How to Fall in Love

by Cecelia Ahern

  As everyone broke into applause, I moved through the crowd, hurried, I couldn’t get out of the room fast enough, I couldn’t get enough air. I ran down a flight of stairs, grateful to find the toilets empty during the speeches, locked myself in a cubicle and burst into tears.

  ‘Christine?’

  It was Brenda’s voice. I froze. The bathroom had filled up very quickly after the speeches had ended and there was a queue outside the cubicles. I was waiting for my puffy eyes to calm down before I risked opening the door to reveal a tear-stained face to anyone who might be out there. The problem was, I had been in there for so long I was a constant subject of debate for the queue outside.

  ‘Christine?’ Adrienne called. ‘Christine, are you in here?’

  ‘We think that one is out of order,’ someone said.

  Mortified, I took out my phone and started furiously texting my sisters to leave me alone, but they began banging on the door, startling me and ending my frantic text.

  ‘Christine, is Adam in there with you?’ Adrienne asked, right outside the door.

  ‘Adam?! Of course not!’ I blurted out. I’d given myself away and I heard a woman in the queue say, ‘It must have been the vol au vents.’

  ‘He’s missing,’ Brenda said quickly. ‘Did you hear that? They’re bringing out the cake and no one can find him.’

  ‘He’s not with Maria, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ Adrienne added.

  That was exactly what I’d been thinking.

  ‘We asked her where he was as she was leaving. She said she had no idea.’ Adrienne lowered her voice and must have come closer to the door because it sounded right on top of her. ‘They didn’t get back together, Christine.’ Her voice was low and urgent.

  All of a sudden my pulse was throbbing in my ears and I could hear nothing else and couldn’t wait to get out of there. I opened the door and suddenly didn’t care about the twenty women staring at me or the fact no one would go into my cubicle after I’d been in there for so long. All I could see was Brenda and Adrienne’s concerned faces – faces that never showed concern, not to their baby sister who was always far too concerned; instead they always maintained a breezy repartee that was meant to jolly me along just in case, God forbid, I was like Mum after all. But now they were looking at me, serious, concerned, panicked.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Brenda asked and I wracked my brain, searching, trawling through our conversation archive for a hint of where he could be.

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ I stammered, trying to think straight. ‘I can’t believe Maria did that to him,’ I said angrily. Twice now she’d broken his heart – couldn’t she see how amazing he was?! ‘I should have stayed with him, what was I thinking?’

  ‘Okay, don’t worry about that now, just focus on where he’d be. Think hard.’

  I thought of the penthouse, the night we’d spent together, his last night. The view of the Ha’penny Bridge. I froze. He’d been planning it all along.

  ‘She knows,’ Adrienne said.

  ‘Go, Christine,’ Brenda urged me.

  I lifted up the hem of my dress and I ran. Running in heels was no easy task, but a piece of glass in my bare foot wasn’t an option either. Nor was jumping into the car with Pat, who was parked up outside. I needed to take a right on Parliament Street to get to the bridge, and that was a one-way street. Pat would only be bringing me away from the bridge to get closer to it. We didn’t have time for that. I ran through the freezing temperatures, hanging on to my faux-fur shawl with one hand while holding my dress up with the other. I ran down Parliament Street and right on to Wellington Quay, attracting glances and comments from Saturday-night revellers. I saw the bridge in the distance but couldn’t see anybody on it. I kept running, the cold burning my nostrils as I breathed it in, my chest burning as I gasped for air. As the bridge came nearer, I saw him. In exactly the same place we’d met two weeks previously, a figure in black, standing beneath the orange glow of the three lamps, the green uplighters casting him and the bridge in an eerie light. Despite my exhaustion, I dug deep within me for more energy and sprinted to the bridge. I ascended the steps.

  ‘Adam!’ I yelled, and he turned to face me, startled. ‘Don’t do this, please!’

  He looked at me, concern, sadness, surprise on his face.

