A Place Called Here. Cecelia Ahern

Helena, whom I hadn’t spoken to for an hour, raised her eyebrows at me, trying to show her lack of amusement although I knew well that she was enjoying every second of my torture. Over the past hour I had ‘accidentally’ knocked over the china, dropped a packet of biscuits on Joan and had a rather loud bout of coughing. Still they slept and Helena refused to lead or even direct me out of the woods to the other life she had spoken of.

      Hearing laughter, I had attempted to make my own way out but, finding my way blocked by thousands of identical leering pines, I decided that getting lost once was enough, to get lost a second time in already unusual circumstances would be just plain stupid.

      ‘How long do they usually sleep for?’ I asked loudly in a bored tone, hoping my voice would disturb them.

      ‘They like to get a good eight hours.’

      ‘Do they eat?’

      ‘Three times a day; usually solids. I walk them twice a day. Bernard in particular loves the leash.’ She smiled into the distance as though remembering. ‘And then they partake in the occasional personal grooming,’ she finished.

      ‘I meant do they eat here?’ I looked around the clearing in disgust, no longer caring if I insulted their annual camping resort. I couldn’t help my agitation but I hated to be pinned down. Usually I came and went in my life as I pleased, in and out of others’. I never even succeeded in staying in my own parents’ house for very long, usually grabbing my bag by the door and running. But here, I had no place to go.

      Laughter echoed in the distance once again.

      ‘What is that noise?’

      ‘People call it laughter, I think.’ Helena settled down in her sleeping bag, looking snug and smug at the same time.

      ‘Have you always had an attitude problem?’ I asked.

      ‘Have you?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said firmly, and she laughed. I let go of my frown and smiled. ‘It’s just that I’ve been sitting in these woods for two entire days now.’

      ‘Is that an apology?’

      ‘I don’t apologise. Not unless I really need to.’

      ‘You remind me of me when I was young. Younger. I’m still young. What has you so irritable at such a young age?’

      ‘I’m not a people person.’ I looked around as I heard another bout of laughing.

      Helena continued talking as though she hadn’t even heard it. ‘Of course you’re not. You’ve just spent the guts of your life working to find them.’

      I registered her statement but decided not to respond to it. ‘Do you not hear these sounds?’

      ‘I grew up beside a train station. When friends stayed over they’d be kept awake all night by the noise and the vibrations. I was so used to it I couldn’t hear a thing, yet the creaking on the stairs when my parents went to bed woke me every time. Are you married?’

      I rolled my eyes.

      ‘I’ll take that as a no. Do you have a boyfriend?’

      ‘Sometimes.’

      ‘Have you got children?’

      ‘I’m not interested in children.’ I sniffed the air. ‘What is that smell? And who is laughing? Is there somebody nearby?’

      My head whizzed round like a dog trying to snap at a fly. I couldn’t discern where the sounds were coming from. They had seemed to be coming from behind me but when I’d turned round the noise appeared to be louder in the other direction.

      ‘It’s everywhere,’ Helena explained lazily. ‘What the new people here compare to a surround-sound system. You probably understand that more than I.’

      ‘Who’s making that noise and is someone smoking a cigar?’ I sniffed the air.

      ‘You ask a lot of questions.’

      ‘And you didn’t when you first arrived here? Helena, I don’t know where I am and what’s going on, and you’re not being much help.’

      Helena at least had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. I’d forgotten what it’s like.’ She stopped and listened to the sounds. ‘The laughter and these smells are just entering our atmosphere now. So far, what do you know about people who come here?’

      ‘That they’re missing.’

      ‘Exactly. So the laughter, cries and scents that arrive are missing too.’

      ‘How can that be?’ I asked, utterly confused.

      ‘Sometimes people lose more than just socks, Sandy. You can forget where you put them first of all. Forgetting things is just parts of your memory missing, that’s all.’

      ‘You can remember again, though.’

      ‘Yes, but you don’t remember all things and you don’t find all things. Those things end up here, like the touch and smell of someone, the memory of their exact face and the sound of their voice.’

      ‘That’s bizarre.’ I shook my head, unable to take it all in.

      ‘It’s really very simple if you remember it like this. Everything in life has a place and when one thing moves, it must go somewhere else. Here is the place that all those things move to.’ She held her hands up to display our surroundings.

      A thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Have you ever heard your own laughter or cries?’

      Helena nodded sadly. ‘Many times.’

      ‘Many times?’ I asked in surprise.

      She smiled. ‘Well, I had the great privilege of being loved by many people. The more people who love you, the more people you have out there to lose memories. Don’t make that face, Sandy. It’s not as desperate as it sounds. People don’t intend to lose memories. Although there are always some things that we would rather forget.’ She winked. ‘It could be that the real sound of my laughter has been replaced by a new memory, or that, when a few months after I went missing my scent left my bedroom and my clothes, the scent they tried so hard to remember was altered. I’m sure the image I have of my own mother’s face is very different from how she actually looked but, forty years on and no reminder, how is my mind to know, exactly? You can’t hold on to all things for ever, no matter how hard you grip them.’

      I thought of the day I’d hear the sound of my own laughter drifting overhead, and I knew it would only happen once because there was only one person who knew the true sound of my laughter and cries.

      ‘All the same,’ Helena looked up to the now bright sky with tears in her eyes, ‘you do sometimes feel like catching them and throwing them back to where they came from. Our memories are the only contact we have. We can hug, kiss, laugh and cry with them over and over again in our minds. They’re very precious things to have.’

      Chuckles, hisses, snorts and giggles filtered through the air, floating by our ears on the wind, the light breeze carrying the faint scents like the forgotten smell of a childhood home; a kitchen after a day’s baking. There’s a mother’s forgotten smell of her baby, now grown up: baby powder, Sudocrem, candy-smelling skin. There are older, musty smells of favourite grandparents: lavender for Grandma, cigar, cigarette and pipe smoke for Granddad. There are the smells of lost lovers: sweet perfumes and aftershaves, the scent of sleepy morning lie-ins or simply the unexplainable individual scent left behind in a room. Personal smells as precious as the people themselves. All the aromas that had gone missing in people’s lives had ended up here. I couldn’t help but close my eyes and breathe in those scents and laugh along with the sounds.

      Joan stirred in her sleeping bag and I snapped out of my trance. My heart began to race in anticipation of finally seeing beyond the woods.

      ‘Good morning, Joan,’ Helena sang so loudly she succeeded in waking Bernard too. He awoke