The Year I Met You (11 page)

He has found a small table, with two chairs where we will have to sit diagonally to avoid our knees meeting. I was hoping to get there first to grab two sinking armchairs well away from each other. He gives me a big hug, a long warm embrace. His hair is thinning, he has wrinkles around his eyes, I think he is the only person I have gone so long without seeing. It’s a big leap for the brain and it’s oddly disconcerting.

‘Wow,’ I say when I sit down and stare at a familiar face peeking out at me from behind an unusual mask of time. I don’t know where to start.

‘You haven’t changed,’ he beams. ‘Still have the red hair.’

‘I do,’ I laugh.

‘And those eyes.’ He looks at me intently, then shakes his head and laughs.

‘Eh. Yes. Decided to keep the eyes.’ I laugh. Nervously. ‘So …’ Long silence while we stare at one another. He is beaming and keeps shaking his head as if he can’t believe it. I get it, but enough now, let’s move on. I’m once again happy we didn’t choose an actual lunch date.

‘Coffee?’ I say, and he jumps up.

I take a look at him as he orders at the counter. Brown cords, V-neck jumper, shirt, quite conservative, not exactly the latest trend but respectable, responsible, a far cry from the ripped-jeans, long-haired troublemaker.

When he sits down, the routine questions begin. Jobs, life, how long are you here, are you still in touch with Sandy, do you still see Liam, do you remember Elizabeth? Who married who, who’s having babies with who, who left who. How Aunt Jennifer is so happy he’s returned. I knew I shouldn’t have said it as soon as I did. It was a simple enough thing to say, but I should have kept it lighter, more vague, devoid of anything issue-related. Mentioning his ‘adoptive’ mother who he hadn’t travelled home to see in over ten years – though she had visited him – was not safe territory. I kick myself. His posture changes.

‘She’s happy to have me back here, of course, but she’s finding the circumstances difficult. I’m back to find my birth parents,’ he says, his hands cupped around the enormous mug of coffee. He is looking down, all I can see are long black eyelashes, and when he looks up I recognise those lost, confused, tortured puppy eyes. He is still searching, though he seems less angry, the spiteful look is gone. We talk about seeking his biological mother some more, about his long-lost sense of identity, his inability to settle down and have his own children without understanding his own lineage, about not being able to settle in relationships, about feeling tied to someone else, elsewhere all this time. I hope I am reassuring him. And then we get to the awkward moment.

‘What I said on the swing …’ he begins, as if it was five minutes ago and not sixteen years, ‘It was wrong of me to do what I did. I was young, I was so confused, I scared you, I know that, and I’m sorry. I went away and tried to figure it out, tried to figure everything out really, I told myself that I must have got our friendship confused. We always had so much in common, I always felt you understood me. The whole thing with you and your dad …’ Which confuses me again, because there was nothing between me and dad, but never mind. ‘I went away and tried to forget you, but when I was gone, all the other women …’ And it gets uncomfortable for a while as I hear about his long list of conquests with whom he does not feel at peace, and then, BAM! ‘I couldn’t stop thinking of you. All the time, my mind kept coming back to you. But I knew how you felt about me. How the whole family felt about me. It’s why I couldn’t come back. But now … Jasmine, I haven’t changed my mind at all from that moment on the swing. I am utterly in love with you.’

I am usually an emotionally stable person. I feel that I cope with things well. I am not dramatic, I am rational, I reason things relatively well. But this … I can’t. Not now, in the middle of my own stuff. I apologise, then stand up and take my leave.

When I get home later, I find the landscaper packing up his van. Though the days are slowly stretching longer, the sky is again black. The new grass is still in rolls, piled up in my driveway in the streetlight.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask him.

He can hear the edge in my voice; he looks a little taken aback.

‘You said the grass would be finished today,’ I say.

‘The ground took me longer to prepare than I thought. I’ll have to come back on Monday.’

‘Monday? You told me you work weekends. Why can’t you come tomorrow?’

‘Another job, I’m afraid.’

‘Another job,’ I say in a disturbing hiss of a voice. ‘Why don’t people finish one job before starting another?’ He doesn’t respond to this so I sigh. ‘I thought the turf was supposed to be laid within a day of delivery.’

‘They’re stored in a shaded area, no frost expected this weekend. It’s perfect conditions.’ He looks at the turf in a long silence as if waiting for it to speak on its own behalf. He shrugs. ‘If you really need to, open the rolls and water them.’

