Cecelia Ahern - How to Fall in Love

Alicia howled with laughter and joined in. ‘Poo! Poo! Poo!’

‘Go as fast as you can,’ he said.

‘I can’t, it’s bendy,’ I said, bumping the car against another bush.

‘I know, just concentrate. And go faster.’

‘Are they following us?’

He didn’t answer.

‘Are they following us?’

I couldn’t help it, I had to find out. I faced forward and saw the blacked-out windows coming towards us. ‘Oh my God.’

‘Why are we going backwards?’ Alicia asked, finally ending her laughter and sensing the panic in the car. Finally I had the opportunity to back up into a driveway, which I did rather quickly and expertly, and then took off, making a series of lefts and rights while Alicia called out directions to me, not noticing they weren’t being followed. When we reached a large housing estate where there was life on the roads again, I slowed down, but continued to make a series of random right and left turns.

‘Okay, I think you can stop now,’ Adam said as I drove around a roundabout for the third time. ‘They’re not behind us.’

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m dizzy,’ Alicia sang.

‘And I’m going to vomit,’ Adam said.

I indicated and came off the roundabout. I dropped Alicia back at her house, where I did my best to explain to Brenda why Alicia was excitedly screaming ‘Reverse!’ and running backwards at top speed around the house and knocking into everything.

‘So, Adam, do you find my sister’s methods are helping you enjoy life?’ Brenda sat at the table and pulled out a chair for him in her imitable style, which never gave people an opportunity to decline.

‘So far we’ve eaten, walked in a park and gone for a drive with a kid.’

‘I see. How was the food?’

‘Actually, it gave me an upset stomach.’

‘Interesting. And how was the park?’

‘I got arrested.’

‘You weren’t arrested, they just put you in a cell to cool down,’ I snapped, unhappy my therapy skills were being called into question.

‘And the drive ended in interrupting a drugs sale,’ Brenda finished for us.

We were silent. Then Brenda leaned her head back and laughed before changing the subject. ‘Tell me, Adam, this party of yours, is it dressy?’

‘Black tie.’

‘Excellent. I saw the perfect dress in Pace. I might even get the shoes to match. Okay,’ she stood up. ‘I have to get Jayden’s dinner ready. You two better scamoosh or I’ll end up pureeing your asses.’

Adam looked at me with that amused expression that brought light into his eyes. This time I didn’t care that it was on account of my mad family and my disastrous ways to enjoy life, I was just happy to see him alive.

It was only when we’d driven to the flat to collect the lily pad, and returned to the car after mere minutes inside the house, that we discovered the windshield of the car completely smashed in.

12

How to Solve a Problem Like Maria

Maria worked in Grand Canal Dock in a modern high-rise that looked like a chequered board from the outside. I was going to take care of the lily pad’s delivery; Adam was sure Maria would personally come to reception to sign for it as long as she was told that it was from him. He was under strict instructions to remain outside, but in a place where he would be able to observe her reaction. Seeing as the building appeared to be built entirely of glass and steel, he had many possible vantage points; the tricky part was ensuring she wouldn’t see him. I wanted the moment when Maria and Adam reunited to come when he was ready. He wasn’t anywhere near ready yet.

I felt odd about meeting Maria. The Maria. The woman whose quite intimate details I knew and who I’d spoken to over the phone twice and who was the reason or one of the reasons that Adam, rather beautiful Adam, had ended up with his life hanging in the balance. As I walked across the marble floor with my heels tapping so that the long line of receptionists looked up to watch me, I realised I resented Maria. And what timing. I couldn’t help but blame her for holding such power over a man she’d supposedly once loved while apparently oblivious to the effects of her rejection on him. When I thought of what he was going through right now to get her back, and her standing here with no idea, my blood boiled. Again, really not good timing, and inappropriate for me to become so protective of him when my role was supposed to be impartial, but I couldn’t feel anything close to unbiased at that moment.

Rationally, I knew it wasn’t Maria’s fault. If Maria had been a friend confiding in me about Adam’s behaviour, I probably would have supported her in leaving him once everything she’d tried to salvage the relationship had failed. But the woman bugged me despite all that. I knew I should really be telling Adam to move on, not to try to win her back. She was already with someone else, his friend; she’d moved on. Was a further rejection going to break him even more? Yes. It would kill him. I already knew that. I needed their relationship to work for Adam’s life. Which brought me back to resenting Maria.

‘I have a delivery for Maria Harty in Red Lips Productions,’ I said to the receptionist.

‘Who will I say it’s from?’

‘Adam Basil.’

I could see Adam outside, his woollen hat low, his duffle coat closed all the way up to his chin, his face was barely visible and what skin was exposed turning red raw from the cold. I would have to make sure I positioned myself so that Adam could see her reaction. I only hoped Maria wouldn’t throw the lily pad on the floor and stamp all over it. I didn’t think I’d reach him on time if he wanted to dive over the edge into the canal.

The elevator doors opened and a doll stepped out in skinny black jeans, biker boots, a T-shirt with a naked woman in a suggestive pose, jet-black hair which was rich and glossy and framed her doll-like chin, a severe fringe, big blue eyes, a perfect nose, and red, red lips. I wouldn’t have thought she was Maria at all. I had pictured her as a corporate type, expecting a suit to appear, but as soon as I saw her, I knew. It was the red lips that gave her away and suddenly the company name made sense. I knew it was her and yet I couldn’t call out to her as I watched her walk across the lobby to reception. I imagined she and Adam cut a very striking couple, turning heads wherever they went, and in that moment I resented Maria even more. Good old-fashioned female jealousy. I was annoyed with myself; I’d never fallen prey to that kind of thinking before. I wasn’t the type. But then, I’d always been happy, settled in my life and now I wasn’t, so anything, anybody secure sent my already wobbly confidence crashing down like a skittle.

The receptionist pointed over at me, and Maria took me in. In the days when they spoke to me, Peter and Paul greeted me as ‘Casual Friday’ in the mornings, because jeans were my staple wardrobe. And not just your regular jeans. I had them in almost every colour of the rainbow, as was the palette of the rest of my clothes. My wardrobe was one great kaleidoscope with the purpose of brightening up my day even when everything else in the world failed to comply. I’d gone from a muted wardrobe of blacks and beiges to this burst of colour in my mid-twenties. I always had on at least one item of colour after I’d read a book, How to Enrich Our Soul Through the Clothes We Wear , which taught me that our skin and soul took energy from the colours we wore, and wearing dark colours drained us. Our bodies craved colour the same way they needed sun, yet here was Maria, all in black and ultra-cool, as if she’d drifted out of an All Saints store, and there was me, like a packet of Skittles, my long, wavy, sandy-coloured hair beneath a stripy woollen hat that looked like I’d stolen it off the set of Zingzillas . My sandy ‘beach’ hair was carefully maintained and treated each week, tousled and teased into looking like it didn’t care, like it didn’t have a trouble in the world, but believe me it cared, it only pretended not to. My hair giggled and flirted, it blew in the breeze, whereas Maria’s … that trendy bob with its strict fringe laughed in the face of danger, it demanded rebellion.