A Place Called Here

by Cecelia Ahern

  It was dark outside, pitch-black among the trees down by the Shannon Estuary where owls hooted and creatures moved around in the undergrowth. He took his emergency flashlight out of his car and as he switched it on, he saw various startled glowing eyes freeze and then dash back into the bushes. Sandy’s Ford Fiesta was in its place, untouched since he’d last been there. He shone the light around the trees, at the pathway that led farther along the estuary. A pleasant walk for bird watchers and nature lovers or a jogging path for Sandy? He walked toward it, deeper into the forest where he had looked so many times over the last few days. His inexperience had previously led him to look out for footprints, as if they would be any help to him. He walked farther, enjoying seeing creatures leap out of the line of the light into the distance, and he shone the light up into the trees and watched as it found its way up to the sky.

  A trail appeared on his left. He stopped walking and immediately stopped trying to work out what was niggling at him. He’d never noticed that trail before. He shone the light up the trail: more trees and blackness were at the end. He shuddered and moved the light away again with the intention of returning in the light of day to wander up the track. As he shone the torch in another direction, shining metal caught his eye and disappeared again. He quickly searched around with the light, afraid whatever it was would vanish. His eye fell upon a silver watch, lying among the long grass beside the trail to his left. He bent to pick it up with his heart thumping in his chest, an image suddenly appearing in his mind.

  It was the memory of Sandy bending to pick up her watch at the garage a few mornings ago.

  29

  Hello, I hope I’ve called the correct number for Mary Stanley.” Jack spoke into the answering machine. “My name is Jack Ruttle. You don’t know me but I’ve been trying to get in touch with Sandy Shortt, whom I know you were recently in contact with. I know this seems like a strange phone call, but if you hear from her or have any idea where she has gone, could you please contact me on the following number…”

  Jack sighed and tried another number. All around him on this sunny day in Dublin, people were lying out on the grass of St. Stephen’s Green. Ducks were waddling around his bench, searching for bits of bread people had dropped while feeding them. They quacked, pecked, and hopped back into the glistening water, distracting him momentarily. After spending more than an hour trying to find his way around Dublin’s system of one-way streets, and then being stuck in traffic jams, he’d finally managed to find a parking space around St. Stephen’s Green. He had an hour to spare before his session with Dr. Burton, something he was growing increasingly nervous about. Jack wasn’t good at discussing his feelings with anyone at the best of times, never mind an entire hour of searching his brain for pretend worries with a psychiatrist, all just to find information about Sandy Shortt. Columbo he was not, and he was growing tired of trying to find indirect ways of getting answers.

  He had been calling through the list on Sandy’s phonebook all morning, leaving messages with all those who had contacted her over the past few days and those she had made appointments with in previous weeks. He wasn’t getting anywhere; so far he’d left six voice messages, he’d spoken to two people who were extremely guarded about giving out any information, and he’d listened for far too long to her fuming landlord, who seemed more upset about not being paid yet that month than where Sandy was.

  “Let me warn you now, sonny, before she breaks your heart,” he’d growled. “Unless you want to be hanging around for days on end, waiting for her, then I suggest you cut your ties with her now. You’re not the only one, I can tell you that.” He’d laughed heartily. “Don’t be fooled by her. She brings them back all the time, thinking none of us hear her. I’m right above; I hear her comings and goings, if you’ll pardon the pun. You mark my words; she’ll turn up here in a few days wondering what all the fuss was about, probably thinking she was gone for two hours instead of two weeks. She does it all the time. But if you do see her before then, tell her to get that money to me ASAP or she’ll be tossed out on her arse.”

  Jack sighed. If he was going to give up, now was the time to do it. But he couldn’t. Here he was in Dublin, a few minutes away from meeting someone who, he imagined, knew more about what went on in Sandy’s head than anybody else. He didn’t want to pack it all in and head home to…nothing. His idea of Sandy was changing. Through their conversations on the phone he had painted a picture of her in his mind: organized, businesslike, in love with her job, chatty, personable. The more he dug around into her life, the more that image of her altered. She was still all of those things, but more. She was becoming more real to him. This wasn’t a phantom he was chasing; she was a real, complex, layered person, no longer just the helpful stranger he’d spoken to on the phone. Maybe Garda Turner was right, maybe she’d just had enough and was hiding from the world for a while, but that was something her counselor would surely know.

  Just as he was about to dial another number, his phone rang.

  “Is that Jack?” a woman asked quietly.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Who is this?”

  “This is Mary Stanley. You left a message on my phone about Sandy Shortt.”

  “Oh, yes, Mary, hello. Thank you so much for returning my call. It was a peculiar message, I know.”

  “Yes.” She was guarded, just as the others had been, unsure of this strange man who was looking for their friend without any viable reason whatsoever.

  “You can trust me, Mary. I mean no harm to Sandy. I don’t know how well you know her, if you’re a relative or friend, but let me explain myself first.” He told the story of how he contacted Sandy, arranged to meet her, passed her at the petrol station, and his efforts since he had lost contact with her. He left out the reason for his meeting her, feeling that wasn’t relevant. “I don’t want to raise any alarm bells,” he continued, “but I’ve been calling people she seems to have maintained close contact with, just to see if they’ve seen or heard from her lately.”

