Cecelia Ahern Short Stories (7 page)

When you return home feeling foolish and angry to a house that’s being emptied you begin to wish all those dark thoughts away. I began to wish that we were still together and feeling miserable rather than having to go through goodbyes. He still felt part of me, I was still his, I was his best friend and he was mine, yet there was just the minor detail of not actually being in love with one another and the fact that any other kind of relationship just wasn’t possible. I begged and pleaded, he cried and shouted, until our voices were hoarse and our faces were tearstained.

Feeling desolate, I looked around the empty wardrobe with its doors wide open, displaying stray hangers and deserted shelves as though taunting me. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

He used to get the same bus as I did. He got on one stop after me and got off one stop before. I thought he was gorgeous the very first day I spotted him outside after wiping the condensation from the upstairs window of the bus. It was dark, cold, raining, seven o’clock in the morning in November, in front of me a man slept with his head against the cold vibrating glass, the woman beside me read a steamy page of a romance novel, probably the cause of the fogged-up windows. There was the smell of morning breath and morning bodies on the stuffy bus, it was quiet, no one spoke, all that was audible was the faint sounds of music and voices from the earphones of Walkmans.

He rose from that staircase like an angel entering the gates of heaven. His hair was soaking, his nose red, droplets of rain ran down his cheeks and his clothes were drenched. He wobbled down the aisle of the moving bus sleepily, trying to make his way to the only free seat. He didn’t see me that day. He didn’t see me for the first two weeks, but I got clever, moving to the seat by the staircase where I knew he would see me. Then I took to keeping my bag on the chair beside me so no one could sit down and moving it only when he arrived at the top of the stairs so he could sit down. Eventually he saw me; a few weeks later he smiled; a few weeks on he said something; a few weeks later I responded. Then he took to sitting beside me
every morning, sharing knowing looks, secret jokes, secret smiles. He saved me from the drunken man who tried to maul me every Thursday morning. I saved him from the girl who sang along loudly with her Walkman on Wednesday evenings.

Eventually, on the way home on a sunny Friday evening in May, he stayed on an extra stop, got off the bus with me and asked me to go for a drink with him. Two months later I was in love, falling out of bed last minute and running with him to the same bus stop most mornings. Sleeping on his shoulder all the way to work, hearing him say he had never loved anyone else in his life as he loved me, believing him when he said he would never fall out of love with me, that I was the most beautiful and wonderful woman he had ever met. When you’re in love you believe everything. We shared kisses that meant something, hearts that fluttered, fingers that clasped, and footsteps that bounced.

Oh, sweet joy, the joy of falling in love, of being in love. Those first few years of being in love, they were only the beginning.

I hated Christmas. Hated every damn song, the sound of the bells, the twinkling lights, every stupid movie and every happy face looking as if it should be stamped with a damn Hallmark sign. It was a time for people either happy or pretending to be. I was neither. So at 10.30 a.m. on 24 December I clocked in at work like any other day. The machine punched a hole through my docket, the sound punching a hole in my pounding head. I was over two hours late, but I didn’t care who saw me trudging down the halls dressed in the same clothes as yesterday stinking of beer, sweat and smoke and minus my uniform.

Last night had started off like every other night—a few innocent after-work drinks down at the local drinking hole with my colleagues. And it had ended just like every other night with everyone saying their goodbyes after a couple of drinks, but as usual I didn’t leave. I didn’t or couldn’t drag myself off that bar stool and I didn’t or couldn’t drag my lips away from the beer glass. I woke up this morning not knowing where the hell I was, once again with goddamn Thumper sitting on my head. You see, I had no family to go home to; no one to convince me that dragging myself away from that bar stool and beer glass was worthwhile.

