Cecelia Ahern – The Time of My Life (страница 3)

I used to cook. I used to cook almost every night. The nights I didn’t, my then boyfriend cooked. We enjoyed it. We owned a large apartment in a converted bread factory with floor-to-ceiling steel grid windows and original exposed brickwork on most walls. We had an open-plan kitchen-cum-dining-room and almost every weekend we had friends around for dinner. Blake loved cooking, he loved entertaining, he loved the idea of all of our friends, even family, joining us. He loved the sound of ten to fifteen people laughing, talking, eating, debating. He loved the smells, the steam, the oohs and aahs of delight. He’d stand at the kitchen island and tell a word-perfect story while dicing an onion, splashing the red wine into a beef bourguignon, or flambéing a baked alaska. He never measured anything, he always got the balance just right. He got the balance of everything just right. He was a food and travel writer, he loved going everywhere and tasting everything. He was adventurous. At weekends we never sat still, we climbed this mountain and that mountain, during summers we’d go to countries I’d never heard of. We jumped out of an airplane twice, we’d both bungee jumped three times. He was perfect.

And, he died.

Just joking, he’s perfectly fine. Alive and well. Cruel joke I know but I laughed. No, he’s not dead. He’s still alive. Still perfect.

But I left him.

He has a television show now. He’d signed the deal when we were still together. It’s on a travel channel we both used to watch all the time, and now and then I switch over and watch him walking the Great Wall of China or sitting in a boat in Thailand eating pad thai; and always, after his word-perfect review, in his perfect clothes – even after a week of climbing mountains, shitting in woods and not showering – he looks into the camera with his perfect face and he’ll say, ‘Wish you were here.’ That’s the name of the show. He told me in the weeks and months that followed our traumatic break-up, while he was crying down the phone, that he’d named it for me, that every time he said it he was talking to me and only me and never ever to anybody else. He wanted me back. He called me every day. Then every two days. Eventually it was once a week and I knew he’d been grappling with the phone for days trying to wait for that one moment to speak to me. Eventually he stopped calling and he’d send me emails. Long detailed emails about where he’d been, about how he felt without me, so depressing and so lonely I couldn’t read them any more. I stopped replying to him. Then his emails got shorter. Less emotional, less detailed, always asking me to meet him though, always asking for us to get back together. I was tempted, don’t get me wrong, he was a perfect man, and having a perfect, handsome man want you is sometimes enough to make you want him back, but that was in the weak moments of my own loneliness. I didn’t want him. It wasn’t that I’d met anybody else either, I told him that time and time again though perhaps it would have been easier if I’d pretended I had because then he could have moved on. I didn’t want anybody else. I didn’t really want anyone. I wanted to just stop for a while. I wanted to stop doing things and stop moving. I just wanted to be on my own.

I left my job, got a new one at an appliance company for half the salary. We sold the apartment. I rented this studio apartment, a quarter of the size of any other home I’d owned. I found a cat. Some would say I stole it but nevertheless, he/she is mine now. I visit my family when held at gunpoint, I go out with the same friends on nights that he’s not there – my ex-boyfriend, not the cat – which is more often now that he’s travelling so much. I don’t miss him and when I do miss him, I switch on the TV and I get enough dosage of him to feel content again. I don’t miss my job. I miss the money a little bit when I see something in the shops or in a magazine that I want, but then I leave the shop or I turn the page and I get over it. I don’t miss the travelling. I don’t miss the dinner parties.

And I’m not unhappy.

I’m not.

Okay, I lied.

He left me.

CHAPTER THREE

I was halfway through the bottle of wine by the time I built up the – not courage, I didn’t need courage, I wasn’t afraid – I needed to care. It took half a bottle of wine to care about returning a call to my life, and so I dialled the number listed on the letter. I took a bite of a chocolate bar while I waited for the phone to connect. It was answered on the first ring. It didn’t give me time to chew, never mind swallow my chocolate.

‘Oh, sorry,’ I said with a stuffed mouth. ‘I’ve chocolate in my mouth.’

‘That’s okay dear, take your time,’ an upbeat older woman with a smooth American-pie Southern accent said perkily. I chewed quickly, swallowed and washed it down with some wine. Then I retched.

