The Year I Met You (32 page)

I move to the kitchen, which is surprisingly in a tidy state. A few cups and plates in the sink that you’ve left until morning, but nothing offensive. Your fruit bowl has three black bananas and an under-ripe avocado. No letter. I take my time searching through the kitchen drawers. Everyone has a rubbish drawer in the kitchen and I find it: place mats, takeaway menus, batteries, bills, new and old, a TV licence, old birthday cards, pictures by the kids. No letter. There is a whiteboard with nothing on it, probably unused since Amy left the house. No notes, no reminders, shopping lists, no communication needed for a busy household because you are all alone. I suddenly feel for you, living alone in this empty family house that was once so full of life. I think of the man Amy left and I have no sympathy for him, he deserved it, but you, I feel for you. It spurs me on to find the letter.

I move to the TV room. It smells of coffee and vinegar, which matches the takeaway bags I saw you carry home from the car at eight p.m. before I was about to break in the first time. That was a good lesson. It taught me to wait, to be patient. I shine the torch on the shelving unit in the alcove. Books, DVDs – you like crime thrillers. I even see
Turner and Hooch
. There are framed photos on the shelves, family photos, babies, holidays, fishing trips, beach trips, first days of school. I wonder why Amy hasn’t taken them with her and I see it as a sign that she’s coming back, until my torch falls upon the naked walls adorned with hooks and realise that all
this
is what she left behind, including you. I am surprised to see a Psychology degree in your name and a framed photo of you in your graduation robes holding the scroll, but then I think of how you look at me sometimes, the way you try to read me as if seeing my soul and how you like to analyse me, everyone, and it makes sense. Your face grins up at me from underneath your graduation cap, as if you’ve just said something rude. You had a cheeky face, even then.

I think I hear a movement upstairs and I freeze, turn the torch off, hold my breath in the still dark silence and listen. The house is silent. I turn the torch back on and continue to root through the pigeonholes of the home-office desk in the corner overlooking the back patio. Old photos, car insurance, vouchers, random keys, no letter. I have been avoiding going upstairs for obvious reasons. It is my last resort, my worst-case scenario, but for a family home it is surprisingly clutter-free, no little piles of paperwork or collected mail. Perhaps upstairs is where I must go. I try to think of where you would keep such a thing. Not in a filing cabinet, that is too clinical, too impersonal. You have been keen to read it, which means you have been keeping it close at hand, somewhere you can regularly check on it, touch it, return to look at it. If it is not in your coat pocket that is hanging on the banister, then I must go upstairs.

It is not in your coat pocket.

I take a deep breath and then think I hear another noise at the back of the house, in the kitchen, and hold my breath, afraid someone will hear me exhale. I’m starting to panic, I need to exhale and my pulse in my ears is so loud it is stopping me from listening out and hearing what’s in the room next to me so I slowly exhale, a long shaky breath. This is ridiculous, I know it is. I should be at home in bed, not sneaking around your house. Watching it all these nights has somehow made me feel entitled; maybe I am a stalker, maybe this is what all stalkers feel, that their actions are entirely normal. But then I think of having to explain to you about writing the letter and I can’t and so I take a determined step on to the stairs. It creaks immediately and I freeze. I backtrack. There must be somewhere downstairs that I can find the letter instead of creeping into your bedroom while you sleep, which is an entirely new level of creepiness. And then I have a thought, an early memory, of something you said about how you’ve given up drink.

‘I have a photo of my father on the fridge. That helps me every time I go to open it to take a drink.’

‘That’s sweet.’

‘It’s not really. He was a raving alcoholic. The photo is there to remind me I don’t want to be like him.’

I redirect the torch down the hallway and move quickly and surely into the kitchen. I think the fridge is my answer. It was filled with drawings and gymnastic certificates but I didn’t check it for the letter. I lift the torch to shine it on the fridge door and I see the envelope, the real envelope with the fake letter and I grin with happiness but then BAM! Something hard whacks me across the side of the head, I feel it mostly in my ear, it slaps my face and I’m knocked to the ground, fall like a sack of potatoes, my legs dead beneath me, screaming in agony to the ground. I hear feet on the stairs and all I can think is that a burglar has attacked me. I have disturbed a burglar and now you are coming downstairs into danger and confusion and I must alert you, but first I must get the letter from the fridge and switch it with the original and that I could do if it were not for the ache I’m feeling in my head and the stickiness on my face.

