Cecelia Ahern - The Gift

Yes, Lou still loved walking that pier, his runway to tranquillity. He loved watching the cars and the houses perched along the cliff edges fade away as he moved farther and farther from land. He would stand shoulder to shoulder with the lighthouse, both of them looking out to sea. After a long week at work, he could throw all of his worries out there, where they’d float away on the waves.

But the night Lou drove home after first meeting Gabe, it was too late to walk the pier. Driving past it, all he could see was blackness and the occasional light flashing on the lighthouse. And besides, the village itself wasn’t its usual quiet hideaway. So close to Christmas, every restaurant was throbbing with diners, Christmas parties, and annual meetings and celebrations. All the boats would be in for the night; the seals would be gone from the pier, their bellies full with the mackerel thrown to them by visitors. Lou continued on the black and quiet winding road that led uphill to the summit and, knowing that home was near and that nobody else was around, put his foot down on the accelerator of his Porsche 911. He lowered his window and felt the ice-cold air blow through his hair, and he listened to the sound of the engine reverberating through the trees as he made his way. Below him, the city twinkled with a million lights, spying him winding his way up the wooded mountain like a spider among the grass.

Suddenly he heard a whoop, and then, looking in his rearview mirror, cursed loudly at the police car that came up behind him, lights ablazing. He eased his foot off the accelerator, hoping he’d be overtaken, but to no avail; the emergency was indeed him. He turned on his signal and pulled over, sat with his hands on the steering wheel, and watched the familiar figure climbing out of the police car behind him. The man slowly made his way to Lou’s side of the vehicle, looking around as he did, as though taking a leisurely stroll.

The man parked himself outside Lou’s door and leaned down to look into the open window.

“Mr. Suffern,” he said without a note of sarcasm, much to Lou’s relief.

“Sergeant O’Reilly.” He remembered the name right on cue and threw him a smile, showing so many teeth he felt like a tense chimpanzee. “We meet again.”

“Indeed. We find ourselves in a familiar situation,” Raphie said with a grimace. “But I do enjoy our little chats. How is your new secretary coming along? Last month you were racing to the office because she had made a mistake with your schedule.”

“Alison. Yes, she’s doing just fine.” Lou smiled.

“And Cliff, how is he? You were racing to the hospital the time before that.”

“Still not good,” Lou said somberly.

“You have his job yet?” Raphie asked softly.

“Not yet.” Lou smiled again.

“So what’s the emergency tonight?”

“My apologies. The roads were quiet, so I thought it would be okay. There’s not a sinner around.”

“Just a few innocents. That’s always the problem.”

“And I’m one of them, Your Honor.” Lou laughed, holding his hands up in defense. “It’s the last stretch of road before getting home, and trust me, I only put the foot down seconds before you pulled me over. Dying to get home to the family. No pun intended.”

“I could hear your engine from Sutton Cross, way down the road.”

“It’s a quiet night.”

“And it’s a noisy engine, but you just never know, Mr. Suffern. You just never know.”

“Don’t suppose you’d let me off with a warning,” Lou said, trying to work sincerity and apology into his best winning smile. Both at the same time.

“You know the speed limit, I assume?”

“Sixty kilometers.”

“Correct. You were fifty above that.”

Lou bit down on his lip and tried his best to look appalled.

Without another word the sergeant bolted upright, causing Lou to lose eye contact and suddenly be staring at the man’s belt buckle. Unsure of what the sergeant was up to, he stayed seated and looked out the window to the stretch of road before him, hoping he wasn’t about to gain more points on his license. With twelve as the maximum before losing his license altogether, he was perched dangerously close with eight. He turned and peeked at the sergeant and saw him grasping at his left pocket.

“You looking for a pen?” Lou called, reaching his hand into his inside pocket.

The sergeant winced and turned his back on Lou.

“Hey, are you okay?” Lou asked with concern. He reached for the door handle and then thought better of it.

The sergeant grunted something inaudible, the tone suggesting a warning of some sort. Through the side-view mirror, Lou watched him walk slowly back to his car. He had an unusual gait. He seemed to be dragging his left leg slightly as he walked. Was he drunk? Then the sergeant opened his car door, got inside, started up the engine, did a U-turn, and was gone. Lou frowned. His day — even in its twilight hours — was becoming increasingly more bizarre by the moment.

LOU PULLED UP TO THE driveway feeling the same sense of pride and satisfaction he felt every night when he arrived home. To most average people, size didn’t matter. To Lou, size most certainly did matter. He didn’t want to be average, and he saw the things that he owned as being a measure of the man that he was. He wanted the best of everything. Despite being on a safe cul-de-sac, one of only a few houses on Howth summit, he’d arranged for the existing boundary walls to be built up higher, and for oversized electronic gates with cameras to be placed at the entrance. The lights were out in the children’s bedrooms at the front of the house, and Lou felt an inexplicable relief.

“I’m home,” he called as he walked into the quiet house.

There was a faint sound of a breathless and rather hysterical woman calling out from the television room down the hallway. Ruth’s exercise DVD.

He loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt and kicked off his shoes, feeling the warmth of the underfloor heating soothe his feet through the marble as he walked to the hall table to sort through the mail. His mind slowly began to unwind, the conversations of various meetings and telephone calls from the day all beginning to slow. Though they were still there in his head, the voices seemed a little quieter now. Each time he took off a layer of his clothes — his overcoat flung over the chair, his suit jacket on the table, his tie onto the table but slithering to the floor — or emptied his pockets — his loose change here, his keys there — he felt the events of the day fall away.

“Hello,” he called again, louder this time, realizing that nobody — his wife — had come to greet him. Perhaps she was busy breathing to the count of four, as he could hear the exercise-DVD woman in the television room doing.

“Sssh!” he heard coming from the second level of the house, followed by the creak of floorboards as his wife made her way across the landing.

Being silenced bothered him. Throughout a day of nonstop talking, of clever words, of jargon, of persuasive and intelligent conversation — deal opening, deal development, deal closing — not one person at any point had told him to Sssh. That was the language of teachers and librarians. Not of adults in their own homes. He felt like he’d left the real world and entered a church. Only one minute after stepping through his front door, he felt irritated. That had been happening a lot lately.

“I’ve just put Bud down again. He’s not having a good night,” Ruth explained from the top of the stairs in a loud whisper. Lou also didn’t like this kind of speech. This whispering was for children in class or teenagers sneaking out of their homes.

The “Bud” she referred to was their one-year-old son Ross. This nickname came about after their five-year-old daughter Lucy overheard Lou affectionately call her new baby brother buddy or bud, and understood it to be his name. Despite their initial corrections, Lucy’s conviction remained and so, unfortunately for Ross, his nickname of Bud seemed to be sticking around.