Cecelia Ahern - The Year I Met You

‘They’re only roses,’ Monday said, but they’re not only anything. And I told him exactly why this was so, and he listened, because he always listens, and when I was finished he kissed me and told me, for the first time, that is exactly why he is in love with me. And now roses remind me of his love for me.

But roses, like you and I, have their issues. Roses planted in soil that has grown roses for a number of years are prone to a disease known as rose sickness. If you plant new roses in this situation you must take out as much of the old soil as possible and replace it with fresh soil from another part of the garden which hasn’t grown roses before. This makes me think of Mr Malone, trying to grow in exactly the same place as his wife has died. It makes me think of anyone who is trying to grow where something, even a part of themselves, has died. We all experience that sickness. It is better to move, uproot ourselves and start afresh; then we will flourish.

I awake one November morning to the sound of dragging coming from outside – a familiar sound, like a screeching of nails on blackboard – and I leap out of bed. It brings me back, magically transports me to another time in my life. I move away from Monday’s arm, which earlier in the night was protective but now feels heavy and dead across my chest, and I slip out of bed. I look out of the window and I see you, pulling the garden table across the drive.

My heart skips a beat, my stomach does an unusual flip, not of excitement but of sorrow and loss, unable and unprepared to move on, to accept change or say goodbye. Instant grief. I can’t watch you do this. I throw on a tracksuit and hurry outside. I must help you do this. I grab one end of the table and you look up at me. You smile.

Corporate Man speeds by. We both take a hand off the table to wave. He doesn’t register us. We laugh and continue. We don’t speak, yet we work together well, manoeuvring the heavy table around the side of the house and into the back garden. It almost feels like a removal, as though we’re carrying the coffin of a dear friend. We do it together and I feel a lump in my throat.

We place the table down in the back garden, on the patio area outside the kitchen and we replace the chairs that you have already carried around.

‘Amy’s coming back,’ you say.

‘That’s terrific news,’ I finally say, surprised I’ve managed to push sound past the lump in my throat.

‘Yeah, it is,’ you say, but you don’t look so happy. ‘I can’t mess this up.’

‘You won’t.’

‘Don’t let me.’

‘I won’t,’ I say, touched by the responsibility you have entrusted me with.

You nod and we make our way around to the front garden. Fionn is sitting inside the car messing with the stereo, changing stations to find a song he wants.

‘You fixed it.’

‘It wasn’t broken,’ you say, confused.

‘But you said … Never mind.’

The penny drops as you realise your earlier lie has been caught out. ‘The Guns N’ Roses song.’ You sigh. ‘My dad used to hit my mum and me. The day we finally got rid of him, the day I finally faced up to him, me and Mum turned “Paradise City” as high as it could go and we danced around the kitchen together. I’ve never seen her so happy.’

Your freedom song. I knew it meant something, I wanted it to mean something on those cold dark nights when you came catapulting down the road like you’d been away the longest time and couldn’t wait to get home to your family, but then always felt locked out even when you weren’t. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

‘Well, it beats “Love is a Battlefield”,’ you say. My mouth falls open. ‘What? You don’t think I can’t hear you blaring that thing every day. When your windows are open I can hear you, you know, and sometimes even see you with your hairbrush.’ You imitate me, doing a woeful eighties dance.

‘I do not sing into a hairbrush,’ I protest.

You’re smiling at me nervously and I realise this is just your attempt to move on from what you revealed to me, in the only way you know how.

‘It’s a deodorant bottle, I’ll have you know, and I’m an excellent lip-syncher.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ you laugh.

I look across at my house and I see Monday watching us from my bedroom window. He moves away when we catch him.

‘That’s going well,’ you say.

I nod. ‘Today’s the day,’ I say, and on his confused expression I explain: ‘My year’s up.’

You look taken aback, surprised. ‘Well. Fancy that.’

‘I thought maybe you knew, with the table.’

‘No. Just felt right.’ We both stare at the place the table used to be. The grass is flattened where the table legs used to stand. The soil shows through. You will have to re-seed.

‘Have you found anything yet?’ you ask.

‘No.’

‘You will.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’ve lost your confidence, but you’ll get it back,’ you say, reassuringly. And I know they’re not empty words because, of all people, you know.

‘Thanks.’

‘Well. It’s been an interesting year.’ You hold out your hand. I stare at it, take it, shake it once, then step closer for a hug.

We embrace, on the grass in the front garden, where the table used to be.

‘You never did tell me what I did wrong,’ you say gently, into my neck. ‘To make you so unhappy. But I think I know.’

I freeze, uncertain how to reply. It has been a long time since I’ve thought of you being that man, that man that I hated for so long. Neither of us move from the embrace, I think it’s easier for both of us not to have to look at each other. You speak into my neck, I can feel your hot breath on my skin.

‘It was your sister, wasn’t it?’

My heart pounds and I’m sure you can feel it. It gives me away.

‘I’m sorry.’

The apology shocks me at first, and then nothing. And I realise that’s not really what I needed. You spent the year showing me you are sorry, that you never meant it in the first place. It doesn’t matter any more. You’re forgiven. I pull away from the embrace, kiss you on the forehead, then cross the road back to my house.

Madra is digging furiously in the garden, he and I clash on issues such as this. Monday is dressed and is standing at the open door. He waves at you, you wave back.

‘Madra!’ I shout. ‘No! Honey, how could you let him …? Oh, my flowers!’

He’s digging at the foot of the sign you bought for me, the one which says, Miracles only grow where you plant them and I fall to my knees to fix the mess, but as I do, my eye falls upon a box in the soil. A metal box, like a rusted treasure box.

‘What the …? Monday, look!’

I look up at Monday, expecting surprise, but he knows already. He’s smiling at me. He lowers himself to his knees and I think he’s going to help me tidy my flowers but instead he says, ‘Open it.’

And I do. And oh, do I do.

This year has been the metamorphosis of me. Not on the outside. On the outside I look the same, a little older perhaps. On the inside I have changed. I feel it. And it is like magic. My garden is the mirror of me. My garden that once looked barren and sterile is now full and blooming and ripe. It thrives and it prospers. Perhaps you could say the same of me. I lost something that I thought defined me and I felt like a shell of a person. Instead of trying to get it back, I had to figure out why I couldn’t be whole all by myself.

The world is fascinated by instant transformations, human makeovers or a magician’s sleight of hand hidden with a flourish. Quick as a snap, from there to here, blink and we’ve missed it. My shift wasn’t instant, and often the slow pace of change can be painful, lonely and confusing, but without us realising it happening, it happens. We look back and think ‘Who was that person?’ when during it all we think, ‘Who am I becoming?’ And at what exact point was it that we crossed over that line, when one version of us became the next? But it is thanks to the slowness that we remember the journey, we reserve the sense of where we were, where we are going and why. Destination completely unknown, we can value the crossing.