A Place Called Here

by Cecelia Ahern

  A branch snapped loudly beneath my foot and it echoed around the forest. The music immediately stopped and the voices quietened.

  “Someone’s there,” a woman whispered loudly.

  All heads turned toward me.

  “Hello, there!” a jovial man called excitedly. “Come! Join us! We’re just about to sing ‘This Little Light of Mine.’” There was a groan from the group.

  The man jumped up from his seat on a fallen tree trunk and came closer to me with his arms held open in welcome. His head was bald apart from four strands of hair, which hung spaghettilike in a comb-over style. He had a friendly moon-shaped face and so I stepped into the light and instantly felt the warmth of the fire against my skin.

  “It’s a woman,” the woman’s voice whispered loudly again.

  I wasn’t sure what to say and the man who had approached me looked now uncertainly back to his group.

  “Maybe she doesn’t speak English,” the woman hissed loudly.

  “Ah,” the man turned back to me, “Doooo yooooou speeeeeaaaaak Eng-a-lish?”

  There was a grumble from the group, “The Oxford English Dictionary wouldn’t understand that, Bernard.”

  I smiled and nodded. The group had quietened and were studying me and I knew what they were all thinking: she’s tall.

  “Ah, great.” His hands clapped together and remained clasped close to his chest. His face broke into an even more welcoming smile. “Where are you from?”

  I didn’t know whether to say Earth, Ireland, or Leitrim. I went with my gut instincts and “Ireland” was all that came out of my mouth, which hadn’t spoken for days.

  “Splendid!” The cheery fellow’s smile was so bright and I couldn’t help but return it. “What a coincidence! Please come and join us.” He excitedly led me toward the group with a hop, skip, and a jump.

  “My name is Bernard,” he beamed like the Cheshire cat, “and heartiest welcome to the Irish contingency. We’re frightfully outnumbered here,” he said, frowning, “although it seems that the numbers are rising. Excuse me, where are my manners?” His cheeks flushed.

  “Underneath that sock over there.”

  I turned to look at the source of the smart comment to see an attractive woman in her fifties, tight salt-and-pepper hair, with a lilac pashmina shawl draped around her shoulders. She was staring distantly into the center fire, the dancing flames reflecting in her dark eyes, her comments flowing out of her mouth as though she were on autopilot.

  “Who have I the pleasure of being acquainted with?” Bernard beamed with excitement; his neck craned up to look at me.

  “My name is Sandy,” I replied, “Sandy Shortt.”

  “Splendid.” His cheeks flushed again and he shook my outstretched hand, “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Allow me to introduce you to the rest of the gang, as they say.”

  “As who say?” the woman grumbled irately.

  “That’s Helena. She loves to chat. Always has something to say, don’t you, Helena?” Bernard looked at her for an answer.

  The wrinkles around her mouth deepened as she pursed her lips.

  “Ah.” He wiped his brow and turned to introduce me to a woman named Joan; Derek, the long-haired hippie playing the guitar; and Marcus, who was sitting quietly in the corner. I took them in quickly: they were all of a similar age and seemed very comfortable with one another. Not even Helena’s sarcastic comments were causing any friction.

  “Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll get you a drink of some sort—”

  “Where are we?” I cut in, unable to take his bumbling pleasantries any longer.

  All other conversation around the fire stopped suddenly and even Helena raised her head to stare at me. She took me in, a quick glance up and down, and I felt like my soul had been absorbed. Derek stopped strumming his guitar, Marcus smiled lightly and looked away, Joan and Bernard stared at me with wide frightened Bambi eyes. All that could be heard was the sound of the campfire crackling and popping as sparks sprang out and spiraled their way up to the sky. Owls hooted and there was the distant snap of branches being stepped on by wanderers beyond.

  There was a deathly silence around the campfire.

  “Is anyone going to answer the girl?” Helena looked around with an amused expression. Nobody spoke. “Well, if nobody speaks up,” she wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders and grasped it at her chest, “I’m going to give my opinion.”

