The Year I Met You (9 page)

I haven’t told my friends about your recent drunken late-night antics. I don’t know why this is. It is perfect fodder. They would love to hear all about it, and what makes it juicier is that you’re famous. But I can’t bring myself to tell anyone. It’s as if it’s my secret. I’ve chosen to protect you and I don’t know why. Perhaps I take your behaviour and your situation too seriously to make a joke about it at a dinner party. You have children, a wife who has just left you. I loathe you, everybody who knows me properly knows that, and nothing about you makes me want to laugh at you. I pull the curtains so that they can’t see you.

I hear you banging, but everybody continues talking, this time a debate about who should get their tubes tied and who should get the snip, and they don’t notice your noise. They think I’m joking when I say that I would like the snip, but I haven’t been concentrating.

Suddenly everything is quiet outside. I can’t concentrate and start to feel agitated, nervous that they will hear you, that the boys will want to go outside and see you, jeer at you or help you, and ruin my private thing that I have with you. I know this is odd. This is all that I have and only I can truly understand what goes on with you at night. I don’t want to have to explain.

I clear away the dessert plates; my friends are talking and laughing, the atmosphere is great and Tristan is still asleep in the armchair, baking by the open fire. Caroline helps me and we spend another few minutes in the kitchen while she fills me in on the things she and her new boyfriend have been doing. I should be shocked by what I hear, she wants me to be shocked, but I can’t concentrate, I keep thinking of you outside. And the key is beside me on the counter, still throbbing. When Caroline nips out to go to the toilet, I make my escape; grabbing the letter and your key, I pull on my coat and slip outside without anybody noticing.

As I cross the road I can see you sitting at the table. It is 11 p.m. Early for you to return home. You are eating from a McDonald’s bag. You watch me cross the road and I feel self-conscious. I wrap my arms around my body, pretending to feel colder than I do with the alcohol keeping me warm. I stop at the table.

‘Hi,’ I say.

You look at me, bleary-eyed. I’ve never seen you sober, up close. I’ve never seen you drunk up close either; you were in between when we met the other morning so I’m not sure exactly what state you’re in, but you’re sitting outside eating a McDonald’s at eleven o’clock at night in three-degree weather, the smell of alcohol heavy in the air, so you can’t be fully compos mentis.

‘Hi,’ you say.

It’s a positive start.

‘Dr Jameson asked me to give this to you.’ I hold out the envelope.

You take it, look at it and put it down on the table.

‘Dr J’s away?’

‘He said his nephew invited him to Spain.’

‘Did he?’ You light up. ‘About time.’

This surprises me. I didn’t know that you and Dr Jameson were close. Not that your response hints at closeness, but it hints at some kind of relationship.

‘You know Dr J’s wife died fifteen years ago, they had no kids, his brother and his wife both passed away, the only family he has is that nephew and he never visits or invites Dr J to anything,’ you say, clearly annoyed about this. Then you burp. ‘Excuse me.’

‘Oh,’ is all I know to say.

You look at me.

‘You live across the road?’

I’m confused. I can’t tell whether you are pretending we have never met or if you genuinely don’t remember. I try to figure you out.

‘You do. In number three, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I finally say.

‘I’m Matt.’ You hold out your hand.

I’m not sure if it’s a new beginning; it could be staged, in which case you will pull your hand away and stick out your tongue as soon as I reach out to you. Whatever your motive, if you’ve forgotten my rudeness from a few days ago, this is a fresh chance for me to do what I should have done.

‘Jasmine,’ I say, and reach out to take your hand.

It’s not so much like shaking hands with the devil as I thought. Your hand is ice-cold, your skin rough like it’s chapped from the winter chill.

‘He also gave me a copy of the key to your house. Your wife made copies for him and me.’ I hold it out to you.

You look at it warily.

‘I don’t have to keep the key if you don’t want me to.’

‘Why wouldn’t I want you to?’

‘I don’t know. You don’t know me. Anyway, here. You can let yourself in and keep the key if you want.’

You look at the key. ‘It’s probably better if you keep it.’

You carry on looking at me and I start to feel uncomfortable. I’m not sure what to do; you clearly have no intention of moving, so I go to your front door and open it.

