Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘I thought you had ways.’

‘You’re right, I do. But I thought you were the psychic one.’

‘I’m certainly not pyschic and I’m not getting anything about where he could be going.’

‘Are your powers fading?’

‘I don’t have powers.’

‘Whatever. Give me an hour, I’ll get back to you.’

Two hours later, just as Dad and I are about to board, I receive a phone call from Frankie.

‘He’s going to be in the National Gallery tomorrow morning at ten thirty. He’s giving a talk on a painting called Woman Writing a Letter . It sounds fascinating.’

‘Oh, it is, it’s one of Terborch’s finest. In my opinion.’

Silence.

‘You were being sarcastic, weren’t you?’ I realise. ‘OK, well, does your Uncle Tom still run that company?’ I smile mischievously and Dad looks at me curiously.

‘What are you planning?’ Dad asks suspiciously once I’ve hung up the phone.

‘I’m having a little bit of fun.’

‘Shouldn’t you get back to work? It’s been weeks now. Conor called your hand phone while you were gone this morning, it slipped my mind to tell you. He’s in Japan but I could hear him very clearly,’ he says, impressed with either Conor or the phone company, I’m not sure which. ‘He wanted to know why the house hadn’t got a For Sale sign in the garden yet. He said that you were supposed to do that.’ He looks worried, as though I’ve broken a world-old rule and now the house will explode if it doesn’t have a For Sale sign dug into the ground.

‘Oh, I haven’t forgotten.’ I’m agitated by Conor’s call. ‘I’m selling it myself. I have my first viewing tomorrow.’

He looks unsure and he’s right to because I’m lying through my teeth, but all I have to do is go through my books and call around my list of clients who I know to be looking for a similar property. I can think of a few straight away.

‘Your company knows this?’ His eyes narrow.

‘Yes,’ I smile tightly. ‘They can take the photos and put the sign up in a matter of hours. I know a few people in the estate agent world.’

He rolls his eyes.

We both look away, in a huff, and just so I don’t feel that I’m lying, while we shuffle along the queue to board the plane, I text a few clients I showed properties to before I took my leave to see if they’re interested in a viewing. Then I ask my trusty photographer to take the shots of the house. Just as we take our seats on the plane, I have already arranged the photographs and For Sale sign for later today and a viewing appointment for tomorrow. Both teachers at the local school, she and her husband will view the house during their lunch break. At the bottom of the text is the mandatory ‘Was so sorry to hear about what happened. Have been thinking of you. See you tomorrow, Linda xx.’

I delete it straight away.

Dad looks at my thumb working over the buttons on my phone with speed. ‘You writing a book?’

I ignore him.

‘You’ll get arthritis in your thumb and it’s not much fun, I can tell you that.’

I press send and switch the phone off.

‘You really weren’t lying about the house?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I say, confidently now.

‘Well, I didn’t know that, did I? I didn’t know what to tell him.’

Score one to me.

‘That’s OK, Dad, you don’t have to feel in the middle of all this.’

‘Well, I am.’

Score one to him.

‘Well, you wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t answered my phone.’

Two one.

‘You were missing all morning – what was I supposed to do, ignore it?’

Two all.

‘He was concerned about you, you know. He thought you should see someone. A professional person.’

Off the charts.

‘Did he now?’ I fold my arms, wanting to call him straight away and rant about all the things I hate about him and that have always annoyed me. The cutting of his toenails in bed, his nose-blowing every morning that almost rattled the house, his inability to let people finish their sentences, his stupid party coin trick that I fake laughed to every time he did it, including the first, his inability to sit down and have an adult conversation about our problems, his constant walking away during our fights … Dad interrupts from my silent torture of Conor.

‘He said you called him in the middle of the night, spurting Latin.’

‘Really?’ I feel anger surge. ‘What did you say?’

He looks out the window as we pick up speed down the runway.

‘I told him you made a fine fluent Italian-speaking Viking too.’ I see his cheeks lift and I throw my head back and laugh.

All even.

He suddenly grabs my hand. ‘Thanks for all this, love. I had a great time.’ He gives my hand a squeeze and goes back to looking out the window as the green of the fields surrounding the runway goes racing by.

He doesn’t let go of my hand, so I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Justin walks through arrivals at Dublin airport on Tuesday morning, with his cellphone glued to his ear, listening once again to the sound of Bea’s voice mail. He sighs and rolls his eyes before the beep, beyond bored now with her childish behaviour.

‘Hi, honey, it’s me. Dad. Again. Listen, I know you’re angry with me, and at your age everything is oh-so-very-dramatic, but if you’d just listen to what I have to say, the odds are you’ll agree with me and thank me for it when you’re old and grey. I only want the best for you and I will not hang up this phone until I have convinced you …’ He immediately hangs up.

Behind the barricade at arrivals is a man in a dark suit holding a large white placard with Justin’s surname written in large capitals. Underneath are those two magical words, ‘THANK YOU’.

Those words had captured his attention on billboards, newspapers, radio adverts and television adverts all day and every day, since the first note arrived. Whenever the words drifted from the lips of a passer-by, he did a double take, following them as though hypnotised, as though in them was contained a special encrypted code just for him. Those words floated in the air like the scent of freshly cut grass on a summer’s day; more than a smell, they carried with them a feeling, a place, a time of year, a happiness, a celebration of change, of moving on. They transport him just as the hearing of a special song familiar from youth does, when nostalgia, like the tide, sweeps in and catches you on the sand, pulling you in and under when you least expect it, often when you least want it.

Those words were constantly in his head, thank you, thank you, thank you . The more he heard them and reread the short notes, the more alien they became, as though he was seeing the sequence of those particular letters for the first time in his life – like music notes, so familiar, so simple, but arranged in a different way, become pure masterpieces.

This transformation of everyday common things to something magical, this growing understanding that what he perceived to be was not at all, reminded him of when he was a child and spent long silent moments staring at his face in the mirror. Standing on a footstool so that he could reach, the more intensely he stared, the more his face began to morph into one he was wholly unfamiliar with. It wasn’t the face his mind had so stubbornly convinced him he had, but instead he saw the real him: eyes further apart than he’d thought, one eyelid lower than the other, one nostril also ever so slightly lower, the corner of one side of his mouth turning downward, as though there was a line going through the centre of his face and with the drawing of that line everything was dragged south, like a knife through sticky chocolate cake. The surface, once smooth, drooped and hung. A quick glimpse and it was unnoticeable. Careful analysis, before brushing his teeth at night, revealed he wore the face of a stranger.