A Place Called Here

by Cecelia Ahern

  She nodded, studying him all the while. “I’ll pass the message on.”

  “Thank you.” There was a pause and Jack prepared to wrap it up.

  “You’re not a Leitrim boy, by the sounds of it.”

  He smiled. “Limerick.”

  She mulled that over. “She was going to visit you last week?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one thing I do know about my daughter, she rang me on her way to Glin, was it?” She smiled and it faded quickly. “She was looking for someone of yours?”

  Jack nodded, feeling like a teenager faced by a nightclub bouncer and hoping by his silence he would be allowed in.

  Mrs. Shortt was quiet while she pondered what to do. She looked up and down the road. A neighbor across the road raised a garden glove to her and she waved back. Perhaps feeling less threatened, she made her decision. “Come inside,” she said, and motioned to him, moving away from the door, heading back down the hall.

  Jack looked up and down the road. The neighbor watched him reluctantly step into the house. He smiled awkwardly. He could hear Mrs. Shortt in the kitchen clattering cups and plates. He heard the kettle go on. The inside of the house was as immaculate as the outside. The front door led directly into the living room. It smelled of furniture polish and fresh air, as though all the windows had been left open for the scents of the garden to rush inside. There was no clutter. The carpet was vacuumed, silver and brasses gleamed, wood shone.

  “I’m in here, Jack,” Mrs. Shortt called out, as though they were lifelong friends.

  He went through to the unsurprisingly gleaming kitchen. The washing machine was running, RTE Radio 1 was on in the background, and the kettle was building up its crescendo to boiling point. From the kitchen there were French doors that led out to the back garden and again it was as well maintained as the front, with a large birdhouse, currently accommodating a greedy-looking robin singing between each peck at the seeds.

  “You have a lovely home, Mrs. Shortt,” Jack said, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “Thank you for the kind invitation.”

  “You can call me Susan, and you’re welcome.” She filled the teapot with boiling water, covered it with a tea cozy and waited. Jack hadn’t had tea like that since his mother used to make it. Despite welcoming him into her home, Susan was still on guard and stood by the counter with one hand on the tea cozy, the other fiddling with a tea bag. “You’re the first friend of Sandy’s to call by since she was a teenager.” She looked deep in thought.

  Jack didn’t know how to respond to that.

  “Everybody after that knew better.” She smiled. “How well do you know Sandy?”

  “Not well enough.”

  “No,” she said more to herself, “I didn’t think so.”

  “Every day that I search for her, I learn something new about her,” he added.

  “You’re searching for her?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “That’s why I’m here, Mrs. Shortt—”

  “Susan, please.” She looked pained. “I look around for Harold’s mother and the scent of cabbage when I hear that name. Everything was cabbage, cabbage, cabbage with that woman.” She laughed at the memory.

  “Susan.” He smiled. “The last thing I came here to do is worry you, but I was due to meet with Sandy last week, as you mentioned. She didn’t show up and since then I’ve done everything to try to contact her.” He deliberately left out the details about finding her car and phone. “I’m sure she’s fine,” he insisted, “but I really want—” He started again. “I really need to find her.” Sending Sandy’s mother into a panic was the very opposite of his intentions and he held his breath awaiting her response. He was relieved if not a little shocked to see a tired smile crawl onto her face but it gave up, collapsing in a sad heap before reaching her eyes.

  “You’re right, Jack, you certainly don’t know our Sandy well enough.” She turned her back to him to pour the tea. “Now let me teach you another thing about my daughter. I love her very much but she has the ability to hide as expertly as a sock in a washing machine. No one knows where it goes, just as no one knows where she goes, but at least when she decides to come back, we’re all here, waiting for her.”

  “I’ve heard that from everyone this week.”

  She whisked around. “Who else did you speak to?”

  “Her landlord, her clients, her doctor…” His voice trailed off guiltily. “I really didn’t want to have to call on you about this.”

