Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

I realise I’ve been holding my breath the entire way and finally release it. The relief I feel surprises me; you have done that to me, you count to me, but this jars with what I have always felt about you.

‘Jasmine!’ A familiar voice breaks into my thoughts and I spin around to see Heather sitting on my front porch. She stands up and makes her way over to us.

My head swirls as I realise that you are about to come face to face with the person I have tried to protect against you all of my adult life.

13

One Sunday a month Heather’s circle of support meets. We have had these meetings ever since she was a teenager; in fact, Mum was the person who set all this up and even while she was undergoing treatment she continued to attend, no matter how sick she was. Even when I was a teenager and had better things to be doing with my time, she insisted that I come along. Although I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I am now glad that I did, because when Mum passed away I knew exactly how things were run and what direction they needed to go in. Person-centred planning is a group of people who meet together regularly to help somebody achieve what they would like to do in their lives. Heather is in charge of who she wants to invite and what she wants to talk about. We talk about Heather’s PATH – Planning Alternative Tomorrows with Hope – we talk about her dreams, how she could achieve these dreams, what is going on in her life and what are the next steps she needs to take. We talk about making her dreams a reality.

The meeting used to be weekly in the days when she was making plans for school, secondary school and what she wanted to study in college – which ended up being a residential college to learn how to live independently, how to get about on public transport, how to shop for food and essentials, cooking skills and preparation for the workplace. It was important to keep the meetings regular while she planned the direction she wanted her life to go in, but when the time came it was Heather herself who decided to switch to monthly meetings.

People who have attended in the past have included teachers, her support assistant – who Heather interviewed herself – someone from her college, the careers officer, her employers, and always me. Dad has come along a handful of times, but he isn’t good in these situations. He misunderstands the purpose. It is about planning, yes, and it is about doing. But it is also about listening to Heather and hearing how she feels about her place in the world and where she wants to be. Dad doesn’t have the patience to listen to these things. If it’s a job she wants, he’ll get it for her; if it’s an activity she wants to do, he’ll sort it out for her. But what I’ve learned from this process is that it helps me get inside Heather’s head. I want to hear the explanations for how and why and when. Like the time she announced that she wanted to leave her job packing bags at the local supermarket, even though it was a job she had spent a long time planning for. Dad was present at the meeting and wanted to rush through it all, gung-ho about getting her out of there because he hated her doing that job anyway. He completely missed the fact that the reason she wanted to leave the job was because somebody at the supermarket was being mean to her. The lady at the till was moving too fast, constantly snapping at her heels, making her feel like she wasn’t doing a good job, taking over the packing to hurry up the process when she felt Heather wasn’t moving fast enough. These are exactly the sort of things we need to hear from Heather at the meetings.

The meeting was planned for two p.m., yet here she is at one o’clock, making her way over to me and you, face to face with the man who embodies everything I have tried so hard to protect her from since I was a child. Words cannot describe how I feel in this moment, but I’ll try. I have gone from feeling warm and consoled by your words once again, consolation I was deliberately seeking from you – and that in itself makes me feel conflicted – to wanting to protect my sister from you. No wonder you can’t figure me out.

I fix all my attention on Heather, step towards her so she doesn’t come any closer to you, positioning myself so we’re two against one, with my arm wrapped around her shoulders protectively. I can’t look at your face; I don’t want to see how you might sneer or judge or analyse, or try to calculate another part of me through seeing her. I only look at her, beam at her with pride, oozing love for her from every pore, hoping you’ll pick up on it, remember your show, feel awful about it, reassess yourself, your job and your whole life. I give it that much energy. I’m sure Heather will sense how disgusting you are, how deplorable and unfair and nasty and judgemental you are. Regardless of what you say about it being purely to get the debate flowing, those words still pass through your lips, you are the source, the root, the creator. Heather possesses this talent to read people and there is never a better moment than now to see this skill in action. I want you to hold out your hand to her, I want her to deny you as she did with Ted Clifford. I want to see you wriggle and squirm with that surprised face you give me when I snap at you, when I turn from hot to cold.

‘Hello,’ I hear you say.

‘Hello,’ Heather responds.

She looks at me, then nudges me, wanting to be introduced.

‘This is my sister Heather,’ I say. ‘The most amazing person in the world.’

She giggles.

‘Heather, this is Matt. A neighbour,’ I say flatly.

You give me that intrigued, curious, studious look again. You know my hot and cold, my in between.

You wave at her. This bothers me, because it is correct behaviour for somebody in the Orange Wave Circle. Then Heather reaches out her hand. I turn to her in surprise, but she is looking at you with a polite smile on her face. I want to stop this exchange, this handshake with the devil, but I’m not sure that I can explain why I’m doing that to Heather, especially after the ruckus at Dad’s house – who I still haven’t heard from.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Heather,’ you say, shaking her hand. ‘That’s a cool bag you have.’

She is wearing the shoulder bag that I got her for her birthday five years ago. She wears it every day and keeps it looking brand new, making sure she cleans it, snips it of any tears. It’s a retro-style DJ bag, which is for storing vinyl records, along with the portable record player. Seeing as she prefers to listen to her vinyl records, I thought it would be a nice gift for her to be able to bring it from place to place. And she does, almost everywhere. The picture on the outside is of a vinyl record, so even on days when she’s not transporting her collection, she uses it to carry her purse, lunch and umbrella to and from work. Always those three things; I plead in vain with her to carry her mobile.

‘Thank you. Jasmine got it for me. It fits fifty records and my portable record player.’

‘You have a portable record player?’

‘A black Audio Technica AT-LP60 fully automatic belt-driven record player,’ she says, unzipping her bag to show him.

‘Hey, that’s very cool,’ you say, stepping forward to look in but not stepping too close. ‘And I see you’ve got some vinyl records there too.’

You are genuinely surprised, genuinely interested in her, genuinely want to see what she has in her DJ bag.

‘Yep. Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson …’ she flips through her collection and I watch your face.

‘Grandmaster Flash!’ you laugh. ‘Can I …?’ You reach towards her bag and I prepare for her to deny you.

‘Yes,’ she says happily.

You slide it out of its compartment and study it. ‘I can’t believe you have Grandmaster Flash.’