Melanie winked at me from the pews, beside her Don made a face to make me laugh and to my utter surprise and delight as I looked ahead of me, beside my grandmother who was checking Mum out from head to toe, I saw Life in the front row, healthy, groomed, handsome but most of all unmistakably happy. He smiled at me proudly, and I was so excited and moved to see him there. It had been just over a month since we’d said our goodbye – for this phase anyway – and even with Don to keep me company I’d missed him every day. As the vows were said, I couldn’t help but look at my life and smile as if we were mentally saying the vows to each other; for better for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.
As long as you’re around, your life is too. So just as you shower love and affection and attention on the husbands, wives, parents, children and forever friends who surround you, you have to do so equally with your life, because it’s yours, it’s you, and it’s always there rooting for you, cheering you on, even when you feel like you can’t do it. I gave up on my life for a while, but what I’ve learned is that even when that happens and especially when that happens, life never ever gives up on you. Mine didn’t. And we’ll be there for each other until those final moments when we will look at each other and say, ‘Thanks for staying until the end.’
And that’s the truth.
Thank you David, for your unshakable support and belief in me, without which I couldn’t have written this book with as much joy and love. Robin, you are yummy and I adore you; this is the one book I’ll allow you to scribble on, enjoy the moment. To Mimmie, Terry, Dad, Georgina, Nicky, Rocco and Jay, thanks for your constant love and support.
Thank you to my agent Marianne Gunn O’Connor for your guidance and encouragement – you’re partly to blame for making my life so exciting. Thank you to my editor Lynne Drew for your advice and skill which make every story a better one. Thanks to HarperCollins, a great big machine made up of such fantastic, hardworking people. I am honoured to be working with you. Huge thanks to Pat Lynch and Vicki Satlow. Thanks to Aslan for allowing me to use the lyrics for ‘Down on Me’.
I’d like to thank my girlfriends. In the interest of world peace, you shall all remain nameless, but thanks for your friendship and most importantly, for sharing your personal stories late into the night and early hours of the morning, all of which have been an endless source of inspiration for this book. Relax, just joking … I never listen anyway.
And finally, I’d like to thank my Life. It’s been really nice meeting you, please stick around.
Other Books by the same author
PS, I Love You
Where Rainbows End
If You Could See Me Now
A Place Called Here
Thanks for the Memories
The Gift
The Book of Tomorrow
Short stories
Girl in the Mirror
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers
THE TIME OF MY LIFE. Copyright © Cecelia Ahern 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-00-735043-8
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Extract from Down On Me reproduced by kind permission of Aslan – Christy Dignam, Billy McGuinness, Alan Downey, Joe Jewell and Rod O’Brien
The publishers have made every effort to secure permission to reprint material protected by copyright. They will be pleased to make good any omissions brought to their attention in future printings of this book.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-743283-7
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