‘Are you having a party?’ you ask, looking across at the parked cars.

‘Just dinner.’

I feel bad then. You’re eating from a McDonald’s bag; am I supposed to invite you in? No, we’re strangers, and you have been the enemy since I was a teenager, I can’t invite you in.

‘What are you doing to your garden?’

‘Putting down grass.’

‘Why?’

I laugh lightly. ‘Good question.’

You pick up the envelope. ‘Will you read this to me?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why don’t
you
read it?’

‘I can barely see straight.’

But you don’t seem that drunk and your speech is fine.

‘And I’ve left my glasses inside,’ you add.

‘No.’ I fold my arms and back away. ‘It’s private.’

‘How do you know it’s private?’

‘It’s for you.’

‘It could be a neighbourhood thing. Dr J’s always organising something. A barbecue.’

‘In January?’

‘A drinks reception about recycling then.’ You like that and you chuckle. I can hear the cigarettes in your chest, a wheezy, dirty laugh.

‘He said it’s from your wife.’

Silence.

At certain angles I see your handsomeness. It’s the way you tilt your head when you’re thinking, or maybe it’s the moonlight, but whatever it is you have moments when you transform. Blue eyes, strawberry-blond hair, button nose. Or maybe that’s how you always look and my dislike for you taints you.

You put the envelope down on the table and push it with one finger towards me. ‘Read it.’

I pick it up and look at it. Turn it over a few times.

‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’ I place it down on the table. You stare at the envelope and say nothing. ‘Goodnight.’

I walk back to the house, straight into the sound of the raucous laughter of my friends. I take my coat off. Tristan is still asleep on the chair. I don’t think anyone has noticed I’d even left. I rejoin the table with another bottle of wine and sit down for a moment, before getting up to open the curtains a little. You’re still at the table. You look up and see me and then you stand and go into the house, close the door behind you. I can still see the white envelope on the table, glowing under the moonlight.

A light rain starts.

I watch the envelope as the rain gets heavier. I can’t concentrate. Rachel is talking about something now, everybody is listening, her eyes are filled, I know that it’s important, it’s about her dad who’s sick, they’ve just learned he has cancer, but I can’t concentrate. I keep looking out the window at the envelope as the rain gets heavier. Rachel’s husband reaches for her hand to help her continue. I mumble something about getting her a tissue, then go outside without my coat, run across the road and retrieve the envelope.

I don’t know you, and I don’t owe you, but I do know that we all have a self-destruct button and I can’t let you do that. Not on my watch.

9

Johnny and Eddie finally finish digging up my paving one week later than promised, citing so many excuses and technical reasons that I don’t know where to begin arguing with them, but at least one hundred square metres has been cleared for laying turf and the remainder of my garden is still my lovely paving. My dad tells me to hang on to the broken stones that they have dug up from the ground because he believes they have value, so I keep them in a small skip on my driveway. His beliefs are vindicated by Johnny’s sudden eagerness to help ‘get rid’ of them for me. I try to think of ways that I can use them, but really I have no idea and suspect that I will probably throw them out.

Dad and Leilah invite me and Heather to lunch on Thursday. On Mondays Heather works in a restaurant, clearing tables and stacking the dishwasher; on Wednesdays she works at the cinema, escorting people to their seats and cleaning up the popcorn and mess afterwards, and on Fridays she works at a local solicitor’s office, doing the post, shredding papers and photocopying. She loves all of her jobs. On Saturday mornings she attends her drama and music class and on Tuesdays she goes to a day service where she hangs out with friends. It only leaves Thursdays and Sundays for us, and my work hours used to mean that Sunday was our day. It’s been that way for the past ten years. I would go to the ends of the earth to avoid missing that day with her. Our activities vary; sometimes she has very specific aims in her head, other times she is quiet and will let me make the decision. We go to the cinema a lot: she loves animation and knows every single word to
The
Little Mermaid
. Sometimes all she wants to do is sit on the floor in front of the television and watch it on repeat. My Christmas gift to her was a trip to see Disney on Ice. They dedicated the entire first act to
The Little Mermaid
and I have never seen Heather so quiet, so completely lost in anything in all of my life. It was beautiful, and being with her is always beautiful. When Ursula the Sea Witch came on stage, an enormous blow-up Octopus slid across the ice and there was evil witch music and loud cackling. Lots of children started crying and I was worried that Heather would be afraid, but she held my hand and gave it a squeeze, and whispered to me, ‘It will be okay, Jasmine,’ so I knew that she was minding me, she was worried about me being afraid. She is my older sister and is constantly protecting me, even when I think it’s me that is protecting her. When the show was over and the lights went up and the mess of spilled popcorn and slush puppies was revealed and all the magic was gone, she looked at me, her hands on her chest where her heart is, her tear-filled eyes enormous behind her thick glasses, and she said, ‘I am moved, Jasmine. I am so moved.’

