Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

Life laughed loudly and clapped his hands. ‘That’s a good impression. Isn’t it, Lucy?’

I scowled.

‘He’s her ex-boyfriend,’ Life explained to Donal, who immediately stopped smiling and looked worried.

‘I’m really sorry, I wouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Life said, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Or as Blake would say, “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”’

Donal laughed but turned it into a cough instead for my benefit.

‘We can talk about the big trip tomorrow. In the mean time, give the man your phone, he needs to call his father.’

‘My battery’s low,’ I said.

Life gave me a look and spoke in a warning tone. ‘Lucy, give the man your phone.’

‘The battery is low,’ I said slowly, so that he’d understand.

‘Fine, you made me do this.’ Life turned to Donal. ‘Donal, I am not Lucy’s friend. I am Lucy’s life, I have contacted her in an effort to fix the mess she has made of herself. So far you have done a wonderful job with her carpet. I’m spending time with her because right now she needs me, though at the moment I’m strongly considering medication as the best course of action.’

I gasped.

‘You lied about the battery on your mobile.’ He justified his truth.

I opened and closed my mouth but nothing would come out. I reached into my pocket and grudgingly handed Donal the phone.

‘Let me walk you to the door,’ I said, taking one step to get there. I held it open for him. While Donal was out of earshot I added in a hushed voice, ‘I thought you could claim it on expenses. I can’t afford my own bill, never mind other people making calls.’

‘I’ll give you the fifty cent,’ Life said and threw me a cheeky smile, revealing new sparkling white teeth, before disappearing down the hallway. When I turned around, Donal was looking at me with a shocked expression as though he’d seen a ghost.

‘What?’ I asked, worried. ‘What happened?’

‘Where did you get this photo?’ He lifted up the phone, showing me the pair of Don Lockwood’s eyes on my screen saver.

‘The guy who owns the eyes sent it to me,’ I replied, confused. ‘Why?’

Realisation passed over his face. ‘Because they’re mine.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

‘What are you talking about?’ I stayed at the door, back pressed up against the metal while my mind ran through the various possibilities. The enduring emotion throughout all of the scenarios was anger. OK, I didn’t know Don Lockwood, he was a wrong number, but I had been honest with him when I had never been honest with anybody – myself included – definitely for the past two years, quite possibly in my entire life, and it doubly hurt that he had conned me. ‘Why would he take a photo of your eyes and send them to me?’

He was grinning broadly, laughing at a joke that I didn’t get. ‘No, I took the photo. I sent it to you. Lucy, I’m Don.’

‘No, you’re not, you’re Donal, your shirt says Donal.’ And a shirt wouldn’t lie. It couldn’t; it was a shirt.

‘My mother stitched this. She’s the only person in the world who calls me Donal. Lucy …’ He emphasised my name and smiled. ‘ Of course , you’re such a Lucy.’

I stared at him, like that gaping fish again trying to figure it all out, then he took his cap off, ruffled his hair a bit self-consciously and looked at me. Then Bam! His eyes hit me, it was almost like a physical reaction, my head jerked back on my neck as if I’d been punched. They were the eyes I’d been staring at all week and there they were in the same room as me, moving, blinking, with a perfect nose and cute dimples beneath them. I don’t know if it’s possible for a human being to do this, but I melted.

‘You have me on your screen saver,’ he grinned proudly, waving my phone in the air.

‘I thought they were nice eyes. Not as nice as the ear, but nice.’

He turned his head to the side and proudly modelled his left ear.

I wolf-whistled and he laughed.

‘I knew it,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I kept looking at you and I knew that I knew you. So it wasn’t a wrong number after all,’ he said.

‘Sometimes wrong numbers are the right numbers,’ I said mainly to myself, echoing Life’s earlier sentiments. I had thought he was being philosophical but for once he was being literal. I was still trying to figure it out. ‘But directory enquiries connected me to the company number, not your mobile.’

‘You called on a weekend. My dad doesn’t work weekends, so the office number gets diverted to my mobile phone.’

‘I’m so stupid. I heard pub noises and just assumed …’

‘You’re not stupid,’ he said softly. ‘You’re just an idiot.’

I laughed.

‘So we were texting each other right beside one another all day.’

I had to think about it. All that time I had hated the person at the other end of his phone and all that time that person had been me. The irony.

‘Which, by the way, was extremely unprofessional of you,’ I said.

‘Couldn’t help it. But you didn’t respond to my last text which, by the way, was extremely rude of you.’ He handed me back the phone.

I scrolled through and read the end of his last text:

– But what I really really want? Is to meet you.

I thought about it, he was looking at me for an answer but instead of giving him one straight away, I texted him back:

– OK. Meet you for a coffee in five minutes?

I put the phone down, ignored him and headed straight for the cupboard from which I removed two mugs, and the coffee granules.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, watching me.

I ignored him and continued. Then his phone beeped. I watched him from the corner of my eye. He read it. Texted. Sent. Then he didn’t look at me and just got straight back to work, removing the furniture from my bed and lining it up back in front of the TV. I watched him as I waited for the kettle to boil.

My phone beeped.

– Just finishing work. See you in five.

I smiled. We went about our business in silence, me making the coffee, him putting the couch back together. Then when he was finished, he made his way over to the kitchen.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Don Lockwood.’ He held his hand out to greet me.

‘I know,’ I said, placing the coffee into it instead. ‘How was work?’

He looked down into his mug as though deciding whether to drink it or not and then he placed it down on the counter. Then he took my mug from my hands and placed it down beside his. And then he stepped closer, put his hand to my face – his fingers touched my face so tenderly – and he leaned in and kissed me. Not since I was twelve years old at the six-thirty-to-eight-thirty disco in my local leisure centre when Gerard Looney and I had slobbered all over each other for three consecutive slow songs without coming up for air, had I kissed someone for that length of time. But I couldn’t stop and I didn’t want to stop, so just for a change of scenery we automatically started working our way from the linoleum, to the brand spanking newly cleaned and slightly damp carpet, then our feet left the floor completely as we collapsed on the bed.

‘I have an idea for your infomercial,’ I said later that evening, lying on my side and leaning on my elbow to look at him. I continued in an advertiser’s voice. ‘We’ll take the dirt from your carpet and bring the filth to your bed. We’ll clean your carpets and seduce your wives while you’re at work.’

He laughed and joined in, ‘Want us to know if your curtains really match your rug?’