The Time of My Life

by Cecelia Ahern

  Sometime in the four-day hibernation retreat I’d actually gone shopping for real food that had to be prepared and cooked. As out of practice as I was, I had to remember that real food took organisation and had to be prepared before hunger hit. On top of cleaning the three-year-old muck from my summer festival Wellington boots, if I collected enough stamps at the supermarket I would get a free rug; it would take me a year of real food shopping but it was an incentive to keep going back. I’d bought lemons and limes and filled a small vase in a nod to my friend in the magazine. I’d rather I never had to work again, I still hadn’t found a passion for anything, that nauseating word I kept hearing people say to me, and even though I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life – an unrealistic cupcake shop dream aside – I was starting to get on the right way of thinking. I would try and find something that marginally interested me and which paid the bills. Progress. However, my birthday money wouldn’t last for ever, in fact it was paying next month’s rent so I needed a job quickly. I showered and dressed and made sure I was perfectly prepared with a fresh cup of coffee as I sat at the breakfast counter to read the newspaper Life had flung at me on my birthday. I hadn’t actually looked at it when or since he’d thrown it down on the counter – I was too distracted by the blob of cream the corner page had lifted from my sponge cake – but as soon as I began to read, I was lost. Circled in red in what I assumed must be a suggested responsible job in the middle of the jobs page was in fact an advertisement for a flatmate in the property section. I was annoyed that Life was suggesting I leave the flat that he knew I loved more than most things in my life and I was about to crumple up the page and throw it away when a thought occurred to me. He wouldn’t ask me to leave the apartment. I read it again. And again. And then when I realised what it was, a smile formed on my lips and I wanted to give Life a big kiss. I ripped out the page and jumped off the stool.

  I hopped off the bus with a spring in my step but quickly it went flat. Momentarily lost, I finally found my bearings when I spotted Don’s beacon, a bright red magic carpet atop the Magic Carpet Cleaner van. It made me smile; the superhero’s car. I took out my pocket mirror and got to work, then I buzzed the intercom.

  ‘Yes?’ Don answered, out of breath.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, disguising my accent. ‘I’m here for the interview.’

  ‘What interview?’

  ‘The flatmate interview.’

  ‘Uh. Hold on … I don’t … who is this?’

  ‘We spoke on the phone.’

  ‘When was this?’

  I could hear paper rustling.

  ‘Last week.’

  ‘Maybe that was Tom. Did you speak to someone called Tom?’ I tried not to laugh as I heard him mentally cursing Tom.

  ‘Is he the fella moving in with his girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, annoyed. ‘What did you say your name is?’

  I smiled. ‘Gertrude.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Gertrude what?’

  ‘Guinness.’

  ‘Gertrude Guinness,’ he replied. ‘I can’t quite see you on the screen.’

  ‘Can’t you? I’m looking right in it,’ I said, holding the palm of my hand flat over the camera at the intercom.

  He paused again. ‘Okay take the lift to the third floor.’ There was a buzz and the main door unlatched.

  In the elevator mirror I fixed my eye patch and made sure all my teeth apart from the front ones on the top and bottom were blacked out. Then I took a deep breath, thinking, here goes everything. The elevator doors slid open and there he was standing at the open door, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. When he saw me I knew that he wanted to be mad but he couldn’t help it, and he smiled, then he threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Hello, Gertrude,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Don.’

  ‘You must be the hideous toothless woman with an eye patch with ten kids that I spoke with on the phone.’

  ‘Your wrong number. That’s me.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ he said softly.

  ‘About you,’ I said cheesily, and he smiled again, but then it faded.

  ‘I was led to believe you and Blake were back together. Is that true?’

  I shook my head. ‘Didn’t you get my message about dinner last week? I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘I did. But …’ He swallowed. ‘I told you I don’t want to be second choice, Lucy. If he didn’t want you back then—’

  ‘He did want me back,’ I interrupted. ‘But I realised it’s not what I wanted. He wasn’t what I wanted.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘I don’t lie. Not any more. To quote one of the most beautiful sentences that was ever said to me, “I don’t love you.”’ He smiled, and feeling encouraged, I continued. ‘But I think that I easily could and that I probably very quickly will. Though I can’t promise anything. It could all very possibly end in tears.’

  ‘That’s so romantic.’

  We laughed.

  ‘I’m sorry I messed you around, Don. It will be the first and probably the last time I ever do that.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘Life is messy,’ I shrugged, and he laughed.

  ‘So are you really here for a flatmate interview?’ He looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Yes,’ I said sombrely. ‘We’ve met three times now and slept together once, I think it’s time we both took the plunge and moved in together.’

  He paled slightly.

  ‘Hell no, Don, I love my little hovel and I’m staying put and I’m nowhere near being emotionally secure enough to live with another human being.’

  He looked relieved.

  ‘I am here for you.’

  He pretended to think about it, at least I hoped he pretended.

  ‘Come here, you.’ He reached for my hands and pulled me close. He gave me a lingering kiss, which left his mouth covered in the eyeliner I’d used to blacken my teeth. I decided not to tell him, it was more fun that way. ‘You know, we’ve actually slept together twice,’ he corrected me. ‘Which is a horrible number,’ he rolled up his nose with disdain. ‘Two.’

