Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

‘It allows me to drive any vehicle as long as it’s in keeping with the assistance and development of your life.’

‘Any vehicle?’

‘Any.’

‘Even motorbikes?’

‘Even motorbikes.’

‘Tractors?’

‘Even tractors.’

‘Quad bikes?’

‘Even quad bikes.’

‘What about boats, can you drive boats?’

He looked at me with exhaustion so I gave up. ‘Fine. He’s all yours.’ I got out of the car and tried to settle down in the back.

And so Life was in the driving seat.

I woke up with a crick in my neck, a headache from where my head had been pressed up and repeatedly thudded against the cold hard glass with every vibration and bump in the road, and my neck was stinging from where the seat belt had continuously rubbed against my bare skin. It took me a moment to realise where I was. In the car, with Life in the driving seat, and he was singing to Justin Bieber in a high-pitched voice that would rival any six-year-old boy who had just been punched in the balls.

It was dark outside which wasn’t particularly unusual as we had left Glendalough at eight p.m., and though it would take a normal car without psychological issues less than an hour to get to my apartment, it took the complex Sebastian longer. On a June summer’s night it wouldn’t become dark until ten so I was expecting a certain amount of darkness but not this. This was pitch black, which meant we had been travelling for a lot more than an hour, and I couldn’t see any lights apart from the occasional small oval in a porch or a square of light from a window in the distance, which meant we were not in Dublin city. Then we stopped moving but the engine kept running. We had arrived somewhere only we weren’t anywhere. I looked at Life, he had his iPhone out on the dashboard and was looking at his sat nav. Alarm bells rang. Seeming satisfied he indicated to nobody, because there wasn’t anybody; the car crept forward again and we maintained a steady speed once more. I leaned forward then and spoke in Life’s ear.

‘Where are we?’

‘Jesus!’ he shouted, startled, and he momentarily lost control of the wheel as he turned around to see who was shouting at him. The car went veering to the left, he quickly grabbed the wheel and swung it to the right, stopping us from dropping into a ditch just in time, only he pulled it too far to the right and sent us flying over to the opposite side of the road. Despite my seat belt I went flying to the left like a rag doll, and then was pushed forward into the seat ahead of me as we nosedived into a ditch.

Then we were still and it was silent, apart from Justin Bieber who was singing about his baby, baby, baby.

‘Uh-oh,’ Life said.

‘Uh-oh,’ I repeated, pulling the seat belt away from my body so it was no longer threatening to amputate me. ‘Uh-oh? We are stuck in the middle of a ditch, in the middle of nowhere, what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘You gave me a fright,’ he said, his pride wounded. ‘And anyway, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, we’re in the middle of Wexford.’ He turned to me. ‘Surprise. I’m helping you follow your dream.’

‘We are stuck in a ditch.’

‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ He fumbled with his phone.

I battled with the seat belt to try and free myself from this downward position but it was stuck. ‘Can you reverse us out of this?’ I asked, full of frustration. The belt finally clicked, and unprepared, I went face first into the headrest in front of me, squishing my nose. I looked out the window. The only thing giving away our position was a house in the distance; I could see a few windows diagonally lit from my position.

‘You can’t reverse out of a ditch. At least not in this car. I think the problem was that I came off the motorway too early. Now let me see …’ he mumbled to himself while he fumbled with the sat nav again.

I pushed open the door. It opened a tiny slit but something behind the door on the other side prevented it from opening fully. It was so dark I couldn’t see out the window so I wound it down and stuck my head out. It was a tree that had come down and now lay there, a pile of complicated branches and dead leaves blocking my path. I reached up to the roof and pulled myself out of the car and onto the window ledge and then I tried to figure out how to get the rest of my body out. I tried to twist and take one bent leg out the window but it was complicated. I removed one hand from the roof to assist in squeezing my bent leg out of the open window. It wasn’t a good idea, because I lost my grip and I went flying backwards, out of the car and straight onto the tree, which hurt, a lot more than any pain I’d felt recently. Silchesters didn’t cry, but Silchesters did curse and scream to the high heavens. I heard a car door bang shut and Life was above me, looking down at me from the top of the ditch. He reached out his hand.

‘Are you okay?’

‘No,’ I grumbled. ‘How did you get out of the car?’

‘I just went out the other door.’

Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. I reached out and Life pulled me out of the ditch.

‘Did you break anything?’ he asked, spinning me around and checking my back. ‘Apart from the tree, that is?’

I jiggled around a little, shimmied a bit, tested out all my joints. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘If you can do that, trust me, you’re okay. Physically, anyway.’ He surveyed the car with his hands on his hips. ‘We’re not far from the B&B that I booked, we could walk it.’

‘Walk? In these shoes? And we can’t leave the car here in the ditch.’

‘I’ll call the AA on our way to the house.’

‘We’re not asking for help, we can do this ourselves. You and me. Come on.’ I whipped him into action and soon I was behind the wheel of the car while he tried to push us. Then when that didn’t work, he was behind the wheel of the car and I was pushing. And when that didn’t work we were both pushing. And when that didn’t work we took our bags from the boot and trudged down the country road following Life’s iPhone sat nav. When I say road I use the term loosely – it was more of a track or a trail, a surface for farmyard animals and tractors to travel, not for a wedge-heeled wrap-around-dress-wearing woman with an aching back and twigs in her hair. We were walking for forty-five minutes before we found the B&B, which we realised was overlooked by a brand-new Radisson Hotel on the motorway. Life looked at me apologetically. The B&B was a bungalow with old-style carpets and wallpaper and smelled of air freshener; it was old-fashioned but it was clean. Because I hadn’t had any microwave dinners for lunch and I had sipped only a few spoons of courgette and pea soup which my palette had been too stunned to taste as my father shouted insults at me, I was ravenous. The lady of the house rustled up some ham sandwiches and a pot of tea which hit the spot, and a plate of biscuits I hadn’t seen the likes of since I was ten years old. I sat on the bed with rollers in my hair painting my toenails. The words my father had spoken rattled around in my head, which felt hollow and empty – a perfect barren place for such words to echo around for all eternity.

‘Stop thinking about your father,’ Life said.

‘Do you read minds?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Because sometimes you say exactly what I’m thinking.’ I looked at him. ‘How do you do that?’

‘I suppose I pick up on what you’re feeling. But it would be obvious for you to be thinking about your dad. He said some harsh things.’

‘Father,’ I corrected him.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘So your parents are rich,’ Life said, talking about it anyway.

‘Wealthy,’ I said automatically, not even thinking, it was an immediate response.