  “I received a phone call from a Garda Graham Turner this morning,” Mary said, and Jack wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement. It was probably both.

  “Yes, I contacted him, I’m concerned for Sandy.” Jack had called Garda Turner that morning and told him about discovering Sandy’s watch, hoping it would make him sit up and take notice. It obviously had.

  “I’m worried too,” Mary said, and Jack’s ears pricked to attention.

  “How did he know to call you?” Jack asked, meaning, Who are you? How do you know Sandy?

  “Who else was on your call list?” she asked, ignoring his question, sounding lost in thought.

  He flicked open his notepad. “Peter Dempsey, Clara Keane, Ailish O’Brien, Tony Watts—do you want me to keep going?”

  “No, that’s enough. You got your hands on a list of Sandy’s?”

  “She left her phone and address book behind. They were the only ways I could look for her.” Jack tried not to sound guilty.

  “Did somebody you know go missing?” Her tone wasn’t soft but it wasn’t harsh either. He was taken aback by the question, asked so directly as though missing people happened all the time.

  “Yes, my brother Donal.” A lump swelled in Jack’s throat every time he mentioned his brother.

  “Donal Ruttle, yes, that’s right. I remember reading that in the paper,” she said, and was quiet again in thought. “All those you’ve mentioned are people whose family members have gone missing,” Mary explained, “including me. My son, Bobby, has been gone for three years.”

  “I’m very sorry,” Jack said softly. It would make sense that all of Sandy’s recent contacts were work-related; he had yet to come across any friends of hers.

  “Oh, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. So let me get this straight, we all enlisted Sandy to help us find our loved ones and now you’re enlisting us to help you find Sandy?”

  Even though Jack was on the phone, his face blushed. “Yes, I guess so.”

>   “Well, whether the others have replied to you yet or not, I don’t care. I’ll speak for them. You can count us all in. Sandy’s very special to us all; we’ll do everything we can to help find her. The quicker we find her, the quicker she can find my Bobby.”

  They were Jack’s thoughts exactly.

  Unable to sleep for the remainder of the night, I lay awake pondering the whereabouts of my watch. My head was dizzy with possibilities, for after finding myself here, there were now a plethora of places I could imagine it inhabiting. Just as I was picturing a world where watches ate, slept, and married one another with grandfather clocks as heads of state, pocket watches as the intellectuals, waterproof watches that inhabited the waters, diamond watches the aristocracy, and digital watches the mere workers, Joseph’s creeping into the house stopped me. I had observed him for what I guessed was a further hour walking back up and down the road looking wide-eyed and fierce in his attempts to find my watch. I now knew what I looked like during my searches, focused and in the zone, completely unaware of all life around, particularly oblivious to a person hiding behind a tree not far away.

  A half hour after I’d returned to my bed, Joseph made his way quietly, but not quietly enough, into the house. I pressed my ear to the wall as I tried to hear the mumblings between him and Helena in the room next to me. The timber was warm against my cheek and I closed my eyes, momentarily hit by a pang of homesickness and a longing for the warm heaving chest I used to rest my head upon in bed. Then there was silence and, feeling like a caged lion, I decided to slip out of the house before anybody stirred again.

  Outside, the market stalls were being set up for another busy day of trading. There was the colorful sound of banter mixed with birdsong, laughter, and shouting as crates and boxes were being unpacked and stacked. I closed my eyes, hit by my second longing for home that day, and imagined myself as a child walking hand in hand with my mother through the organic farmers’ markets in the Market Yard in Carrick-on-Shannon, the scintillating smell of the fruit and vegetables, so ripe and vibrant, enticing everybody to touch, smell, and taste. I opened my eyes again and was back here.

  I arrived outside the Lost and Found building and noticed how the carvings on this building were more playful: two odd socks, one yellow-and-pink polka dot and the other purple-and-orange stripes. I stood thinking of Gregory and me at my good-bye dance at school and I laughed. A face appeared in the window, a very familiar face, and I immediately stopped laughing, feeling as though I’d seen a ghost. He was young, nineteen by now, if I calculated correctly. He gave me a cheeky grin, waved, and disappeared from the window and appeared at the now open door like the Cheshire cat. So this was the Bobby from Lost and Found that Helena and Wanda had mentioned.

  “Hello.” He leaned against the door frame with his shoulder, crossed one leg over the other and held out his two hands. “Welcome to Lost and Found.”

  I laughed. “Hello, Mr. Stanley.”

  His eyes narrowed at my knowing his name but his smile widened. “And you are?”

  “Sandy.” I’d heard he was a character, always acting the joker. I had watched countless home videos of him performing for the camera from the age of six all the way up to sixteen, just before his disappearance. “You were on my list,” I explained, “for auditions yesterday, and you didn’t show up.”

  “Ah!” Realization dawned on him yet he still continued to study me curiously. “I’ve heard about you.” He stopped leaning against the door frame and coolly made his way down the steps with his hands in his pockets. He stopped directly on front of me, folded his arms, then placed one hand to his chin and began to circle me slowly.

