Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

I felt proud of Blake, and proud that Life could see him like this. People were drawn to him, he had an aura, this was a perfect example.

‘What a gobshite,’ Life said and threw his head back and laughed.

I looked at him in surprise. Then the three lads and girl from the camper van started laughing and I was angry.

Harry looked at me in disbelief. ‘Is this the fella?’

I ignored him. The other women in the group were cheering, whooping and clapping, delighted by the opening introduction. I joined in with the polite applause, the cheering I did on the inside in a soprano High C. Blake smiled and looked at the ground shyly in an aw shucks, gee whizz, you guys kind of way. Then he detached his parachute and walked the rest of the way to the group with his groin wrapped up in a harness as if he was gift-wrapping his sizeable manhood. He finally reached the group.

‘Thanks, guys,’ he said, beaming, raising his hands to calm the applause. It had the desired effect and there was silence.

Life chose that moment to finish eating his crisps and crumple the packet into a ball. Blake’s head turned as Life noisily stuffed the crisp bag into his jeans pocket. Blake looked at him and then at me. And then his face broke into the largest smile. My stomach did a triple Axel jump, the crowd roared and I stepped up to the first position on the podium, accepted my flowers, dipped my head for the gold medal and listened to the national anthem while second and third scowled and plotted ways to break my legs.

‘Lucy Silchester,’ he smiled, then looked back at the curious group. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, meet the love of my life.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

From the corner of my eye I saw Jenna slip back inside the cabin. It was possibly the happiest moment of my life and I would have punched the air with delight were it not a ridiculously sad thing to do. Blake told them to take a moment to chat amongst themselves while he came over to me, his arms spread wide, ready for a hug. I fell into his arms and my head naturally went to his chest, my right cheek resting against him, his arms wrapped around me tightly as he kissed the top of my head. It was the same, it was all exactly the same, we slotted together like a jigsaw puzzle. Two years, eleven months and twenty-one days since I’d seen him, since he’d sat me down, after we’d made love the night before, and said that he was leaving me.

All of a sudden anger rushed through me as I remembered how he’d brought me breakfast in bed and then sat at my feet and began explaining his complicated, turbulent mind. He had been so awkward, so uncomfortable, so unable to look me in the eye that I thought he was about to propose. I was afraid that he was going to propose and then when he was finished I would have done anything for him to have proposed. And then while I lay in bed with a heavy tray of food and coffee resting on my thighs he stood before the wardrobe, scratching the back of his head, and tried to figure out what clothes he should pack for his new single life. If indeed it was a single life he was headed to, and if he hadn’t been seeing Jenna behind my back for the first few weeks of filming the travel show. And then on the same day that I had lost my boyfriend, I had gotten drunk and lost my career and my driver’s licence, shortly afterwards my home when we put it on the market.

He hugged me tight two years, eleven months and twenty-one days later and all the love I had felt for him, every single day since then, vanished and was replaced by anger. My eyes opened suddenly and I saw Life looking at me; he was smiling, enjoying the sight of us embracing. Confused by my sudden emotional shift, I let go of Blake and peeled myself away from him.

‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ he was saying, his hands holding on tight to the tops of my arms. ‘You look great, this is great.’ He laughed and I let the anger settle as I relaxed under his gaze.

‘Blake, I want you to meet a special friend of mine.’

Blake was slow to turn away from me, he seemed a little disconnected then. ‘Yeah, sure. Hey, how are you doing?’ He shook Life’s hand quickly as if he was doing me and him a favour, then returned his gaze to me. ‘I’m so happy you’re here.’

‘Me too,’ I laughed.

‘How long are you staying for?’

‘I just popped by to say hi. I wanted to see the dream realised.’

‘Stay and do the dive with us.’

‘OK. We’d love to.’

He looked confused by the we ; then he glanced at Life quickly again and back to me and said, ‘Oh, yeah, sure.’ Then he made his way back to face everybody on the grass and he started the lesson on how to position the body when free falling. I was an expert on that.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said to Life as I observed him on the ground copying the positions.

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘He looked really pleased to see you. That’s great, Lucy.’

‘Yeah, it is,’ I said nervously. ‘So are you going to do the dive?’

‘No,’ he said, moving to the new position, ‘I just like the view from here.’

I looked ahead of him to the cute blonde girl with her bum in the air and I rolled my eyes. ‘Come up in the plane at least.’

‘No way.’

‘Are you afraid of flying too?’

‘No, it’s the hurtling towards the earth at astronomical speeds that terrifies me.’

‘You don’t have to dive. Honestly, just come up there with us, I want you to see. It’s a twenty-minute flight, the views will be nice and then you can come back down with the pilot the old-fashioned way.’

He looked up at the sky to make the decision. ‘Fine.’

I followed Blake to the aeroplane hangar to help gather the equipment.

‘Does your girlfriend not do the dives too?’ I asked him, trying to keep my tone casual and uninquisitive when really my sanity and lifelong happiness depended on his answer.

‘Girlfriend?’ He looked at me, confused. ‘What girlfriend?’

I almost danced on the spot. ‘The girl doing the paperwork in the other cabin,’ I said, not wanting to say her name out of fear that he’d think I was a stalker who’d been following her around for years, despite the fact that she and I had talked an hour ago. ‘The girl who works on your show. There she is.’

We looked out and saw Jenna leading everybody to another area. She was all smiles and she said something and everybody laughed, including my life, which bothered me.

‘Oh, her. That’s Jen.’

Jen, not Jenna. I hated her even more.

‘Why did you think she was my girlfriend?’

‘I don’t know. She just seemed your type.’

‘Jen? You think?’ He looked at her thoughtfully, and I didn’t like what he was thinking. I tried to get his attention again but short of clicking my fingers in front of his face I wasn’t sure what else to do. I stepped in front of him, side-stepped kind of casually to block his view of her, which worked because he looked away and concentrated on the equipment. We were quiet for a while. I hoped he wasn’t thinking of Jenna. I desperately tried to think of something to say to make him change his thoughts but he got there first.

‘So is he your boyfriend?’

‘Him? No,’ I laughed. ‘It’s the oddest thing, actually.’ I had to tell him the truth, I was excited to tell him the truth. ‘You’ll love this, you’re so into this kind of thing. I received a letter from him a couple of weeks ago from the Life Agency, have you ever heard of it?’

‘Yeah.’ He stopped with the equipment and looked at me. ‘I read an article when I was at the dentist about a woman who’d met with her life.’