  “Her doctor?” Susan asked, not minding at all that she had been left until last. She was more interested in the mention of her daughter’s doctor.

  “Yes, Dr. Burton,” Jack said slowly, not sure whether to reveal Sandy’s private information to her mother.

  “Oh!” Susan tried to hide a smile.

  “You know him?”

  “Do you know by any chance if it’s Gregory Burton?” She tried to hide her excitement but failed miserably.

  “That’s him, but he isn’t so keen on me, in case you’re talking to him.”

  “Indeed,” Susan said thoughtfully, not hearing what he’d said. “Indeed,” she repeated with her eyes alight, answering a question Jack wasn’t privy to. She was clearly delighted, but remembering Jack was in the room, she composed herself, intrigue taking the place of a mother’s excitement. “Why is it that you want to find Sandy so much?”

  “I was worried about her when she didn’t turn up to meet me in Glin, and then I was unable to contact her, which made me even more concerned.” It was partly true but it sounded lame and he knew it.

  Susan appeared to know it too. She raised her eyebrows and spoke in a bored tone. “I’ve been waiting for three weeks for Barney the plumber to come and fix my sink but I haven’t yet planned on visiting his mother.”

  Jack looked absentmindedly at her sink. “Well, Sandy is looking for my brother. I even got in touch with a member of the Gardaí in Limerick.” He felt his face flush as Susan let out a sound of surprise. “Graham Turner is his name, in case he calls.”

  Susan smiled. “We called the police on three occasions at the beginning but we’ve learned not to, now. If Garda Turner asks around he’ll know not to continue with his investigations.”

  “He’s already done that,” Jack said grimly, and then he frowned. “I don’t understand all this, Susan. I can’t understand where she’s gone. I can’t fathom how she can disappear so cleverly without anyone knowing where she is, without anyone wanting to know where she is.”

  “We each have our hiding places and we each put up with the little quirks of the people we love.” She rested her head on her hand and seemed to study him.

  He sighed. “That’s it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s it? Just let people vanish? No more questions asked? Come and go as you please? Flutter in and out. Disappear, reappear, and disappear again? No problem!” He laughed angrily. “Nobody worry about a thing! Don’t bother caring about all the people at home that love you and that are worrying themselves sick to death about you.”

  There was silence.

  “You love Sandy?”

  “What?” He screwed his face up.

  “You said…Never mind.” She sipped her tea.

  “I’ve only ever spoken to Sandy on the phone,” Jack said slowly. “There was no…relationship between us.”

  “So by finding my daughter, you find your brother?” He didn’t have time to answer the question. “Do you think your brother’s hiding place is the same as Sandy’s?” she asked boldly.

  And there it was. A complete stranger, someone who had met him no more than ten minutes before, had summed up the ridiculous notion behind his frantic search, in one question. Susan allowed a few moments to pass before offering, “I don’t know the circumstances of your brother’s disappearance, Jack, but I know he’s not in the same place as Sandy. Here’s another lesson,” she said softly, “a lesson Harold and I have learned over the years. No one ever finds the other sock
in the washing machine, not through actively looking, anyway.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Things just turn up. You can drive yourself crazy trying to find them. It doesn’t matter how neat and tidy you keep your life, it doesn’t matter how organized things are.” She paused and laughed sadly. “I’m a hypocrite, I somehow pretend to myself that a tidy house will make Sandy come home more often. I think, if she can just see everything, if she can see that everything is in order and has its place, then she won’t have to worry about things going missing.” She looked around the spotless kitchen. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because you can’t control it. Sometimes things and people just go.” She waved her hand through the air on the last word. “Just like that.” Then she placed the comforting hand over his. “Don’t destroy yourself trying to find out where.”

  They said their good-byes at the door and Susan, trying to hide her embarrassment, said, “Talking about things turning up, if you do come across Sandy before we do, tell her I found her purple diary with the butterflies. It was in her old bedroom. Unusual, because I’ve cleaned out that wardrobe dozens of times but never came across it.” She frowned. “Anyway, it would be important for her to know.”

