A Place Called Here

by Cecelia Ahern

  I walked toward him slowly, not knowing what to say. He didn’t seem to know either, but nor did he care, his smirk still on his face.

  “Did we…?” I asked.

  “Twice.” He winked and my insides churned. “By the way, before you throw me out of your building, some guy came by when you were in the bathroom. I told him he could wait if he wanted, but you probably wouldn’t recognize him when you saw him.” He grinned again.

  “What guy?” I racked my brain.

  “See, I told him you wouldn’t remember him.”

  “Is he in there?” I looked toward the closed door.

  “No, I guess he didn’t feel like hanging around a bedsit with a naked hairy man.”

  “You answered the door naked?” I asked angrily.

  “I thought it was you.” He shrugged. “Anyway, he left this card for you.” He handed me the business card. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in me giving you my number?”

  I shook my head, took the card from his hand. “Thanks, eh…” I began weakly.

  “Steve,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Nice to meet you.” I smiled and he laughed. He was kind of cute but still I watched him walk down the stairs.

  “We met before, by the way,” he called up to me, not turning around as he made his way down the steps.

  I was silent while I tried to remember.

  “At Louise Drummond’s Christmas party last year?” He stopped and looked up hopefully.

  I frowned.

  “Ah, it doesn’t matter.” He waved his hand dismissively. “You didn’t remember the next morning then, either.” Then he smiled and was gone.

  There was a moment of guilt until I remembered the business card in my hand and the bad feelings vanished. My knees went weak when I saw the name.

  It seemed Mr. Burton had set up a clinic in Dublin, Scathach House on Leeson Street. Wait a minute, Dr. Burton; he’d passed his exams at last.

  I danced around excitedly on the spot. I heard the toilet flush and Mr. Rankin left with a newspaper in his hand and caught me dancing.

  “You need to go again? I wouldn’t go back in there for a while.” He wafted the newspaper.

  I ignored him and went back into my bedsit. Mr. Burton was here now. He’d found me three years after I’d moved away and that’s all that mattered. At last, one odd sock had showed up.

  26

  Oh, Dr. Burton.” Jack sat up in the car seat and pressed the phone closer to his ear. “I remember why I’d made a note of it now. Actually it’s not me that I’m enquiring about. It’s about a friend of mine who had an appointment yesterday with Doctor…” He stopped, already forgetting the surname.

  “Burton,” the secretary finished for him, and he could hear another phone ringing in the background. “I’m sorry, could you just hold for a moment, please, sir?”

  “Yes.” Jack waited and listened to Duran Duran playing over the phone while he tried to formulate some sort of a plan. He scribbled Dr. Gregory Burton’s name and address into his notebook. Later he would go through Sandy’s missed calls, received calls, and dialed numbers that her phone had recorded over the last few days and he would try to piece together where she had gone, even if it meant ringing everyone in her phonebook.

  The secretary returned on the line. “I’m sorry, it’s very busy here today. How can I help you?”

  “I was wondering if you could tell me whether my friend Sandy Shortt showed up for her appointment yesterday?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr….?”

  Jack thought fast. “Le Bon.” Not fast enough. Le Bon?

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Le Bon, but we can’t give out information about our clients.”

  “Oh, of course you can’t, I understand that, but I’m not looking for any personal information. My friend has been terribly sick lately but she has been afraid to do anything about it in case it’s more serious than she anticipates. It’s her stomach; it’s been giving her trouble for months. I made an appointment for her and she says she went to Dr. Burton yesterday but I’m afraid she’s lying to us all. The family are all so worried. Could you at least just let us know if she arrived for the appointment? I’m not asking for any personal details.”

  “You’re enquiring about Sandy Shortt?”

  He sat back relieved. “Yes, Sandy,” he replied happily. “Her appointment was for one o’clock.”

  “I see. Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you as this is not a medical clinic, Mr. Le Bon. It’s a counseling center, so you can’t have made the appointment for her regarding stomach problems. Is there anything else I can help you with?” Her voice was firm, angry even.

