Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

The lights were out in the children’s bedrooms at the front of the house, and Lou instantly felt an inexplicable relief.

‘I’m home,’ he called to the quiet house.

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

He loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt, kicked off his shoes, felt the warmth of the underfloor heating soothe his feet through the marble, and started to sort through the mail on the hall table. His mind slowly began to unwind, the conversations of various meetings and telephone calls all beginning to slow. Though they were still there, 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 shoes kicked across the floor, his tie onto the table but slithering to the floor, his case here, loose change and keys there – he felt the events of the day fall away.

‘Hello,’ he called again, louder this second time, realising that nobody – i.e. his wife – had come to greet him. Perhaps she was busy breathing to the count of four, as the hysterical woman in the television room was 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.

This bothered him. Not the creaking, for it was an old house and not much could be done about that, but the being silenced was a problem. After a day of non-stop talking, of clever words of jargon, persuasion and intelligent conversation, deal opening, deal development and deal closing, not one person he had met with had at any point told him to Sssh . This was the language of teachers and of librarians. Not of adults in their own homes. He felt like he’d left the real world and entered a crèche. After only one minute of stepping through his front door, he felt irritated. That had been happening a lot lately.

‘I’ve just put Pud down again. He’s not having a good night,’ Ruth explained from the top of the stairs, in a loud whisper. This kind of speech, though Lou understood, he did not like. Like the Sssh language, this adult-whispering was for children in class or teenagers sneaking out of or into their homes. He didn’t like limitations, particularly in his own home. So that irritated him too.

The ‘Pud’ she referred to was their son Ross. A little over a year old now, he still held on to his baby fat, his flesh resembling the uncooked dough of a croissant or that of a pudding. Hence the nickname Pud, which, unfortunately for the already christened Ross, seemed to be sticking around.

‘What’s new?’ he mumbled, referring to Pud’s lack of desire to sleep, while searching through the mail for something that didn’t resemble a bill. He opened a few and discarded them on the hall table. Pieces of ripped paper drifted from the surface and onto the floor.

Ruth made her way downstairs, dressed in a velour tracksuit-cum-pyjamas outfit, he couldn’t quite tell the difference between what she wore these days. Her long brown chocolate hair was tied back in a high ponytail and she shuffled towards him in a pair of slippers – the noise grating on his ears, worse than the sound of a vacuum cleaner, which, until that point, had been his least loved.

‘Hi,’ she smiled, and the tired face disappeared and there was a glimpse, a tiny flicker, of the woman he had married. Then, as quickly as he saw it, it disappeared again, leaving him to wonder if it was he who had imagined it, or if that part of her was there at all. The face of the woman he saw every day stepped up to kiss him on the lips.

‘Good day?’ she asked.

‘Busy.’

‘But good?’

The contents of a particular envelope took his interest. After a long moment he felt the intensity of a stare.

‘Hmm?’ He looked up.

‘I just asked if you had a good day.’

‘Yeah, and I said, “busy”.’

‘Yes, and I said, “but good”? All your days are busy, but all your days aren’t good. I hope it was good,’ she said, in a strained voice.

‘You don’t sound like you hope it was good,’ he replied, eyes down, reading the rest of the letter.

‘Well, I sound like I did the first time I asked.’ She kept an easiness in her voice.

‘Ruth, I’m reading my post!’

‘I can see that,’ she mumbled, bending over to pick up the empty ripped envelopes that lay on the ground and on the hall table.

‘So what happened around here today?’ he asked, opening another envelope. The paper fluttered to the floor.

‘The usual madness. And then I tidied the house just before you got back, for the millionth time,’ she said, making a point as she bent down to pick up another crumpled ball of paper. ‘Marcia called a few times today, looking for you. When I could finally find the phone. Pud hid the handset again, it took me ages to find it. Anyway, she needs help with deciding a venue for your dad’s party. She liked the idea of the marquee here, and Quentin, of course, didn’t. He wants it in the yacht club. I think your dad would like either of them – no, that’s a lie, I think your father would prefer none of them, but seeing as it’s going ahead without his say-so, he’d be happy with either. Your mum is staying out of it. So what did you tell her?’

Silence. She patiently watched him reading the last page of the document and waited for an answer. When he had folded it and dropped it on the hall table, he reached for another.

‘Honey?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘I asked you about Marcia,’ she said, through gritted teeth, and proceeded to pick up the scraps of new paper that had fallen to the ground.

‘Oh yeah.’ He unfolded another document. ‘She was just, eh …’ He became distracted by the contents.

‘Yes?’ she said loudly.

He looked up and gazed at her, as though noticing for the first time that she was there. ‘She was calling about the party.’ He made a face.

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’ He started reading again.

‘Because she – never mind.’ Start again. ‘She’s so excited about this party, isn’t she? It’s great seeing her really getting her teeth into something after the year she’s had. She’s been talking a mile a minute about food and the music …’ She trailed off.

Silence.

‘Hmm?’

‘Marcia,’ she said, rubbing her tired eyes. ‘We’re talking about Marcia, but you’re busy so …’ She began making her way to the kitchen.

‘Oh, that. I’m taking the party off her hands. Alison’s going to organise it.’

Ruth stopped. ‘Alison?’

‘Yes, my secretary. She’s new. Have you met her?’

‘Not yet.’ She slowly made her way towards him. ‘Honey, Marcia was really excited about organising the party.’

‘And now Alison is,’ he smiled. ‘Not.’ Then he laughed.

She smiled patiently at the in-house joke, wanting to strangle him for taking the party out of Marcia’s hands and putting it into those of a woman who knew nothing of the man who was celebrating seventy years in this life, with the people he loved and who loved him.

She took a deep breath, her shoulders relaxing as she exhaled. Started again. ‘Your dinner’s ready.’ She began to move towards the kitchen again. ‘It’ll just take a minute to heat up. And I bought that apple pie you like.’

‘I’ve eaten,’ he said, folding the letter and ripping it into pieces. A few pieces of paper fluttered to the ground. It was either the sound of the paper hitting the marble or his words that stopped her on her way, but either way she froze.

‘I’ll pick the bloody things up,’ he said with irritation.