  ‘Yuck,’ I played along.

  ‘But three,’ he brightened. ‘Three, is a number I like. And four? Four is a great number.’

  I laughed as he tried to pull off my eye patch.

  ‘No, I like this, I’m keeping it on.’

  ‘You’re nuts,’ he said warmly, kissing me again. ‘Fine. On one condition.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Everything comes off except for the eye patch.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  We kissed again. Then he pulled me inside and kicked the door closed.

  EPILOGUE

  Saturday 6 August in Glendalough was a stunning day as meteorologists had predicted, and one hundred members of our parents’ family and close friends milled around the grass with champagne in their hands, enjoying the sun on their skin as they happily chatted and waited for it all to begin. The back lawn of my parents’ home had been transformed for their vow-renewal ceremony with one hundred seats separated by a white aisle leading to a white hydrangea-adorned trellised archway. Nearby was a marquee filled with ten tables of ten, for which the dozens of shades of green mountainside provided the backdrop. A single white rose sat in a tall vase in the centre of each table and at the top of the room was an enlarged photograph of the day the vows had first been said, thirty-five years ago, before Riley and Philip and I had come along.

  As I walked around the side of the marquee I spied Father dressed appropriately for the summer setting in a white linen suit, and talking with Philip. I hid behind a blue and pink hydrangea bush to eavesdrop, momentarily thinking father and son might be having a moving moment, but then I remembered this was real life, not the film about the girl with the cupcake shop who had reunited with her father. At the same time as I had the realisation, Philip turned away from Father, red faced and angry, and stormed off in my direction. Father didn’
t even bother to watch him leave; instead he sipped on his glass of white wine which he held by the stem, firmly between his finger and thumb, and watched the view in the distance. As Philip passed the bush I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the shrubbery.

  ‘Ow, Jesus, Lucy, what the hell are you doing?’ he asked angrily, then once he’d calmed, started laughing. ‘Why are you hiding in a bush?’

  ‘I was trying to witness father-and-son bonding time.’

  Philip snorted. ‘I’ve just been informed I’ve brought embarrassment on the family.’

  ‘What, you too?’

  He shook his head disbelievingly, then had the sense to finally laugh about it.

  ‘Is it about the boobs?’

  He laughed. ‘Yes, it’s about the boobs.’

  ‘I’m afraid Majella in that dress gave it away for you.’

  Philip laughed and reached out to my hair to remove a leaf. ‘Yeah, but it was worth it.’

  ‘“The gift that keeps on giving”,’ I said and he laughed loudly. I punched his arm and he clamped his hand over his mouth. I felt like we were kids again, hiding from a pending family day out to a museum or our parents’ friends’ house where we would be ignored and would have to sit politely alongside the adults being seen and not heard. We both looked at Father looking out to the distance, away from the crowd of people who’d gathered there for him.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it, you know,’ I said, trying to make Philip feel better.

  ‘Yes, he does. He means every single word and you know it. It’s just in him to be miserable and judgemental to everybody in his life apart from himself.’

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘I thought that role was just especially for me.’

  ‘Don’t think so much of yourself, Lucy. I was born before you, I’ve given him at least a few more years worth of disappointment than you have.’

  I tried to think back to a time when I’d witnessed Father bearing down on Philip but couldn’t.

  ‘He’s fine when you’re doing what he wants but if you divert in any way at all …’ he sighed and it was filled with resignation. ‘He wants the best for us, he just has no idea that the best for us in his eyes and the best for us in reality are not one and the same.’

  ‘So Riley is still the golden child,’ I said, bored. ‘We’ll have to take him out.’

  ‘Done. I just told Father he was gay.’

  ‘What is it with you and Mum? Riley isn’t gay!’

  ‘I know that,’ he laughed. ‘But it’ll be fun listening to Riley get himself out of that one.’

  ‘I’ve already got a bet on with him that he can’t say “transcendent elephant” in his speech. He’s not having a good day.’

  We laughed.

  ‘He’ll pull it off, he always does,’ Philip said good-naturedly, then pushed himself out of the hedge and back on the path. ‘Shouldn’t you go up to Mum now?’ He glanced at his watch.

  I looked at Father again. ‘I will in a minute.’

  ‘Good luck,’ he said, dubiously.

  I deliberately made my presence known so as Father wouldn’t get a fright when I appeared.

  ‘I already saw you in the bush,’ he said, not turning around.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Though I won’t enquire as to what you were doing. God knows, you won’t find a profession in there.’

  ‘Yeah, about that …’ I started, feeling the adrenaline of anger surge through my body again. I tried to control it. I got straight to the point. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you about how I left my job.’

  ‘You mean about how you were fired?’ He looked down at me, through the spectacles at the end of his nose.

  ‘Yes.’ I gritted my teeth. ‘I was embarrassed.’

  ‘So you should have been. Your behaviour was despicable. You could have found yourself behind bars. And they would have been right to do it, you know.’ He left a long pause after every sentence as if each was a new thought and nothing at all to do with the previous one. ‘And there would have been nothing I could have done about it.’