  Voices of objection rose from the circle and I immediately wanted to hear Helena’s opinion all the more. Her eyes danced, enjoying the choir of disapproval.

  “Tell me, Helena,” I interrupted, feeling my usual impatience with people return. I always wanted to get to the point. I hated pussyfooting around.

  “Oh, you don’t want that, trust me,” Bernard fluffed, his double chin wobbling as he spoke.

  Helena lifted her silver-haired head in defiance and her dark eyes glistened as she looked at me directly. Her mouth twitched at the side. “We’re dead.”

  Two words said coolly, calmly, crisply.

  “Now, now, don’t you mind her,” Bernard said in what I imagined was his best angry voice.

  “Helena,” Joan admonished, “we’ve been through this before. You shouldn’t scare Sandy like that.”

  “She doesn’t look scared to me,” Helena said, still with that amused expression, her eyes unmoving.

  “Well,” Marcus finally spoke after his long silence since I’d joined the group, “she may have a point. We may very well be dead.”

  Bernard and Joan groaned, and Derek began strumming lightly on his guitar and singing softly, “We’re dead, we may very well be dead.”

  Bernard tutted, then poured tea from a china pot into a cup and handed it to me on a saucer. In the middle of the woods, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “If we’re dead, then where are my parents, Helena?” Joan scolded, emptying a packet of biscuits onto a china plate and placing them before me. “Where are all the other dead people?”

  “In hell,” Helena said in a singsong voice.

  Marcus smiled and looked away so that Joan wouldn’t see his face.

  “And what makes you think we’re in heaven? What makes you think you’d get into heaven?” Joan huffed, dunking her biscuit into her tea and pulling it up before the soggy end fell in.

  Derek strummed and sang gruffly, “Is this heaven or is this hell? I look around and I can’t tell.”

  “Didn’t anybody else notice the Pearly Gates and the choir of angels as they entered, or was it just me?” Helena smirked.

  “You didn’t enter through Pearly Gates.” Bernard shook his head wildly, his neck wobbling from side to side. He looked at me and his neck continued to shake. “She didn’t enter through Pearly Gates.”

  Derek strummed, “I didn’t pass the Pearly Gate nor felt the burning flames of hate.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Joan huffed.

  “Stop it,” he sang.

  “I can’t bear any more.”

  “I can’t bear any more, someone please show me the door…”

  “I’ll show you the door,” Helena warned, but with less conviction.

  He continued strumming and they all fell silent, contemplating his last few lyrics.

  “Little June, Pauline O’Connor’s daughter, was only ten when she died, Helena,” Bernard continued. “Surely a little angel like her would be in heaven and she’s not here, so there goes your theory.” He held his head high and Joan nodded in agreement. “We’re not dead.”

  “Sorry, it’s over-eighteens only,” Helena said in a bored tone. “Saint Peter’s down at the gate with his arms folded and an earpiece in his ear, taking instructions from God.”

  “You can’t say that, Helena,” Joan snapped.

  “I can’t get in, I can’t get out, Saint Peter, what’s it all about?” Derek sang in a gravelly voice. Suddenly he stopped strumming and finally spoke. “It’s definitely not heaven. Elvis isn’t here.”

  “Oh, well then
.” Helena rolled her eyes.

  “We’ve got our own Elvis here, haven’t we?” Bernard said, chuckling, changing the subject. “Sandy, did you know that Derek used to be in a band?”

  “How would she know that, Bernard?” Helena said, exasperated.

  Bernard ignored her again. “Derek Cummings,” he announced, “the hottest property in St. Kevin’s back in the sixties.”

  They all laughed.

  My body turned cold.

  “What was it you were called, Derek? I’ve forgotten now,” Joan said with a laugh.

  “The Wonder Boys, Joan, the Wonder Boys,” Derek said fondly, reminiscing.

