Time of My Life (31 page)
‘I’m sorry, I need to do what?’
From the way he was looking at me I knew that he’d heard exactly what I said. I wasn’t being asked to repeat it for hearing’s sake but so that I would know there was no way in the world that was ever going to happen. That’s when our friendly break-up, or our not-getting-back-together moment became less so.
‘I’d like them to know that I didn’t break up with you,’ I said easily, trying to keep my tone casual but firm so this could be as non-conflicting as possible.
‘So you want me to just call them all up and say, Hi, by the way …’ He finished the sentence in his head, carried the scene out. ‘No way.’ He shifted uncomfortably on the grass.
‘You don’t have to call them all up and make a big song and dance about it, Blake, in fact you don’t have to say anything at all, I’ll tell them. My thirtieth is in two days and we’re going out for dinner and I could just tell them then, no big deal, no fireworks, just tell them and then if they don’t believe me, which they probably won’t, they’ll probably call you up and that’s when I’d need you to back me up.’
‘No,’ he said immediately, eyes fixed ahead of him. ‘It was years ago, it’s history, let’s just leave it there. Believe me, nobody cares. I don’t know why you want to bring it all back up.’
‘For me. It’s important to me. Blake, they all think I cheated on you, they—’
‘I’ll tell them you didn’t, that’s ridiculous,’ he said protectively. ‘Who said that?’
‘All of them, apart from Jamie, but that’s not the point.’
His jaw set as he thought hard. ‘You didn’t, did you?’
‘What? No way! Blake, listen to me, they think I’m the bad guy, that I broke your heart, that I ruined your life and—’
‘You want me to be the bad guy instead,’ he said angrily.
‘No, of course I don’t, I just want them to know the truth. It’s as if they blame me for all the changes in our lives. Not everyone, mostly Adam—’
‘Don’t mind Adam,’ Blake said, calming then. ‘He’s my best friend, he’s the most loyal human being on the planet, but you know what he’s like, he’s intense. I’ll tell him to lay off you.’
‘He makes comments all of the time. There’s always an atmosphere between me and him, and Mary for that matter, though that doesn’t bother me much. He makes things difficult for me; if he just knew that he was misinformed then he’d stop. He might even apologise.’
‘You want an apology? So that’s what this is about. I’ll talk to him, I’ll tell him to calm down, to stop being so intense, that things between us just fizzled out naturally and you were the strong one to finally point it out and end it, that I’m fine about the whole thing, that—’
‘No, no, no,’ I said, not wanting to get sucked into another story. ‘No. I want them to know the truth. We don’t have to tell them why we said what we said, we’ll tell them it’s private and we never want to talk about it again. But at least they’ll know. You know?’
‘No,’ he said firmly and stood, wiped the grass from his jeans. ‘I don’t know what you and him came here to do. Trick me into becoming some kind of bad guy to our friends but I’m not falling for it. I’m not doing it. The past is the past, you were right, there’s no point in going back there again.’
I stood too. ‘Wait, Blake. Whatever you think this is, you’re wrong. This is not some kind of act of sabotage, in fact it’s the opposite. I want to fix things, more specifically I want to fix my life. I thought that meant finding you, and in a way I was right but just not exactly the way I thought it was supposed to be. Look,’ I took a deep breath, ‘it’s as simple as this. A few years ago we told a lie. What we thought was a small lie, but it wasn’t. It’s okay for you because you’re away all the time, you’re travelling the world and you don’t have to live with it. I have to live with it every day, every single day. Why did I walk away from something that was perfect? They ask me all the time. But I didn’t. Truth is, something that I thought was perfect was taken away from me, and I never wanted perfect again. I wanted middle of the road, stuff I didn’t care about so that I couldn’t lose anything I really loved ever again. I can’t live with the lie any more. I can’t. I need to move on but in order for me to do that I need you to help me do this one thing. I could tell them myself but it needs the both of us. Please, Blake, I need you to help me do this.’
He thought hard, staring at a pile of barrels with his jaw firm and square, his eyes intense. Then he bent over and picked up his pint from the grass and looked at me, but only for a second. ‘Sorry, Lucy, I can’t. Just move on from it, okay?’ And he left me and disappeared into the black hole in the pub, swallowed up by the songs and cheers from inside.