  “Em,” Jack said, his face red with embarrassment. “No.”

  “Thank you for calling.” She hung up.

  He stared in embarrassment at the appointment made for one o’clock in Sandy’s diary. Suddenly Sandy’s phone began ringing and the name “Gregory B” flashed up on the screen. Jack’s heart thumped like a drum. He ignored the ring tone, relieved when it finally stopped and beeped to signal a message. He picked up the phone and dialed into her messaging service.

  “Hi, Sandy. Gregory here. I’ve tried calling you a few times but there’s no answer. I presume you’ve gone wandering the deep abyss again. I was just calling to let you know that a man named…” He moved his mouth away from the phone. “Carol, what was his name?”

  Jack heard the secretary’s voice saying “Mr. Le Bon.”

  “Right, yeah.” Gregory came back on the phone. “A Mr. Le Bon, I assume that’s not his real name,” he said laughing, “rang our offices looking for you. He was wondering if you’d made your appointment yesterday for your stomach problem?” His voice got quieter. “Just be careful, OK? I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ve considered getting a real job yet, waitressing or something. There’s little chance nuts would be chasing you then. You could go door-to-door, selling bibles; in fact a nice woman dressed head to toe in tweed came to my door last night, which quite obviously made me immediately think of you, so I took her card. Think about calling her. It’s a fine, uplifting card with Our Lord looking miserable on the cross. And it’s recycled paper so she really must care.” He laughed again. “Anyway, if you don’t think you could endure the tweed, get a nine to five. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, it’s this thing that people do. It allows them to have a life outside of work hours. That’s ‘life,’ L-I-F-E, you can look it up in your dictionary when you get the chance. Anyway…” He sighed and was quiet for a while as if deciding what to say, or more likely he knew exactly what to say and was deciding whether to say it or not. Jack knew that silence well. “Right,” his voice suddenly got louder and more businesslike. “Talk to you soon.”

  Knuckles rapping loudly on the glass of the passenger side of the car caused Jack to jump and drop the phone. He looked up to see Alan’s mother, a round-faced frump of a woman glaring in the window. He leaned over and rolled down the window.

  “Hello, Mrs. O’Connor.”

  “Who’s that?” She scrunched up her face and stuck her head in the window. Wiry hairs escaped from her jawline. Her false teeth unclamped themselves from her gums and moved around in her mouth as she spoke. “Do I know you?” she shouted, spit landing on Jack’s lip.

  “Yes, Mrs. O’Connor.” He wiped his lip and raised his voice, knowing she had bad hearing. “I’m Jack Ruttle, Donal’s brother.”

  “Merciful hour, baby Donal’s brother. What are you doing sitting out here? Get out and let me have a look at you.”

  She shuffled away in maroon-colored velvet slippers, her jaw moving as she looked him up and down, teeth still sloshing around in her mouth. She was dressed in the same outfit she appeared to have been wearing since the forties. “Make Do and Mend” had always been a part of the O’Connors’ way of life, recycling textiles around the house to clothe the twelve children she had reared without their father, who came for one thing and left when he got it. Jack remembered Alan coming along on a
day out with Donal when they were kids, wearing white shorts made from pillowcases. Donal never seemed to care, refusing to mock his friend as the other kids did. Not that Alan endured the taunts, instead choosing to knock the bejaysus out of anyone who even looked at him the wrong way. But he protected Donal from everyone, and his friend’s disappearance had hit him particularly hard.

  “Com’ere to me, aren’t ya all grown up?” She rubbed Jack’s hands and tousled his hair as though he had just reached adolescence that very day. “You’re the image of your father, God rest his soul,” she said, blessing herself.

  “Thank you, Mrs. O’Connor. You look great too,” he said, though it was a lie.

