Cecelia Ahern Untitled Novel 1

‘Hi.’ I hear a voice beside me and I jump to my feet, startled.

‘Ginika, hi, you gave me a fright.’

She examines my bike, where I’m standing, the way I’m standing. Perhaps she recognises a hiding place when she sees one. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’

‘I said that I’d think about it,’ I reply weakly. I’m pissed off, I’m agitated. I don’t know what the hell I want.

‘Nah. You’re not. It’s OK. It’s all a bit weird anyway, isn’t it? Us lot? Still, it gives us something to do. Something to focus on, thinking about our letters.’

I exhale slowly. I can’t be angry at Ginika. ‘Do you have an idea of what you want to do?’

‘Yeah,’ she adjusts her grip on Jewel’s thigh as the baby sits on her hip. ‘But it’s not, like, smart the way the others’ ideas are.’

‘It doesn’t have to be smart, just yours. What’s your idea?’

She’s embarrassed and avoids eye contact. ‘It’s a letter, that’s all. One letter. From me to Jewel.’

‘That’s lovely. It’s perfect.’

She seems to prepare herself to say something and I brace myself. She’s firm, strong, shoots from the hip, a hip loaded with a baby she made.

‘You weren’t right in there, what you said, about everyone remembering us when we’re gone. She won’t remember me.’ She holds her baby tighter. ‘She won’t remember anything about me. Not my smell or nothing of the things you said. She’s not going to look at anything and think of me. Whether it’s good or bad. Ever.’

She’s right. I hadn’t considered that.

‘That’s why I have to tell her everything. Everything from the start, all the things about me that she knows now but won’t remember, and all the things about her as a baby, because there’ll be no one to tell her. Because if I don’t write it all down about her, then she’ll never know. All she’ll have of me is one letter for the rest of her life, and that letter has to be from me. About me and her. Everything about us that only we know and that she won’t remember.’

‘That’s a beautiful idea, Ginika, it’s perfect. I’m sure Jewel will treasure it.’ These are feathery kinds of words in response to the weight of her reality but I have to say something.

‘I can’t write it.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘No, I mean. I can’t write. I can barely read. I can’t do it.’

‘Oh.’

‘I left school. I didn’t, couldn’t keep up’ She looks around, embarrassed. ‘I can’t even read that sign up there.’

I look up at the road sign. I’m about to tell her that it says No Through Road but I realise it doesn’t matter.

‘Can’t read my baby bedtime stories. Can’t read the instructions on my medication. Can’t read the hospital paperwork. Can’t read directions. Can’t read buses. I know you’re so smart and all, you probably don’t understand.’

‘I’m really not smart Ginika,’ I say, with a bitter laugh. If I had been smart I wouldn’t have gone to Joy’s house today, I wouldn’t be in this position now. If I was smart, if I could think clearly through the mush and the fog, then I would know exactly what to do next, instead of standing here, feeling completely emotionally incapacitated, this supposedly experienced adult facing a teenager, unable to aid or guide. I’m reaching out and grasping for golden nuggets of advice and inspiration, but my hands flail uselessly in the emptiness. Too wrapped up trying to clean the shit off my own wings instead of helping a younger woman to fly.

‘I don’t ask for help,’ Ginika says. ‘I’ve always been able to do everything myself. Don’t need no one else.’ She shifts Jewel’s weight to her left hip. ‘But I need help writing the letter,’ she says it as though she’s pushing it out through her teeth, it’s that hard for her to say.

‘Why don’t you ask somebody in the club to write the letter for you?’ I suggest, trying to weasel myself out of the equation. ‘I’m sure Joy would be wonderful. You can tell her exactly what you want to say and she can write it down, exactly as you want. You can trust her.’

‘No. I want to write it myself. I want to learn how to write this letter for her. Then she’ll know that I done something good for her, because of her. And I don’t want to ask any of them. They mean well, but they haven’t a clue. I’m asking you to help me.’

I look at her, feeling stunned, frozen, by the magnitude of this request. ‘You want me to teach you how to write?’ I ask slowly.

‘Can you?’ she looks at me, her large brown eyes deep and pleading.

I feel that I should say yes; I know that I shouldn’t.

‘Can I …’ I begin nervously, then shut down my emotions, the desire to protect myself is too great. ‘I’d like to take some time to think about it.’

Ginika’s shoulders drop instantly, her demeanour slackens. She has swallowed her pride and asked for help and, selfish coward that I am, I can’t bring myself to say yes.

I know it’s prosaic, I know it’s tedious to say this after so much time has passed, when everything is OK, when I am more than a woman in grief, but sometimes something sets me off and everything gets tilted. I lose him all over again and all I am is a woman in grief.

