Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

‘Was she standing beside a vase full of lemons and limes?’ I asked excitedly.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, anyway, he’s my life. Isn’t that kind of cool?’

I expected him to be impressed, he used to be so into that kind of thing, reading book after book about self-development, self-empowerment, self-searching and anything and everything to do with oneself. He used to always talk about different religious theories, reincarnation, life after death, so many exploratory searching works about the human soul that I knew this would be the ultimate for him. Meeting Life in the flesh; I was so sure he thought he’d never see the day when I would reach such depths. I was so sure he would be so enthusiastic about it that I spoke with more passion than I did about anything, because he was into that kind of thing, because I wanted him to know I was too, that I had changed, that I had new depths he didn’t even know about, that he could love me.

‘He’s your life?’

‘Yes.’

‘And why is he here?’

From the questions he might have seemed interested, but believe me, he wasn’t. It came across more like, he’s your life, and tell me again why is he here?

I swallowed, wanting to back-pedal, but I couldn’t and I felt it would be disrespectful to my life not to sell him properly after he’d driven me here for a surprise and gone along with my little ‘get Blake back’ adventure. ‘The idea is that we spend some time together, to get to know one another. When people are busy with work and friends and other distractions, sometimes we lose sight of the important things. Apparently I’d lost sight of me.’ I shrugged. ‘But not any more. He’s everywhere I look. But he’s funny. You’ll like him.’

He nodded once, then went back to his equipment. ‘You know I’m going to do a cookbook?’

That was an unusual key change but I went with it. ‘Really? That’s great.’

‘Yeah,’ he lit up. ‘It came about because of the show I do – have you seen it, by the way? Lucy, it’s such a ride, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. Anyway, we were going to so many different places, experiencing so many cultures and just the tastes and smells and sounds were so inspiring that whenever I came home after travelling I wanted to replicate what I’d tasted.’

‘That’s great, you always loved cooking.’

‘Yeah, and I don’t just replicate it, that’s the idea of the book, I give it my own twist. The Blake twist or the Blake taste. I think that’s what we’ll call it. The Blake Taste . The publishers love it, they say it could even transfer onto the screen so I could have a separate show from Wish You Were Here just based on the food I eat when travelling.’ He had lit up, his face was animated, his words were hopping a mile a minute, he was so excited he could barely get them out in the right order. I watched him, fascinated that I was seeing him in the flesh, that he hadn’t changed one bit, that he was still the passionate, energetic, beautiful man he had always been. ‘I’d love for you to taste some of my recipes, Lucy.’

‘Wow, thank you, I’d love that,’ I beamed.

‘Would you?’

‘Of course, Blake, I really would. I’d like to get back into cooking myself, actually. I just kind of stopped. I suppose I got out of the habit. I moved to a smaller place, the kitchen isn’t as good as the one that we—’

‘Oh, man, that kitchen,’ he shook his head. ‘That was some kitchen, but you should see the one I have now. I’m using this amazing oven; it’s a built-in multi-function stainless-steel PyroKlean oven. It offers you forty different programmes for fresh and frozen foods and you just enter the weight of the food and the oven automatically selects the best setting, then it controls—’

‘—the cooking time and switches off when the meal is done, using the residual heat to save energy,’ I interrupted.

His mouth dropped. ‘How did you know that?’

‘I wrote it,’ I said, proudly.

‘I don’t understand, you wrote what?’

‘The instruction manual. I work at Mantic. Or at least I did until yesterday. I translated the manuals.’

He continued to look at me in such an unusual way that I had to turn around to make sure it was me he was looking at, at all.

‘What is it?’

‘What happened to Quinn and Downing?’

‘I haven’t worked there for years,’ I laughed. Then, though I tried to keep it casual, I added more seriously, ‘Didn’t Adam tell you anything about me over the past few years?’ I meant it. I thought that everything I was doing was going back to Blake, I thought he knew everything about me and I knew nothing about him. For the past few years I’d made decisions and created lies thinking they’d be working their way back to him, and he didn’t even know what had happened on Day One, the day that he left me and I lost my job.

‘Adam? No,’ he said, confused, then smiled and his face lit up again. ‘So let me tell you about this Moroccan pie—’

‘He thinks I cheated on you,’ I interrupted his recipe. I didn’t plan to say that, never ever in all of my conniving thoughts and pre-planning plans; it just came flying out of my mouth.

‘Huh?’ He had been about to talk about saffron and this had put a spanner in the works.

‘They all do.’ I tried to keep the tremor out of my voice, the tremor not of nerves but of anger; it was building again and I was fighting hard to keep it under wraps.

‘Blake,’ called a guy who stuck his head in the door. ‘We have to get a move on.’

‘Coming now,’ Blake said and he picked up the equipment. ‘Let’s go,’ he grinned. My anger once again dissipated and I found myself with a mushy smile on my face.

The plane held six people, which was three groups. Harry was strapped to Blake, and the young fertile lady who wanted to have Blake’s babies was strapped to another instructor named Jeremy – the one whose timely arrival had stopped me from exploding at Blake in the equipment room – and she was staring at Harry with jealousy over having pulled the short straw. Life was wearing an orange jumpsuit with goggles over his eyes; he was sitting on the floor between my legs with his back against my front, and every now and then he looked at me with absolute disgust and terror.

He turned around again as we took off. ‘“The view will be nice,”’ he hissed at me.

‘It is a beautiful view,’ I smiled calmly.

‘“And you can land with the pilot,”’ he said angrily. ‘You tricked me. You lied to me. That’s one big lie,’ he said with venom in his voice.

‘You don’t have to jump,’ I said, trying to be relaxed, but really I was worried. I couldn’t afford for Life to tell a humongous truth. Not here, not now, not with Blake so close that our feet were touching.

‘Then why am I attached to you by an umbilical cord?’

‘You can pretend to have a panic attack. We can go back down if you want, I just wanted to, you know, do this one more time with him.’

‘Pretend? I won’t need to bloody pretend,’ he said, then faced front again and ignored me for the rest of the journey. Harry was absolutely terrified looking and was green in the face; I could see his body trembling. Our eyes met.

‘You’re going to love it. Just picture Declan with no eyebrows.’ He smiled, closed his eyes and took deep breaths. Blake and I watched one another as the plane left the ground and we went up to the sky. We couldn’t stop ourselves from smiling; he shook his head again out of disbelief that I was there. We climbed up to two hundred feet. We flew for twenty minutes and finally we were ready for action. Blake opened the door and wind blasted inside as the countryside below was revealed to us like a patchwork quilt.