  ‘I’m not going to touch you, I’m not going to come closer, okay?’

  People kept walking across the bridge, unsure of what to do, stepping around Adam in a wide circle, afraid, as if he were a landmine.

  I was crying. I had started some time during my sprint to the bridge and now I stood before him, a cold, shaky, out of breath, snivelling wreck.

  He didn’t say a word.

  ‘I know things didn’t work out with Maria …’ I tried to catch my breath. ‘And I’m sorry about that, I’m so so sorry. I know you love her and I know you feel as though you have nothing now. That’s not true. You have Basil’s and there’s a room full of people who are excited about that. And you have …’ I wracked my brain ‘… so so much. Your health, your friends …’ I gulped. ‘And you have me.’ I lifted my hands up, pathetically. ‘I know I’m not what you want, but I’d be at the end of the phone any time. I swear I’d do anything to help you, to make you happy. Truth is,’ I took a deep breath, ‘I need you. When we first met and I promised to show you the beauty of the world, I didn’t know what the hell to do. I bought a book!’ I laughed, pitifully. ‘But you can’t chase happiness. Joy happens spontaneously – it’s not some generic, by-numbers formula that you follow. Only I didn’t know that, I didn’t know what to do. I think I’d stopped seeing the beauty of the world for a while, without even realising it. Being with you … you helped me to see how beautiful life is, how fun it is. You were my wonderfully bespoke original guide to happiness. You showed me that doing simple things are all you need as long as you’re doing them with someone who wants to be with you. I was supposed to teach you and listen to you, but it was you who ended up showing me the way. And I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but you helped me fall in love. Proper love. Not just with life.’ I swallowed. ‘But with you. I think I’ve always tried to play it safe. I’ve always tried to fix things for everyone around me and I’ve always been with people that are … safe.’

  I thought of Barry and of our relationship. I had chosen somebody I’d known there’d be no drama with, no surprises, nothing that would break so I wouldn’t have to fix it. I hadn’t allowed myself to really fall in love. Not until I met Adam, who had brought nothing but drama and surprise every day I’d spent with him.

  ‘I don’t care if my love is requited or not, because being with you and the very thought of you makes me happy. The point I’m trying to make is that you are loved because I love you, Adam. Please, don’t do it. Please don’t jump because I need you.’

  Adam’s eyes were filled with tears. A couple who had lingered to listen were standing holding hands and cooing, obviously missing the part that Adam was threatening to jump off the bridge.

  I felt rather pathetic, spent after my revelations. I was drained and freezing cold. Pouring my heart out was all I could do to save him. So I waited, hoping, wishing, praying, that he would not only hear but feel my words, that they would somehow penetrate that part of his brain that was manipulating him into thinking none of it was worthwhile any more. I had failed with Simon, I could not, would not fail with Adam.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said.

  I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to hear his reasoning or his goodbye. I started crying even more.

  ‘Look at him,’ the woman urged and I looked up.

  Adam had a smile on his face, and I was confused. This wasn’t funny, why was he finding this funny? The couple were smiling too, as if there was a joke no one had let me in on. I felt like smacking them and saying, You don’t understand – a life is at stake here!

  ‘What side of the bridge am I on?’ he said, smile still on his face.

  ‘What?’ I frowned, looki
ng from him to the couple. ‘What are you talking about?’ Was it metaphorical? Was it supposed to mean something? He was still grinning at me, completely calm, as though he was thinking rationally when I knew he wasn’t. I thought back to when I first saw him on the bridge, he had been standing on the other side, his feet on the ledge, close to jumping off. I looked at him now, his feet on the concrete, not hanging over the edge, not clinging to the wrong side of the railings. He was standing on the bridge looking out at the view, which meant he hadn’t been about to jump!

  ‘Oh fuck,’ I whispered.

  ‘Come here,’ he laughed, holding his arms out to me.