The smashing of his favourite Star Wars mug. Discarding our bedsheets. When his clothes lost his smell. The broken coffee machine, the sun we’d rotated every day like two desperate planets. Small losses but huge. We all have something that unexpectedly derails us when we are motoring smoothly, blissfully, ardently. This encounter with the club is mine. And it hurts.

My instinct is to move inward, recoil, curl in a ball like a hedgehog, but never hide or run. Problems are excellent hunters with their flaring nostrils and sharp teeth; their special sensory organs ensure there is no place they can’t find you. They like nothing more than to be in control, on top, predator to you the prey. Hiding from them gives them power, even feeds their strength. A face-to-face meeting is what is required, but on your own terms, in your own territory. I go to the place where I process and acknowledge what is happening. I ask for help; I ask it of myself. I know the only person who can ultimately cure me is me. It’s in our nature. My troubled mind calls out to my roots to dig deep and steady myself.

I cycle away from Ginika, my heart pounding, my legs feeling shaky, but I don’t go home. As if I’m a homing pigeon, an inner compass takes over and I find myself at the graveyard staring at a Columbarium Wall. I read the familiar words of one of Gerry’s favourite phrases, and wonder just how and when the past started chasing me, when I started running, and the moment it caught me. I wonder how on earth all that I worked so hard to build up has so suddenly come crashing down.

Damn you, Gerry. You came back.

9

I watch the ‘For Sale’ sign being hammered into the soil in the front garden.

‘I’m glad we finally got to do this,’ the estate agent breaks into my thoughts.

I’d made the decision to sell the house in January, and it’s now April. I’d cancelled our appointment a few times, a representation of the yin-yang pendulum swinging in my newly altered state of mind, though I told Gabriel it was because the estate agent kept cancelling. I had to arm-wrestle his phone to the floor when he threatened to give her a piece of his mind. My reluctance has not been because I’ve changed my mind, but because I seem to have lost the ability to focus my mind on ordinary tasks. Though as I watch the ‘For Sale’ sign’s violent disturbance of the peaceful daffodil beds, I acknowledge this task is not ordinary.

‘I’m sorry, Helen, my schedule kept changing.’

‘I understand. We all lead busy lives. The good news is I have a list of very interested people – it’s the ideal starter home. So I’ll be in touch with you very soon to organise viewings.’

A starter home. I look out the window at the sign. I’ll miss the garden, not miss doing the physical work which I delegated to my landscaper brother Richard anyway, but I’ll miss the view and the escape. He created a haven for me, one that I could disappear to when I craved it. He will miss this garden and I will miss the connection we have because of this garden; it binds us together. Gabriel’s house has a courtyard in the back, with a beautiful lone mature pink cherry blossom tree. I sit and gaze at it from his conservatory, captivated by it when in bloom and willing it on in winter. I wonder if I should grow new plants, how Gabriel will feel about a pot of sunflowers, in keeping with my annual tradition since Gerry sent me the seeds in one of his ten letters. If this is my starter home, does that mean Gabriel’s house is the main event? Or is there a third course with him or another person that I have to look forward to?

Helen is staring at me. ‘Can I ask a question? It’s about the podcast. It was wonderful, incredibly moving, I had no idea what you’d been through.’

I’m put out, not ready for the sudden veering into my personal life and thoughts in the middle of a regular life moment.

‘My sister’s husband died. Heart attack, out of the blue. Only fifty-four.’

Twenty-four more years than Gerry had. I used to do that; a calculation of how many more years people had with their loved ones than I managed. It’s cold but it used to help feed the bitterness that occasionally came to life and chomped at every hopeful thing around it. Apparently the gift has returned to me.

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Thanks. I was wondering … did you meet somebody else?’

I’m taken aback.

‘In your husband’s final letter, he gave you consent, his permission to meet somebody else. That seems so … unusual. I can’t imagine my brother-in-law doing that. I can’t imagine her with anyone else anyway. Xavier and Janine. Just rolls off the tongue, you know.’

Not quite, but that’s the point, isn’t it. People who don’t fit together suddenly do and then you can’t imagine anyone else fitting at all. Circumstance and happenstance collide to synchronise two people who until then repelled each other, so they find themselves pulled into a net electric field. Love; as natural as shifting tectonic plates with seismic results.

‘No.’

She seems uncomfortable at having asked, starts to backtrack. ‘I suppose there’s only one real true love. You’re lucky you had him at all,’ she blurts. ‘At least, that’s what my sister says. OK, so I’ll get this in motion, and I’ll call you as soon as I have viewings arranged.’

