Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

Though perhaps my red circle is the largest of all. Some people remain strangers forever.

Confused, I drive back to my garden with my tail between my legs. I go back to thinking. I must snap the dead heads off and prepare for summer.

Summer

The seasons between spring and autumn, comprising in the Northern Hemisphere the warmest months of the year: June, July and August.

The period of finest development, perfection, or beauty previous to any decline: the summer of life.

20

I love June, and June in a garden showered with love is the greatest reward a gardener could receive for their hard work. Every month and season has its beauty, but summer is when it is at its most vigorous, its brightest, its proudest, its most dramatic. If spring is hopeful, summer is proud, autumn is humble and winter is resilient. When I think of spring I see big and youthful bambi-like eyes looking up at me through long lashes, when I think of summer I see shoulders back, a chest heaved up and puffed out. When I think of autumn I think of a dipped head with a small smile lost in nostalgia, and for winter I imagine bruised knobbly knees and fists, growling, ready for the fight.

June brings constant watering, mulch renewal, weekly mowing, a half-dozen hanging baskets, pink peonies, cream roses, perennials of all different colours and an ample herb garden, which I have growing in a pot outside my kitchen. June brings frequent visits of you and your children to your garden where you have also begun to take a keen interest by beginning a kitchen garden at the side of your house to rival my garden, sowing runner beans and French beans, carrots, Brussels sprouts and courgettes. We race to see who can get outside the earliest each morning to tend to our gardens and when it is us first we smugly give the morning wave to the late arrivals. Now it is a competition to see whose bedroom curtains open first. There we both work, you in your garden, me in mine, while the Malones sit outside their front door, Mrs Malone in her chair, the stroke rendering her immobile and unable to speak and read, while Mr Malone reads to her, Patrick Kavanagh’s poems in Mr Malone’s soft Donegal lilt, drifting over the honeysuckle to me. You and I can go hours without speaking, without calling random thoughts or gardening questions across the road, but it feels as if we are working together. Maybe that is just me. And there is something nice about that. When I see you take a sip of refrigerated bottled water, it reminds me to take mine. When I straighten my back and announce I’m going to eat lunch, you agree that you will too. We don’t eat together, but we stick to the same schedule. Sometimes I’ll sit on my garden bench and eat my salad, and you’ll sit at your table that you still haven’t moved from the front lawn, and we’ll be in each other’s company but not really. We both wave good morning and good evening to the corporate man who is renting number six, who drives past us in his BMW but who has failed to notice us so far and drives on unaware of our neighbourly salutes. At first his nonchalance annoyed me. Now it both annoys me and makes me pity him, because I know exactly what is on his mind. He has no time for us, for our mundane neighbourly intrusion in his life. He is too busy. He has things on his mind. Real things. Distractions.

And I am coming closer to possibly becoming that person again as June brings my job interview. As soon as Monday informed me of the date I started willing it to come quickly, but now it’s almost here and I want the week to slow down. June ninth, June ninth, I’m so nervous about it, I try not to think about it, though Monday won’t let me off the hook, calling over to run through questions with me over a dinner I’ve cooked. I’m not nervous about it because I don’t feel competent, I’m nervous because I feel I am competent and as the weeks have gone by I have grown to realise I want this job more than ever and I worry I won’t get it. If I don’t get this job, it’s the beginning of unemployment becoming an issue, because it is out of my control while I’m on gardening leave. I don’t want to officially feel bored, worthless, uncertain and panicking about my future. In a way, this is the calm before the storm, and if this is calm …

‘Okay, so tell me again from the start, Ms Butler.’

‘Monday,’ I groan, as we sit at the kitchen table and he goes through the interview for the tenth time. ‘Do you do this with all your headhuntees?’

‘No.’ He looks away, feathers ruffled.

‘So why am I getting special treatment?’

Say it, say it , I will him to say the something I want to hear so badly.

‘I want you to get the job.’

‘Why?’ I leave a long silence.

‘All the other candidates have jobs,’ he finally says. ‘You deserve it.’

I sigh. Not the answer I was hoping for. ‘Thanks. Who are they, anyway? Are they better than me?’

‘You know I can’t tell you that,’ he says, smiling. ‘Besides, you knowing wouldn’t make a difference.’

‘It might. I could sabotage their chances on the day of the interview. Slash their tyres, put pink hair dye in their shampoo, that kind of thing.’

He laughs, looks at me in the way that makes my insides melt, as though I both interest and baffle him at the same time.

‘By the way,’ he says, while I clear away the dishes. ‘There’s been a change of plan. The interview has been moved to the tenth.’

I stop scraping leftover food into the bin and look at him. My throat tightens, my stomach clenches. He notices the silence, looks up at me. ‘And you just thought you’d mention that now.’

‘It’s only a day later, Jasmine – don’t look so scared,’ he says, smiling, rubbing his hand along his jaw as he studies me.

‘I’m not scared, I’m …’ I debate whether to tell him or not. I don’t know why I wouldn’t tell him, but not telling him reveals to me that I’m not – in this moment – fully committing to this interview and that scares me. I need this interview. I need this job. I need to get back on track.

June tenth is the day Heather goes on her four-day holiday to Fota Island with Jonathan. All that I intend doing while she’s gone is to sit around at home waiting, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for a neighbour to bang on my door and tell me something has happened, the way they do it in the movies, waiting for a guard to take his hat off and dip his head respectfully. If I go to the job interview that day I won’t be able to fully concentrate on wondering what Heather is doing. Some would say the distraction would be good for me, but no, it will mean switching my phone off for at least an hour, it will mean not being able to listen to my senses, the possible sudden strike of fear that could alert me to the fact that something is wrong, leaving me unable to jump in my car and drive to Cork at a moment’s notice. I want to get a job, but Heather should be my main priority. This debacle won’t do.

‘Jasmine,’ Monday says, joining me in the kitchen. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘No,’ I lie, and he knows I’m lying.

After he leaves, I stay at the kitchen table and bite all of my nails down to the quick.

Monday calls me on Thursday ninth when I am in Heather’s apartment packing with her, to make sure everything is okay for her trip the following day. He is suspicious and he is right to be, I am vague, and though I am committed to going to the interview in my head, when I say the words aloud even I don’t believe them. I need the job. I need to get my life back on track. But Heather. My heart is completely torn and I am overwhelmed with worry.

‘See you tomorrow, Jasmine,’ Monday says.

‘See you tomorrow,’ I finally say and I almost choke on the final word.