Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

9

Johnny and Eddie finally finish digging up my paving one week later than promised, citing so many excuses and technical reasons that I don’t know where to begin arguing with them, but at least one hundred square metres has been cleared for laying turf and the remainder of my garden is still my lovely paving. My dad tells me to hang on to the broken stones that they have dug up from the ground because he believes they have value, so I keep them in a small skip on my driveway. His beliefs are vindicated by Johnny’s sudden eagerness to help ‘get rid’ of them for me. I try to think of ways that I can use them, but really I have no idea and suspect that I will probably throw them out.

Dad and Leilah invite me and Heather to lunch on Thursday. On Mondays Heather works in a restaurant, clearing tables and stacking the dishwasher; on Wednesdays she works at the cinema, escorting people to their seats and cleaning up the popcorn and mess afterwards, and on Fridays she works at a local solicitor’s office, doing the post, shredding papers and photocopying. She loves all of her jobs. On Saturday mornings she attends her drama and music class and on Tuesdays she goes to a day service where she hangs out with friends. It only leaves Thursdays and Sundays for us, and my work hours used to mean that Sunday was our day. It’s been that way for the past ten years. I would go to the ends of the earth to avoid missing that day with her. Our activities vary; sometimes she has very specific aims in her head, other times she is quiet and will let me make the decision. We go to the cinema a lot: she loves animation and knows every single word to The Little Mermaid . Sometimes all she wants to do is sit on the floor in front of the television and watch it on repeat. My Christmas gift to her was a trip to see Disney on Ice. They dedicated the entire first act to The Little Mermaid and I have never seen Heather so quiet, so completely lost in anything in all of my life. It was beautiful, and being with her is always beautiful. When Ursula the Sea Witch came on stage, an enormous blow-up Octopus slid across the ice and there was evil witch music and loud cackling. Lots of children started crying and I was worried that Heather would be afraid, but she held my hand and gave it a squeeze, and whispered to me, ‘It will be okay, Jasmine,’ so I knew that she was minding me, she was worried about me being afraid. She is my older sister and is constantly protecting me, even when I think it’s me that is protecting her. When the show was over and the lights went up and the mess of spilled popcorn and slush puppies was revealed and all the magic was gone, she looked at me, her hands on her chest where her heart is, her tear-filled eyes enormous behind her thick glasses, and she said, ‘I am moved, Jasmine. I am so moved.’

I love her, I love everything about her. The only thing I would change about her is the discomfort she often feels due to her hypothyroidism which manifests sometimes for her as fatigue, sluggishness and irritability. I would watch her like a hawk, but she won’t let me. After years of trying to teach her in ways that she could understand, what I finally learned about my sister is that Heather always has been and always will be the teacher and that I am her student. Her speech is often unclear, though I can generally understand her, and she has difficulty with her motor skills and her hearing, but Heather can tell you the name of every single Disney character in every single Disney movie, and the writers and singers of every song. She loves music. She has quite a collection of vinyl – despite me introducing her to iPods and iPads, she’s an old-school girl at heart and prefers her records. She can tell you the musicians playing the instruments and who has produced and arranged every song. She reads the small print on every album and offers the information at the drop of the hat. When I saw that she had an appetite for this, I fed it and continue to feed it, buying her music, bringing her to live performances. When I was fourteen, I took Heather on a playdate with a little boy called Eddie, with Down syndrome. Eddie loved music too, especially the song ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ by Elvis. While speaking with his sister I learned that, because he likes the song, they let him play it on repeat all day, which annoyed everybody in the household. But none of them could have been as annoyed as I was; it made me furious that they failed to recognise that this boy had a love for music, not just that one song. They weren’t helping to bring out the best in him. When Heather shares her knowledge, people are always surprised and impressed. And what happens when she sees that they’re impressed by her? Like all of us, she flourishes.

The most admirable, almost magical thing about Heather is her insight into people, more specifically her insight into their insight into her . I see their views of her reflected in her own behaviour. She can read strangers like no one else I’ve encountered in my life. When speaking with someone who views her with pity or who wants to get away from her, she shrinks, she almost disappears, she becomes a person with Down syndrome because she knows that that is all they see of her. When she is in the company of someone who doesn’t care about Down syndrome, like children before they learn to tease, or someone who has experience with the condition, she absolutely glows, she blossoms, she becomes Heather, the person. She often senses these things before I do, and I have learned to understand strangers or at least their opinions of her through Heather. She has the ability to get straight to the truth. This is something that many children possess, but perhaps we lose it as we get older. Heather, on the other hand, has honed this with age and as a result, her sense of right and wrong are so finely tuned.

I drive Heather to where Dad, Leilah and Zara live in a three-bedroom apartment in Sutton Castle. Built in 1880 by the Jameson family – no relation to Dr Jameson that I know of – it is in a prestigious location on seven acres of landscaped gardens overlooking Dublin Bay. The castle was a hotel where we often ate Sunday lunches as a family; it was refurbished during the boom time and the main house was broken up into seven apartments. It’s an impressive home, kept beautifully by Leilah in her bohemian style. At thirty-five, Leilah is around the same age as Heather and I, yet she seems so far away from becoming any kind of a friend of mine. She is a young woman who married my dad and for that I will always wonder what is wrong with her. I have no actual problem with Leilah, but distance is my friend and that’s where I keep her. Heather on the other hand warmed to her immediately, holding her hand on the first meeting, which made Leilah blush. It was an act that neither Leilah nor Dad knew was the greatest compliment ever given. Heather has correctly sensed my feelings toward Leilah and, though we’ve never discussed it, she tries to find things that Leilah and I have in common, like a mother trying to help two little girls become friends at a party. It is endearing and sweet, and I love this about her. Even though we both go along with it purely for Heather’s sake, it does oddly enough help us to communicate.

Zara pulls the door open dressed as a pirate. She punches the air before us with a plastic hook on the end of her hand and yells ‘Arrrrrrrgh, mateys!’

I feel Heather flex beside me. Heather is fond of Zara, though a little unsure. Zara, at three, can be temperamental. Her loud protests, or sudden explosive tears, or even extreme hyperness can make Heather very unsettled.

‘Well, arrrrrgh yourself.’ I go down on my knees to hug her, battling her pirate protestations and walk-the-plank threats, and I end up lying on the floor with her straddling me, the tip of her hook held to my neck. Heather swiftly sidesteps us and softly makes her way down the hall and into the living area.