Bobby, has been gone for three years.”

“I’m very sorry,” Jack said softly. It would make sense that all of Sandy’s recent contacts were work-related; he had yet to come across any friends of hers.

“Oh, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. So let me get this straight, we all enlisted Sandy to help us find our loved ones and now you’re enlisting us to help you find Sandy?”

Even though Jack was on the phone, his face blushed. “Yes, I guess so.”

“Well, whether the others have replied to you yet or not, I don’t care. I’ll speak for them. You can count us all in. Sandy’s very special to us all; we’ll do everything we can to help find her. The quicker we find her, the quicker she can find my Bobby.”

They were Jack’s thoughts exactly.

Unable to sleep for the remainder of the night, I lay awake pondering the whereabouts of my watch. My head was dizzy with possibilities, for after finding myself here, there were now a plethora of places I could imagine it inhabiting. Just as I was picturing a world where watches ate, slept, and married one another with grandfather clocks as heads of state, pocket watches as the intellectuals, waterproof watches that inhabited the waters, diamond watches the aristocracy, and digital watches the mere workers, Joseph’s creeping into the house stopped me. I had observed him for what I guessed was a further hour walking back up and down the road looking wide-eyed and fierce in his attempts to find my watch. I now knew what I looked like during my searches, focused and in the zone, completely unaware of all life around, particularly oblivious to a person hiding behind a tree not far away.

A half hour after I’d returned to my bed, Joseph made his way quietly, but not quietly enough, into the house. I pressed my ear to the wall as I tried to hear the mumblings between him and Helena in the room next to me. The timber was warm against my cheek and I closed my eyes, momentarily hit by a pang of homesickness and a longing for the warm heaving chest I used to rest my head upon in bed. Then there was silence and, feeling like a caged lion, I decided to slip out of the house before anybody stirred again.

Outside, the market stalls were being set up for another busy day of trading. There was the colorful sound of banter mixed with birdsong, laughter, and shouting as crates and boxes were being unpacked and stacked. I closed my eyes, hit by my second longing for home that day, and imagined myself as a child walking hand in hand with my mother through the organic farmers’ markets in the Market Yard in Carrick-on-Shannon, the scintillating smell of the fruit and vegetables, so ripe and vibrant, enticing everybody to touch, smell, and taste. I opened my eyes again and was back here.

I arrived outside the Lost and Found building and noticed how the carvings on this building were more playful: two odd socks, one yellow-and-pink polka dot and the other purple-and-orange stripes. I stood thinking of Gregory and me at my good-bye dance at school and I laughed. A face appeared in the window, a very familiar face, and I immediately stopped laughing, feeling as though I’d seen a ghost. He was young, nineteen by now, if I calculated correctly. He gave me a cheeky grin, waved, and disappeared from the window and appeared at the now open door like the Cheshire cat. So this was the Bobby from Lost and Found that Helena and Wanda had mentioned.

“Hello.” He leaned against the door frame with his shoulder, crossed one leg over the other and held out his two hands. “Welcome to Lost and Found.”

I laughed. “Hello, Mr. Stanley.”

His eyes narrowed at my knowing his name but his smile widened. “And you are?”

“Sandy.” I’d heard he was a character, always acting the joker. I had watched countless home videos of him performing for the camera from the age of six all the way up to sixteen, just before his disappearance. “You were on my list,” I explained, “for auditions yesterday, and you didn’t show up.”

“Ah!” Realization dawned on him yet he still continued to study me curiously. “I’ve heard about you.” He stopped leaning against the door frame and coolly made his way down the steps with his hands in his pockets. He stopped directly on front of me, folded his arms, then placed one hand to his chin and began to circle me slowly.

I laughed. “What have you heard about me?”

He paused behind me and I twisted my upper body around to him. “They say you know things.”

“They do?”

“They do,” he repeated, and continued strolling around me. When he had come full circle he stopped and folded his arms again, twinkles dancing in his blue eyes. He was everything his mother had boasted. “They say you’re the soothsayer of Here.”

“Who are they?” I asked.

“The…” He looked around to make sure nobody was listening; he lowered his voice to a whisper. “ Auditionees.”

“Ah.” I nodded smiling. “Them.”

“Yes, them . We have a lot in common,” he said mysteriously.

“We do?”

“We do,” he repeated. “They say, they being”-he looked left and right again before whispering-“the auditionees , say you’re the person to go to if you want to know things.”