Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

I spend a long time in the shower, crying with frustration, the hot water stinging my skin and leaving it red and raw. I finish with one clear vow in my mind. I will not lower myself to becoming your company, particularly at night. I believe this has been my lowest point and I will not fall to this level again. I will rise above this, I will rise above you. It is not just the Larry conversation that has upset me. What got me to that point in the first place was you. It was you who caused me to charge home and pick up the phone and call him. Because it was your words that made me look at myself, at my situation, and made me want to get out of it.

I hear your voice over and over: it was nice not to be alone out here for once . You have brought me into your world, without my permission, without my say-so, you have included me in your crisis, in your state of mind, you have likened me to you. And by doing that you have made me feel ashamed, because I have always believed your words are poison, that they are the worst thing about you, that they are dangerous.

But when I let my guard down, your words gave me warmth. It was nice not to be alone out here for once. When you said those words, they comforted me. I did not feel alone then either.

I will not let you do that to me again.

11

For the first time in a very long time when I wake up my room is flooded with yellow light and a sense of calm. It is unusual, different to the blue-grey light that barely lit the room over the past few months. It is the first of February and though spring has not yet sprung, it gives cause to believe it just might win the battle. There is a sense of it in the air, or perhaps it is because for the first time in a very long time I have woken up late. I don’t like lie-ins, they make me feel lazy; even after a late night I find a long walk by the bay is the only cure for me, but after the physical exertion of my late-night gardening I am exhausted. As soon as I move, I feel the stiffness in my limbs.

My radio tells me that I have slept for eight hours and once again the country has been battered by storms, ‘storm factory’ being the new term we’re growing used to hearing, along with ‘polar vortex’ – no doubt new names for babies in 2015. They warn that there’s another fortnight of mayhem on the way, thanks to unsettled weather from the Atlantic. The calmness outside is deceiving. Three cities are underwater, five-metre swells are forecast, and the talk on most stations turns to global warming and the melting polar ice that is fuelling the storms. January rainfall was 70 per cent above the norm and the outlook for February is more of the same. But not today. I look out the window and feel revived by the clear blue sky, the wispy occasional clouds. Even though I am still sore from my late-night workout in the garden, and embarrassed about you seeing it, I bury all that at the back of my mind.

I survey my hard work and am disappointed – no, devastated by what I see. At first I think somebody has come by and deliberately ransacked my newly laid turf, but on closer inspection I realise that I am in fact the culprit. Only with the benefit of my bedroom bird’s-eye view I can see that it encapsulates perfectly my state of mind last night as I was doing it. It resembles a badly sewn, unfinished patchwork quilt, and I am horrified by what I see. It’s as though my diary has been left open for everybody to read my deepest, darkest thoughts, and now I need to slam it closed before I am revealed to the world. I can’t wait until Monday for the landscaper to return and fix my mess. There’s no way I can endure two days with my fragile mental state displayed in the front garden for all to see.

Online research – something I should have made time for last night instead of letting adrenaline and anger rule me – is the answer. It educates me in how exactly to go about fixing the problem. One hour later I have returned from the garden centre and I’m ready and armed. Never do something that can’t be undone, that’s what I always tell myself, and I repeat it now as I assess the task ahead of me. Messy, time-consuming, challenging and frustrating, but possible. The landscaper had already prepared the soil for me perfectly; it had taken him longer than he’d said, but he had done it. Even though I had foolishly trodden all over the grass last night, as I realise today that I shouldn’t have, I carefully roll each piece of turf up again before lifting it to its correct place. I lay the first row along the straight edge where the soil meets the stones, slowly unrolling it to minimise damage. The one I had kicked my heel through still lies on the driveway like a corpse at a crime scene. I place the next roll as close to the last as I can and ensure good contact with the soil by tapping down firmly with the back of the rake. All this I now know I should have done last night, but I also know that I would not have had the patience for it. Last night was about moving, being busy, doing something – not about doing it right.

As I rectify my mistakes on this oddly calm day, I feel a stillness coming over me. I forget about everything that has riled me up so much over the past few days and weeks, and devote all my concentration to the job in hand. Distraction. My mind quietens as I continue the process for a few hours, covering the area in a brickwork pattern. I’m about to turn my attention to the sides, trimming the edges with a straight-edged board and a half-moon cutting tool, both of which I have bought for the purpose, when a car drives past the house. I don’t recognise the driver as one of my neighbours, but this happens a lot on weekends when people take drives along the coast and then explore the surrounding residential streets. I am used to seeing cars passing by, the back seats filled to the brim with kids, their faces pressed up against the glass for a gawk and older couples having a browse on their slow Sunday drives. We have the perfect cul de sac for window-shopping: it is pretty, welcoming, the kind of place people like to imagine themselves living in.

The driver has to do a three-point turn as it’s only a short road. I watch him checking the numbers on the houses, which is not an easy task as everybody has chosen to display them differently in different places. You have a black plaque with pretty pink flowers to display your number, Dr Jameson has a goose in flight and next door has a garden gnome with one hand holding up a 2, the other hand is holding up his trousers, which have dropped to display enormous red-and-white heart boxer shorts. Mine is the least exciting of all: a black letter box attached to the wall with 3 on it.

He parks outside my house and gets out. I am positive he can’t be looking for me, so I continue my gardening, but I’m unable to concentrate knowing he is looking around. Then I’m conscious of the fact his eyes have settled on me. I hear footsteps as he comes closer.

‘Excuse me, I’m looking for Jasmine Butler.’

I look up, wipe sweat from my grimy forehead. He’s tall, brown-skinned, with chiselled high cheekbones. His eyes are a striking green, which jar with his skin tone, and his Afro rises and then descends down over his eyes in tiny tight corkscrew curls. He is wearing a black suit, white shirt, green tie, shiny black shoes. He makes me remind myself to breathe.

From the way I’m looking at him dumbly, he thinks I haven’t heard him.

‘Are you Jasmine Butler?’

He is remarkably familiar but I haven’t seen him before, I would remember that. And then I realise it’s his voice I recognise. The telephone salesman.

‘Or perhaps you’re Penelope Paddington,’ he says, and as he purses his lips together to hide his smile, two enormous dimples appear on his cheeks.

I smile, knowing I’m caught out. ‘I’m Jasmine,’ I say, my voice coming out in a croak. I clear it.