Cecelia Ahern - How to Fall in Love

I woke up with a start. I looked at the clock and saw I’d only been asleep for twenty minutes.

‘Okay?’ Adam grumbled.

‘Mmm.’

His arms were wrapped around me tightly, his chest rose and fell, and I drifted off again. I was back in the apartment block, the real one this time, only it was fully furnished and people were living there, every single apartment teeming with sounds of life, the way it was meant to be. Simon was standing before me with a banana in his hand, which he’d taken from the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter. He was telling me that it was a gun.

I started to speak, but I spoke too fast and my words blurred together, and didn’t make any sense. Somehow he understood though. When I was finished my nonsensical talk, he put the gun down on the counter. I sighed with relief. I looked around for Detective Maguire, but there was no one there, so I waited for the gardaí to take over; I’d done the job, I was finished, I’d talked him down! But nobody came. Where was everybody? I was so relieved yet at the same time anxious, my heart was beating wildly in my chest. He was looking lost, exhausted from the experience. I knew I should say something, fill the silence.

‘Now you can go home, Simon, home to your girls.’

I knew it was wrong as soon as I said it. The whole time he had been telling me that this apartment was his home, that they had tried to take him away from his home, and all he wanted to do was return with his family, to the home he’d saved for, the home he’d bought with his wife, the home he planned to live in with his children – their first home together as a family. The room suddenly emptied, became grey and unlived in, and I realised we were standing in his home. I had said the wrong thing. He looked up at me, and I knew instantly I’d made a mistake.

He picked up the banana, which had become a gun.

‘This is my home.’ He pulled the trigger.

I woke up, his words ringing in my ears. My heart was pounding in my chest, Adam was no longer beneath me, he was beside me in bed, the clock read four a.m. I sat up, hot and sticky from the dream, panic and dread twisting through my body at the memory of what had happened. I reached for the notepad beside the bed and wrote, Had to go. Will explain. See you later.

I pondered adding a X , but decided against it. I didn’t want to come across as too attached, too presumptuous. By then I had wasted enough time and didn’t have time to ponder it any more. I would be back before he woke up, hopefully. I got out of bed, threw on some clothes, and I was soon in reception waiting for a taxi. Twenty minutes later I was at the hospital.

I burst into the ward and, from the look on my face, security knew to let me through. Thankfully, Angela was on duty.

‘Christine, what’s wrong?’

‘It was my fault,’ I said, tears coming to my eyes.

‘It’s not your fault, I told you that.’

‘I have to tell him. I remember now. I have to say sorry.’ I tried to push past Angela, but she held me back.

‘Now you’re not going anywhere until you calm down, do you hear me?’ Her voice was firm. A nurse stepped out from the station to see if everything was okay and, not wanting to make a scene, I immediately forced myself to calm down.

I sat at Simon’s bedside, fidgeting. He had been taken off the life-support unit while I was in Tipperary, but he was still in intensive care. He was breathing unassisted though he still hadn’t opened his eyes or fully regained consciousness. My fingers trembled as the words I uttered on the night of his shooting – which I’d forgotten, had somehow blocked out – came reverberating around my head, taunting me, blaming me, pointing the finger at me accusingly.

‘Simon, I’m here to apologise. I’ve remembered what I said. You probably remembered all along and wanted to scream it at me, but now I know,’ I sniffled. ‘You had put the gun down. You let me call the guards. You looked different, relieved, and then I was so relieved, so happy to have prevented you from shooting yourself, but I didn’t know what to do. It was probably only five seconds, but it felt so long. I was afraid you would pick up the gun again.’ I squeezed my eyes shut, the tears rolled down my cheeks and I put myself back in the room from over a month ago. ‘“Well done, Simon,”’ I repeated. ‘“The guards are on their way. They’re going to bring you home, to your wife and girls.” And you suddenly looked different. It was because of what I’d said, wasn’t it? Home. I said go home , but you’d spent the entire time telling me this was your home, the one you’d been forced to leave. I did listen to you, Simon, I completely understood, I … slipped up, at the end. I made a mistake and I’m sorry.’

I wanted to take his hand but felt any contact would be an intrusion. I wasn’t a friend, I wasn’t family, I was the woman who had failed to save him from himself.

‘It would be wrong of me, selfish of me to suggest that there was a reason for you doing what you did, that any good at all could possibly have come from what you’ve done, but when I lost you I became so desperate to never make the same mistake again that I went beyond, have been going way beyond, in my efforts to save another man’s life. And if I hadn’t failed with you, then I may not have succeeded with him. I want you to know that.’ I thought of Adam and the night we had shared together and I smiled briefly.

I sat with him in a long silence. Suddenly there was a loud beeping from a machine beside the bed. I froze at first and then jumped up. At the same time Angela came rushing into the room, and jumped into action.

‘I was only talking to him,’ I said, panicked. ‘What did I do?’

‘You didn’t do anything,’ she said quickly. She rushed to the door, fired a list of orders to another nurse on duty, then looked at me. ‘You didn’t do anything. Stop blaming yourself. I’m glad you were with him. Now go.’

The room became a flurry of activity and I left.

Simon Conway was pronounced dead that night.

24

How to Wallow in Your Despair in One Easy Way

I arrived back at the Morrison Hotel suite at five thirty a.m., exhausted and completely drained. I wanted to climb back into bed beside Adam’s warm strong body, feel secure, have him recharge me with love and joy, belief and goodness again. This was what I’d expected to do, but when I walked into the suite, he was already up.

The sight of him made me smile and my heart lift, seeing him medicine enough for me, but then I saw the look on his face as I walked into the room and my smile disappeared. Warning bells rang. I knew regret when I saw it, I’d been looking at it in the mirror every day since I married Barry. I readied myself, steeled my heart, built up my wall around myself in preparation for the attack. The ice queen defences were engaged.

‘You’ve been crying,’ he said.

I looked at my reflection in the hall mirror and I was a mess. The clothes I’d thrown on were a mismatch, my hair hadn’t been brushed, I wasn’t wearing make-up, my nose was red, my skin blotchy. I didn’t exactly look a sight to win him over. I was about to tell him about Simon when it began.

It began with a look and I knew, I knew it before he even said the words, immediately feeling like a piece of filth who had taken advantage of a sick man, and I wanted the moment to be over already so I could collect my bag and do the walk of shame back to Clontarf. Had I learned nothing from the Simon Conway experience? What had I done to Adam? He looked a mess; had I undone all the good work he had done on himself, made him confused and disgusted with himself, disoriented enough to send him straight back to the bridge beneath our window? How could I leave him now? In this state? Even when he asked me to leave?