‘Water them? It hasn’t stopped raining in a week.’

‘Well then.’ He shrugs again. ‘Should be fine.’

‘And if they’re not, you’re paying for them.’

I watch him drive away. I stand in my garden, hands on my hips, staring him off as if my look alone is going to make him stop the van and finish the job. It doesn’t. I survey the pile of grass beside me. The first day of February tomorrow. Almost three weeks of waiting for this garden when I could have used the money to go on a holiday, to sit on someone else’s green grass.

You leave your house, wave at me. I ignore you because I’m mad at you again, I’m mad at everyone and you are always first on my list, you will always feel my wrath. You get in your jeep and drive away. Dr Jameson is away, Mrs Malone is still in hospital, as is Mr Malone who is keeping vigil. I no longer have to feed the cat full-time but only when Mr Malone asks, which doesn’t bother me so much any more as Marjorie has turned out to be quite the conversationalist. I look around. I can’t tell whether anyone’s home in the other houses, but it feels like an empty street. There is nothing I can do about the garden, only pray that a deep frost doesn’t suddenly descend on my new grass.

That night I can’t sleep. I am tossing and turning with anger over my father: his treatment of Heather, his attempt to line me up for a job in his old company – for I’m almost convinced that’s what he’s doing. I am further distressed by Kevin’s declaration of love for me yet again and my messy garden bothers me. Everything feels unfinished – worse than unfinished: torn, as if everything’s been ripped and left ragged at the ends. It is a peculiar way to explain it, but that’s how I feel. I can’t settle with all of these thoughts, these angry thoughts that can’t be contained or filed away somewhere else while I sleep. I have nothing to distract me. Ordinarily I would have a meeting to plan for, an aim, an objective, a new idea, a presentation – something,
anything
to take my mind off the useless thoughts that circulate in my head. Getting up, I go downstairs and turn the security lights in the front garden on full. They are so bright they are like floodlights. What I see angers me. Inefficiency. My blood boils.

I put my coat on over my pyjamas and go outside. I look at the stacked rolls of grass and I look at the cleared patch of soil to my right. If you want something done properly, you should do it yourself: always my philosophy. It shouldn’t be too hard.

I pick up the first roll of grass and it is heavier than I thought it would be. I drop it, curse and hope I haven’t broken it. I stare at the space and try to figure out how to do this. Then I roll. Two hours later I am dirty and sweating. I’ve lost the coat, which restricted my movements, and instead layered up with an old fleece. I’m covered in muck, grass, sweat and at one stage there are even tears of frustration: for the grass, for the job, for Kevin and for Heather and my mum and the fingernail that I chipped when I bumped it against the skip. I am so lost in myself, in my chore, that I almost jump out of my skin when I hear a cough breaking the silence.

‘Sorry,’ I hear you say suddenly.

It is three a.m. I look across the road to your garden and I can’t see a thing. I see the shape of the garden furniture, but the rest is blackness, all lights are out on the house. My heart is pounding while my eyes furiously search the dark. Then I see the glow of a cigarette, brightening as it’s inhaled. It’s you. How long have you been there? I didn’t hear or see your jeep arrive, and I still don’t see it now, which means you have been there the entire time. I want to cry. I mean, I have been crying, quite loudly, thinking nobody could hear me.

‘Got locked out,’ you say, breaking the silence.

‘How long have you been there?’ I repeat. Now that I know that you’re there I can start to see the outline of you, sitting in the chair at the head of the table, the same chair as usual.

‘Few hours.’

‘You should have said something.’

I go inside the house to get the spare key and when I walk outside you’re standing at your door.

‘Why is it so dark over here?’

‘Streetlight is broken.’

I look up and realise that’s why I couldn’t see you. Dr Jameson will be annoyed about this when he returns. On the ground underneath is smashed glass which has fallen and one of my bricks from the skip is in the middle of the road. I wonder why I didn’t hear that happening, I was so sure I hadn’t slept. I look at you accusingly.

‘It was too bright. I couldn’t get any sleep,’ you say softly. You don’t seem that drunk, you are composed, you’ve had time to sober up – in my company, when I didn’t even know you were there – but I can smell the alcohol.

‘Where’s your jeep?’

‘Clamped in town.’

I hand you the key. You open the front door and gives it back to me.

‘You should have said something,’ I say again, finally looking you in the eye, then glancing away, feeling so vulnerable.

‘I didn’t want to disturb you. You seemed busy. Sad.’