  “Remember the dances on a Friday night?” Bernard asked excitedly. “Derek would be up there on the stage, playing rock and roll, and Father Martin would be almost having a heart attack at him shaking his pelvis.” They all laughed again.

  “Now, what was the name of the dance hall?” Joan thought aloud.

  “Oh, gosh…” Bernard closed his eyes and tried to remember.

  Derek stopped strumming and thought hard.

  Helena kept staring at me, watching my reactions. “Are you cold, Sandy?” Her voice sounded far away.

  Finbar’s Hall. The name jumped into my head. They had all loved going to Finbar’s Hall every Friday night.

  “Finbar’s Hall,” Marcus finally remembered.

  “Ah, that was it.” They all looked relieved and Derek’s strumming continued.

  Goose pimples formed on my skin. I shivered.

  I looked around at the faces of the group, studied their eyes, their familiar features, and I allowed all I had learned as a little girl to come flooding back to me. I could see it now as clearly as I had then, when I came across the story in the computer archives while researching a project for school. I had immediately taken interest, had followed up on the story and was more than familiar with it. I saw the young teenage faces smiling up from the newspaper’s front page and I saw those same faces around me now.

  Derek Cummings, Joan Hatchard, Bernard Lynch, Marcus Flynn, and Helena Dickens. Five students from St. Kevin’s Boarding School. They disappeared during a school camping trip in the sixties and were never found. But here they were now, older, wiser, and their innocence lost.

  I had found them.

  10

  When I was fourteen, my parents talked me into seeing a counselor after school on Mondays. They didn’t have to do much convincing. As soon as they told me I’d be able to ask all the questions I wanted and that this person was qualified enough to answer, I practically drove myself to school.

  I knew they felt that they had failed me. I could tell that by their expressions when they sat me down at the kitchen table, with the milk and cookies in the center and the washing machine going in the background as the usual distraction. Mum held a rolled tissue tightly in her hands as though she had used it earlier to dab away tears. That was the thing with my parents: they would never let me see their weaknesses, yet they would forget to get rid of the proof of them. I didn’t see Mum’s tears but I saw the tissue. I didn’t hear Dad’s anger at having failed to help me but I saw it in his eyes.

  “Is everything OK?” I looked from one strong face to the other. The only time two people can look so confident and as though they can face anything is when something bad happens. “Did something happen?”

  Dad smiled. “No, honey, don’t worry, nothing bad happened.”

  Mum’s eyebrow lifted when he said that and I knew she didn’t agree. I knew Dad didn’t agree with his words either but he was saying them nonetheless. There was nothing wrong with sending me to a counselor, nothing wrong at all, but I knew that they had wanted to help me themselves. They had wanted their answers to my questions to be enough. I overheard their endless discussions about the correct method of dealing with my behavior. They had helped me in every way they could and now I could feel their disappointment in themselves and I hated myself for making them feel that way.

  “You know the way you have so many questions, honey?” Dad explained.

  I nodded.

  “Well, your mum and I”—he looked to her for support and her eyes softened immediately as she glanced at him—“well, your mum and I have found someone that you’ll be able to talk to about all of those questions.”

  “This person will be able to answer my questions?” I felt my eyes widen and my heart quicken as though all of life’s mysteries were about to be answered.

  “I hope so, honey,” Mum answered. “I hope that by talking to him, you won’t have any more questions that will bother you. He’ll know far more about all the things you worry about than we do.”

  Then it was time for my lightning round. Fingers on the buzzers.

  “Who is he?”

  “Mr. Burton.” Dad.

  “What’s his first name?”

  “Gregory.” Mum.

  “Where does he work?”

  “At the school.” Mum.

  “When will I see him?”

  “Mondays after school. For an hour.” Mum. She was better at this than Dad. She was used to these discussions while Dad was out working.

  “He’s a psychiatrist, isn’t he?” They never lied to me.

  “Yes, honey.” Dad.

  I think that’s the moment I began to hate seeing myself in their eyes, and unfortunately it was when I began to dislike being in their company.