It may seem like a lie, that I’m a Judas to my Gabriel, but I didn’t mean to tell her that I haven’t found love again. It was her paraphrasing of Gerry’s final letter that I took issue with. I did not receive nor did I need Gerry’s consent or permission to fall in love again; that human right to choose who I love and when I love has always lain with me. What Gerry did was provide a blessing, and it was this blessing that boomed the loudest in the scared, excited Greek chorus of my mind when I began dating again. His blessing fed a desire that already lived within me. Humans possess insatiable longings for wealth, status, and power, but are hungry, most of all, for love.

‘Which room did it happen in?’ she asks.

‘His death?’ I ask, in surprise.

‘No!’ she says, aghast. ‘Where were they written, or discovered, or read? I thought that might help with the tour of the house. It’s always nice to have a little story. The room where the wonderful PS, I Love You letters were written,’ she says, grinning, her salesperson head on full blast.

‘It was the dining room,’ I say, making it up. I don’t know where Gerry wrote the letters, I’ll never know, and I read them in every room, all the time, over and over again. ‘The same room he died in. You can tell them that too.’

His breath, hot, against my face. His sunken cheeks, his pale skin. His body is dying, his soul is still here.

‘See you on the other side,’ he whispers. ‘Sixty years. Be there or be square.’

He’s still trying to be funny, the only way he can cope. My fingers on his lips, my lips on his. Inhale his breath, inhale his words. Words mean he’s alive.

Not yet, not yet. Don’t go yet.

‘I’ll see you everywhere.’ My reply.

We never speak again.

10

I study Denise for a hint of what to expect. She seems calm, but impossible to read, and that’s always how Denise announces these things. I recall her face when she announced her engagement, her apartment, her promotion, coveted shoes bagged in a sale: any announcement of good news has been preceded by this solemn expression, to trick us into thinking she’s going to deliver bad news.

‘No.’ She shakes her head and her face crumples.

‘Oh sweetie,’ Sharon says, reaching for her and embracing her.

I haven’t seen the old bubbly Denise for a few years. She is tamer, quieter, distracted. I see her less often. She’s exhausted, constantly putting her body under stress. This is the third course of IVF that has failed in six years.

‘That’s it, we can’t do it any more.’

‘You can keep trying,’ Sharon says, in soothing tones. ‘I know somebody who went through seven courses.’

Denise cries harder. ‘I can’t do this four more times.’ There is pain in her voice. ‘We can’t afford one more time. This has wiped us out.’ She wipes her eyes roughly, sadness turned to anger. ‘I need a drink.’ She stands. ‘Wine?’

‘Let me get it,’ I say, standing.

‘No,’ she snaps. ‘I’m getting it.’

I hurriedly sit.

‘You’ll have one too, Sharon,’ I say in a tone that I hope she can decipher. I want her to order the wine, sit with it, pretend to drink it, anything to draw attention away from the fact Sharon currently has something growing inside her that is the only thing Denise wants. But Sharon isn’t getting it. She thinks that I’ve forgotten. She’s making ridiculous wide-open eyes in an attempt to secretly remind me, but Denise watches this pantomime act and knows at once that something is up.

‘Sparkling water is fine,’ Sharon says to Denise finally.

I sigh and sit back. All she had to do was order the damn thing. Denise wouldn’t have noticed. Denise’s eyes run over Sharon’s body, as if she’s carrying out her own ultrasound.

‘Congratulations,’ Denise says flatly, before continuing to the bar.

‘Fuck,’ Sharon says, breathing out.

‘You should have just ordered the drink,’ I sing. ‘That’s all you had to do.’

‘I know, I get it now, but I couldn’t figure out what you were doing – I thought you’d forgotten. Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ she says, holding her hand to her head. ‘Poor Denise.’

‘Poor you.’

Denise returns to the table. She sets down the glasses of wine and the sparkling water, then reaches over to hug Sharon. They hold each other for a long time.

I take a large gulp of wine that burns going down my throat. ‘Can I run something by you both?’

‘Sure,’ Denise says, concerned and happy to be distracted.

‘After the Magpie podcast, a woman from the audience was so moved by what she heard she set up a club, called the PS, I Love You Club. It’s made up of people who are ill, and they want to write letters to their loved ones, the way Gerry did.’

‘Oh my …’ Denise says, looking at me with wide eyes.

‘They reached out to me and want me to help them write their letters.’

Sharon and Denise share a concerned look, each trying to figure out how the other feels.

‘I need your honest opinions, please.’

‘Do you want to help them?’ Denise asks.

‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘But then I think about what I’d be helping them with, I know the value of what they’re doing and I feel slightly obligated.’