I fell back down, exhausted, on the grassy slope we had been lying on moments earlier, and went through the conversation in my head over and over again. There was nothing I could have said differently. It was dusk now, the half-light of a summer night, when shapes and shadows threatened more sinister things beneath. I shivered. I heard footsteps around the corner, coming from the direction of the lively beer garden. Life appeared then, he stopped when he saw me alone, didn’t come any further, just leaned his shoulder against the wall.
I looked at him gloomily.
‘We can catch a lift back to the B&B in five minutes if you want.’
‘What, and not stay until the end? Have you not taught me anything?’
He gave me a small smile, a congratulation for effort. ‘Jenna’s heading back to her holiday cottage. She’s thinking of moving out.’
‘Of the cottage? Good for her.’
‘No. Out of Ireland. She’s going home. To Australia.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t think things quite worked out for her the way she’d hoped.’ He looked at me knowingly.
‘Fine. I’ll be ready in five minutes.’
He made his way to me and groaned like an old man as he lowered his body to the grass. He clinked his bottle to my glass. ‘Sláinte,’ he said, then lifted his face to the stars. We had a moment’s silence while my head still rang with Blake’s words. There was no point in following him inside for round two, I knew that his mind couldn’t be changed. I looked at Life; he had a smile on his face as he watched the stars.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ he grinned even wider.
‘Come on, tell me.’
‘No. Nothing,’ he tried to stop smiling.
I gave him a dig in the ribs.
‘Ow.’ He flexed his stomach and sat up beside me. ‘Just that he has his face on his business card.’ He chuckled like a girl.
He annoyed me at first but the more he laughed, the more I wanted to join in, which I eventually did.
‘Yeah.’ I finally took a breath. ‘That was a bit sad, wasn’t it?’
He snorted, an actual pig snort, which sent us both into a fit of giggles.
Life had jumped in the back of the jeep, forcing me to take the front seat beside Jenna. She was subdued, there wasn’t the big smile that greeted us that morning, though she wasn’t rude – I doubted there was a rude bone in her body.
‘It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?’ Life asked, capturing the mood in the jeep and breaking the silence.
‘Yeah,’ she and I said simultaneously in a tired tone. We quickly looked at each other then away again.
‘Did I hear something about you and Jeremy in the pub? Whispers of romance?’ Life stirred it up.
Jenna’s cheeks had pinked. ‘Oh, there was a party… it was nothing, well, it was something, but it’s nothing. He’s not…’ She went quiet, swallowed hard. ‘It’s not what I want… so.’
That explained her status change on Facebook. We rode the rest of the journey in silence. She pulled into the B&B driveway and we thanked her and jumped out. She turned the car around and we stood there to wave her off.
Life glared at me.
‘What?’
‘Say something,’ he said impatiently.
I sighed, watched her, a tiny little blonde thing in the big jeep, then I jogged over and knocked on the window. She hit the brakes, and lowered the window. She looked tired.
‘I heard you might be going back home.’
‘Yeah, I am.’ She looked away. ‘Like you said, it’s a long way.’
I nodded.
‘I’m going home in the morning.’
She looked up, suddenly eager to hear more. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s too bad.’ She was too polite to say it cattily but it wasn’t altogether convincing either.
‘I’m not…’ I struggled to think of how to phrase the sentence. ‘I’m not coming back,’ I said simply. She studied me, trying to understand what I’d said. Then she did. ‘Just thought you should know.’
‘Right.’ She gave me a brighter smile, battling with it not to take over her face. ‘Thanks.’ She paused. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
I stepped back from the car. ‘Thanks for the lift.’
I went back to the house and heard the wheels on the gravel. I turned back once, saw the window closing, the smile on her face, and the jeep drove back down the long drive. It paused at the exit, then she indicated right, back the way we’d come.
I’d been holding my breath all that time and as soon as she turned, I let it out. My heart twisted again and for a moment I panicked. I wanted to call her back, take it back, I wanted to go to Blake, take
him
back, live the way we had always lived together. But then I remembered.
Habit.
I awoke to a fully dressed Life watching me from an armchair, which was spooky to say the least. He looked concerned.