  I clasped my hands to my head in utter embarrassment, cursing my sisters, cursing him, cursing myself. I had revealed my soul to him. I took steps backwards, mortified. ‘Oh, shit, sorry, I thought that, my sisters said that, I assumed, wrongly that …’

  He walked toward me, reached for me and stopped me from moving away. He was so tall he had to look down at me.

  ‘I told Maria it wouldn’t work with her and me.’

  My mouth fell open. ‘You what? What did you do that for?’

  He seemed amused by me. ‘Because I meant it. She hurt me, I don’t want to go back there. I understand she wasn’t treated how she should have been the past year, but I apologised for that. She admitted that she was moved by everything I had done to win her back, but what she was really nostalgic for was the old us, the way we were at the beginning. I suppose I was too. But I know now that we can’t be that couple any more – too much has changed, life has moved on. We’re over, there’s no going back. I don’t want to go backwards.’

  I shivered, still in shock, and he pulled me close.

  ‘Maria said to me, “Is it because of that girl?” And I realised that was a big part of it.’

  ‘What girl?’ I asked, feeling like I was totally losing the plot.

  Adam laughed.

  ‘Adam, this is not funny. I have no idea what’s going on. A minute ago I thought you were about to jump because you had no Maria, now you’re telling me you weren’t going to jump, and you don’t want Maria because of some other girl that you never mentioned anything to me about. And I told you things,’ I moaned, resting my head on his chest, mortified by what I’d said.

  ‘Did you mean those things?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Of course I did.’ I cringed. ‘I wouldn’t have said them if I didn’t mean them. But, Adam, you have to understand why I said them. The circumstances—’

  ‘You’re the girl,’ he interrupted my rambling. That stopped me. ‘The girl Maria was talking about. I realised I don’t love Maria. Whether I’m with her or not isn’t going to determine whether I live or die. My problem was, I was unhappy with me. You made me like me again. You helped me live my life again. And whether I have you or not, it won’t mean I’ll jump, or end my life. I need to be happy with me. All those things we did for Maria, I enjoyed them because I did them with you. I had fun with you. She may have been the reason, but you were the cause. While you were trying to make Maria fall in love with me, and make me fall in love with life, I fell in love with you.’

  His hands were on my face, my stunned face. He laughed nervously. ‘You can stop looking at me like that now.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘When I woke up this morning and you were gone, I thought that you had changed your mind,’ he explained.

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘And then when you came back to the bedroom and you’d been crying, I thought you were going to tell me you’d regretted it.’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘When you told me about Simon it made sense. I got it all wrong. I wanted to say it to you before you said it to me. I thought I’d make it easier on you.’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ I said gently, finally allowed to speak.

  He smiled.

  ‘Kiss,’ the woman beside us said.

  ‘I have conditions,’ I announced, stopping him.

  He pulled back.

  ‘You know you still have a long way to go,’ I said. ‘I helped you in the best way that I could, and I’ll continue to do that, but I’m clearly no therapist, Adam, I don’t know how to help you when you become … that man.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, serious then. ‘I came here to think about how far I’ve come. I’m not the same man that stood here two weeks ago, but I know I can be that person again if I don’t get help, if I don’t help myself. I feel like I’ve been given a chance to live – you helped me get that chance, and I’m going to grab it and try to make the best of it. I’m sure I’ll mess up sometimes, but I actually feel for the first time in a long time that I want to try to enjoy my life. So yes, I’ll start seeing someone about it. I don’t want to get that low ever again.’

  We locked eyes and smiled. He leaned toward me and we kissed. The man and woman cheered and then I heard their footsteps as they left us alone and made their way across the bridge.

  Adam took off his tuxedo jacket and draped it around my shivering shoulders. My teeth were chattering, my toes ice-cold.

  ‘I forgot to give you this.’ He reached into his pocket and retrieved my mother’s missing earring. ‘Pat found it in the car this morning.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, filled with relief. I held the emerald stone in my hand tightly, feeling honoured that my mother had become part of one of the most outstanding moments of my life. I could feel her there with me.

