Cecelia Ahern - There’s No Place Like Here

He called into the house. We heard the female voice again, but not her words. He stood there looking directly at us.

“Can I help you?” he called, holding his hand to his forehead to shield the sun from his eyes.

Helena and Bobby looked to me. I stared at the man and the child in his arms, speechless.

“Well, yes, thank you. We’re looking for Jenny-May Butler,” Helena called politely. “I’m not sure if we’re at the right place.”

I had no doubt we were at the right place.

“Who is looking for her?” he asked politely. “I’m sorry, I can’t see you from here.” He began to take a few steps forward.

“Sandy Shortt is here for her,” Helena called.

Immediately a figure appeared at the door.

I heard my large intake of breath.

Long blond hair, slim and pretty. The same but older. My age. The child in her was gone. She wore a loose-fitting white cotton dress and was barefoot. She held in her hand a tea cloth, which fell to the floor when she held her hand to her forehead to block out the sunlight, and her eyes fell upon me.

“Sandy?” Her voice was older but the same. It quivered and was uncertain, displaying fear and joy all at the same time.

“Jenny-May,” I called back, hearing exactly the same tone in my voice.

Then I heard her cry as she slowly started to walk toward me and I heard myself cry as I took steps toward her. And I saw her arms reaching out and felt mine do the same. The distance between us grew smaller, the idea of her being before me becoming more real. Her sobs were loud; mine too, I was sure. We cried like children as we walked toward one another, studying faces, hair, bodies, and remembering, good things and bad. And then we were within each other’s grasp and we fell into each other. Crying and hugging, moving to look at each other’s face, wiping tears from each other’s cheek, and then holding on again. Never wanting to let go.

Jack,” Garda Graham Turner said with surprise, “what are you doing back here? We won’t have results back from forensics for another few days, and I promise you we’ll contact you with the news.”

Time had got to Donal’s body before them, and had spared it no mercy. He had yet to be officially identified, though Jack and his family knew in their hearts it was Donal. Fresh and decaying flowers were found on the site that Alan had visited each week of the year. He had confessed his true story to police the previous night but had refused to give the names of the gang involved. Over the next few months he would stand trial, and Jack was glad his own mother wasn’t around to see the man she helped raise take part of the blame for the murder of her baby.

After discussing the night’s events with his family, it was the early hours of the morning before Jack returned to Foynes. The town was still celebrating the festival with all the energy of its opening hours. He ignored the sounds of music and singing, and went into the bedroom to find Gloria lying asleep in bed. He sat beside her on the bed and watched her, her long black lashes resting on the tops of her rosy cheeks. Her mouth was slightly open, soft sounds of her breath causing her white chest to heave gently up and down. It was that hypnotic sound and sight that compelled him to do what he hadn’t done for a year. He reached out to her, placed his hand on her shoulder, and gently woke her from her slumber, finally inviting her into his world. When they had talked all night about the past year and all he had learned in the past week, he finally felt tired and joined her in her sleep at last.

“I’m not here about Donal,” Jack explained, sitting down in the station on Sunday evening. “We need to find Sandy Shortt.”

“Jack.” Graham rubbed his eyes wearily. His desk and the surrounding desks were covered in paperwork, and phones rang all around him. “We’ve been through this.”

“Not in enough detail. Now listen to me. Maybe Sandy got in touch with Alan and he panicked. You never know. Maybe they arranged to meet and he got nervous she was getting close to the truth and maybe he did something. I don’t know what. I’m not even talking about murder. I know Alan’s not capable of that but-” He paused. “Actually,” he said, his pupils dilated with anger, “maybe he did. Maybe he got desperate and-”

“He didn’t,” Graham interrupted. “I’ve been through it over and over again with him. He doesn’t know anything about her, he had never even heard of her. He had no clue about what I was talking about. All he knew was what you told him, that some unknown woman was helping you find Donal. That’s all.” He looked Jack in the eyes and softened his tone. “Please, Jack, give up on this.”

“Give up? Like everyone told me to when I was looking for Donal?”

Graham shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

“Alan was Donal’s best friend and he lied about what happened to him for one year . He’s in enough trouble already. Do you think he’s going to bother telling us about what he could have done to some woman he cares nothing about? Was I not right about Alan the first time?” Jack raised his voice.

Graham was silent for a long time, biting down on his already nonexistent nail as he quickly made a decision. “OK, OK.” He closed his tired eyes and focused. “We’ll start searching the site where her car was left.”

I have thought about that moment with Jenny-May long and hard for many hours, days, and nights but I have no words for the time that we spent together that day. It was far too big for words. It was more important than words; it had more meaning than just words.

We stole away from the cabin, leaving Bobby, Helena, Daisy, and Jenny-May’s husband, Luc, to chat among themselves. We had a lot to say to each other. To explain our conversations would not do the moment justice because we talked about nothing. To explain how I felt, watching an older version of the pretty photo embedded in my memory come alive, would fall short of the enormity of my delight. Delight not good enough a word. Relief, joy, pure ecstasy still not even close.

I filled her in on local people she once knew who were doing things of no interest to anybody but her. She told me about her family, her life, all that she had done since I had seen her. I told her of mine. Not once did we speak about her treatment of me. Does that seem odd? It didn’t then. It wasn’t important. Not once did we mention where we both were. Does that seem odd too? Perhaps, but that wasn’t important either. It wasn’t about then, or where, it was just about now. This moment, today. We didn’t notice the hours go by, we barely saw the sunset and the moonrise. We didn’t feel the heat leave our skin and the evening breeze cooling it. We felt nothing, heard nothing, saw nothing but the stories, sounds, and visions of our own minds, which we filled each other with. It is nothing to others but so much to me.

But it is perhaps enough to say that a part of me was set free that night, as I sensed was the case for Jenny-May. We never said it to each other, of course. But we both knew.

Helena had to get back to the village for the dress rehearsal, and so while they said their good-byes, Jenny-May and I put our heads together and looked up to the camera in my hand and smiled. I took the photo and slid it into my shirt pocket. Jenny-May turned down her invitation to see the play, preferring to stay home with her family. We said we would meet again but we made no arrangements. Not out of any bad feeling between us, but because I felt it had all been said, or not said but understood, and she probably did too. To know she was there was enough, and for her to know I was around probably was too. Sometimes that’s all people ever really need. Just to know.