Read Online There's No Place Like Here by Cecelia Ahern - Free Book Online Page B

embarrassing, irrelevant, and unnecessary question I had ever asked about Helena Dickens meant the world to her. I knew there had been a reason for my endless searches, my infinite interrogations of myself and of others. And the greatest thing of all was that there wasn’t just one reason for it all; sitting next to me by the campfire there were four others.
    Oh, the relief. That’s what the feeling was. The first sense of relief my mind had felt since I was ten years old.
    The sky was growing brighter; the tips of the trees that had been burned by the sun by day had been cooled by the night and now shaded the cool blue sky. The birds that had been silent during the dark hours were now warming their vocal cords, like the idiosyncratic rendition of an orchestra tuning, pre-performance. Bernard, Derek, Marcus, and Joan lay asleep in their sleeping bags, covered by blankets and looking how they should have the night of their school camping trip. I wondered, had they slept soundly through that night instead of venturing into the woods, would they have been back in their families’ arms all those years ago or would the secret door to this world have welcomed them in regardless?
    Was it an accident that we were all here? Did we stumble upon a blip in the earth’s creation, a black hole on the surface, or was this just a part of life that remained unspoken throughout the centuries? Were we lost and unaccounted for, or was this where we truly belonged and our normal lives the original error? Was this a place for those who felt like outsiders in life to belong, to finally feel relief? Despite my own relief, my questions kept flowing. The world around me had changed but some things remained constant.
    “Were you happy?” I looked around at the others sleeping. “Was everybody happy?”
    Helena smiled softly. “We’ve all asked the question of why, and there is no answer that we know of. Yes, we were happy. We were all very, very happy in our lives.” She paused. “Sandy…” She broke the silence again, watching me with that amused expression as if enjoying a private joke. “Believe it or not we’re very happy here too. We’ve spent more years living here than anywhere else. The past is a distant but pleasurable memory for us.”
    I looked around the campfire. They had nothing. Nothing but small overnight bags packed with teabags, unnecessary chinaware and biscuits, blankets and sleeping bags, wraps and jumpers to keep warm, all of which they undoubtedly retrieved from the piles of belongings scattered around us. These five people had slept under the stars, swathed in blankets with a fire and a sun as their only source of light and heat. For forty years. How could they be truly happy? How could they not be clawing their way back to existence, back to material belongings and craving the companionship of others?
    I shook my head as I looked around.
    Helena laughed at me, “Why are you shaking your head?”
    “I’m sorry.” I was embarrassed at being caught pitying a life they seemed content with. “It’s just that forty years is such a long time to settle”—I looked around at the clearing—“well…here.”
    Helena’s face opened in surprise.
    “Oh, I’m so sorry.” I backtracked. “I didn’t mean to offend you—”
    “Sandy, Sandy,” she interrupted, “ this is not our whole world.”
    “I know, I know.” I backed off. “You have each other and—”
    “No.” Helena started laughing and her forehead crumpled in confusion. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew this wasn’t a permanent thing. We go camping together once a year on the anniversary of our disappearance. I thought you would recognize the date. This clearing is the first place we arrived at forty years ago—well, the first area where we realized we weren’t at home anymore. We all stay in touch during the year but we live more or less separate lives.”
    “What?” I was confused.
    “People go missing all the time, you know that.