  ‘We can’t leave the party,’ I protested as Adam led me off the opposite side of the bridge.

  ‘We already have.’ He wrapped his arms around me. ‘It’s my party, I can do what I like. And I’m taking the woman I love back to my hotel.’

  I smiled. ‘You know, I came up with an idea for my book,’ I said coyly. I’d had the idea while I spent the day huddled under my duvet, crying over my life. Inspiration came from the most unusual places.

  ‘You did? What is it?’

  ‘It’s called How to Fall in Love. It’s going to be the story of how I met you.’

  He smiled. ‘You’ll have to change our names.’

  ‘I’ll have to do more than that. I think there’s a reason it’s taken me ten years to start it. I was trying to write the wrong thing. I’m going to write it as fiction; that way no one will know it’s true.’

  ‘Except us,’ he said, kissing my nose and taking my hand.

  ‘Except us,’ I agreed.

  We walked hand-in-hand across the Ha’penny Bridge, safely to the other side.

  27

  How to Celebrate Your Achievements

  I was positioned on Talbot Street with a ‘Congratulations’ banner in my hand, a party hat on my head and a party blower in my mouth. I was receiving some nasty glares from people passing, but I tried to ignore my embarrassment and concentrated on the people disembarking from the bus directly in front of me. Last off was Oscar, who looked rather shaky as he concentrated, head down, on making his way down the steps.

  I blew the party blower and he looked up in surprise. His face broke into a smile and he laughed as I waved the banner in his face, attracting smiles from the crowd.

  ‘You did it!’ I shouted. ‘You made it all the way into town!’

  He grinned, embarrassed but proud.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Like … I’m alive!’ he punched the air with his fist, as if he was going to burst.

  ‘Good!’ I laughed. ‘And you remember this feeling Oscar, whenever you have a down day or a wobbly moment, remember how good it is to feel alive. Okay?’

  He nodded enthusiastically, ‘Absolutely, absolutely, I won’t ever forget this.’

  ‘Call Gemma and make an appointment for Tuesday. We’ll work on you getting a job, now that you can travel into the city.’

  ‘Gemma’s back? I like Gemma. But you know I always prefer Mondays. It helps me begin my week,’ he said, concerned.

  Gemma had agreed to come back after I’d posted her a How to Tell Someone You’ve
Changed Your Mind Without Appearing a Flip-Flopper. The following day on my desk was How to Deal with a Difficult Boss and she was back at work the next morning. We had never discussed the incident.

  ‘I’ll be in Tipperary on Monday,’ I said happily, looking forward to my next trip. I had given up on my quest to find my happy place after realising the book was a load of rubbish that succeeded only in making me feel worse about myself because I couldn’t possibly live up to what it preached. I had brought it to read while sitting at the boathouse in Tipperary one day while Adam was at the office and it had frustrated me so much that I’d tossed it into the lake. Ironically, whenever I think of how I felt in that moment, it brings a smile to my face and an enormous feeling of freedom, a feeling I can summon up on demand.

  On our way to get something to eat before Oscar went to catch the bus home again, my phone rang. It was Detective Maguire. I stopped walking, Oscar continued until he realised I was gone.

  ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ he called back to me.

  I stared at the ringing phone, realising for the first time that I would probably always feel this way about Adam for the foreseeable future, unsure of what his future held, always wondering if he was okay when I wasn’t with him. I finally answered it, afraid of what I’d hear but more afraid of ignoring it.

  ‘I’m calling on behalf of Caroline,’ he barked. ‘It’s her sixteenth birthday next week. We’re having a party on Friday. You’d swear she was going to the bloody Oscars the way she’s going on. Anyway, she wanted you to come.’ He cleared his throat and lessened the aggression in his tone. ‘And I want you to come too.’