Cecelia Ahern - If You Could See Me Now

So all I could do that night was think about my new friend Luke. I need to do that occasionally. I make notes in my head so that I can file a report for admin. They like to keep it all on record for training purposes. We’ve new people joining up all the time and in fact, when I’m between friends, I lecture.

I needed to think about why I was here. What made Luke want to see me? How could he benefit from my friendship? The business is run extremely professionally and we must always provide the company with a brief history of our friends and then list our aims and objectives. Naturally, I was very good at identifying the problem straightaway, but this scenario was slightly baffling. You see, I’d never been friends with an adult before and I’m not jumping the gun here, but whenever anyone can sense me in any way it means that they need me and that we’re supposed to be friends. It’s my whole meaning for existence, trust me, I know . Anyone who has ever met an adult would understand why I’ve never been friends with one. There’s no sense of fun with them, they stick rigidly to schedules and times, they focus on the most unimportant things imaginable, like mortgages and bank statements, when everyone knows that the majority of the time it’s the people around them that put the smiles on their faces. It’s all work and no play and I work hard, I really do, but playing is by far my favorite.

Take, for example, Elizabeth; she lies in bed worrying about car tax and phone bills, babysitters and paint colors. If you can’t put magnolia on a wall then there are always a million other colors you can use, if you can’t pay your phone bill then just write letters telling them. I’m not playing down the importance of these things, yes you need money for food, yes you need food to survive, but you also need sleep to have energy, to smile to be happy, and to be happy so you can laugh, just so you don’t keel over with a heart attack. People forget they have options. And they forget that those things really don’t matter. They should concentrate on what they have and not what they don’t have. And by the way, wishing and dreaming doesn’t mean concentrating on what you don’t have, it’s positive thinking that encourages hoping and believing, not whinging and moaning. But I’m veering away from the story again.

I worried about my job a little the night I was locked in the living room. It’s the first time that ever happened. I worried because I couldn’t figure out why I was there. Luke had a difficult family scenario, but that was normal and I could tell he felt loved. He was happy and loved playing, he slept well at night, ate all his food, had a nice friend called Sam, and when he spoke I listened and listened and tried to hear the words he wasn’t saying but there was nothing. He liked living with his aunt, was scared of his mom, and liked talking about vegetables with his granddad. But Luke seeing me every day and wanting to play with me every day meant that I definitely needed to be here for him.

On the other hand, his aunt never slept, ate very little, was constantly surrounded by silence so loud that it was deafening, she had nobody close to her to talk to, that I had seen yet anyway, and she didn’t say far more than she actually did say. She had heard me say thank you once, felt my breath a few times, and heard me squeak on the leather couch. Yet she couldn’t see me, nor could she stand the thought of me being in her house.

Elizabeth did not want to play. Plus, she was a grown-up, she gave me butterflies, and wouldn’t know fun if it hit her in the face, and believe me, I’d tried to throw it at her plenty

of times over the weekend. So you’d think I couldn’t possibly be the one to help her.

People refer to me as an invisible or an imaginary friend. Like there’s some big mystery surrounding me. I’ve read the books that grown-ups have written asking why kids see me, why they believe in me so much for so long and then suddenly stop and go back to being the way they were before. I’ve seen the television shows that try to debate why it is that children invent people like me.

So just for the record for all you people, I’m not invisible or imaginary. I’m always here walking around just like you all are. And people like Luke don’t choose to see me, they just see me. It’s people like you and Elizabeth that choose not to.

Chapter Six

Elizabeth was awakened at 6:08 a.m. by the sun streaming through the bedroom window and onto her face. She always slept with the curtains open. It stemmed from growing up in a cottage; lying in her bed she could see out the window, down the garden path, and out the front gate. Beyond that was a country road that led straight from the farm, stretching on for a mile. Elizabeth could see her mother returning from her adventures, walking down the road for at least twenty minutes before she reached the bungalow. She could recognize the half-hop, half-skip from miles away. Those twenty minutes always felt like an eternity to Elizabeth. The long road had its own way of building up Elizabeth’s excitement, it was almost teasing her.

And finally she would hear that familiar sound, the squeak of the front gate. The rusting hinges acted as a welcoming band for the free spirit. Elizabeth had a love/hate relationship with that gate. Like the long stretch of road, it would tease her, and some days on hearing the creak she would run to see who was at the door and her heart would sink at the sight of the postman.

Elizabeth had annoyed college roommates and lovers with her persistence in keeping the curtains open. She didn’t know why she remained firm on keeping them open; it certainly wasn’t as though she were still waiting. But now in her adulthood, the open curtains acted as her alarm clock; with them open she knew the light would never allow her to fall into a deep sleep.

Even in her sleep she felt alert and in control. She went to bed to rest, not to dream.

She squinted in the bright room and her head throbbed. She needed coffee, fast. Outside the window, the bird’s song echoed loudly in the quiet of the countryside. Somewhere far away, a cow answered its call. But despite the idyllic morning, there was nothing about this Monday that Elizabeth was looking forward to. She had to try to reschedule a meeting with the hotel developers, which was going to prove difficult because after the little stunt in the press about the new love nest at the top of the mountain, they had design companies Flying in from all parts of the world and looking for the job she knew should be hers. This annoyed Elizabeth; this was her territory. But that wasn’t her only problem.

Luke had been invited to spend the day with his grandfather on the farm. That bit, Elizabeth was happy with. It was the part about him expecting another six-year-old by the name of Ivan that worried her. She would have to have a discussion with Luke this morning about it because she dreaded to think of what would happen if there was a mention of an imaginary friend to her father.

Brendan was sixty-five years old, big, broad, silent, and brooding. Age had not managed to mellow him; instead it had brought bitterness, resentment, and even more confusion. He was small-minded and unwilling to open up or change. Elizabeth could at least try to understand his difficult nature if being that way made him happy, but as far as she could see, his views frustrated him and only made his life more miserable. He was stern, rarely spoke except to the cows or vegetables, never laughed, and whenever he did decide someone was worthy of his words, he lectured. There was no need to respond to him. He didn’t speak for conversation. He spoke to make statements. He rarely spent time with Luke, as he didn’t have time for the airy-fairy ways of children, for their silly games and nonsense. The only thing that Elizabeth could see that her father liked about Luke was that he was an empty book, ready to be filled with information and not enough knowledge to question or criticize. Fairy tales and fantasy stories had no place with her father. She supposed that was the only belief they actually shared.