Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

The receptionist, Carol, looked at Jack with worry, not sure whether to be frightened of him or sorry for him at the screaming she had heard inside. Jack placed his credit card on the counter and reached down to her desk to pass her a piece of paper.

“Could you please tell Dr. Burton that if he changes his mind, here’s my phone number and the address of the meeting point later today?”

She read the note quickly and nodded, still defensive of her boss.

He entered his PIN into the machine and retrieved his credit card. “Oh, and please give him this, too.” He placed the silver watch on the counter. Her eyes narrowed as he walked away.

“Mr. Ruttle?” he heard her say as he reached the door. A man reading a car magazine looked up at the mention of the peculiar name.

Jack froze and turned to her slowly. “Yes?”

“I’m sure Dr. Burton will be in contact soon.”

Jack laughed lightly, “Oh, I’m not too sure about that.” He moved to leave again and she cleared her throat, trying to get his attention. He walked back to her desk.

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. The man took the hint and went back to reading his magazine.

“It’s usually just a few days each time. The longest was almost two weeks but that was at the beginning. This is by far the longest in a while,” she whispered. “When you find her, tell her to come back to…” She looked sadly at the door to Dr. Burton’s office. “Well, just tell her to come back.”

As quickly as she’d spoken, she stopped, took the watch from the counter, placed it in a drawer, and carried on typing. “Kenneth,” she called, ignoring Jack now. “Dr. Burton will see you now. Go right in.”

It’s difficult beginning a relationship with someone you were never allowed to know anything about.

Our relationship to date had been based on me, and I was finding it hard to make the transition to it suddenly being about the both of us. Every week our meetings were centered on how I was feeling, what I had done that week, what I thought and what I’d learned. He was allowed to access my mind whenever he wanted, that was the sole reason for our relationship; for him to delve into my mind and try to figure me out. And to try and stop me from trying to figure him out.

A more serious relationship, a more intimate relationship was proving to be the opposite. I had to remember to ask him about him, and to remember that he couldn’t now know everything that was inside my head. Some things had to be held back, for safekeeping, for self-preservation, and in a way, I lost my confidant. The closer we got, the less he knew about me, the more I learned about him.

An hour a week had been intensified and roles had been reversed. Who’d have thought Mr. Burton had a life beyond the four walls of the old school. He knew people and did things that I never knew about; things that I was suddenly allowed to know about but wasn’t sure whether I wanted to. How could a person historically incapable of sharing a bed and a head not need to run from all of that? Sure, I went missing for days at a time.

No, the age gap didn’t matter, it had never mattered. The years weren’t the problem; it was the time that was the fault. This new relationship existed without a ticking clock. There was no long hand to dictate the end of a conversation; I could not be saved by the proverbial bell. He could access me at all times. Of course I ran.

There’s a fine line between love and hate. Love frees a soul and in the same breath can sometimes suffocate it. I walked that tightrope with all the gracefulness of an elephant, my head weighing me to the side of hate, my heart hoisting me to the side of love. It was a wobbly journey and sometimes I fell. Sometimes I fell for long periods of time, but never for too long.

Never for as long as this.

I’m not asking to be liked. I’ve never yearned to be liked, nor am I asking to be understood; I’ve never been that, either. When I behaved that way, when I left his bed, let go of his hand, hung up the phone, and closed his door behind me, even I had difficulty liking me, understanding me. But it’s just how I was.

How I was.

Bobby stood at the door of the stockroom, arms folded across his chest, a scowl on his face.

“What?” I scrambled to my feet and towered over him. He didn’t seem so confident now that I’d risen to my full six-foot-one height. He dropped his hands by his sides and looked up at me. “Your name isn’t Bobby Stanley?”

“No, according to everybody else here, my name is Bobby Duke,” he said defensively, accusingly, childishly.

“Bobby Duke ?” I rubbed my face in frustration. “What?” I repeated. “The guy from the cowboy movies? Why?”

“Never mind the why .” His face reddened. “I think the issue here is that you are the only one who knows my real name. How?”

“I know your mother, Bobby,” I said softly. “There’s no great mystery, it’s as simple as that.” The past few days had consisted of secrets, mysteries, and little white lies. It was time to stop all that, for now anyway. All I wanted to do was meet the people I had been searching for, tell them all that I knew, and then bring them home. That is what I would do. While contemplating all this I suddenly noticed that Bobby had gone completely silent and had whitened ever so slightly.

“Bobby?” I said.

He didn’t speak, just backed away a little from the doorway.

“Bobby, are you OK?” I asked a little more gently.

“Yeah,” he said, not looking at all OK.

“You’re sure?”

“I kind of knew that,” he said quietly.

“What?”

“I kind of knew that you knew my mum. Not just when I first opened the shop door this morning and you called me Mr. Stanley and not just when everybody from the auditions told me that you knew so much, but I kind of knew when I kept finding all of your things.” He looked beyond me to my lost life, scattered on the floor. “When you’re on your own, you look for signs. Sometimes you make them up, sometimes they’re actually there, but most of the time you can’t tell the difference between the two. I believed in this one the most.”

I smiled. “You’re exactly as she said you’d be.”

His lower lip trembled and he tried to stop it. “Is she OK?”

“Apart from missing you like crazy, she’s OK.”

“Ever since Dad left it was always just her and me. She’s on her own now; I hate that she’s on her own.” His voice went up and down as he tried to control it.

“She’s never alone, Bobby; she has your uncles, aunts, and grandparents. Besides she brings anyone and everyone who’ll listen into her home and goes through photo albums and home videos of you. I don’t think there’s one person in Baldoyle who hasn’t seen you score against St. Kevin’s in the finals.”

He smiled. “We could have won that match had it not been…” His voice trailed off.

I continued for him: “Had it not been for Gerald Fitzwilliam getting injured in the second half.”

He raised his head and looked at me, light in his eyes. “It was Adam McCabe’s fault,” he tutted, and shook his head.

“He should never have been put in midfield,” I said, and he laughed. He laughed that loud, cartoon laugh that I’d heard so many times in the home videos, the laugh that his family spoke about so much. The high-pitched, addictively funny sound that instantly made me giggle.

“Wow,” he said, followed by a breath. “You know her well.”

“Bobby, believe me, you don’t need to know your mother well to know that.”

Jack sat in Mary Stanley’s home, drinking coffee and watching home videos of her son, Bobby.