  She looked up and waved again across the road and Jack turned to see a woman similar in age to Susan. “That’s Mrs. Butler,” she said, although it was of no importance to Jack. “Her daughter Jenny-May went missing when she was ten years old, the same age as Sandy. Such a lovely little girl, an angel, everyone said.”

  Jack, suddenly interested, studied the woman some more. “Did they find her?”

  “No,” Susan said sadly, “they never did, but she has left that porch light on every single night for twenty-four years hoping she’ll come home. She’ll barely go away on holiday, she’s so afraid she’ll miss her.”

  Jack slowly walked back to his car, feeling odd, different, as though he had switched bodies with the man who had only an hour ago entered the Shortt household. He stopped walking, looked to the sky, and contemplated all that he had learned through meeting Sandy’s mother. He smiled. And he cried as relief washed over him like a waterfall raining down. Because for the first time in a year, he felt like he could finally stop.

  And start living again.

  42

  Bobby was in no mood to discuss hearing his laughter enter this atmosphere the previous night, but he needn’t have spoken a word because it was clear that the air had been let out of his once ballooned spirit and all that was left was its deflated shell. It broke my heart to see him that way, to see a bird that had once soared now lie defeated on the ground, a broken wing stopping his flight. The few times I had attempted to raise the issue, the more still he lay wounded. There wasn’t a whimper, there wasn’t a tear; it was his silence that screamed the words he couldn’t or wouldn’t voice. It appeared he was going to concentrate on my problems until he felt fit to deal with his own. Not an altogether alien method of dealing with life, for me.

  “Why do you always leave your bag by the door?” Bobby spoke for the first time as we entered his shop.

  I looked to where Bobby was staring to see my bag, or dare I say, Barbara Langley’s bag, that had been quite absentmindedly placed beside the door. Like a cowboy in a western who parked his horse up by the saloon door, it was to enable a swift departure from any situation. To help ease the feelings of claustrophobia I would feel in the rooms and company of those I wasn’t altogether comfortable with, my parents included. Gregory included. My own home included. Rarely were there places I would keep my bag on my person. I would look to the door, see my bag, and feel secure knowing there was a way out, and there, as proof, were my belongings not far from that exit to freedom.

  I shrugged. “Just habit.” How all of my life’s complications and complex idiosyncrasies could be reduced to a shrug and two words. How nothing words could be.

  Bobby wasn’t in the mood to question me any further and we returned to the storeroom containing my boxes of belongings.

  “So,” I said, breaking the silence as I looked to Bobby, who was staring as though lost, as though he had never before encountered this room. “What are we doing back here?” I asked.

  “We’re going to empty your boxes.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t respond, not because he was ignoring me but because I think he didn’t hear me. There was so much more for him to hear now. He began emptying the top box, placing Mr. Pobbs very carefully on the floor. He lined up each item in a row from wall to wall, then moved to the next box and did the same. I helped him though I didn’t understand why. After twenty minutes, my belongings from Here were lined neatly in six rows across the walnut floor. I looked down at each item and couldn’t help smiling. Each one, from the impersonal—the stapler—to the personal—Mr. Pobbs—all opened the doors to previously locked-away memories.

  Bobby was looking at me.

  “What?”

  “Do you notice anything?”

  I looked back to the floor, running my eyes along the rows. Mr. Pobbs, stapler, T-shirt, twenty odd socks, engraved pen, work file I got in trouble for losing…Was I missing the point? I turned to him questioningly.

  “What about the passport,” he stated lifelessly.