I cleared my throat. ‘Finished.’

‘What was it?’

‘Galaxy.’

‘Bubble or caramel?’

‘Bubble.’

‘Mmm, my favourite. How can I help you?’

‘I received a letter about an appointment on Monday. My name is Lucy Silchester.’

‘Yes, Ms Silchester, I have you in the system. How does nine a.m. suit?’

‘Oh well, actually that’s not why I’m calling. You see, I can’t make the appointment, I’m working that day.’

I waited for her to say, Oh silly us, asking you to come on a work day, let’s cancel the entire thing, but she didn’t.

‘Well, I guess we can work around you. What time do you finish?’

‘Six.’

‘How about seven p.m.?’

‘I can’t because it’s my friend’s birthday and we’re going for dinner.’

‘What about your lunch break? Would a lunch meeting suit you?’

‘I’ve to bring my car to the garage.’

‘So, just to summarise, you can’t make the appointment because you’ve work in the day, you’re bringing your car to the garage on your lunch break and you’ve dinner with friends in the evening.’

‘Yes.’ I frowned. ‘Are you writing that down?’ I heard tapping in the background. This bothered me; they had summoned me, not the other way around. They were going to have to find a time.

‘You know, sweetheart,’ she said in her long Southern drawl – I could almost see the apple pie slithering from her lips and landing on her keyboard, then her keyboard hissing and going alight, and my summons being forever wiped from the memory. ‘You’re obviously not familiar with this system.’ She took a breath and I jumped in before the boiling apples had a chance to drip again.

‘Are people usually?’

I’d knocked her off her train of thought.

‘Pardon me?’

‘When you contact people, when life summons people to meet with it,’ I emphasised, ‘are people usually familiar with the procedure?’

‘Well,’ the longest sing-song that sounded like way-eell, ‘some are and some aren’t, I suppose, but that’s what I’m here for. How’s about I make it easier for you by arranging for him to come to you? He’d do that if I asked.’

I thought about that, then suddenly, ‘Him?’

She chuckled. ‘That catches people out too.’

‘Are they always hims?’

‘No, not always, sometimes they’re hers.’

‘Under what circumstances are they men?’

‘Oh, it’s just hit or miss, sweetheart, there ain’t no reason for it. Just like you and me being born what we are. Will that be a problem for you?’

I thought about it. Couldn’t see why it would. ‘No.’

‘So what time would you like him to visit you?’ She tapped some more.

‘Visit me? No!’ I shouted down the phone. Mr Pan jumped, opened his eyes, looked around and closed them again. ‘Sorry for shouting,’ I composed myself. ‘He can’t come here.’

‘But I thought you said that wouldn’t be a problem for you.’

‘I meant it’s not a problem that he’s a man. I thought you were asking if that would be a problem.’

She laughed. ‘But why would I ask you that?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes health spas ask that too, you know, in case you don’t want a male masseuse …’

She chuckled. ‘Well, I can guarantee he won’t be massaging any part of your anatomy.’

She made anatomy sound dirty. I shuddered.

‘Well, tell him I’m very sorry but he can’t come here.’ I looked around at my dismal studio flat that I always felt quite cosy in. It was a place for me, my own personal hovel; it was not for entertaining guests, lovers, neighbours, family members or even emergency services when the rug caught fire, it was just for me. And Mr Pan.

I was huddled up by the arm of the couch and a few steps behind me was the end of my double bed. To my right was a kitchen countertop, to my left the windows and beside the bed was a bathroom. That was about the size of it. Not that the size bothered me, or embarrassed me. It was more the state of it. My floor had become the wardrobe. I liked to think of my scattered belongings as stepping stones, my yellow brick road … that kind of thing. The contents of my previous top-dollar penthouse wardrobe were bigger than the new studio apartment itself and so my too many pairs of shoes had found their home along the windowsill, my long coats and full-length dresses hung on hangers at the right- and left-hand ends of the curtain pole and I slid them open and closed as the sun and moon requested just like regular curtains. The carpet was as I have already described, the couch monopolised the small living area reaching from windowsill to kitchen counter, which meant you couldn’t walk around it but had to climb over the back to sit on it. My life could not visit me in this mess. I was aware of the irony.