  Mr. Burton’s office was in a room the size of a closet, just about big enough for two armchairs. I chose to sit in the dirty olive-green-velvet-covered chair with dark wooden handles, as opposed to the stained brown-velvet-covered chair. They both looked like they dated from the forties and hadn’t been washed or removed from the small room since. There was a little window so high up on the back wall that all I could see was the sky. The first day I met Mr. Burton it was a clear blue. Every now and then a cloud passed, filling the entire window with white before moving on.

  On the walls were posters of school kids looking happy and declaring to the empty room how they had said no to drugs, spoke out against bullying, coped with exam stress, had beaten eating disorders, dealt with grief, were clever enough to not have to face teenage pregnancy because they didn’t have sex, but on the off chance that they did, there was another poster of the same girl and boy saying how they used condoms. Saints, the lot of them. The room was so positive I thought I was going to be ejected from my chair like a rocket. Mr. Burton the magnificent had helped them all.

  I expected Mr. Burton to be a wise old man with a head of wild gray hair, a monocle in one eye, a waistcoat with a pocket watch attached by a chain, a brain exploding with knowledge after years of extensive research into the human mind. I expected Yoda of the Western world, cloaked in wisdom, who spoke in riddles and tried to convince me that the Force in me was strong.

  When the real Mr. Burton entered the room I had mixed feelings. The inquisitive side of me was disappointed; the fourteen-year-old in me positively delighted. He was more of a Gregory than a Mr. Burton. He was young and handsome, sexy and gorgeous. He looked like he had just walked out of college that very day, in his jeans and T-shirt and fashionable haircut. I did my usual calculations: twice my age could work. In a few years it would be legal and I would be out of school. My whole life was mapped out before he had even closed the door behind him.

  “Hello, Sandy.” His voice was bright and cheery. He shook my hand and I vowed to lick it when I got home and never wash it again. He sat on the brown velvet armchair across from me. I bet all those girls in the posters invented all those problems just to come into this office.

  “I hope you’re comfortable in our designer, top-of-the-line furniture?” He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he settled into the chair, which had burst at the side and had foam spilling out.

  I laughed. Oh, he was so cool. “Yes, thanks. I was wondering what you would think my choice of chair says about me.”

  “Well,” he said with a smile, “it says one of two things.”

&nbs
p; I listened intently.

  “First, that you don’t like brown, or second, that you like green.”

  “Neither.” I smiled. “I just wanted to face the window.”

  “A-ha.” he grinned. “You are what we call at the lab a ‘window facer.’”

  “Ah, I’m one of those.”

  He looked at me with amusement for a second, then placed a pen and pad on his lap and a tape recorder on the arm of the chair. “Do you mind if I record this?”

  “Why?”

  “So I can remember everything that you say. Sometimes I don’t pick up on things until I listen back over the conversation.”

  “OK, what’s the pen and pad for, then?”

  “Doodling. In case I get bored listening to you.” He pressed RECORD and said that day’s date and time.

  “I feel like I’m at a police station, about to be interrogated.”

  “Has that ever happened before?”

  I nodded. “When Jenny-May Butler went missing, we were asked to give any information we had at the school.” How quickly talk had come around to her. She would have been delighted at the attention.

  “Ah,” he nodded. “Jenny-May was your friend, wasn’t she?”

  I thought about that. I looked at the anti-bullying posters on the wall and wondered how to answer. I didn’t want to seem insensitive to this gorgeous man by saying no, but she wasn’t my friend. Jenny-May hated me. But she was missing and I probably shouldn’t speak badly of her because, after all, everyone thought she was an angel. Mr. Burton mistook my silence for being upset, which was embarrassing, and the next question he asked, his voice was so gentle I almost burst out laughing.

  “Do you miss her?”

  I thought about that one, too. Would you miss a slap across the face every day? I felt like asking him. Once again I didn’t want him to think I was insensitive by saying no. He’d never fall in love with me and take me away from Leitrim then.