The Year I Met You by Cecelia Ahern Page B

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