  “Ah, I don’t.” She waved her hand dismissively and began to shuffle back toward her ground-floor flat in the high-rise building. Two bedrooms and twelve kids; he wondered how she had managed it. No wonder Alan had spent so much time in the Ruttles’ house, being satiated with food by Jack’s mother.

  “Is Alan here? I came to talk to him.”

  “No, he’s not. He finally moved in with that young thing. In a house now, wouldn’t you know. He’s only with her because of the house but she only gets it because of her kid, mind you. Fancy houses they get nowadays, the single mothers. I had nothin’ like it in my day, not that I was single, but I was as good as, and all the better for it,” she continued, shuffling to her door.

  Jack laughed. Alan was always involved in something, landing on his feet no matter what the circumstances. Donal had named him “The Cat.”

  “I won’t disturb you, Mrs. O’Connor. I’ll go over to Alan at the house if that’s OK.”

  “You think he done something wrong?” She looked worried.

  “Not to me, anyway.” Jack smiled, and she nodded, relief written all over her hard face.

  Alan must have received a phone call from his mother, because he was outside in the driveway waiting. He looked thin, thinner than usual, and his face was pale and drawn, paler and more drawn than usual. But didn’t they all, hadn’t everyone and everything been affected by Donal’s disappearance? It was as if, when he left the chipper that night, bumping against the door frames in his drunken state, he had managed to bump the earth off its axis, causing it to swirl at top speed in the wrong direction on the wrong path. Everything felt out of place.

  They greeted each other with a hug. Alan immediately began to cry and Jack fought the urge to join him. Instead, he stiffened, allowing the younger man to weep on his shoulder, swallowing back the lump in his throat, blinking back the tears and trying to focus on everything around him that was real and that he could touch—everything except Donal.

  They sat in the living room. Alan’s hands shook as he tapped ash from his cigarette into one of the empty beer cans piled alongside the couch. The room was deathly silent; Jack wished they could put on the television as a background distraction.

  “I came here to see if a woman had called by today, she’s helping me out with looking for Donal.”

  Alan’s face brightened. “Yeah?”

  “She just wanted to ask you questions about the night, you know go back over everything again.”

  “I’ve been through that a million times with the guards, and a million times every day with myself.” He inhaled deeply on his cigarette and his nicotine-stained fingers rubbed his eyes wearily.

  “I know, but it’s good to have a fresh eye and ear go over everything again, maybe there’s something they missed.”

  “Maybe,” he said in a small voice, but Jack doubted he believed that; he doubted there was any moment of that night that Alan hadn’t analyzed, overanalyzed, and then dissected all over again. To tell him there was maybe something he was forgetting must surely be an insult.

  “She didn’t call by?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been here all day, was here all day yesterday, and I’ll be here all day tomorrow, too,” he said angrily.

  “What happened to that last job of yours?”

  He made a face and Jack knew not to ask any more questions.

  “Do me a favor, will you?” Jack said, and handed Alan his phone. “Ring this number and make an appointment for me with Dr. Burton, I don’t want them to recognize my voice.”

  Alan being Alan, he didn’t ask any questions. “Hi, I want to make an appointment with Dr. Burton,” he said, opening another beer can.

  He raised his eyebrows and looked at Jack. “Yeah, for a counseling session.”

  Jack nodded.

  “When do I want the appointment?” He repeated the secretary’s question, looking at Jack.

  “As soon as they can,” Jack whispered.

  “As soon as you can,” Alan repeated. He listened and looked at Jack. “Next month?”

  Jack shook his head wildly.

  “No, I need it sooner than that, my head is really messed up, you never know what I might do.”

  Jack rolled his eyes.

  Seconds later he hung up. “You got a cancellation for noon on Thursday.”

  “Thursday?” Jack asked, jumping up from his chair as though moving now would have him there on time.

  “Well, you said as soon as possible,” Alan said, handing him back the phone. “Has that got anything to do with finding Donal, by any chance?”

  Jack thought about it. “In a way, yeah.”

