Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

I had received a letter every day since I’d met Life the previous Sunday. I had ignored all of them and nothing was going to change this Monday. I stepped over the envelope like a child whose only power is to exercise authority on a dolly. Mr Pan must have known what he’d done and sensed my mood because he stayed clear of me. I showered, pulled a dress down from the curtain pole and was ready in minutes. I gave Mr Pan his breakfast, ignored the letter for the second week running and left the apartment.

‘Morning, Lucy,’ my neighbour said, opening the door as I stepped outside. I was suspicious of her timing; if I didn’t know any better I’d have guessed she had been standing at her door waiting for me.

‘Morning,’ I said and searched my irritated brain for her name but there was no room for information, only frustration. I turned my back on her and locked the door.

‘Do you mind if I ask a favour?’ Her voice sounded shaky and I immediately turned around. Her eyes were red and swollen as if she’d been crying all night. I felt myself soften as my bad mood took time out. ‘Would you mind leaving this at security for me? I’ve organised a courier to collect it but they said they wouldn’t come upstairs. He’s sleeping so I couldn’t leave him …’

‘Of course, no problem.’ I took the sports bag from her.

She wiped her eyes, and said thanks but her voice had given up on her and it came out as a whisper.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes, thanks, I just … em …’ That shaky voice again while she tried to compose herself. She straightened her back and cleared her throat, tried to maintain some kind of dignity but her eyes kept filling up and she fought hard to control them. ‘My mother was taken to hospital yesterday. It’s not looking very good.’

‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’

She waved a hand dismissively to hide her embarrassment, tried to compose herself. ‘There are just a few things that I thought she’d need in there. I mean, what do you give a person who …’ She finished the sentence in her head.

‘They won’t let you visit?’

‘Oh, they will. I just can’t get in to her because …’ She looked back into the apartment to her baby.

‘Oh.’ I knew what I was supposed to say next but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, wasn’t sure if it was right. I spoke reluctantly, ‘I could babysit for you, if you want. For …’ I didn’t know whether to say him or her, ‘the baby.’

‘Yes. Conor.’ She cleared her throat again. ‘It’s very kind of you to offer but I don’t really like leaving him …’

‘I completely understand,’ I jumped in, relieved. ‘I’ll leave these at the desk for you.’

She whispered her thanks again. I was at the elevator when she raised her voice down the hall. ‘Lucy, if I change my mind, and do need you, if it’s, you know, an emergency, how will I contact you?’

‘Oh. Well. You could wait till I get back at around sevenish or …’ I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t want to give her my mobile. I knew it would lead to general annoyance down the line. ‘You could email me …’ I looked at her face, so distraught but hopeful. Her mother was possibly dying and I was telling her to email me. ‘Or you could call me.’ Her shoulders seemed to relax. I gave her my number and got out of there. I got a cappuccino from Starbucks at the end of my block; I bought a newspaper and had to miss seeing cute guy on the train in order to drive Sebastian to work. I had to bring him to the garage again that day and I was already dreading the bill. I used my ID card to get in through the turnstiles at the entrance to my office building. Mantic was outside the city in a new commercial outlet with architecture that looked like an extraterrestrial spaceship landing. Ten years ago they had moved the factory to Ireland and merged the offices together in a clever manoeuvre to increase productivity, and since moving here and paying extortionate rents, their profits had decreased and they’d had to lose one hundred employees from the twelve-hundred-strong company. Mantic was Greek for having prophetic and divine powers, which was ironic really, seeing all the trouble they were in, but no one was laughing at the joke. It seemed that, for the time being anyway, things had settled and we were assured that we were safe but most felt delicate after the shock of losing so many before. We were still surrounded by the empty desks and chairs of those who had already gone and though we held sympathy for the people who had lost their jobs, we had also enjoyed finding better-positioned desks and more comfortable seats.

I had been surprised I wasn’t one of the first to go. I worked as a translator in the instruction-manual section, which was now a team of six people. Translating instruction manuals for the company’s appliances into German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Italian may seem like an easy enough task and it was, only I didn’t speak Spanish, or I did, but not very well and so I outsourced that part of the job to a contact I had who spoke very good Spanish, in fact perfect Spanish because she was in fact from Madrid. She didn’t mind doing it and it was nothing that the gift of a bottle of poitín at Christmas didn’t sort. It had worked for me so far; however my contact was often lazy and slow and left me on tenterhooks by delivering the translations at the eleventh hour. I had received a first degree in business and languages and a masters in international business. I’d spent a year working in Milan, a year in Germany and I’d done my masters in a Paris business school; I’d taken night classes to learn Dutch as a kind of a personal project but it was on a friend’s hen night in Madrid where I’d met the woman who would become my Spanish alibi. Despite my not having studied law like my father and Riley or medicine like Philip I think my father was marginally proud of my university accomplishments and my knowledge of languages, until I moved to this job and whatever little delight he had for me went out the window.

The first person in the office I met every morning was Nosy Bitch, but who was christened Louise by her parents. I shall name her Nosy in the interest of taste. She was the administrator, was getting married in twelve months’ time and had been planning her big day ever since Day One in the womb. When Fish Face, the boss, wasn’t around, she flicked through magazines and ripped out pictures to create mood boards of her perfect day. Not that I was a woman of absolute substance but I liked to think I possessed at least some and I was tired of her incessant chat about all things cosmetic, which would have been the same choices regardless of the man she married. Her inquiry into other people’s “special day” was endless. She wasn’t so much a magpie for information as a piranha because she devoured every word as soon as it was spoken. Conversations with her were interviews and I knew every question was designed to suit her making a decision about her own life but never out of courtesy to ask about mine. She would turn her nose up at things she didn’t like, and when she heard something that she found pleasing she would barely listen to the end of the sentence before scurrying back to her desk to document her new findings. I disliked her quite intensely and the fact that she wore tight T-shirts, with ridiculous logos, that failed to cover her love handles continued to annoy me more and more every day. It was the minutiae of any person that watered the seeds of dislike, though on the contrary the things I hated most about Blake, like his teeth grinding in his sleep, ended up being the very things I missed most about him. I wondered if Jenna the bitch minded his teeth grinding.

Today Nosy wore a blazer over a black T-shirt, which had a picture of Shakespeare and beneath read Prose before Hos. Sometimes I wondered if she even understood what they meant.