‘I have some bad news.’
‘We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of Sebastian,’ Life said as we stood in a scrapyard staring at my poor car that had been brought here by the medics.
‘How long have you known about this?’
‘Since yesterday, but I didn’t want to tell you then. Didn’t seem right.’
‘Does he really have to go? Can we not keep him going for a bit longer?’
‘Afraid so. A team of mechanics couldn’t bring him back. Besides, you’d be better off buying a new car with all the money you spend on fixing him.’
‘I’m loyal.’
‘I know.’
We took a moment of silence then I patted Sebastian on the roof. ‘Thank you for bringing me to all the places I wanted to go to and for taking me away from them again. Farewell, Sebastian, you have served me well.’
Life passed me a handful of soil.
I took it from him and threw it on the roof. We took a step back and the clamp was lowered and Sebastian was lifted up towards the heavens.
And then promptly dropped and crushed.
A car horn broke into my thoughts and we turned to see Harry hanging his head out of the camper-van window. ‘Brazil Nuts here is itching to leave. His mum is having a hissy fit and needs the van for some Irish-dancing feis.’
I was quiet on the way home as was Harry. He was beside me, texting the entire time, and in the moments he was waiting for the next reply, he read the previous ones.
‘Harry’s in love,’ Annie teased.
‘Congratulations.’
His cheeks pinked, but he smiled. ‘So what happened with your man?’
‘Oh. No. Nothing.’
‘I told you people can change a lot in three years.’
I didn’t want a young college boy to think he knew more about the evolution of the human race than I did, so I smiled at him and spoke rather patronisingly. ‘But he didn’t change, he was exactly the same.’
He rolled his nose up at that, disgusted that Blake’s little entrance yesterday was the norm and not the result of some knock on the head he’d received in the past three years of my not knowing him. ‘You changed then,’ he said matter-of-factly and then went back to his phone to text the girl he wanted to have his babies.
I was even quieter after that conversation; I had a lot to think about. Life was all chat but finally realised after my delayed mono-worded answers that I didn’t want to talk so he left me in silence. I had lost a lot on this trip: not just the love I thought I’d had, and my beloved car, but also the hope that I could redeem myself – my dream to stop living in a web of lies woven entirely by myself seemed to be an un realistic one, or at least was going to be more of a battle than I had thought. I felt like I didn’t have anything or even worse I felt like I had nothing: no job, no car, no love, a dilapidated relationship with my family and my friends, and more worryingly, with my best friend. All I had was my rented studio-flat across from a neighbour who probably never wanted to speak to me again and a cat that I had left alone for two nights.
I looked to my other side. But I had my life.
Life leaned forward as soon as we reached the inner city. ‘Can you let us out here?’
‘Why here?’
We’d gotten out on Bond Street, the heart of the Liberties in Dublin, one of the most historical and central areas in the city where most of the original streets, including the one we found ourselves on, were still cobble-locked. Behind the black gates of the nearby Guinness Brewery, smoke pumped into the air as the scientists in white lab coats inside concocted our greatest export.
‘Follow me,’ he smiled proudly. I followed him down the cobble-stoned road, the old walls beside us towering above us as they hid working factories side by side with derelict buildings and walls of bricked-up arched windows. Then, just when I thought we were in the middle of a lesson of the heart that would go a little something like talking about all the problems that had come to people before, perhaps to the very people who lived on this street, yet they had recovered from it – perhaps sealing up their windows in a mass form of self-healing – and that hearing this would somehow make me feel better about myself, he took out a set of keys and made his way to a random door in a wall full of bricked-up windows.
‘What are you doing? What’s in here?’ I looked around, waiting for somebody to stop us.
‘I want to show you something. What do you think I’ve been doing all the time I was sneaking away from you?’
I frowned, then had an image of Life cheating on me with a younger prettier version of me, parading as her Life in order to get close to her, sitting with her family at Sunday lunches, trying to keep up with the stories of her growing up and under the beady eyes of her possessive father having to act like he knew them all already, while all the time feeling guilty for pretending to the well-adjusted woman who was now questioning herself that she needed a life intervention, yet also feeling torn inside about what he was doing to me; exhausted from the double lie.
