Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

People should never start crying. Because if they start … Justin felt like shouting out for them all to stop being so stupid; that Al wasn’t crying because of his dad. He wanted to tell them that Al had little idea of what was really going on. He’d been concentrating on his fire engine all day and occasionally looking to Justin with a face so full of questions that he had to keep turning away.

There were men in suits that carried his dad’s casket to this place. Men that weren’t his uncles or his dad’s friends. They weren’t crying like everyone else, but they weren’t smiling either. They didn’t look bored but they didn’t look interested. They looked as though they had been to Dad’s funeral a hundred times already and they didn’t care so much that he had died again but also didn’t mind having to make another hole, carry him again and bury him again. He watched as the men with no smiles threw handfuls of soil onto the coffin, making drumming sounds against the wood. He wondered if that would wake his dad up from his summer slumber. He didn’t cry like everyone else because he felt assured that Dad had finally escaped the light. His dad would no longer have to sit alone in the shade.

Justin realises the driver is staring at him intently. His head moves in close as though he’s awaiting the answer to a very personal question concerning a rash and whether Justin has ever had one too.

‘No,’ Justin says quietly, clearing his throat and adjusting his eyes to the world of thirty-five years later. Time travel of the mind; a powerful thing.

‘That’s us over there.’ The driver presses the button on his keys and the lights of an S-class Mercedes light up.

Justin’s mouth drops. ‘Do you know who organised this?’

‘No idea.’ The driver holds the door open for him. ‘I just take the orders from my boss. Thought it was unusual having to write “Thank You” on the sign. Does that make sense to you?’

‘Yes, it does but … it’s complicated. Could you find out from your boss who’s paying for this?’ Justin sits into the back seat of the car, places his briefcase on the floor beside him.

‘I could try.’

‘That would be great.’ I’ll have gotcha then! Justin relaxes into the leather chair, stretches his legs out fully and closes his eyes, barely able to hold back his smile.

‘I’m Thomas, by the way,’ the driver introduces himself. ‘I’m here for you all day so wherever you want to go after this, just let me know.’

‘For the entire day?’ Justin almost chokes on his free bottle of chilled water, which was waiting for him in the hand rest. He saved a rich person’s life. Yes! He should have mentioned more to Bea than muffins and daily newspapers. A villa in the South of France. What an idiot he was not to have thought more quickly.

‘Would your company not have organised this for you?’ Thomas asks.

‘No.’ Justin shakes his head. ‘Definitely not.’

‘Maybe you’ve a fairy godmother you don’t know about,’ Thomas says, deadpan.

‘Well, let’s see what this pumpkin’s made of,’ Justin laughs.

‘Won’t get to test it in this traffic,’ Thomas says, braking as they enter Dublin traffic, worsened by the grey rainy morning.

Justin presses the button on the door for heated seats and reclines as he feels his back and behind warming. He kicks off his shoes, reclines his chair and relaxes in comfort as he watches the miserable faces of those in buses glaring sleepily out of the fogged-up windows.

‘After the Gallery, do you mind bringing me to Street? I need to visit somebody in the blood donor clinic.’

‘No problem, boss.’

The October gust huffs and puffs and attempts to blow the last of the leaves off the nearby trees. They hang on tight, like the nannies in Mary Poppins , who cling to the lampposts of Cherry Tree Lane in a desperate attempt to prevent their airborne competition from blowing them away from the big Banks job interview. The leaves, like many people this autumn, are not yet ready to let go. They cling on tight to yesterday, unable to have controlled their change in colour but, by God, putting up a fight before giving up the place that has been their home for two seasons. I watch as one leaf lets go, dances around in the air before falling to the ground. I pick it up and slowly twirl it around by its stalk in my hand. I’m not fond of autumn. Not fond of watching things so sturdy wither as they lose against nature, the higher power they can’t control.

‘Here comes the car,’ I comment to Kate.

We’re standing across the main road from the National Gallery, behind the parked cars, shaded by the trees rising above and over the gates of Merrion Square.

‘You paid for that? ’ Kate says. ‘You really are nuts.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know. Actually, I paid half. That’s Frankie’s uncle driving – he runs the company. Pretend you don’t know him if he looks over.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘Good, that’s convincing.’

‘Joyce, I have never seen that man in my life.’

‘Wow, that’s really good.’

‘How long are you going to keep this up, Joyce? The London thing sounded fun but really, all we know is that he donated blood.’

‘To me.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘I know that.’

‘You can’t know that.’

‘I can. That’s the funny thing.’

She looks doubtful and stares at me with such a look of pity, it makes my blood boil.

‘Kate, yesterday I had carpaccio and fennel for my dinner, and I spent the evening singing along to practically all the words of Pavarotti’s Ultimate Collection .’

‘I still don’t understand how you think that it’s this Justin Hitchcock man that’s responsible for it. Remember that film Phenomenon? John Travolta just suddenly became a genius overnight.’

‘He had a brain tumour that somehow increased his ability to learn,’ I snap.

The Mercedes pulls up by the gates of the Gallery. The driver gets out of the car to open the door for Justin and he emerges, briefcase in hand, a beam from ear to ear, and I’m happy to see that next month’s mortgage payment has gone to good use. I shall worry about that, and everything else in my life, when the time comes.

He still has the aura I felt from the day I first laid my eyes on him in the hair salon – a presence that makes my stomach walk a few flights of stairs and then climb the final ladder to the ten-metre diving platform at the Olympics final. He looks up at the Gallery, around at the park, and with that strong jawline he smiles, a smile that causes my stomach to do one bounce, two bounce, three bounce, before attempting the toughest dive of all, a reverse one-point-five somersault and then one, two, three and a half twists before entering the water, with a belly flop. My unsophisticated entry into the water shows I am not a seasoned nervous wreck. The dive, while terrifying, was quite pleasant and I’m open to taking those steps again.

The leaves around me rustle as another soft breeze blows and I’m not sure if I imagine that it carries to me the smell of his aftershave, the same scent as from the hair salon. I have a brief flash of him picking up a parcel wrapped in emerald-green paper, which sparkles under Christmas tree lights and surrounding candles. It’s tied with a large red bow and my hands are momentarily his as he unties it slowly, carefully peels back the tape from the paper, taking care not to rip it. I am struck by his tenderness for the package, which has been lovingly wrapped, until his thoughts are momentarily mine and I am in on his plans to pocket the paper and use it on the unwrapped presents he has sitting out in the car. Inside is a bottle of aftershave and a shaving set. A Christmas gift from Bea.