Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

‘Yeah.’ I scratched my head. ‘I just said I could speak a language, but I can’t.’ I threw it away, hoped that we could laugh over it and it would be gone but I knew I couldn’t be so lucky.

Melanie threw her head back and laughed again. ‘What was it? Swahili or something?’

‘No,’ I laughed awkwardly.

‘Why, what language did you say? Honestly, Cosmo, I have to squeeze information about herself out from her all the time.’

‘Spanish.’

Her dark eyes darkened a little but she smiled, though not as ecstatically. ‘You’re even worse at Spanish than me.’

‘Yeah,’ I smiled. I wanted to change the subject, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t forced and unnatural.

‘But what if they’d asked you to use it?’ she said, and I was sure she was testing me.

‘They did.’ I took a sip of my drink. ‘They did all the time. Our main manual languages are English, French, Dutch and Italian.’

‘And Spanish,’ she said, studying me.

‘And Spanish,’ I confirmed.

She sucked on her straw, her eyes not moving from mine. ‘So what did you do?’ She was slowly getting it, or she’d already got it. Or I was paranoid but I already knew my paranoia was instinct so either way I was in trouble.

‘I got a little help.’

Life was looking from her to me and me to her, sensing something was up but not knowing exactly what. I waited for him to take his computer out to search for the answer but he didn’t. He politely sat it out.

‘From who?’ she asked. She was still now. Tense. Expectant. Waiting for confirmation.

‘Melanie, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry, just answer the question,’ she said coldly.

‘The answer is yes and I’m sorry.’

‘You went to Mariza.’

‘Yes.’

She stared at me, shocked. Even knowing it was coming, she couldn’t believe it. I thought she was going to throw her drink over me but the anger subsided and she just looked hurt. ‘You’ve been in contact with Mariza?’

Mariza was the love of her life who’d broken her heart very badly and we were all destined to hate her for the rest of our lives. And I did, until she emailed me one day asking after Melanie’s well-being. I’d done the proper friend thing at first, being coldly distant and distantly cold, telling lies about how Melanie was doing great, but then it changed and I needed her.

‘Only a little contact. It was just for translations, nothing personal.’

‘Nothing personal?’

‘Okay maybe a little. She was always asking about you, I told her you were travelling the world, really successful, meeting other people, I never ever told her anything about you that you wouldn’t have wanted me to say. I promise. She was worried about you.’

‘Sure she was.’ Then another thought. ‘You’ve been in that job for how long?’

‘Two and a half years,’ I mumbled. I was so embarrassed, partly because it was happening in front of my life but mostly because it was happening at all.

‘So for two and a half years you’ve been contacting her. Lucy, I can’t believe this.’ She stood up, took a few random steps in different directions but ultimately didn’t want to go anywhere. She returned to the table but remained standing. ‘How would you feel if I had spent the last two and a half years contacting an ex of yours without your knowledge, while you haven’t heard a thing directly from them since the moment they broke up with you? The amount of times I wondered what she was doing, or where she was, and you knew all that time and didn’t say anything. How would you feel if I did that to you?’

Life looked at me. I felt he was urging me to say something, something about Blake. I couldn’t risk him telling a truth at this time. Not now, it was the wrong time, but I couldn’t lie.

‘I understand. I’d be incredibly hurt too.’ I swallowed. ‘But you do speak to Blake all the time,’ I said in my defence.

She looked at me as though I were stupid. ‘Blake is different. Blake didn’t just decide one day for no clear reason to step on your heart and crush it into a million little pieces. You left Blake. You have no idea how I feel.’

Life’s eyes were bearing into me. Speak now or forever hold your peace. I held my peace.

She stopped herself before she said too much, though she already had. ‘I need to take a minute, I just need to get some air.’ She grabbed her cigarettes from the table and went outside.

I looked at my life. ‘Happy now?’

‘I’m feeling a little better.’

‘The better I do for you, the more I alienate other people. What good is that for me?’

‘Right now, not much, but down the line it’ll pay off. They just need to get to know you.’

‘They know me.’

‘You don’t even know you, how can you expect them to?’

‘Very philosophical.’ I grabbed my bag.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘But we just got here.’

‘She doesn’t want me here.’

‘She never said that.’

‘She didn’t have to.’

‘So make it up to her.’

‘How?’

‘By staying. You’ve never done that before.’

‘And do what?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Dance.’

‘I am not dancing with you.’

‘Come on.’ He stood up and grabbed my hands and pulled me up. I fought him but he was strong.

‘I don’t dance,’ I said, trying to pull myself away from him.

‘You used to. You and Blake were Dirty Dancing competition winners two years in a row.’

‘Well, I don’t dance any more. There’s no one even on the dance floor, we’ll look like tools. And I’m not dirty dancing with you.’

‘Dance like they’re not watching.’

Which they were, including Melanie who had come back inside and was currently watching us from the darkness, even though she was mad at me. I felt a weight I didn’t even know was there lift from my shoulders at having revealed a truth. Life was like a drunken uncle at a bad wedding, attempting to dance like John Travolta in a bizarre mix between Pulp Fiction and Stayin’ Alive, but he was happy and he made me smile. So I did a little Uma Thurman and danced with Life like no one was watching until we were the last on the floor and last out the door. He was persuasive; life has a way of getting what it wants when it really knows what it wants.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘So tell me about your dad,’ Life asked the following morning. We were sitting on a park bench drinking coffee from take-out cups and watching Mr Pan chasing a butterfly and leaping around with such joy I tried not to think about the fact the last time he’d felt grass under his feet was when I’d walked it into the flat.

‘First of all, it’s not Dad,’ I corrected him. ‘It’s Father. He made that very clear as soon as our lips could form actual words. And secondly, there’s not much to tell.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

Life turned to the old woman beside him. ‘Excuse me, this lady’s boyfriend left her but they concocted a lie to make people think it was the other way around.’

‘Oh,’ the lady said, confused, thinking she should have known what he was talking about but couldn’t quite figure it out.

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ I grumbled.

‘You lie, I tell a truth,’ he repeated his mantra.

‘I didn’t lie, there’s really not much to tell about my father.’

‘Lucy, has it ever occurred to you that I might be here for a specific reason? And as soon as I investigate all areas and find the thing that’s wrong with you, I’m gone, out of your life. You won’t have to see me again and imagine how happy your days will be then? So it’s in your best interest to co operate, even if you think the thing I’m asking you about is a non-issue.’