‘You are not obligated,’ Sharon says firmly.

They’re both pensive.

‘On the positive side,’ Denise begins, ‘It’s beautiful that they asked you.’

The beauty of it we cannot deny.

‘On the realistic side,’ Sharon steps in, ‘for you, it would be like reliving the entire thing. It would be going backwards.’

She echoes Gabriel’s podcast concerns and half of my family’s feelings on the matter too. I look from one to the other like it’s a tennis match, my two best friends replaying the exact same conversation I’ve had in my head all week.

‘Unless it would actually take her forward. She’s moved on,’ Denise defends it. ‘She’s a different Holly now. She has a new life. She works. She washes herself. She’s selling her house, she’s moving in with the sexy tree-man.’

The more Denise speaks, the more nervous I get. These are all things I worked hard to achieve. They cannot become undone.

Sharon is studying me, concerned. ‘How ill are they?’

‘Sharon,’ Denise elbows her. ‘Ill is ill.’

‘Ill is not ill. There’s ill and then there’s …’ she sticks her tongue out and closes her eyes.

‘Ugly?’ Denise finishes.

‘They aren’t all terminally ill,’ I admit, attempting a hopeful tone. ‘One guy, Paul, is in remission and Joy, has a life-long … deteriorating condition.’

‘Well, isn’t that a rosy picture,’ Sharon says, sarcastically. She doesn’t like it. She fixes me with one of her scary mummy faces that takes no nonsense. ‘Holly, you need to be prepared. You’d be helping these people because they’re sick and they’re dying. You’re going to have to say goodbye over and over again.’

‘But imagine, how beautiful it could be,’ Denise changes the tone, to our surprise. ‘When they write the letters. When they die knowing they achieved it. When their loved ones read their letters. Think ahead to that part. Remember how we felt, Sharon, when Holly would open an envelope on the first day of every month? We couldn’t wait to get to her. Holly, you received a gift from Gerry and you are in a position to pass it on. If you are able to, if you feel it’s good for you, you should do it; if you think it will set you back, then don’t and don’t feel guilty about it.’

Wise words but a straight yes or no would have been more helpful.

‘What does Gabriel think?’ Sharon asks.

‘I haven’t told him yet, but I already know what he’ll say. He’ll say no.’

‘No?’ Sharon says, huffily. ‘You’re not asking him for his permission.’

‘I know but … I don’t even think it’s a good idea.’

‘Well then, there’s your answer,’ Sharon says in a final tone.

So why am I still asking the question?

I tune out of the rest of their conversation, my mind racing back and forth as it chases the options, grasping for a decision. I feel as though I should, I know that I shouldn’t.

We part, back to our lives, back to our problems.

To weave and unravel, to unravel and weave.

11

It’s 2 a.m. and I pace the downstairs rooms of my house. There aren’t many. Living room to dining room to small U-shaped kitchen that only has enough standing room for two people, a toilet and shower room under the stairs. Which is ideal for me because it’s only me, and occasionally Gabriel. His house is nicer and we stay there more often. Mine and Gerry’s was a starter home; a new build in the suburbs of Dublin for us to begin the rest of our life together. Everything was shiny and new, clean, we were the first to use our shower, the kitchen, our bathroom. How excited we’d been to come from our rented flat to our own home with stairs for the first time.

I walk to the staircase and look up.

‘Holly!’ Gerry calls me.

He was standing where I’m standing now, at the foot of the stairs, hand on the banister.

‘Yes!’ I yell from upstairs.

‘Where are you?’

‘In the bathroom!’

‘Where? Upstairs?’

‘Gerry, our only bathroom is upstairs.’

‘Yes, but we have a toilet downstairs.’

I laugh, understanding. ‘Ah yes but I’m in the bathroom upstairs. Where are you? Are you downstairs?’

‘Yes! Yes, I’m here downstairs!’

‘OK great, I’ll see you in a minute when I come downstairs, from where I am upstairs!’

‘OK.’ Pause. ‘Be careful on the stairs. There’s a lot of them. Hold on to the banister!’

I smile at the memory, running my hand up and down the banister, touching all the places he touched, wanting to rub him on to me.

I haven’t done this late-night room wandering for years, not since the months after he passed, but now I feel the house is owed my attentive farewell. My mind is whirring with ideas. Bert’s quiz, Ginika’s letter, Joy’s trees and flowers notions; I didn’t ask Paul what he wants to do. They had more questions for me than I for them, about the dolphins, the holiday, the sunflowers. Sunflowers. My October letter from Gerry. A sunflower pressed between two cards and a pouch of seeds to brighten the dark October days you hate so much

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