‘I told you to wait!’ I hear you hiss, and I’m confused. You’re in on this too? The burglary of your own house? I think of insurance fraud and how I have stumbled into dangerous territory, and if you are in on it – which you must be, since you’re hissing at your accomplice who clubbed me, who seems to have entered the house from the back kitchen door – then I am in great danger. I should run. But first I should switch the letter on the fridge door. I lift my head up from the floor and I feel everything move beneath me. Though the room is still dark, the moonlight is casting the windowpane’s reflection on the tiled floor. It lights up the fridge and I have a surreal moment where I believe the moon, the universe is on my side, lighting the way for me, guiding me. But I can’t move.

I groan.

‘Who is it?’ you ask.

‘I don’t know, I just hit him.’

‘Let’s turn the lights on.’

‘We should call the police first.’

‘No. We can take care of this ourselves, teach this guy a thing or two.’

‘I do not condone—’

‘Come on, Dr J, what’s the point of a neighbourhood watch if we can’t—’

‘
Watch
, not tie up and
torture
.’

‘What did you hit him with? Jesus, a frying pan? I told you to grab a golf club.’

‘He came at me quicker than I planned.’

‘Hold on, he’s trying to get away. He’s sliding …’

The light suddenly goes on. I am at the foot of the fridge, mere inches away from the letter. If I stretch my arm up, which I am doing, I can almost,
almost
, reach it.

‘Jasmine!’ you exclaim.

‘Oh dear Lord, oh dear Lord,’ Dr Jameson says.

The light is so bright I can’t see a thing and my head,
Jesus
my head.

‘You hit Jasmine?’

‘Well, I didn’t know it was her, did I?! Good gracious.’

‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ you say and you both try to lift me up and carry me away from the fridge, which makes me groan, and not just from the agony. I can see the letter get further and further away from me as you take me from the kitchen to the couch. I was so close.

‘What is she saying?’ Dr Jameson asks, moving his flopping oversized ear to my mouth.

‘She’s saying something about the fridge,’ you say, placing my head down on a pillow, concern etched all over your face.

‘The fridge, not a bad idea, Jasmine. I’ll get ice.’ Dr Jameson hurries away.

‘Will she need stitches?’

Stitches?

You examine me and I can see your strawberry-blond nose hairs. One wiry grey pokes out and I want to pull it. ‘What frying pan did you use?’ you ask Dr Jameson.

‘Non-stick, Tefal aluminium,’ he says, returning with provisions for my head. ‘I’ve got the entire set. Five SuperValu coupons and you only have to add fifteen euro. I do a mean French toast on it,’ he says, face pushed up close to mine as he concentrates. His breath smells like barley sugar.

‘Jasmine, what on earth were you doing?’ you ask incredulously.

I clear my throat. ‘I used my keys, I thought you had an intruder. Must have been Dr J,’ I say weakly, closing my eyes as he dabs at my head. ‘Ouch.’

‘Sorry, dear. It wasn’t me because I contacted Matt as soon as I saw your torch,’ Dr Jameson says.

‘Jasmine,’ you say in a low warning voice. ‘Cough it up.’

I sigh.

‘I gave you the wrong letter. From Amy. The one I gave you was one that I had written. For someone else. I got them confused. Mixed up the envelopes.’

I open one eye to see if you’re swallowing it.

Your arms are folded across your chest, you’re looking down on me, assessing me. You’re wearing a faded Barcelona ’92 Olympics T-shirt and stripy baggy boxers. You seem unconvinced by my story, but not completely. It could still work. You suddenly back out and head to the kitchen.

‘Don’t open it,’ I yell, and the shouting makes my head worse.

‘Hold on, don’t move,’ Dr Jameson says, ‘I’m almost there.’

You bring the envelope in. I don’t like the look on your face. It’s that naughty mischievous look. You’re tapping the envelope against your open palm, slowly, rhythmically, while you pace the floor before me. You are going to play with me.

‘So. Jasmine. You broke into my house—’

‘I had a key.’

‘—to retrieve a letter that you say that you wrote for someone else. Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?’

‘Because I was afraid that you would open it. It’s very personal and I don’t trust you.’

You hold a finger up. ‘Plausible. Well done. I
would
have read it.’

Dr Jameson instructs me to hold the bag of frozen peas to my head and as I sit up to face you, he sits down beside me.

