Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

‘My name is Monday O’Hara. I called you a few times on the phone during the last couple of weeks.’

‘You didn’t leave your name or contact details,’ I say, wondering if I heard his name correctly.

‘True. It’s a private matter. I wanted to talk to you myself, and not … your housekeeper.’

I continue to look at him. So far he hasn’t given me enough to get off the grass for, or even welcome him into my home.

‘I work for Diversified Search International. I’ve been hired by DavidGordonWhite to find suitable candidates for a new position, and I think you more than meet the requirements they are looking for.’

I feel myself floating as he continues.

‘I called your office quite a few times but couldn’t reach you. I didn’t leave any messages there, don’t worry. I didn’t want to raise a red flag so I told them it was a personal matter. But they were stronger gatekeepers than I assumed they’d be; you may or may not be happy to hear that.’

I struggle with how to respond to that. It was clear when we spoke on the phone that he doesn’t know I’ve been fired. I am unsure as to why nobody told him that, perhaps because technically I haven’t been fired, I am still contractually tied to them even though they won’t let me past the front door.

‘You’re a difficult woman to find,’ he says, with a smile, which is a beautiful thing to behold. Two definite dimples and a tiny chip in his front tooth: even his imperfection is perfectly perfect. In my humble opinion.

My house is a mess. I haven’t got around to cleaning the muck I trampled into the floor during my rampage last night and my dirty knickers are in a pile on the kitchen floor in front of the washing machine, waiting for my towels to finish their cycle. I cannot bring him into the house.

‘I’m sorry to bother you on a Saturday, but I find out-of-work hours are the best time to deal with people. I’m very conscious of the need to keep your office from finding out about our contact.’

I’m still thinking about the state of the house, a long pause that he mistakes for mistrust, so he apologises and digs in his pockets and retrieves a business card. He hands it to me. He has to lean his long arms across the grass to reach me; he knows not to step on the grass and I like that. I examine the card. Monday O’Hara. Headhunter. Diversified Search International. The whole thing makes me smile.

‘We don’t have to talk now, I just wanted to make contact first and—’

‘No, no, now is perfect. Well, not right now …’ I run my hand through my scraped-back dirty hair and find a crusty leaf in it. ‘Would you mind if I took twenty minutes to quickly change? We could meet at the Marine Hotel around the corner?’

‘Perfect.’ There’s a flash of that gorgeous smile, but then it’s all locked away in a very square jaw and he nods, business-like, at me and makes his way back to his car. I have to work hard not to dance into my house.

I sit in on an oversized couch in the Marine Hotel lobby, feeling refreshed and looking more human, while Monday heads off in search of a waiter. I feel nervously excited about what’s to come. At long last, something that feels like a step forward. He has no idea that I’ve been fired, and I still haven’t told him, or even let on that I’m no longer working there, and if it does slip out, he doesn’t need to know that it wasn’t my decision to leave. I know exactly why I’m keeping it to myself: because I want to play. I want to play along, feel like the desired woman with two companies fighting over her, instead of the loser, fired from her job and with nothing on the horizon. Or maybe, just maybe, in an embarrassing bout of ego and weakness, I don’t want the handsome man to see me as the fired failure that I currently feel like.

A woman and a little girl, her daughter, around four years old, sit at the table in front of me. The little girl picks up her spoon and lightly taps on the glass.

‘I’d like to make toast,’ she says, and her mother howls with laughter.

‘ A toast, Lily.’

‘Oh,’ she giggles. ‘I’d like to make a toast.’ She clinks the glass again, stretches her neck and puts on a posh, serious face.

Her mother cracks up laughing again.

The little girl is funny, but it is her mother’s reaction that makes me join in the laughter. She is laughing so hard, she’s crying and patting at the corners of her eyes to stop it.

‘So what’s your toast about?’

‘The toast would like to thank,’ Lily says in a deep, posh voice, ‘the butter and the jam.’

Her mother rolls over on the couch, laughing.

‘And the egg, for making it into soldiers.’

Lily sees me listening and stops, embarrassed.

‘Don’t let me stop you,’ I call. ‘You’re doing a great job.’

‘Oh,’ her mother sits up and wipes her eyes, trying to catch her breath. ‘You crack me up, Lily.’

Lily makes a few more speeches, which have me laughing to myself. I sit still as can be while they are busy together, but I will not be still and alone for long. My headhunter returns. This man has hunted me, it feels animalistic. I feel myself blush and I try to put a stop to the ridiculous antics in my head. I fix all my attention on Monday, all thoughts of the little girl gone from my mind.

‘I ordered you a green tea,’ he says, checking.

‘Perfect. Thanks. So, your name is Monday. I’ve never heard that before.’

He leans over, placing his elbows on his knees. This brings him quite close, but to sit back would be rude so I get lost in his face and then try to remember that I shouldn’t be, that I should be concentrating on the words coming through his chipped white tooth and out of his sumptuous mouth and why I am here. Because he has found me, sought me out, and thinks I’m a highly qualified, wonderful person. Or something like that.

I can tell he is completely at ease with my question, and has no doubt been asked it a thousand times.

‘My mother is nuts,’ he says with an air of finality, and I laugh.

‘I was hoping for more than that.’

‘Me too,’ he replies, and we smile. ‘She used to be a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra. Now she gives lessons in a caravan in Connemara, in the garden of a house that she refuses to live in because she’s convinced she saw the ghost of her dad. She named me Monday because I was born on a Monday. My middle name is Leo because I was born in late July. O’Hara is her surname, not my father’s.’ He smiles and his eyes move from mine to my hair. ‘Her hair is as red as yours, though I didn’t inherit that. Just her freckles.’

It’s true, he has a beautiful smattering of freckles across his nose and the tips of his cheeks. I picture a red-haired woman with freckles and pale skin in a field in Galway with a cello between her thighs. It’s a bit racy.

My turn. ‘My granddad brought my mum a bunch of winter jasmine from his garden when she was in hospital after I was born. So she named me Jasmine.’

He seems surprised. ‘People rarely reciprocate my name story.’

‘If you have a name story, you have to tell it,’ I say.

‘I don’t usually have a choice,’ he says. ‘A mere introduction requires explanation. It’s the same for my sister, Thursday.’

‘You do not have a sister called Thursday!’

‘No.’ He laughs, enjoying my reaction.

‘Well, I do have a sister. My granddad brought a bunch of heather to my mum after she was born. So she called her Heather.’

‘That’s a bit predictable,’ he teases, curling his lip.

‘I suppose. My brother Weed lucked out.’

He narrows his eyes suspiciously, then laughs.

‘Where’s your dad from?’