A Place Called Here. Cecelia Ahern

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      She had fallen into a deep sleep after hours spent at the garda station, the first day they worried about not hearing from Donal after four days of silence. She slept after the Gardaí had spent the day searching the river for his body. She slept after the day they’d spent hours attaching photos of Donal to shop windows, supermarket notice boards and lampposts. She slept the night they thought they had found his body down an alley in the town and slept the next night when they discovered it wasn’t him. She slept the night the Gardaí said there was nothing more they could do after months of searching. She slept the night of his mother’s funeral, after seeing the coffin of a grief-stricken mother being lowered into the dirt, to join her husband at long last after twenty years in this life without him.

      It frustrated Jack, but he knew it wasn’t a lack of caring that caused Gloria’s lids to close. He knew this because she held his hand when they sat through the questions at the garda station that first time. She stood beside him as the wind and rain lashed at their faces, by the river, watching the divers appear on the surface of the grey murky water with faces more gloomy than when they had disappeared to the world below. She had helped him stick posters of Donal to windows and poles. She had held him tightly when he cried the day the Gardaí stopped looking and she stood in the front row of the church and waited for him while he helped carry his mother’s coffin to the altar.

      She cared all right, but one year on, she still slept at night during the longest hours of his life. The hours when Jack cared most about everything but the hours when, deep in her sleep, Gloria didn’t and couldn’t care at all. Every night he felt the distance grow between her world and his.

      He didn’t tell her about coming across the woman, Sandy Shortt, from the missing persons agency in the Golden Pages. He didn’t tell her he had called her. He didn’t tell her about the late-night phone calls all last week and the new sense of hope this woman’s determination and belief had filled his head and heart with.

      And he didn’t tell her that they had arranged to meet on this very day in the next town because … well, because she was sleeping.

      Jack finally managed to overtake the long vehicles, and as he neared home he found himself alone on the now quiet country road in his twelve-year-old rusting Nissan. The interior of his car was silent. Over the past year he found he was intolerant of unwanted noise; the sound of a TV or a radio in the background was merely a distraction to his pursuit of answers. Inside his mind was manic: shouting, screaming, replays of previous conversations, imaginings of future ones all leaped around his head like a bluebottle trapped in a jam jar.

      Outside the car the engine roared, the metal rattled, the wheels bounced and fell over every pothole and bump in the surface. His mind was noisy in the silent car, his car clattered in the quiet countryside. It was five fifteen on a sunny Sunday morning in July and he needed to stop for air, for his lungs and for the front deflated wheel.

      He pulled over at the deserted petrol station, which would be closed until later in the morning, and parked beside the air pump. He allowed the birdsong to fill his head temporarily and push out his thoughts while he rolled up his sleeves and stretched his limbs from the long journey. The bluebottle momentarily settled.

      Beside him a car pulled up and parked. The population of the area was so small he could spot an alien car a mile away … and the Dublin licence plate gave it away too. Out of the tiny battered car, two long legs dressed in grey sweatpants appeared, followed by a long body. Jack stopped himself from gawking but from the corner of his eye he watched the curly-black-haired woman taking long strides to the coffee dispenser by the door of the shuttered garage. He was surprised that someone of her height could even fit into the small car. He noticed something fall from her hand and heard the sound of metal against the ground.

      ‘Excuse me, you dropped something,’ he called out.

      She looked behind her in confusion and walked back to where the metal was glistening on the ground.

      ‘Thank you,’ she smiled, sliding what looked like a bracelet or a watch onto her wrist.

      ‘No problem. Lovely day, isn’t it?’ Jack felt the pain in his swollen cheeks worsen as they lifted in a smile.

      Her green eyes sparkled like emeralds against her snow-white skin and glinted as they caught the sunlight streaming through the tall trees. Her jet-black curls twirled around her face playfully, revealing parts of her features, hiding others. She looked him up and down, taking him in as though analysing every inch of him. Finally she raised an eyebrow. ‘Gorgeous,’ she replied, and returned the smile. She, her jet-black curly hair, the Styrofoam cup of coffee, legs and all, disappeared into the tiny car like a butterfly into a Venus flytrap.

      Jack watched the Ford Fiesta drive into the distance, wanting her to have stayed, and once again he noted how things between him and Gloria, or perhaps just his feelings for her, were changing. But he hadn’t time to think about that now. Instead he returned to his car and leafed through his files in preparation for his meeting later that morning with Sandy Shortt.

      Jack wasn’t religious; he hadn’t been to church for over twenty years. In the last twelve months he had prayed three times. Once for Donal not to be found when they were searching the river for his body, the second time for the body in the alley not to be him, and the third time for his mother to survive her second stroke in six years. Two out of three prayers had been answered.

      He prayed again today for the fourth time. He prayed for Sandy Shortt to take him from the place he was in and to be the one to bring him the answers he needed.

       7

      The porch light was still on when Jack arrived home. He insisted on it being left on all night for Donal’s sake, as a beacon to guide his brother home. He turned it off now that it was bright outside and tiptoed around the cottage quietly, careful not to wake Gloria, who was enjoying her Sunday lie-in. Scouring through the linen basket of dirty clothes, he grabbed the least crumpled garment he could find and quickly changed out of one check shirt and into another. He hadn’t washed as he didn’t want the electric shower and ceiling fan in the bathroom to wake her. He’d even held back from flushing the toilet. He knew it wasn’t his overflowing generosity that was causing him to behave that way and yet he couldn’t quite summon the shame in knowing that it was exactly the opposite. He was deliberately keeping his meeting with Sandy Shortt a secret from Gloria and the rest of his family.

      It was as much to help them as it was to help him. In their hearts, they were beginning to move on. They were trying their utmost to settle back into their lives after the major upheaval and upset of suffering the loss of not one but two family members in one year. Jack understood their positions, they had all reached a point where no more days off work could be taken, sympathetic smiles were being replaced by everyday greetings, and conversations with neighbours were returning to normal. Imagine, people were actually talking about other things and not asking questions or offering advice. Cards filled with comforting words had stopped landing on his doormat. People had gone back about their own lives, employers had moved around shifts as much as possible and now it was back to business for all concerned. But to Jack it felt wrong and awkward for life to resume without Donal.

      Truthfully it wasn’t Donal’s absence that held Jack back from joining his family in bravely carrying on with the rest of his life. Of course he missed him but, as with the death of his mother, he could and would eventually get through the grief. Instead it was the mystery that surrounded his disappearance; all the unanswered questions left question marks dotting his vision like the aftermath of flash photography.

      He closed the door behind him to the cluttered one-bedroom СКАЧАТЬ