I could smell the alcohol seeping from my pores and the stench of stale cigarette smoke clinging to my clothes as I walked down the hall to my workspace. I saw the faces, the glances, the nudges, the looks of disgust and the smiles of sympathy. I knew what they could see; I saw it every morning when I looked in the mirror: a sad old man letting it all slip away. But that didn’t scare me because at least I had a goal. I’d lost the most important things in my life and, if I kept on going the way I was going, I’d lose everything else. What a result, what an achievement, a triumph of perseverance. I was a perfect advertisement for what you could do when you really put your mind to it. And there was a certain amount of bravery that came with what I was doing, I believed. Not many people have the guts to throw absolutely everything away. They’re always stupid enough to hold onto something small, selfish enough to think that one thing could be a small comfort. But it’s not: it’s a reminder that you used to be somebody, that you used to belong to someone and they to you. If you’re going to do something, do it right, get rid of it all. The first thing I lost was my heart, everything after that was a cinch.

But who the hell works on 24 December? I hear you ask. Us, that’s who. We leave everything until the last minute and then have to work all hours to get the job done, every single year. The boss says we can’t start earlier because the clients don’t start ordering the goods until the run-up to Christmas. The others thrive on the manic times, I don’t. But I used to.

I work in a factory. A great, big, depressing, monstrous warehouse with no windows. I have a theory on the lack of windows: while we’re working, we can’t see how many hours have passed and the beauty of the changing day. That suits me just fine.

We’ve a boss who’s above us both geographically and mentally. He’s got an office way up at the top of the building with great big windows so he can look down on us all. Which he does. And I’ve been called up to that office once or twice and I see what he sees: hundreds of us working away like little ants, ready to be stomped on at any time.

In case you’re wondering what I do, I work on a production line. The factory makes toys, which is why we’re so busy at this time of the year. I say that it’s the factory that makes toys, not me: this Christmas all I was responsible for was sticking a plastic arm into a hole of the shoulder of some scary-looking doll with eyes so blue and dead I think I’m looking at myself. Happy Holly. That’s what they call her on the box. But I bet the kids wouldn’t touch her with a bargepole if they knew how she started out looking. When she gets
to me she’s bald with no legs or arms, just a plastic torso and a head with eyes. This thing ends up singin’ and dancin’ and talkin’ and probably spittin’ if you want her to.

But every day for the past week I’ve been staring at this doll, been staring at those eyes dead and cold and thinking my development has worked in the opposite way to hers. I went from all-singin’ all-dancin’ to being a dead, cold, legless stump like her. It was as if someone had put me on that revolving table and sent me around while one by one people hammered me, pulled at me until I came out the other side feeling and looking like I do now. A conveyor belt surrounded by my ex-wife, kids, mother-in-law, brothers, sisters and whatever friends I had, all armed with their weapons. They’d all taken a jab at me and left me with cold, staring, blue eyes.

I took my place at the conveyor belt, apologized to the guy next to me who was red in the face and sweating from having to put two arms into two holes instead of just his usual one. But I bet he’d done it all while whistling. They all whistled while they worked here, wearing stupid-looking uniforms and working all day without a break. Not me, I don’t make a sound, I had the wind knocked out of me a long time ago.

I could see the boss standing at the window in his office looking at me. Glaring at me with his arms crossed over his fat belly, dressed in an expensive suit ready for his night’s work. We were all working overtime tonight. I hated him. I hated seeing him sitting up there doing nothing while we slaved away down here. I hated that he was the name and face of the company, that he reaped all the rewards, got all the glory and fame and had his picture plastered on every poster all over the world. I wasn’t jealous, no way, that’s not my nature. Not for one second did I want to be in his boots. But I hated him because he wouldn’t let me go.

He wouldn’t give up on me like everyone else had. It was as if we were having some kind of contest. How much could I push it before he sacked me, how much could he take before he would have no choice? I wouldn’t quit; if I was gonna lose everything it had to be taken from me, not given
by
me. I had a feeling he was just leaving me for the next selfish guy who took his job; I was the mess he didn’t want to have to clean up. He was retiring soon, getting away from all this damn snow and heading to the sun. So in the meantime I got to work later every day and missed a few Happy Holly dolls now and then.