Life was staring at me. ‘You look angry. What are you thinking about?’
I shrugged. ‘Nothing. So what is this place?’
Inside, it was a converted warehouse, a large open space with high ceilings and exposed brickwork, dusty from new renovations. We stepped into an elevator and I waited for us to catapult through the ceiling and soar into the sky over rooftops while my Willy Wonka Life showed me all that was mine to keep. But that didn’t happen. We got out on the seventh floor and Life led me down the hall to a light-filled square room, boxes everywhere on the floor and a window which looked over the city: flats and terraced houses dominated the view immediately below, St Patrick’s Cathedral and the Four Courts were visible in the distance with their bright green copper roof and dome respectively, and out towards Dublin Bay, building cranes filled the sky alongside the Poolbeg red-and-white striped 680-foot-high chimneys. Then I waited for the lesson. But it didn’t come.
‘Welcome to my new office,’ he beamed. He looked so happy, so far removed from the man that I had met a fortnight ago that it was difficult to believe he was the same person.
I looked at the boxes cluttering the floor, most of which were still taped closed but some of which had been half-emptied revealing the files inside. Black marker on the outside of the boxes declared ‘Lies 1981–2011’, ‘Truths 1981–2011’, ‘Boyfriends 1989–2011’, ‘Silchester Family Ties’, ‘Stewart Family Ties’. There was a box for ‘Lucy’s Friends’, with files divided into individual headings of ‘School’, ‘College Degree’, ‘MBA’, ‘Miscellaneous’ and a file for each of my previous jobs, not that I had made or taken many friends with me from them. There was a box marked ‘Holidays’ with separate compartments for each trip I’d taken, with the date. I surveyed the floor, the dates and random moments jumping out at me and sparking off memories I’d long lost. These boxes contained my entire life – on paper – all my dealings with every single person I had ever met; Life kept a report of them all, analysing them and studying them to see if the victim of bullying in the school yard had anything to do with a failed relationship twenty years later, or whether it was the contrary; a successful day at work; and if an unpaid bill in Corfu had anything to do with a drink in my face in a Dublin club – which I mention because it turned out it had absolutely everything to do with it. I imagined him then as a kind of a scientist and his office his laboratory, where he’d spent the days before I met him, and would continue to spend the rest of my days, analysing me, experimenting with philosophies and theories as to how I’d turned out the way I did, why I made mistakes, why I made good decisions, why I succeeded and why I faltered. My life; his life’s work.
‘Mrs Morgan thinks I should get rid of all this and just have everything in these little USBs but I don’t know, I’m old-fashioned, I like my written reports. It gives them character.’
‘Mrs Morgan?’ I asked, in a daze.
‘You remember the American woman you gave the chocolate bar to? She offered to help me put everything on computer but the agency won’t fork out for it so I’ll get round to doing it at some stage. It’s not like I’ve anything else to do.’ He smiled. ‘As you probably remember from our first meeting, I’ve a lot of the important stuff on the computer already. Oh, and you’ll be glad to know I got a new one,’ he said, patting a brand-new PC on his desk.
‘But … but … but …’
‘That’s a very good point, Lucy, and one I argued countless times.’ He smiled softly. ‘Has this become weird to you now?’
‘No, but I suppose I’m just realising, I really am your
job
? Just me?’
‘You mean, do I do nixers with other people’s lives?’ he laughed. ‘No, Lucy. I’m your soulmate, your other half, if you will. You know that old-fashioned theory that there’s another part of you elsewhere … that’s me.’ He waved awkwardly. ‘Hi.’
I don’t know why I was finding it all so weird now, I’d read about all of this in the magazine; as well as giving us a schedule of her new diet and toning exercises which was displayed in a separate box complete with photos of the food – porridge, blueberries, salmon, a piece of broccoli for those who weren’t yet acquainted with the food types – the star interviewee had also gone into extreme detail about how the entire ‘Life’ system worked. So I knew, I had no cause to be surprised, but seeing it all at play here in an office, so
ordinary,
seemed to take the magic out of it, not that I believed in magic – thanks to my Uncle Harold’s overemphatic declarations of stealing my five-year-old nose but my only ever being able to see his fat yellow thumb between his fingers. It looked nothing like my nose; my nose did not have a dirty fingernail and carry the stench of cigarettes.
