Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

‘Got locked out,’ you say, breaking the silence.

‘How long have you been there?’ I repeat. Now that I know that you’re there I can start to see the outline of you, sitting in the chair at the head of the table, the same chair as usual.

‘Few hours.’

‘You should have said something.’

I go inside the house to get the spare key and when I walk outside you’re standing at your door.

‘Why is it so dark over here?’

‘Streetlight is broken.’

I look up and realise that’s why I couldn’t see you. Dr Jameson will be annoyed about this when he returns. On the ground underneath is smashed glass which has fallen and one of my bricks from the skip is in the middle of the road. I wonder why I didn’t hear that happening, I was so sure I hadn’t slept. I look at you accusingly.

‘It was too bright. I couldn’t get any sleep,’ you say softly. You don’t seem that drunk, you are composed, you’ve had time to sober up – in my company, when I didn’t even know you were there – but I can smell the alcohol.

‘Where’s your jeep?’

‘Clamped in town.’

I hand you the key. You open the front door and gives it back to me.

‘You should have said something,’ I say again, finally looking you in the eye, then glancing away, feeling so vulnerable.

‘I didn’t want to disturb you. You seemed busy. Sad.’

‘I’m not sad,’ I snap.

‘Sure you’re not. Four a.m., you’re gardening, I’m smashing lights, we’re both fine.’ You do the chesty chuckle that I hate. ‘Besides, it was nice not to be alone out here for once.’

You give me a small smile before gently closing the door.

When I return to the house I realise my hands are shaking, my throat is dry and closed, my chest feels tight. I can’t stop moving. I haven’t quite realised what a frenzy I am in until I see that I have walked muck everywhere in confusing circles on the floor, the stop-start trail of a madwoman.

It’s the middle of the night, but I can’t help it: I pick up the phone.

Larry answers groggily, he always answers. He leaves his phone on all night, constantly expecting to hear the worst news about his daughter every time she leaves the house to go to a disco or stay over in a friend’s house in a skirt that’s too short, wobbling with Bambi legs on heels that she can’t balance on. The stress of her will kill him.

‘Larry, it’s me.’

‘Jasmine,’ he says groggily. ‘Jesus. What time is it?’ I hear him fumbling around. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Not really, you fired me.’

He sighs. He has the decency to sound embarrassed in the stuttering, half-asleep, respectful response he gives me, but I interrupt him.

‘Yeah, yeah, you said that before, but listen, I need to talk about something else. This gardening leave. It’s not working for me. We need to cancel it. Stop it.’

He hesitates. ‘Jasmine, it was part of the contract. We agreed—’

‘Yeah, we agreed, four years ago when I didn’t think you were going to fire me and then force me to sit on my arse for an entire year. I need you to stop it.’ I sound wired, strung up, like I need a fix. I do. I need work. I need work like a heroin addict needs a fix. I am desperate. ‘It’s killing me, I swear, Larry. You don’t know what this shit does to your head.’

‘Jasmine,’ he is alert now, his voice steady. ‘Are you okay? Are you with—’

‘I’m fucking fine, Larry, okay? Listen to me …’ I tear off the chipped nail with my teeth and realise I’ve pulled away too much; the air hits the exposed nail bed and it stings and causes me to suck in air loudly. ‘I’m not asking for my job back, I’m asking you to reconsider. Actually, not reconsider, just stop this gardening leave thing. It’s unnecessary. It’s—’

‘It’s not unnecessary.’

‘It is. Or else it’s too long. Shorten it. Please? It’s been over two months already. That’s okay. Two months is fine. Lots of companies leave it at two months. I need to be busy – you know me. I don’t want to turn into him across the road, some nocturnal crazy owl man that—’

‘Who’s across the road?’

‘It doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, I need to work, Larry. I need—’

‘No one’s expecting you not to do anything, Jasmine. You can take on projects.’

‘Fucking projects. Like what? Build a volcano of baked beans? This isn’t school, Larry, I’m thirty-fucking-three. I can’t NOT work for a year . Do you know how hard it will be for me to get back to it next year? After a whole year? Who wants someone who hasn’t worked for a year ?’

‘Fine. So where will you work?’ He is getting feistier, fully awake now. ‘Exactly what line of business do you have in mind? Tomorrow, if you were able to go back out there and get a job – tell me where you’d go. Or would you like me to help you out with that answer?’

‘I …’ I falter, because he’s intimating something, which is confusing me. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’

‘In that case I’ll tell you. You’d go to Simon—’

I freeze. ‘I wouldn’t go to Simon—’

‘Yes, you would, Jasmine – you would. Because I know that you met with him. I know that you two had coffee. Straight after you walked out of here, you walked into a restaurant with him. Grafton Tea Rooms, wasn’t it?’ He’s angry now and I can hear the sense of betrayal in his voice. ‘The same place where you both used to meet when you were trying to sell the company that you weren’t supposed to be selling – isn’t that right?’

I’m not expecting him to stop talking so suddenly and my silence is like an admission. By the time I’m ready to speak for myself again, he has resumed:

‘See, Jasmine, you have to be careful, don’t you? Never know who’s watching you. Did you think I wasn’t going to hear about that one? Because I did, and I was really fucking pissed, to be honest with you. I also know that he offered you a job and that you said yes, but he wouldn’t work with you under the gardening leave terms. I know that because his legal people got in touch with our legal person to enquire about the exact details. Seems a year is too long for him. You’re not worth waiting that long for. So don’t call me up now, begging me to go easy on you, not when you were going to betray me—’

‘Excuse me, who are you to talk about betrayal? We started that company together, Larry, together …’

We continue talking over one another, the same conversation we had eleven weeks ago when I was fired. In fact, the same conversation we had before I was fired, when he’d heard that I was making preparations with Simon to put us in a good position to sell.

It is pointless, and neither of us is prepared to back down until I hear his wife in the background, a sleepy, angry interruption, and Larry apologises softly then comes back on the phone, loud and angry and clear.

‘I’m not going to waste my time with this conversation. But hear me loud and clear, Jasmine: I. Will. Not. Drop. The. Gardening. Leave. Clause. Right now, if I could make it two years long I would. I don’t care what you do for the year – take a holiday, go on a fucking retreat, try finishing something you’ve started for once in your life – I don’t care, just don’t fucking call my number again, and especially not at this hour. It’s one year. One fucking year and then you can get back to starting and selling and never finishing, same as you always do, okay?’

He hangs up, leaving me shaking, reeling with anger.

I pace the kitchen, mumbling about finishing things that I’ve started, angrily compiling a list of as many things as I can think of. He has hit a nerve. It was sudden and surprising and it has hurt me more than anything else he has said, more than the act of firing me. It is in fact, the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to me and I am shaking. I continue to debate the point with him in my mind, but it is useless as I am me and I am him, and me as me will always win. I look at the mess of a garden, which sends me into a spiral of anger. I go outside and kick a roll of grass, my foot punctures the roll, and then I stamp on it, sending it tumbling off the pile and down on to the ground, opening and unravelling. The grass splits at the hole where I’ve kicked it. Embarrassed by my actions, and surprised, I look up and see your curtains flutter. I go back inside and slam the door.