‘That’s plausible to me too,’ he says. He has messy bed-head hair, unbrushed eyebrows and is wearing smart leather shoes with a shell suit that I’ve never seen before, obviously the first things he grabbed when getting out of bed.

‘What am I, on trial here?’

‘Yes,’ you say, narrowing your eyes at me as you pace.

You are so dramatic.

‘Are you sure my head hasn’t fallen off?’ I ask Dr Jameson.

‘Is your neck sore?’

I move it. ‘Yes.’

He moves closer and starts prodding at my neck. ‘Is it sore here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it sore here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it sore here?’

‘Yes.’

You stop pacing and look at me. ‘Who is your letter addressed to?’

I stall. Assess the situation. I know you will check it.

‘Matt,’ I say.

You laugh. ‘Matt.’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s a coincidence.’

‘Hence the mix-up.’

You hold it out to me and I quickly reach out. It’s just beyond my grasp, millimetres away from my fingertips when you whip it back and tear it open.

‘No!’ I groan and cover my face with a pillow.

‘Read it out loud,’ Dr Jameson says, and I throw the pillow at him and reach for another to hide behind.

‘
Dear Matt
,’ you say, the mischievous cheeky face on, a reading voice that drips with sarcasm, but as you read ahead silently to yourself to see what’s coming, the sarcasm drops. You pause. You look up at me, then resume reading with your normal voice.

‘
We all have stand-out moments in our lives, periods which influenced small or profound changes in us. I can think of four life-changing moments for me: the year I was born, the year I learned I would die, the year my mother died and now I have a new one – the year I met you.
’

I cover my face. It’s all coming back to me now.

‘
I have heard your voice every day, listened to the unsavoury words that formulate your tasteless thoughts and made a judgement on you. I did not like you. But you are proof that you can think you know someone yet never really know them at all.

‘
What I have learned is that you are more, more than what you pretend to be, more than what you believe yourself to be. You are less an awful lot of the time, but being less has driven people away. I think sometimes you like doing that and I understand that too. Hurt people hurt people.
’

You clear your throat and I peek at you through a gap in my hands, thinking you might cry.

‘
But when you think no one is listening or when you think no one is paying you any attention, you are so much more. It’s a pity that you don’t believe that yourself, or show the people you love.
’

For the next part your voice warbles and I peek at you. You are genuinely moved and I am glad, but I am horrendously embarrassed. I watch you read.

‘
The year I met you, I met myself. You should do the same, because I think you’ll find a good man.’

You stop reading and there is a long hush in the room.

‘Well, well,’ Dr Jameson says, eyes twinkling.

You clear your throat. ‘Well, I’m sure whoever this Matt is, that he’ll be very appreciative of what you’ve said to him.’

‘Thanks,’ I whisper. ‘I hope so.’

I stand up to take the letter from your hand and as I do, you refuse to let go of the letter. I think you are playing with me, but when my eyes meet yours, I realise you are serious. Your hand brushes mine instead. You nod in thanks, a sincere, touched thanks.

I return it with a smile.

25

We are in the middle of our second heatwave this summer. We are also in the midst of a water shortage; the council have cancelled water for a few hours every day and if anyone is seen using a hose to clean their car, garden, dog or self they are liable to be hanged on the spot. Or something.

Sick days records are at an all-time high this week, greens are packed with half-naked bodies, the scent of suncream and barbecue are in the air and overflowing buses from the city centre to the seaside sway from side to side as they carry their merry load.

Caroline and I are staring across the garden table at each other in a long impatient silence, both clearly wanting to say something but biting our tongues. It is a beautiful Saturday and we are sitting out under the sun umbrella in her back garden, the first time I have seen her since Heather staged the intervention into my non-moving life. What has led to this staring stand-off is yet another of my propositions which she has once again batted away. I have suggested she change the name of her idea to ‘Frock Swap’, in order to give it more of an international appeal. I know that she knows it makes sense but she’s finding it hard to let go of her clever logo and the fact that this new name isn’t her idea. I understand this but what I was afraid was happening is actually happening. She has recognised my success in this area, which was why she came to me in the first place, and there is nothing wrong with that, only she is chasing success and success alone. What she has failed to take into account is the reason why my projects have worked: because I have injected my sensibilities, my passion, my ideas and my heart, and not blindly followed other people’s orders. I know that this will never work with us. I now understand how it is that I work; how I want to work and how I have to work.