Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

‘Coffee?’ I say, and he jumps up.

I take a look at him as he orders at the counter. Brown cords, V-neck jumper, shirt, quite conservative, not exactly the latest trend but respectable, responsible, a far cry from the ripped-jeans, long-haired troublemaker.

When he sits down, the routine questions begin. Jobs, life, how long are you here, are you still in touch with Sandy, do you still see Liam, do you remember Elizabeth? Who married who, who’s having babies with who, who left who. How Aunt Jennifer is so happy he’s returned. I knew I shouldn’t have said it as soon as I did. It was a simple enough thing to say, but I should have kept it lighter, more vague, devoid of anything issue-related. Mentioning his ‘adoptive’ mother who he hadn’t travelled home to see in over ten years – though she had visited him – was not safe territory. I kick myself. His posture changes.

‘She’s happy to have me back here, of course, but she’s finding the circumstances difficult. I’m back to find my birth parents,’ he says, his hands cupped around the enormous mug of coffee. He is looking down, all I can see are long black eyelashes, and when he looks up I recognise those lost, confused, tortured puppy eyes. He is still searching, though he seems less angry, the spiteful look is gone. We talk about seeking his biological mother some more, about his long-lost sense of identity, his inability to settle down and have his own children without understanding his own lineage, about not being able to settle in relationships, about feeling tied to someone else, elsewhere all this time. I hope I am reassuring him. And then we get to the awkward moment.

‘What I said on the swing …’ he begins, as if it was five minutes ago and not sixteen years, ‘It was wrong of me to do what I did. I was young, I was so confused, I scared you, I know that, and I’m sorry. I went away and tried to figure it out, tried to figure everything out really, I told myself that I must have got our friendship confused. We always had so much in common, I always felt you understood me. The whole thing with you and your dad …’ Which confuses me again, because there was nothing between me and dad, but never mind. ‘I went away and tried to forget you, but when I was gone, all the other women …’ And it gets uncomfortable for a while as I hear about his long list of conquests with whom he does not feel at peace, and then, BAM! ‘I couldn’t stop thinking of you. All the time, my mind kept coming back to you. But I knew how you felt about me. How the whole family felt about me. It’s why I couldn’t come back. But now … Jasmine, I haven’t changed my mind at all from that moment on the swing. I am utterly in love with you.’

I am usually an emotionally stable person. I feel that I cope with things well. I am not dramatic, I am rational, I reason things relatively well. But this … I can’t. Not now, in the middle of my own stuff. I apologise, then stand up and take my leave.

When I get home later, I find the landscaper packing up his van. Though the days are slowly stretching longer, the sky is again black. The new grass is still in rolls, piled up in my driveway in the streetlight.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask him.

He can hear the edge in my voice; he looks a little taken aback.

‘You said the grass would be finished today,’ I say.

‘The ground took me longer to prepare than I thought. I’ll have to come back on Monday.’

‘Monday? You told me you work weekends. Why can’t you come tomorrow?’

‘Another job, I’m afraid.’

‘Another job,’ I say in a disturbing hiss of a voice. ‘Why don’t people finish one job before starting another?’ He doesn’t respond to this so I sigh. ‘I thought the turf was supposed to be laid within a day of delivery.’

‘They’re stored in a shaded area, no frost expected this weekend. It’s perfect conditions.’ He looks at the turf in a long silence as if waiting for it to speak on its own behalf. He shrugs. ‘If you really need to, open the rolls and water them.’

‘Water them? It hasn’t stopped raining in a week.’

‘Well then.’ He shrugs again. ‘Should be fine.’

‘And if they’re not, you’re paying for them.’

I watch him drive away. I stand in my garden, hands on my hips, staring him off as if my look alone is going to make him stop the van and finish the job. It doesn’t. I survey the pile of grass beside me. The first day of February tomorrow. Almost three weeks of waiting for this garden when I could have used the money to go on a holiday, to sit on someone else’s green grass.

You leave your house, wave at me. I ignore you because I’m mad at you again, I’m mad at everyone and you are always first on my list, you will always feel my wrath. You get in your jeep and drive away. Dr Jameson is away, Mrs Malone is still in hospital, as is Mr Malone who is keeping vigil. I no longer have to feed the cat full-time but only when Mr Malone asks, which doesn’t bother me so much any more as Marjorie has turned out to be quite the conversationalist. I look around. I can’t tell whether anyone’s home in the other houses, but it feels like an empty street. There is nothing I can do about the garden, only pray that a deep frost doesn’t suddenly descend on my new grass.

That night I can’t sleep. I am tossing and turning with anger over my father: his treatment of Heather, his attempt to line me up for a job in his old company – for I’m almost convinced that’s what he’s doing. I am further distressed by Kevin’s declaration of love for me yet again and my messy garden bothers me. Everything feels unfinished – worse than unfinished: torn, as if everything’s been ripped and left ragged at the ends. It is a peculiar way to explain it, but that’s how I feel. I can’t settle with all of these thoughts, these angry thoughts that can’t be contained or filed away somewhere else while I sleep. I have nothing to distract me. Ordinarily I would have a meeting to plan for, an aim, an objective, a new idea, a presentation – something, anything to take my mind off the useless thoughts that circulate in my head. Getting up, I go downstairs and turn the security lights in the front garden on full. They are so bright they are like floodlights. What I see angers me. Inefficiency. My blood boils.

I put my coat on over my pyjamas and go outside. I look at the stacked rolls of grass and I look at the cleared patch of soil to my right. If you want something done properly, you should do it yourself: always my philosophy. It shouldn’t be too hard.

I pick up the first roll of grass and it is heavier than I thought it would be. I drop it, curse and hope I haven’t broken it. I stare at the space and try to figure out how to do this. Then I roll. Two hours later I am dirty and sweating. I’ve lost the coat, which restricted my movements, and instead layered up with an old fleece. I’m covered in muck, grass, sweat and at one stage there are even tears of frustration: for the grass, for the job, for Kevin and for Heather and my mum and the fingernail that I chipped when I bumped it against the skip. I am so lost in myself, in my chore, that I almost jump out of my skin when I hear a cough breaking the silence.

‘Sorry,’ I hear you say suddenly.

It is three a.m. I look across the road to your garden and I can’t see a thing. I see the shape of the garden furniture, but the rest is blackness, all lights are out on the house. My heart is pounding while my eyes furiously search the dark. Then I see the glow of a cigarette, brightening as it’s inhaled. It’s you. How long have you been there? I didn’t hear or see your jeep arrive, and I still don’t see it now, which means you have been there the entire time. I want to cry. I mean, I have been crying, quite loudly, thinking nobody could hear me.