Cecelia Ahern - If You Could See Me Now

At 6 a.m. the fuchsia door opened and I stood to attention as though a teacher had entered the classroom. Elizabeth stepped out, closed the door behind her, locked it, and walked down the cobblestoned drive. She was wearing her chocolate-brown tracksuit again, her only informal outfit in her wardrobe apart from her work jeans. Her hair was tied back messily, she had no makeup on, and I don’t think I’d ever seen her look so beautiful in my life. A hand reached into my heart and twisted it momentarily. It hurt.

She looked up and saw me and stalled. Her face didn’t break into a smile like it usually did. The hand around my heart squeezed tighter. But at least she saw me and that was the main thing. Don’t ever take it for granted when people look in your eyes; you’ve no idea how lucky you are. Actually, forget about luck, you’ve no idea how important it is to be acknowledged. Even if it is an angry glare, because it’s when they ignore you, when they look right through you, that you should start worrying. Elizabeth usually ignores her problems; she usually looks right past them and never in the eye. But I was obviously a problem worth solving.

She walked toward me with her arms folded across her chest, her head held high, her eyes tired but determined.

“Are you all right, Ivan?”

Her question threw me. I expected her to be angry, to shout at me and not listen or believe my side of the story, like they do in the movies, but she didn’t. She was calm, with a temper bubbling beneath the surface, ready to erupt depending on my answer. She studied my face, searching for answers she would never believe.

I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that question before. I was thinking about that as she was studying my face. No, it was as clear as day to me that I did not feel all right. I felt brittle, tired, angry, hungry, and there was a pain, not a hunger pain but an ache that started in my chest and worked its way through my body and head. I felt that my views and philosophies had been changed overnight. The philosophies that I had gladly carved in stone, recited, and danced upon. I felt as though the magician of life had cruelly revealed his hidden cards and it wasn’t magic at all, just a mere trick of the mind. Or a lie.

“Ivan?” She looked concerned. Her face softened, her arms dropped from their folded position, and she stepped forward and reached out to touch me.

I couldn’t answer.

“Come on, walk with me.” She linked my arm and we walked out of Fuchsia Lane.

They walked in silence deep into the heart of the countryside. The birds sang loudly in the early morning, the crisp air filled their lungs, rabbits bounded daringly across their path, and butterflies danced through the air waving through them as they walked along the woodlands. The sun shone down through the leaves of the dominant oaks, sprinkling light on their faces like gold dust. The sound of water trickled alongside them while the scent of eucalyptus refreshed the air. Eventually they reached an opening, the trees held their branches out, making a grand and proud presentation of the lake. They crossed a wooden bridge and sat on a hard carved bench in silence, watching as the salmon jumped to the surface of the water to catch the flies in the warming sun.

Elizabeth was the first to speak. “Ivan, in a complicated life, I try my best to make things as simple as possible. I know what to expect, I know what I’m going to do, where I’m going, who I’m going to meet every single day. In a life that is surrounded by complicated, unpredictable people, I need stability. ” She looked away from the lake and met Ivan’s eyes for the first time since they had sat down. “You,” she took a breath, “you take the simplicity out of my life. You shake things around and turn them upside down. And sometimes I like it, Ivan, you make me laugh, you make me dance around streets and beaches like a lunatic, and make me feel like someone I’m not.” Her smile faded. “But last night you made me feel like someone I don’t want to be. I need things to be simple, Ivan,” she repeated.

There was a silence between them.

Ivan spoke. “I’m very sorry about last night, Elizabeth. You know me; it wasn’t done out of any malice.” He stopped to try and figure out if and how he should explain the events of last night. He decided against it for now. “You know, the more you try to simplify things, Elizabeth, the more you complicate them. You create rules, build walls, push people away, lie to yourself, and ignore true feelings. That is not simplifying things.”

Elizabeth ran a hand through her hair. “I have a sister who is missing, a six-year-old nephew to mother, about which I know nothing, a father who has not moved away from a window for weeks because he is waiting for his wife, who disappeared over twenty years ago, to return. I realized last night that I was just like him as I sat on the stairs, staring out the window, waiting for a man with no surname who tells me he’s from a place called Ekam Eveileb, a place that has been Googled and searched on the damn atlas at least once a day and that I now know doesn’t exist.” She took a breath. “I care for you, Ivan, I really do, but one minute you’re kissing me and the next you’re standing me up. I don’t know what is going on with us. I have enough worries and I have enough pain as it is and I am not volunteering myself for any more.” She rubbed her eyes tiredly.

They both watched the activities in the lake as the leaping salmon brought ripples to the water, making soothing splashing sounds; across the lake a heron moved silently and skilfully on his stilt-like legs along the water’s edge. He was a fisherman at work, watching and waiting patiently for the right moment to break the glassy surface of the water with his beak.

Ivan couldn’t help but see the similarities in both their jobs at that moment.

When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters, a table leg breaks, or a picture falls off the wall, it makes a noise. But as for your heart, when that breaks, it’s completely silent. You would think as it’s so important it would make the loudest noise in the whole world or even have some sort of ceremonious sound like the gong of a cymbal or the ringing of a bell. But it’s silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain.

If there is a noise, it’s internal. It screams and no one can hear it but you. It screams so loudly your ears ring and your head aches. It thrashes around in your chest like a great white caught in the sea, it roars like a mother bear whose cub has been taken. That’s what it looks like and that’s what it sounds like, a thrashing, panicking, trapped, great big beast, roaring like a prisoner to its own emotions. But that’s the thing about love; no one is untouchable. It’s as wild as that, as raw as an open flesh wound exposed to salty sea water, but when it actually breaks, it’s silent, you’re just screaming on the inside and no one can hear it.

But Elizabeth, she saw the heartbreak in me and I saw it in her, and without having to talk about it we both knew. It was time to stop walking with our heads in clouds and instead, keep our feet on the harder soil of ground level we should always have been rooted to.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“We should get back to the house now,” Elizabeth said, jumping up from the bench.

“Why?”

“Because it’s starting to rain,” she said, looking at him as though he had ten heads, and flinching as another droplet of rain landed on her face.

“What is it with you?” Ivan laughed, settling down into the bench as a sign he wasn’t budging. “Why is it you’re always dashing in and out of cars and buildings when it rains?”