Yesterday they had hundreds of them all packaged nice and pretty, ready to go out, until some guy realized that half of them had only one arm. I told them it would be more realistic to let the kids know that not everyone is born looking like some blonde princess with pretty dresses who did whatever you wanted her to do whenever you wanted. It was sending out the wrong message, I told them. But they didn’t go with my idea, instead they just took them all out of the boxes again and some fool whistled while he fixed the few hundred he wasn’t supposed to fix and wasn’t paid to fix. He didn’t care, just kept on with that happy tune while his dinner grew cold on the table, while his kids went to sleep without a goodnight kiss from their daddy and while his wife, who was getting angrier and angrier by the minute, was getting bored waiting for him and starting to look elsewhere.

And why’s he doin’ it? Because one fat man with a grey beard has given some screwed-up motivational speech about helping people all around the world and he fell for it. Got tied up thinking about kids he didn’t know and forgot about his own. I knew the story all too well.

I watched him hammering away and thought, That’s what I must have looked like before they sent me out on the conveyer belt. All enthusiastic and happy, packaged in bright colours designed to please the eye and heart. Ready and willing to do anything asked of me at the press of a button. Plastic.

I missed a few Happy Holly dolls while watching him, decided I couldn’t care less, sat back, lit up a cigarette and watched while those beady eyes rolled on by, seein’ nothin’ and hearin’ nothin’. Existing only
in the world to please little beings who’d throw them around, drool on them, kick them, dirty them, leave them out in the rain and make them sit down and drink imaginary tea. Eventually they’d be forgotten about or lost.

The cigarette smoke sent a few whistles out of tune, that’s for sure, caused a few coughs. I looked up at the window at Big Brother and wondered when he was gonna give up. He slowly unfolded his arms, beckoned to me, calling me up. Ah, victory at last. I’d finally won. I’d lost absolutely everything.

I knocked on his door and entered. He was sitting in an expensive leather chair behind an expensive desk looking fat and rich and unhealthy. He looked at me with his twinkling blue eyes, rosy cheeks and a red nose—all the signs of someone who’d drunk far too much all his life.

‘Want me to sit on your knee, Nicholas?’ I asked sarcastically, taking a drag of my cigarette.

He laughed heartily. He wasn’t supposed to and that annoyed me. So I stood before him while he told me a story. A story about a man who worked so hard, cared so much about people he didn’t know, that he lost his family and friends, drank himself to oblivion, ate all the junk in the world and got a belly so big he could rest a cup of cocoa on it, and I stood there fuming because I thought he was talking about me. But it turned out to be his own story and he told me that he looked out that window every day at me and thought he was looking at himself in the mirror. A mirror with a time delay. I didn’t realize it at the time but it seemed that, watching him, I’d been looking in a mirror reflecting the future.

Later, after his retirement, from the windows of that very same office, I kept an eye on the enthusiastic hammerer and watched as he let it all slip away. He would be next. I changed my name, settled into my new job where obesity and unhealthiness was a virtue and where parents smiled and took photos when you put their kids on your knee. Suddenly, I was more welcome in every home around the world than I’d ever been in my own. I had a wonderful assistant, Mary, who made a list of my clients and I checked them twice.

I filled the boots of a great man and in turn became a great man. I may have lost everything I ever owned and loved, but in return I was given the world.

A spoon tapping against a champagne glass silences the bubbles of conversations. Voices simmer and then calm.

My eldest son George takes his place at the head of the room, the ringmaster, as always, ready to direct proceedings. My husband, Fred, and I are surrounded by our entire world, cocooned by the generations we had a hand in creating. Fred and I sit beside one another, everybody else stands with a drink in their hand. I eye the quickly disappearing whiskey in the glass in Fred’s hand and vow, again, as I did as a young woman at the top of the altar over fifty years ago, to keep an eye on him tonight. I prepare to be spoken about as though I’m not here, the centre of attention for tonight. Oh, how I hate that, but they all mean well, I know.

‘I was trying to think when was the last time so many of us gathered together and I think it was again for Mum, when we celebrated her seventieth birthday three years ago,’ George begins.