  I nodded and counted to five, keeping my anger at bay.

  ‘It’s not really about the drink-driving, though, is it?’ I finally said. ‘It’s me. You have a problem with me.’

  ‘Problem, what problem?’ he mumbled, already irritated that I’d pointed out a weakness in him. ‘I have no problem, Lucy, I merely want you to rise to the challenge, show responsibility and make something of yourself, instead of this … idleness … this nothing that you so much want to be.’

  ‘I don’t want to be nothing.’

  ‘Well, you’re doing a ruddy good job of it, regardless.’

  ‘Father, don’t you realise that no matter what it is that I do, you won’t be happy, because you want me to be what you want me to be, and not necessarily what I need to be, for me?’ I swallowed.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about? I want you to be a decent human being,’ he snapped.

  ‘I am one,’ I said quietly.

  ‘One who offers something to society,’ he continued as if he hadn’t heard me, and set off on a rant about responsibility and duty, each sentence beginning with, ‘One who …’

  I counted to ten silently in my head and it worked; my anger and hurt had subsided and on the day that it was, after the conversation I’d had with Philip, I didn’t feel as uptight about his lack of approval as I usually did. Though I believed in self-development and evolution for all of the human race, I knew I would never be able to change him or his opinions of me, and as I would never want to try to please him, an eternity of locking horns was in our future. However, deliberate attempts to displease him would no longer be on my to-do list, at least not intentionally, but one can never predict how the subconscious works. I suddenly felt light, the very last lie to myself undone; Father and I would not ever be friends.

  I tuned back into his rant ‘… so if you’ve nothing further to add we should end this conversation immediately.’

  ‘I’ve nothing further to add,’ I grinned.

  He wandered off to Uncle Harold whom he despised and who could not take his eyes off Majella’s chest.

  Mum was in her bedroom preparing when I knocked on the door and entered. She turned around from the full-length mirror.

  ‘Wow, Mum, you look amazing.’

  ‘Oh,’ she wafted her eyes. ‘I’m being so silly, Lucy, I’m nervous,’ and she laughed as her eyes filled. ‘I mean, what have I got to worry about? It’s not as if he’s not going to show!’

  We both laughed.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ I smiled. ‘I love the dress. It’s perfect.’

  ‘Oh, you’re probably just saying that to please the fussy old bride.’ She sat down at her dressing table.

  I pulled out a tissue and gently dabbed at the corners of her eyes where her tears had smudged her make-up. ‘Believe me, Mum, I don’t lie any more.’

  ‘Is Don here?’

  ‘He’s outside talking to Uncle Marvin who asked me in front of Father if he’d just seen me in an infomercial for Magic Carpet Cleaners. Father almost dropped dead.’

  ‘It was your finest work,’ Mum said with mock pride.

  ‘It’s been my only work,’ I said, worried.

  ‘You’ll find something.’

  I paused. ‘Don asked me to work with him.’

  ‘Cleaning carpets?’

  ‘His dad is having back problems. Don has had to do all the work himself for the past two weeks and he needs help.’

  Mum looked concerned at first, the old Silchester adage of respectability the first thought in her mind, but then her new thoughts kicked in and she smiled supportively. ‘Well, that will be handy, won’t it? Having a daughter who can clean up after herself for a change. Are you going to take the job?’

  ‘Father won’t be happy about it.’

  ‘When have you ever done anything to please him?’ Mum looked out of the window. ‘Look at him. I’d better p
ut him out of his misery and get down there.’

  ‘Nah, leave it another ten minutes, let him sweat it out.’

  Mum shook her head. ‘You two…’ Then she stood up and took a deep breath.

  ‘Before you go down there, I just want to give you a present; a proper present this time. Remember you said that you never felt you were good at anything, that you never knew what it was you were supposed to do?’

  Mum looked embarrassed, then resigned herself to the fact. ‘Yes. I remember.’

  ‘Well, it got me thinking. Apart from being the best mother in the world, and the best bread maker, I remembered how you used to draw pictures for us to colour in. Do you remember that?’

  Mum’s face lit up. ‘You remember that?’

  ‘Of course I do! We had colouring books wherever we went because of you. You were so good at that. So, anyway.’ I ran out to the landing and returned with an easel and its accessories all wrapped up in a red bow. ‘I got you this. You’re lots of things to lots of people, Mum, and when I was a child, I always thought that you were an artist. So, paint.’

  Mum’s eyes filled again.

  ‘Don’t, you’ll ruin your make-up. I preferred it when you didn’t cry.’ I grabbed another tissue and dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘Thank you, Lucy,’ she sniffed.

  Riley knocked on the door. ‘Are you ladies ready?’

  ‘For now and for the next thirty-five years,’ she smiled. ‘Let’s go.’

  Walking down the aisle behind my mother who was arm in arm with Riley was the most positive emotionally charged day of my life. The two of them walked before me towards a dapper Philip and the proudest-looking Father I’d ever seen, and I could see the young awkward apprentice who had promised Mum she would never be lonely again in the older man who had never broken that promise.