Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

“What do you mean?”

“That’s where you told Donal to go for a cab, isn’t it?”

Alan snorted and swallowed, cleaning his nostrils, making a sound but not answering the question. He slowly rolled the cigarette between his hands; Jack could see he was thinking. Trying to work it all out in his head.

“It’s probably not such a good idea to recommend it to anyone now,” Jack said a little too angrily.

Alan stopped playing with his cigarette and looked at Jack. “What’s going on, Jack?”

“There are a few things running through my mind.” He scratched his forehead with his thumb and noticed his fingers tremble with anger. Alan looked up and saw them too. His eyes narrowed. “I lost contact with the woman who was helping me look for Donal,” Jack explained, hearing his voice shaking but having no control over it. “And that’s driven me half insane. But mostly what’s bothering me”-he spoke through gritted teeth-“is the fact you told the guards and my family and everyone that would listen that you hadn’t noticed Donal leave. Then last week you told me that you had noticed him leave. In fact, you’d even spoken to him. In fact, you’d even told him which way to go for a taxi.”

Alan’s eyes got wider and wider as Jack spoke. His hands began to fidget more, he moved uncomfortably in his seat and a bead of sweat formed above his top lip.

“It doesn’t make sense, Alan. And it might not even be a big deal, but can you tell me why you lied for an entire year about the fact you told my brother, your best friend, to walk to an area, for a taxi, that would cause him to disappear?” The anger began to rise, and the volume of his voice with it.

Alan started to tremble. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“With what?”

“With Donal going missing. I had nothing to do with it.” He went to stand up but Jack reached out and pushed him down by the shoulder. The bag of tobacco spilled to the carpet. Jack kept his hand there firmly, holding him down.

“Well then, who did?” he said angrily.

“I don’t know.”

Jack dug his fingers into Alan’s shoulder blade. He was just skin and bone.

“Jesus Christ, do we have to do this here?” Alan said in pain, trying to squirm out of Jack’s grasp but failing.

Jack leaned in and said, “Do what here? Is there someplace else you’d like to go? The garda station maybe?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Alan insisted. “I swear.”

“Then why did you lie?”

“I didn’t lie,” he said with big wide eyes, looking like he’d never told the truth in his life. “I don’t exactly have a clean sheet as it is. I thought the guards would think I’d something to do with it.”

Their faces were only inches apart now. “Tell me the truth.”

“I have.”

“He was your best friend, Alan; he was always there for you.”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted, holding his trembling nicotine-stained fingers to his head. Tears began to form in his eyes and he stared down at the table, his whole body shuddering.

“You can either tell me and make me understand, or I go to the guards,” Jack threatened.

It felt like hours before Alan built up the nerve to speak again, “Donal got involved in something,” he said, so quietly Jack had to move his head even closer. Their heads were practically touching now.

“You’re a liar.”

“I’m not a liar,” Alan’s head shot up, and Jack could see for once he was telling the truth. “I was working for these lads-”

“What lads?”

“I can’t say.”

Jack reached across and grabbed his collar. “Who are they?”

“I’m helping you as much as I can, Jack,” Alan croaked, color rising quickly in his face.

Jack loosened his grip slightly, enough for Alan to be able to breathe, and listened.

“They brought Donal in to program some stuff onto their computer. I suggested him as he’d got his degree and all, but he saw and heard a few things he shouldn’t have and they got angry. I told them he wouldn’t say a word but Donal was threatening to talk.”

“About what?” Anger was firing through Jack. He couldn’t believe after one year of searching, the answer was right here at home, the truth resting with his brother’s best friend.

“I can’t tell you that,” Alan said through gritted teeth, spittle spilling from the sides of his mouth. “I couldn’t talk Donal out of snitching. He was trying to get me on the straight and narrow, but he didn’t understand how serious they were. He wouldn’t listen.” His entire body trembled and Jack’s eyes filled as he waited. Alan’s voice broke and the shame was evident as he whispered, “They were only supposed to knock him around a bit, warn him off, give him a scare.”

It was as though red powder fell before Jack’s eyes. The anger pumped violently within him. “And you walked him straight into it.” His voice was hoarse. Jack jumped out of his chair, pushed his hand up against Alan’s throat and forced him off his chair. He fell back against the wall, and the mirror behind Alan’s head smashed with the force. The pub was silenced and people leaped out of the way of the two men. Jack threw Alan’s head hard against the wall again. “Where is he?” he hissed, his face up against Alan’s.

Alan made choking sounds and Jack squeezed his grip tighter. Alan tried to speak and Jack remembered himself and loosened his grip. “Where is his body?”

When he got his answer, he let go of Alan’s throat and backed away, dropping him from his grip as if he were a dirty rag. He allowed Garda Graham Turner, who had been sitting nearby, to take over, and Jack left the pub to find his brother. This time he could say good-bye properly. This time the brothers would both finally be at rest.

Hello, Sandy.” Grace Burns smiled at me from behind her desk. Her office was a cubbyhole at the back of a planning office. Inside were models of buildings and layouts of future plans for the surrounding lands.

I took a seat before her desk. “Thank you for saving me from the angry mob last night,” I joked.

“No problem.” But her smile quickly faded. “Tell me what’s really happening, Sandy. Is your watch missing?”

After talking to Joseph, Helena, and Bobby late into the night about what was the best thing do, they all agreed that I should lie. I didn’t agree.

“Yes, it’s missing,” I responded. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight in her chair. “But the last thing I want to do is make a big deal of it,” I warned. “I cannot explain how it disappeared, just as I can’t explain how I arrived here. No amount of questions from your colleagues or scientists or people who consider themselves to be experts can help this situation. I don’t want that G.I. Joe following me around anymore either. I don’t know anything. You must give me your word that you won’t spread this news because I will not be cooperative.”

“I understand,” she said. “In the time that I’ve been here there have been a few people I know of who have reported the same thing, but we have been unable to learn anything, just as all of our studies have had little success in discovering how we arrived here. The people I knew of either moved out of town because word got out and life became too difficult under the gaze of everybody in the village, or else it was a false alarm and they found whatever it was they thought they’d lost. The two people that we did actually have the opportunity to work with closely just couldn’t provide us with anything solid to work on. They knew nothing about why and how it was happening and most of us have realized that it’s an impossible thing to understand.”

“Where are they now?”