I love her, I love everything about her. The only thing I would change about her is the discomfort she often feels due to her hypothyroidism which manifests sometimes for her as fatigue, sluggishness and irritability. I would watch her like a hawk, but she won’t let me. After years of trying to teach her in ways that she could understand, what I finally learned about my sister is that Heather always has been and always will be the teacher and that I am her student. Her speech is often unclear, though I can generally understand her, and she has difficulty with her motor skills and her hearing, but Heather can tell you the name of every single Disney character in every single Disney movie, and the writers and singers of every song. She loves music. She has quite a collection of vinyl – despite me introducing her to iPods and iPads, she’s an old-school girl at heart and prefers her records. She can tell you the musicians playing the instruments and who has produced and arranged every song. She reads the small print on every album and offers the information at the drop of the hat. When I saw that she had an appetite for this, I fed it and continue to feed it, buying her music, bringing her to live performances. When I was fourteen, I took Heather on a playdate with a little boy called Eddie, with Down syndrome. Eddie loved music too, especially the song ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ by Elvis. While speaking with his sister I learned that, because he likes the song, they let him play it on repeat all day, which annoyed everybody in the household. But none of them could have been as annoyed as I was; it made me furious that they failed to recognise that this boy had a love for music, not just that one song. They weren’t helping to bring out the best in him. When Heather shares her knowledge, people are always surprised and impressed. And what happens when she sees that they’re impressed by her? Like all of us, she flourishes.

The most admirable, almost magical thing about Heather is her insight into people, more specifically her insight into their insight into
her
. I see their views of her reflected in her own behaviour. She can read strangers like no one else I’ve encountered in my life. When speaking with someone who views her with pity or who wants to get away from her, she shrinks, she almost disappears, she becomes a person with Down syndrome because she knows that that is all they see of her. When she is in the company of someone who doesn’t care about Down syndrome, like children before they learn to tease, or someone who has experience with the condition, she absolutely glows, she blossoms, she becomes Heather, the person. She often senses these things before I do, and I have learned to understand strangers or at least their opinions of her through Heather. She has the ability to get straight to the truth. This is something that many children possess, but perhaps we lose it as we get older. Heather, on the other hand, has honed this with age and as a result, her sense of right and wrong are so finely tuned.

I drive Heather to where Dad, Leilah and Zara live in a three-bedroom apartment in Sutton Castle. Built in 1880 by the Jameson family – no relation to Dr Jameson that I know of – it is in a prestigious location on seven acres of landscaped gardens overlooking Dublin Bay. The castle was a hotel where we often ate Sunday lunches as a family; it was refurbished during the boom time and the main house was broken up into seven apartments. It’s an impressive home, kept beautifully by Leilah in her bohemian style. At thirty-five, Leilah is around the same age as Heather and I, yet she seems so far away from becoming any kind of a friend of mine. She is a young woman who married my dad and for that I will always wonder what is wrong with her. I have no actual problem with Leilah, but distance is my friend and that’s where I keep her. Heather on the other hand warmed to her immediately, holding her hand on the first meeting, which made Leilah blush. It was an act that neither Leilah nor Dad knew was the greatest compliment ever given. Heather has correctly sensed my feelings toward Leilah and, though we’ve never discussed it, she tries to find things that Leilah and I have in common, like a mother trying to help two little girls become friends at a party. It is endearing and sweet, and I love this about her. Even though we both go along with it purely for Heather’s sake, it does oddly enough help us to communicate.