Cecelia Ahern - The Time of My Life

He thought hard, staring at a pile of barrels with his jaw firm and square, his eyes intense. Then he bent over and picked up his pint from the grass and looked at me, but only for a second. ‘Sorry, Lucy, I can’t. Just move on from it, okay?’ And he left me and disappeared into the black hole in the pub, swallowed up by the songs and cheers from inside.

I fell back down, exhausted, on the grassy slope we had been lying on moments earlier, and went through the conversation in my head over and over again. There was nothing I could have said differently. It was dusk now, the half-light of a summer night, when shapes and shadows threatened more sinister things beneath. I shivered. I heard footsteps around the corner, coming from the direction of the lively beer garden. Life appeared then, he stopped when he saw me alone, didn’t come any further, just leaned his shoulder against the wall.

I looked at him gloomily.

‘We can catch a lift back to the B&B in five minutes if you want.’

‘What, and not stay until the end? Have you not taught me anything?’

He gave me a small smile, a congratulation for effort. ‘Jenna’s heading back to her holiday cottage. She’s thinking of moving out.’

‘Of the cottage? Good for her.’

‘No. Out of Ireland. She’s going home. To Australia.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t think things quite worked out for her the way she’d hoped.’ He looked at me knowingly.

‘Fine. I’ll be ready in five minutes.’

He made his way to me and groaned like an old man as he lowered his body to the grass. He clinked his bottle to my glass. ‘Sláinte,’ he said, then lifted his face to the stars. We had a moment’s silence while my head still rang with Blake’s words. There was no point in following him inside for round two, I knew that his mind couldn’t be changed. I looked at Life; he had a smile on his face as he watched the stars.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ he grinned even wider.

‘Come on, tell me.’

‘No. Nothing,’ he tried to stop smiling.

I gave him a dig in the ribs.

‘Ow.’ He flexed his stomach and sat up beside me. ‘Just that he has his face on his business card.’ He chuckled like a girl.

He annoyed me at first but the more he laughed, the more I wanted to join in, which I eventually did.

‘Yeah.’ I finally took a breath. ‘That was a bit sad, wasn’t it?’

He snorted, an actual pig snort, which sent us both into a fit of giggles.

Life had jumped in the back of the jeep, forcing me to take the front seat beside Jenna. She was subdued, there wasn’t the big smile that greeted us that morning, though she wasn’t rude – I doubted there was a rude bone in her body.

‘It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?’ Life asked, capturing the mood in the jeep and breaking the silence.

‘Yeah,’ she and I said simultaneously in a tired tone. We quickly looked at each other then away again.

‘Did I hear something about you and Jeremy in the pub? Whispers of romance?’ Life stirred it up.

Jenna’s cheeks had pinked. ‘Oh, there was a party… it was nothing, well, it was something, but it’s nothing. He’s not…’ She went quiet, swallowed hard. ‘It’s not what I want… so.’

That explained her status change on Facebook. We rode the rest of the journey in silence. She pulled into the B&B driveway and we thanked her and jumped out. She turned the car around and we stood there to wave her off.

Life glared at me.

‘What?’

‘Say something,’ he said impatiently.

I sighed, watched her, a tiny little blonde thing in the big jeep, then I jogged over and knocked on the window. She hit the brakes, and lowered the window. She looked tired.

‘I heard you might be going back home.’

‘Yeah, I am.’ She looked away. ‘Like you said, it’s a long way.’

I nodded.

‘I’m going home in the morning.’

She looked up, suddenly eager to hear more. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s too bad.’ She was too polite to say it cattily but it wasn’t altogether convincing either.

‘I’m not…’ I struggled to think of how to phrase the sentence. ‘I’m not coming back,’ I said simply. She studied me, trying to understand what I’d said. Then she did. ‘Just thought you should know.’

‘Right.’ She gave me a brighter smile, battling with it not to take over her face. ‘Thanks.’ She paused. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

I stepped back from the car. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

I went back to the house and heard the wheels on the gravel. I turned back once, saw the window closing, the smile on her face, and the jeep drove back down the long drive. It paused at the exit, then she indicated right, back the way we’d come.

I’d been holding my breath all that time and as soon as she turned, I let it out. My heart twisted again and for a moment I panicked. I wanted to call her back, take it back, I wanted to go to Blake, take him back, live the way we had always lived together. But then I remembered.

Habit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I awoke to a fully dressed Life watching me from an armchair, which was spooky to say the least. He looked concerned.

‘I have some bad news.’

‘We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of Sebastian,’ Life said as we stood in a scrapyard staring at my poor car that had been brought here by the medics.

‘How long have you known about this?’

‘Since yesterday, but I didn’t want to tell you then. Didn’t seem right.’

‘Does he really have to go? Can we not keep him going for a bit longer?’

‘Afraid so. A team of mechanics couldn’t bring him back. Besides, you’d be better off buying a new car with all the money you spend on fixing him.’

‘I’m loyal.’

‘I know.’

We took a moment of silence then I patted Sebastian on the roof. ‘Thank you for bringing me to all the places I wanted to go to and for taking me away from them again. Farewell, Sebastian, you have served me well.’

Life passed me a handful of soil.

I took it from him and threw it on the roof. We took a step back and the clamp was lowered and Sebastian was lifted up towards the heavens.

And then promptly dropped and crushed.

A car horn broke into my thoughts and we turned to see Harry hanging his head out of the camper-van window. ‘Brazil Nuts here is itching to leave. His mum is having a hissy fit and needs the van for some Irish-dancing feis.’

I was quiet on the way home as was Harry. He was beside me, texting the entire time, and in the moments he was waiting for the next reply, he read the previous ones.

‘Harry’s in love,’ Annie teased.

‘Congratulations.’

His cheeks pinked, but he smiled. ‘So what happened with your man?’

‘Oh. No. Nothing.’

‘I told you people can change a lot in three years.’

I didn’t want a young college boy to think he knew more about the evolution of the human race than I did, so I smiled at him and spoke rather patronisingly. ‘But he didn’t change, he was exactly the same.’

He rolled his nose up at that, disgusted that Blake’s little entrance yesterday was the norm and not the result of some knock on the head he’d received in the past three years of my not knowing him. ‘You changed then,’ he said matter-of-factly and then went back to his phone to text the girl he wanted to have his babies.

I was even quieter after that conversation; I had a lot to think about. Life was all chat but finally realised after my delayed mono-worded answers that I didn’t want to talk so he left me in silence. I had lost a lot on this trip: not just the love I thought I’d had, and my beloved car, but also the hope that I could redeem myself – my dream to stop living in a web of lies woven entirely by myself seemed to be an un realistic one, or at least was going to be more of a battle than I had thought. I felt like I didn’t have anything or even worse I felt like I had nothing: no job, no car, no love, a dilapidated relationship with my family and my friends, and more worryingly, with my best friend. All I had was my rented studio-flat across from a neighbour who probably never wanted to speak to me again and a cat that I had left alone for two nights.