Roar. Cecelia Ahern

me a drawer, not a shelf.’

      ‘Yes, of course I want you to move in. Immediately. And I want you to leave your job and sit on this shelf so that everyone can see you, so that they can admire you, see what I see: the most beautiful woman in the world. You won’t have to lift a finger. You won’t have to do anything. Just sit on this shelf and be loved.’

      Her heart had swelled, her eyes filled. By the next day she was sitting on that shelf. Five feet above the floor, in the right-hand alcove of the living room, beside the fireplace. That was where she met Ronald’s family and friends for the first time. They stood around her, drinks in hand, marvelling at the wonder of the new love of Ronald’s life. They sat at the dinner table in the adjoining dining room, and though she couldn’t see everybody she could hear them, she could join in. She felt suspended above them – adored, cherished, respected by his friends, worshipped by his mother, envied by his ex-girlfriends. Ronald would look up at her proudly, that beautiful beam on his face that said it all. Mine. She sparkled with youth and desire, beside his trophy cabinet, which commemorated the football victories from his youth and his more recent golf successes. Above them was a brown trout mounted on the wall on a wooden plate with a brass plaque, the largest trout he’d ever caught, while out with his brother and father. He’d moved the trout to build the shelf, and so it was with even more respect that the men in his life viewed her. When her family and friends came to visit her they could leave feeling assured that she was safe, cocooned, idolized and, more importantly, loved.

      She was the most important thing in the world to him. Everything revolved around her and her position in the home, in his life. He pandered to her, he fussed around her. He wanted her on that shelf all of the time. The only moment that came close to the feeling of being so important in his world was Dusting Day. On Dusting Day, he went through all his trophies, polishing and shining them, and of course, he’d lift her from the shelf and lay her down and they would make love. Shiny and polished, renewed with sparkle and vigour, she would climb back up to the shelf again.

      They married, she quit her job, nursed her children, cuddled them, spent sleepless nights caring for them on the shelf, then watched them sleep, gurgle and grow on the rug and playpen beneath her. Ronald liked for her to be alone on the shelf, he employed childcare so that she could have her space, so that she could stay in the place he built for her, so that he wouldn’t lose a part of her to the children, or that their special relationship wouldn’t be altered. She had heard of couples who were torn apart after having families, husbands who felt left out when babies arrived. She didn’t want that to happen, she wanted to be there for him, to still feel adored. The shelf was her place. She cared deeply for everyone from there, and because of her position in the home, everyone always looked up to her. It was only later, when the children had grown up and left the house, twenty years after the day she first climbed onto the shelf, that the loneliness took hold of her.

      With the suddenness of an alarm bell, in fact.

      It was the angle of the TV that started it. She couldn’t see what Ronald was watching. It had never bothered her before because she was always content to see the faces of her children watching television rather than the TV itself. But the couch was now empty, the room quiet, and she needed distraction, escapism. Company. Ronald bought a new television, a flat screen that went on the wall, which meant it couldn’t be tilted, and it was suddenly out of her view, just as her children were. And then there were the gatherings Ronald organized without inviting her or telling her, that would go on around her, involving people she had never met, and some women she wasn’t sure of, right there in her own home – under her very nose, as it were.

      She watched from above as his life carried on beneath her, as though she wasn’t in the room, as though she wasn’t a part of his life. Wearing a smile to hide her confusion, she would try to cling on, she would try to join in, but they couldn’t hear her up there on the shelf and they’d grown tired of looking up, of raising their voices. They’d moved on. Ronald would forget to top up her drink, to check on her, to introduce her. It was as though he’d forgotten that she was there. And then he built the extension; it took him months, but once he was finished and the kitchen extended out to the back garden, suddenly all the gatherings and dinners moved out there. The TV room that had been the formal room, the centre of their home, was now a small, comfortable den. It had lost its grandeur. She’d reached the point where she felt she wasn’t a part of his life any more.

      And now it’s Saturday night, and she’s been alone all day while he’s been out golfing, while the children are busy getting on with their own lives.

      ‘Ronald,’ she says.

      He’s on the couch, watching something that she can’t see. He makes a sound in response but doesn’t look up at her.

      ‘Something doesn’t feel right up here.’ She hears the tremble in her voice, feels the tightness in her chest. When you put me up here, it was for everybody to see me, to be the centre of everything, but now … now everything is carrying on without me, out of sight. I feel so disconnected. She can’t say it, the words won’t come. Even thinking this way scares her. She likes her shelf, she is comfortable on her shelf, the shelf is her place, it’s where she has always been, it is where she should always stay. He put her there to remove all the concerns and responsibilities of life from her, for her.

      ‘Do you want another pillow?’ he asks. He chooses a pillow beside him and throws it to her. She catches it and looks at it and then at Ronald in surprise, heart pounding, things inside her hurting. He stands up then.

      ‘I can buy you a new one, a bigger one,’ he says, silencing the television with the remote control.

      ‘I don’t want a new pillow,’ she says quietly, taken aback by her response. Usually she loves such things.

      It’s as though he doesn’t hear her, or perhaps he does and he ignores her. She can’t figure it out.

      ‘I’m going out for a few hours, I’ll see you later.’

      She stares at the closed door, listens to the car engine start up, in utter shock. It’s been building up slowly over the years, but this is her moment of realization. All the little signs come together and hit her now, almost knocking her from her perch. He’d placed her on this shelf, a cherished woman whom he adored and wanted to protect and showcase, and now that everyone has seen her, has admired her, has congratulated him on his achievements, there’s nothing left. Now she’s just part of the furniture, a shelf adornment like the rest of his trophies, tucked away in an old comfortable den. She can’t even remember the last Dusting Day; how long has it been since he took her down to polish her?

      She is stiff. She realizes this for the first time. Her body needs to move. She needs to stretch. She needs room to grow. She’s spent so many years sitting up here representing an extension of Ronald, of his achievements, that she no longer has any idea what she represents to herself. She can’t blame Ronald for this; she willingly climbed up onto this shelf. She was selfish in lapping up the attention, the praise, the envy and the admiration. She liked being new, being celebrated, being his. But she was foolish. Not foolish to think it was a beautiful thing, but foolish to think it should be the only thing.

      As her mind whirs, the pillow that she has been hugging for comfort falls from her hands and lands softly on the floor. It makes a soft pfft on the plush carpet. She gazes at it on the floor and as she does, another realization dawns.

      She can get off the shelf. She can step down. She’d always had the ability to do that, of course, but somehow it seemed her place, the natural place to be, and why would anybody leave their place to become displaced? Her breath quickens at the dangerous new thought, dust catches in her throat and she coughs, hearing a wheeze in her chest for the first time.

      She has no place gathering dust. She lowers herself down. One foot on the armchair beneath, where Ronald used to sit holding her feet in his hands while he watched TV – until the new flat screen was installed. She reaches out to the wall to steady herself. The brown trout is the only thing she can grasp. Her stockinged foot slips on the armrest of the chair. Her hand flies out in panic, searching for something to cling to, and grips the open mouth of the trout.