  I laughed. “What have you heard about me?”

  He paused behind me and I twisted my upper body around to him. “They say you know things.”

  “They do?”

  “They do,” he repeated, and continued strolling around me. When he had come full circle he stopped and folded his arms again, twinkles dancing in his blue eyes. He was everything his mother had boasted. “They say you’re the soothsayer of Here.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “The…” He looked around to make sure nobody was listening; he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Auditionees.”

  “Ah.” I nodded smiling. “Them.”

  “Yes, them. We have a lot in common,” he said mysteriously.

  “We do?”

  “We do,” he repeated. “They say, they being”—he looked left and right again before whispering—“the auditionees, say you’re the person to go to if you want to know things.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I know some things.”

  “Well, I’m the person to go to if you want to get things.”

  “Well, that’s why I’m here.” I smiled.

  He became serious. I think. “Which one? You’re here to get something or to let me know something?”

  I thought about that but didn’t answer aloud. “Aren’t you going to let me inside?”

  “Of course.” he smiled and dropped the act. “I’m Bobby,” he said, and held out his hand. “But you already know that.”

  “I do.” I smiled. “I’m Sandy Shortt,” I took his hand and shook it. It felt limp and I looked up to see his face that had paled.

  “Sandy Shortt?” he asked.

  “Yes.” My heart beat nervously. “Why, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Sandy Shortt from Leitrim, Ireland?”

  I let go of his limp hand and swallowed. I didn’t answer. It seemed that I didn’t need to. Bobby took me by the arm and led me to the shop. “I’ve been expecting you.” He looked over his shoulder one last time to see that no one was watching before dragging me inside and closing the door.

  Then he closed the shop.

  30

  Leading away from St. Stephen’s Green, Leeson Street was a fine Georgian street largely intact. The buildings, once grand homes housing the aristocracy, now mainly housed businesses: hotels, offices, and the basements were home to Dublin’s “Strip,” a chain of thriving nightclubs and strip clubs.

  A brass plate beside the grand black Georgian door announced the building to be Scathach House. Jack took the seven concrete steps up to the door and came face to face with a brass lion’s head with a ring clasped between his teeth. He was just about to grasp it and rap it against the door when he noticed a collection of buzzers to the right of the door: modern day’s ugly invention mingled with the old. He looked up Dr. Burton’s clinic; it was on the second floor, a PR agency at the bottom, a solicitor’s office at the top. He was buzzed upstairs where he waited in an empty reception area. The receptionist smiled at him and he felt like shouting, I’m not here for me, there’s nothing wrong with me, I’m investigating!

  But he smiled back instead.

  Magazines adorned the table, some a few months old, others a year old. He picked up one and self-consciously flicked through the pages, reading about a member of the royal family of an obscure country who lay across beds, couches, kitchen tables, and pianos in the favorite rooms of her house.

  The door to Dr. Burton’s office opened and Jack quickly disposed of the magazine.

  Dr. Burton was younger than Jack had imagined, mid-to-late forties. He had a tight beard, light brown, speckled with silver in places. He had piercing blue eyes, was five eleven, Jack guessed, and was dressed in jeans and a tan corduroy jacket.

  “Jack Ruttle?” he asked, looking at him.

  “Yes.” Jack stood and they greeted each other with a handshake.

  The office was busy, the style of furniture and design eclectic with a packed bookshelf, a full desk, a line of filing cabinets, a wall of academic credentials, nonmatching rugs, a chair, and a couch. The place had character. It suited the man who sat before him in the chair taking his personal details.

  “So, Jack.” Dr. Burton finished filling out the form and crossed his legs, focusing all his attention on Jack. Jack fought the urge to run out of the building. “Why is it that you have co
me here today?” he asked.

  To find Sandy Shortt, he wanted to say, but instead shrugged and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He wanted to just get this all over and done with right now. How on earth was he going to find out about Sandy through making up lies about himself? He hadn’t fully thought this through, assuming that everything would fall into place as soon as he’d walked into Dr. Burton’s office. What was it they said in the movies when the shrinks asked them questions? Think, Jack, think. “I’m under a lot of pressure,” he said a bit too confidently, pleased with himself for answering a question.

  “What kind of pressure?”

  What kind? Was there more than one kind? “Just the normal kind of pressure.” He shrugged again.

  Dr. Burton frowned and Jack feared he’d got the question wrong. “Is it due to work or—”

  “Yeah.” He jumped in, “It’s work. It’s really”—he searched his brain—“pressurizing.”

  “OK.” Dr Burton nodded. “What is it that you do?”

  “I’m a stevedore in Shannon Foynes Port Company.”

  “And what brings you to Dublin?”

  “You.”

  “You came all the way to see me?”

  “I had to visit a friend too,” he said quickly.

  “Oh, OK.” Dr Burton smiled. “So what is it about work that you find so pressurizing? Talk to me about it.”

  “Uh, the hours.” Jack made an under-pressure face which he thought was convincing. “The hours are so long.” He was silent then and he clasped his hands together on his lap and nodded and looked around the room.