  “I hope you find him, Jack.” His eyes filled up again. “I keep going back over that night again and again, wishing I’d left with him. I really thought he’d be OK getting a taxi down that way, you know?” His eyes looked tortured and his hands shook. Around his feet on the floor lay sprinkles of ash he constantly flicked with his nicotine-stained thumb.

  “You weren’t to know.” Jack comforted him. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I hope you find him,” Alan repeated, opening another can of beer and slugging it down.

  Jack left him sitting there in the silence of the empty house, staring into space, knowing he was rethinking and reliving that night all over again, looking for the vital piece of evidence they had all missed. It was all they could do.

  27

  Missing person number one, Orla Keane, entered the great Community Hall, the light shining in from the open door spotlighting her presence. She stopped at the entrance, trying to get her bearings, looking like Alice in Wonderland who had just swallowed an “Eat Me” beside the monstrous oak door. I cleared my throat nervously and its amplified sound bounced off the walls, raced to the ceilings, and back down again like a Ping-Pong ball let loose. She turned to where I had made the noise and began to make her way toward me, high heels on the wooden floor echoing loudly.

  Joan and Helena had set up a table for me to sit behind on the far side of the room and, much to Joan’s disappointment, they stepped outside to give me privacy. As Orla approached me, I felt starstruck. I couldn’t believe that this person had stepped out of my “Missing” photographs and was now a living, breathing person walking directly toward me.

  “Hello,” she said with a smile, her Cork accent still strong despite her time here.

  “Hello.” My voice came out as a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. I looked down at the list of names on the table before me. I would have to do this twelve times today, and then again with Joan and Bernard. The thought of seeing all these people thrilled me, but the idea of having to discuss such delicate topics so subtly was draining me already. I had asked Helena earlier once again why on earth it was that I couldn’t just let everybody know without having to carry out this charade.

  “Sandy,” she had said so firmly that I needn’t have even heard a reason, “when people want to get home they get desperate. For them to learn that you found your way here while looking for them would cause them to believe that they can leave with you. Life wouldn’t be worth living here with a few hundred people trailing your every move.”

  She had a point. So here I was, playing the role of casting agent and owner of an acting agency, about to wind a conversation about every member of t
heir family and friends into a Hamlet soliloquy.

  I had had one more question for Helena. “Do you think that I can lead the people out of here and bring them home?” I had been wondering if that was my purpose for being here, because I was convinced I wasn’t staying. The typical victim belief: This can’t happen to me, not me of all people.

  She smiled sadly, and once again I needn’t have heard her response because her face said it all. “Sorry, Moses, I don’t think so.” But before I dissolved completely she quickly added, “But I think you are here for a reason and that reason is, right now, to share your stories with everyone, to tell them about their families and how much they’re missed. That’s your way of bringing them home.”

  I looked up at Orla, who was sitting before me anxiously awaiting my next move. It was time to bring her home.

  She was twenty-six years old now and she looked like she’d hardly changed at all. Nearly six years had passed since she had gone missing. Six years I’d spent looking for her. I knew her parents’ names were Clara and Jim and they had divorced two years ago. I knew she had two sisters, Ruth and Lorna, and a brother, James. Her best friends were Laura and Rebecca, who was also known as “Fly” because of her regular forgetfulness to zip up her fly. Orla was studying art history at Cork University when she went missing. Her debs dress was purple, and the scar across her left eyebrow was from when she’d fallen off her bike on vacation in Bantry when she was eight. She lost her virginity when she was fifteen at a house party, to Niall Kennedy, the guy who worked at the local video store, and she secretly crashed her parents’ car when they were away for a week in Spain but had it repaired on time and they still don’t know it to this day. Her favorite colour is lilac, she loves pop music, played the piano until she was fourteen, had secretly dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer since the age of six, yet never once took a class, and she had been here for five and three quarter years.

  I looked at her and didn’t know where to start. “So, Orla, tell me a bit about yourself.”