Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

I move to the TV room. It smells of coffee and vinegar, which matches the takeaway bags I saw you carry home from the car at eight p.m. before I was about to break in the first time. That was a good lesson. It taught me to wait, to be patient. I shine the torch on the shelving unit in the alcove. Books, DVDs – you like crime thrillers. I even see Turner and Hooch . There are framed photos on the shelves, family photos, babies, holidays, fishing trips, beach trips, first days of school. I wonder why Amy hasn’t taken them with her and I see it as a sign that she’s coming back, until my torch falls upon the naked walls adorned with hooks and realise that all this is what she left behind, including you. I am surprised to see a Psychology degree in your name and a framed photo of you in your graduation robes holding the scroll, but then I think of how you look at me sometimes, the way you try to read me as if seeing my soul and how you like to analyse me, everyone, and it makes sense. Your face grins up at me from underneath your graduation cap, as if you’ve just said something rude. You had a cheeky face, even then.

I think I hear a movement upstairs and I freeze, turn the torch off, hold my breath in the still dark silence and listen. The house is silent. I turn the torch back on and continue to root through the pigeonholes of the home-office desk in the corner overlooking the back patio. Old photos, car insurance, vouchers, random keys, no letter. I have been avoiding going upstairs for obvious reasons. It is my last resort, my worst-case scenario, but for a family home it is surprisingly clutter-free, no little piles of paperwork or collected mail. Perhaps upstairs is where I must go. I try to think of where you would keep such a thing. Not in a filing cabinet, that is too clinical, too impersonal. You have been keen to read it, which means you have been keeping it close at hand, somewhere you can regularly check on it, touch it, return to look at it. If it is not in your coat pocket that is hanging on the banister, then I must go upstairs.

It is not in your coat pocket.

I take a deep breath and then think I hear another noise at the back of the house, in the kitchen, and hold my breath, afraid someone will hear me exhale. I’m starting to panic, I need to exhale and my pulse in my ears is so loud it is stopping me from listening out and hearing what’s in the room next to me so I slowly exhale, a long shaky breath. This is ridiculous, I know it is. I should be at home in bed, not sneaking around your house. Watching it all these nights has somehow made me feel entitled; maybe I am a stalker, maybe this is what all stalkers feel, that their actions are entirely normal. But then I think of having to explain to you about writing the letter and I can’t and so I take a determined step on to the stairs. It creaks immediately and I freeze. I backtrack. There must be somewhere downstairs that I can find the letter instead of creeping into your bedroom while you sleep, which is an entirely new level of creepiness. And then I have a thought, an early memory, of something you said about how you’ve given up drink.

‘I have a photo of my father on the fridge. That helps me every time I go to open it to take a drink.’

‘That’s sweet.’

‘It’s not really. He was a raving alcoholic. The photo is there to remind me I don’t want to be like him.’

I redirect the torch down the hallway and move quickly and surely into the kitchen. I think the fridge is my answer. It was filled with drawings and gymnastic certificates but I didn’t check it for the letter. I lift the torch to shine it on the fridge door and I see the envelope, the real envelope with the fake letter and I grin with happiness but then BAM! Something hard whacks me across the side of the head, I feel it mostly in my ear, it slaps my face and I’m knocked to the ground, fall like a sack of potatoes, my legs dead beneath me, screaming in agony to the ground. I hear feet on the stairs and all I can think is that a burglar has attacked me. I have disturbed a burglar and now you are coming downstairs into danger and confusion and I must alert you, but first I must get the letter from the fridge and switch it with the original and that I could do if it were not for the ache I’m feeling in my head and the stickiness on my face.

‘I told you to wait!’ I hear you hiss, and I’m confused. You’re in on this too? The burglary of your own house? I think of insurance fraud and how I have stumbled into dangerous territory, and if you are in on it – which you must be, since you’re hissing at your accomplice who clubbed me, who seems to have entered the house from the back kitchen door – then I am in great danger. I should run. But first I should switch the letter on the fridge door. I lift my head up from the floor and I feel everything move beneath me. Though the room is still dark, the moonlight is casting the windowpane’s reflection on the tiled floor. It lights up the fridge and I have a surreal moment where I believe the moon, the universe is on my side, lighting the way for me, guiding me. But I can’t move.

I groan.

‘Who is it?’ you ask.

‘I don’t know, I just hit him.’

‘Let’s turn the lights on.’

‘We should call the police first.’

‘No. We can take care of this ourselves, teach this guy a thing or two.’

‘I do not condone—’

‘Come on, Dr J, what’s the point of a neighbourhood watch if we can’t—’

‘ Watch , not tie up and torture .’

‘What did you hit him with? Jesus, a frying pan? I told you to grab a golf club.’

‘He came at me quicker than I planned.’

‘Hold on, he’s trying to get away. He’s sliding …’

The light suddenly goes on. I am at the foot of the fridge, mere inches away from the letter. If I stretch my arm up, which I am doing, I can almost, almost , reach it.

‘Jasmine!’ you exclaim.

‘Oh dear Lord, oh dear Lord,’ Dr Jameson says.

The light is so bright I can’t see a thing and my head, Jesus my head.

‘You hit Jasmine?’

‘Well, I didn’t know it was her, did I?! Good gracious.’

‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ you say and you both try to lift me up and carry me away from the fridge, which makes me groan, and not just from the agony. I can see the letter get further and further away from me as you take me from the kitchen to the couch. I was so close.

‘What is she saying?’ Dr Jameson asks, moving his flopping oversized ear to my mouth.

‘She’s saying something about the fridge,’ you say, placing my head down on a pillow, concern etched all over your face.

‘The fridge, not a bad idea, Jasmine. I’ll get ice.’ Dr Jameson hurries away.

‘Will she need stitches?’

Stitches?

You examine me and I can see your strawberry-blond nose hairs. One wiry grey pokes out and I want to pull it. ‘What frying pan did you use?’ you ask Dr Jameson.

‘Non-stick, Tefal aluminium,’ he says, returning with provisions for my head. ‘I’ve got the entire set. Five SuperValu coupons and you only have to add fifteen euro. I do a mean French toast on it,’ he says, face pushed up close to mine as he concentrates. His breath smells like barley sugar.

‘Jasmine, what on earth were you doing?’ you ask incredulously.

I clear my throat. ‘I used my keys, I thought you had an intruder. Must have been Dr J,’ I say weakly, closing my eyes as he dabs at my head. ‘Ouch.’

‘Sorry, dear. It wasn’t me because I contacted Matt as soon as I saw your torch,’ Dr Jameson says.

‘Jasmine,’ you say in a low warning voice. ‘Cough it up.’

I sigh.

‘I gave you the wrong letter. From Amy. The one I gave you was one that I had written. For someone else. I got them confused. Mixed up the envelopes.’