‘How do you know I’m the right person for you?’ I continued. ‘What if there’s some depressed man named Bob sitting on his couch now eating chocolate sandwiches and wondering where on earth his life is, and it’s you, and instead you’re here, with me, and it’s all just a big mistake and—’
‘I know,’ he said simply. ‘Don’t you have the same feeling?’
I looked at him then, dead in the eye, and I immediately softened. I knew. Like I’d known when I looked at Blake every day for five years. There was a connection. Every time I looked at Life in a crowded room where nobody and nothing made sense to me, I knew that he was thinking exactly the same thing as me. I knew. I just knew.
‘What about your own life?’ I asked him.
‘It’s getting better since we met.’
‘Really?’
‘My friends can’t believe the change in me. They keep thinking we’re going to get married even though I’m always telling them that’s not how it works.’ He laughed, then there was an enormous awkward moment as I felt, oddly I’ll admit, like I’d just been dumped.
I looked away, not wanting him to pick up on my confused feelings, but just ended up feeling dizzy as my life literally flashed before my eyes. ‘Lucy and Samuel 1986–1996’. That was a fairly thin file. My father and I had had a relatively normal relationship then, if you considered it normal seeing him once a month for Sunday lunch when I came home from boarding school. The following years’ files grew thicker for a bit – when I was fifteen years old with a head as stubborn as his we’d begun to lock horns – and then somewhere in my early twenties they got thinner again – I was away for long periods of time, studying in university, which pleased him. The file for the last three years was thicker than any other. There was a file for the relationship I had with each member of my family. I wasn’t even the slightest bit intrigued to see what was inside them. I had lived it, I knew what had happened, I’d rather remember them with the certain bias and misinterpretation that time, age and hindsight had brought me. Life continued speaking as normal, still excited and proud of his accomplishment and not at all realising my discomfort.
‘I’m still going to keep all of these papers though, even when I’ve inputted them into the computer. I’m kind of sentimental about them. So, what do you think?’ He beamed again at his office, delighted with his achievement.
‘I’m so happy for you,’ I smiled, feeling sadness. ‘I’m so happy that everything is working out for you.’
His smile lessened then as he sensed my mood but I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to selfishly turn this special moment for him into being about me.
‘Ah, Lucy.’
‘No, don’t. It’s okay. I’m fine.’ I brightened up, plastered a fake smile on my face. I knew it looked fake and I knew I sounded fake but it was better than the truth. ‘I’m really happy for you, you’ve come a long way, but if you don’t mind, I have to go now. I have … em … an appointment with this girl I met at the gym who …’ I sighed, I couldn’t lie, not any more. ‘Actually, no, I don’t have an appointment, but I have to go. I just have to go.’
He nodded, the wind taken out of his sails. ‘I understand.’
It suddenly felt awkward.
‘Maybe you can meet with Don or something, tonight?’ I asked, more hopeful than I realised, but then Life’s face fell.
‘No, I don’t think that would be a good idea.’
‘Why not?’
‘Not after last night.’
‘You just missed a pint, it’s hardly a big deal.’
‘It was to him,’ he said, serious then. ‘You chose Blake, Lucy. He knows that. It wasn’t just a pint. It was a decision you had to make. You know that.’
I swallowed. ‘I didn’t really see it that way.’
Life shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. He does.’
‘But it doesn’t mean you and he still can’t be friends.’
‘Doesn’t it? Why on earth would he want to spend time with me when it’s you that he wants? Blake was the opposite, he wanted you, not your life. And Don, Don can only have your life but not you. Ironic, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’ I smiled weakly. ‘Well, I’d better go. Congratulations, really, I’m so glad for you.’ I couldn’t hide the sadness and the words sounded so hollow. So I left.
I bought a tin of cat food and a microwave cottage pie in the corner shop near my block. As soon as I stepped out of the elevator on my floor I froze and then wanted to get back in. My mum was standing outside my door, her back to me as she leaned against the door, and looking as though she had been there for a very long time. My first instinct as I said was to get back into the elevator but immediately after that I thought that something was terribly wrong. I rushed towards her.