  I looked back to the floor, smiling already. When I was fifteen years old my parents had arranged for us to go to Austria on a hiking holiday but the night before we were due to travel, my passport was nowhere to be found. I hadn’t wanted to go away at all. I had been complaining about the trip for months. A week away had meant missing two sessions with Mr. Burton, but not only that, any fear, any irrational phobia, tends to affect normal daily life. I stopped enjoying trips away due to my fear of losing things, and if something was lost in a place like Austria, a place I had never been to, a place I would more than likely never return to again, well then, how on earth was I supposed to find anything again? The night I lost my passport I had a quick change of heart. The two sessions with Mr. Burton were forgotten. All of a sudden I wanted to find the passport and I wanted to go on the trip. Anything that meant not missing another possession in my life.

  The trip was canceled as it was too late to get a replacement or temporary passport, but for once my parents were genuinely as flummoxed as I was, and had searched as frantically as I had. Finding it here after all those years, tattered and worn and complete with gawky photograph of me at age eleven, had been an incredible moment. But as I looked around the floor my smile faded. It was no longer there.

  I stepped over the rows of items, kicking some in my rush to get to the cardboard boxes where I frantically searched. Bobby left the room to give me my space, or so I thought, but he returned with a Polaroid camera. He motioned for me to step aside, which I did without question. He pointed the camera at the ground, took a photograph, extracted the square photo, shook it, examined it, and then slid it into a plastic folder.

  “I found this camera years ago,” he explained, sadness echoing in his words. “It’s difficult to find the cartridges that go with it. I don’t even know if they make them anymore, but now and again, I come across boxes of the right ones. I have to be careful with the photographs I take; I can’t waste them. I don’t mind being careful but it’s difficult to know which second among a lifetime of seconds is more special. Often when you realize how precious those seconds are, it’s too late for them to be captured because the moment has passed. We realize too late.” He was silent for a moment, lost in thought, frozen as though his batteries had run out. I touched his arm and he looked up, surprised to see me in the room. He looked down at the camera in his hands, surprised to see it there too. Then he rebooted. The light returned behind his eyes and he continued, “This is how you refill it. Take photos of these items on the floor every morning from now on.” He handed it to me and added before walking away, “And then I suggest you start taking the other photos.”

  “What other photos?”

  He stopped at the doorway an
d suddenly looked even younger than his nineteen years, like a lost little boy. “I don’t know much about what goes on around here, Sandy. I don’t know why we’re all here, how we all got here, or even what we’re supposed to be doing. I never knew that when I was at home with my Mum either.” He smiled. “But as far as I can see, you followed all your belongings here and now, day by day, items disappear. I don’t know where they’re going, but wherever that is, I suggest that when you find yourself there, you have proof that you were ever here. Proof of us.” His smile weakened. “I’m tired now, Sandy. I’m going to go to bed. See you at seven for the council meeting.”

  43

  Barbara Langley hadn’t much in the way of clothes suitable for community meetings, most likely because the doomed New York holiday, which resulted in the loss of her luggage more than twenty years ago, didn’t call for being put on trial by an entire community. But then again, you never know.

  I chose to stay away from rehearsals at the Community Hall, knowing that my presence there later would be enough and that Helena had the play I really wasn’t interested in being involved in all under control. I passed the day by covering the shop for Bobby, who had quite understandably decided to stay in bed the entire day. I busied myself; I pleasured myself rooting around the long-legged people’s section, diving into bargain buckets with all the ferocity of a bear that had stumbled upon a picnic park. Excitedly I pulled out outfits I dreamed of having at home. Ecstasy-fueled purrs escaped my lips as I tried on shirts with sleeves that reached my wrists, T-shirts that covered my belly button, and trousers with hems that fell to the floor. A tingle rushed through my body each time the feel of fabric covered an area of skin so used to being bare and exposed. What a difference an inch of fabric made. Particularly on a cold morning standing at the bus stop stretching the sleeves of a favorite sweater just so it covered a racing, angry pulse. That small inch, insignificant to most, everything to me, was the difference between a good day and a bad, internal peace and outward loathing, denial and the realization of an overwhelming albeit temporary desire to be like everyone else. A few inches shorter, a few inches happier, richer, content, warmer.