‘I’m not sad,’ I snap.

‘Sure you’re not. Four a.m., you’re gardening, I’m smashing lights, we’re both fine.’ You do the chesty chuckle that I hate. ‘Besides, it was nice not to be alone out here for once.’

You give me a small smile before gently closing the door.

When I return to the house I realise my hands are shaking, my throat is dry and closed, my chest feels tight. I can’t stop moving. I haven’t quite realised what a frenzy I am in until I see that I have walked muck everywhere in confusing circles on the floor, the stop-start trail of a madwoman.

It’s the middle of the night, but I can’t help it: I pick up the phone.

Larry answers groggily, he always answers. He leaves his phone on all night, constantly expecting to hear the worst news about his daughter every time she leaves the house to go to a disco or stay over in a friend’s house in a skirt that’s too short, wobbling with Bambi legs on heels that she can’t balance on. The stress of her will kill him.

‘Larry, it’s me.’

‘Jasmine,’ he says groggily. ‘Jesus. What time is it?’ I hear him fumbling around. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Not really, you fired me.’

He sighs. He has the decency to sound embarrassed in the stuttering, half-asleep, respectful response he gives me, but I interrupt him.

‘Yeah, yeah, you said that before, but listen, I need to talk about something else. This gardening leave. It’s not working for me. We need to cancel it. Stop it.’

He hesitates. ‘Jasmine, it was part of the contract. We agreed—’

‘Yeah, we agreed, four years ago when I didn’t think you were going to fire me and then force me to sit on my arse for an entire year. I need you to stop it.’ I sound wired, strung up, like I need a fix. I do. I need work. I need work like a heroin addict needs a fix. I am desperate. ‘It’s killing me, I swear, Larry. You don’t know what this shit does to your head.’

‘Jasmine,’ he is alert now, his voice steady. ‘Are you okay? Are you with—’

‘I’m fucking fine, Larry, okay? Listen to me …’ I tear off the chipped nail with my teeth and realise I’ve pulled away too much; the air hits the exposed nail bed and it stings and causes me to suck in air loudly. ‘I’m not asking for my job back, I’m asking you to reconsider. Actually, not reconsider, just stop this gardening leave thing. It’s unnecessary. It’s—’

‘It’s not unnecessary.’

‘It is. Or else it’s too long. Shorten it. Please? It’s been over two months already. That’s okay. Two months is fine. Lots of companies leave it at two months. I need to be busy – you know me. I don’t want to turn into him across the road, some nocturnal crazy owl man that—’

‘Who’s across the road?’

‘It doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, I need to work, Larry. I need—’

‘No one’s expecting you not to do anything, Jasmine. You can take on projects.’

‘Fucking projects. Like what? Build a volcano of baked beans? This isn’t school, Larry, I’m thirty-fucking-three.
I can’t NOT work for a year
. Do you know how hard it will be for me to get back to it next year? After a whole year? Who wants someone who
hasn’t worked for a year
?’

‘Fine. So where will you work?’ He is getting feistier, fully awake now. ‘Exactly what line of business do you have in mind? Tomorrow, if you were able to go back out there and get a job – tell me where you’d go. Or would you like me to help you out with that answer?’

‘I …’ I falter, because he’s intimating something, which is confusing me. ‘I don’t know what you’re—’

‘In that case I’ll tell you. You’d go to Simon—’

I freeze. ‘I wouldn’t go to Simon—’

‘Yes, you would, Jasmine – you would. Because I know that you met with him. I know that you two had coffee. Straight after you walked out of here, you walked into a restaurant with him. Grafton Tea Rooms, wasn’t it?’ He’s angry now and I can hear the sense of betrayal in his voice. ‘The same place where you both used to meet when you were trying to sell the company that you weren’t supposed to be selling – isn’t that right?’

I’m not expecting him to stop talking so suddenly and my silence is like an admission. By the time I’m ready to speak for myself again, he has resumed:

‘See, Jasmine, you have to be careful, don’t you? Never know who’s watching you. Did you think I wasn’t going to hear about that one? Because I did, and I was really fucking pissed, to be honest with you. I also know that he offered you a job and that you said yes, but he wouldn’t work with you under the gardening leave terms. I know that because his legal people got in touch with our legal person to enquire about the exact details. Seems a year is too long for him. You’re not worth waiting that long for. So don’t call me up now, begging me to go easy on you, not when you were going to betray me—’