Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

She slowly turned around and asked in a quiet voice, ‘Where did you eat?’

‘Shanahans. Rib-eye steak. I’m stuffed.’ He absent-mindedly rubbed his stomach.

‘With who?’

‘Work people.’

‘Who?’

‘What’s this, the Spanish inquisition?’

‘No, just a wife asking a husband who he had dinner with.’

‘A few guys from the office. You don’t know them.’

‘I wish you would have told me.’

‘It wasn’t a social thing. Nobody else’s wives were there.’

‘I didn’t mean – I’d like to have known so I wouldn’t have bothered cooking for you.’

‘Christ, Ruth, I’m sorry you cooked and bought a bloody pie,’ he exploded.

‘Sssh,’ she said closing her eyes and hoping his raised voice wouldn’t wake the baby.

‘No! I won’t sssh!’ he boomed. ‘Okay?’ He made his way into the parlour, leaving his shoes in the middle of the hallway and his papers and envelopes strewn across the hall table.

Ruth took another deep breath, turned away from his mess and made her way to the opposite side of the house.

When Lou rejoined his wife, she was sitting at the kitchen table eating lasagne and salad, the pie next in line to be eaten, watching women in spandex jump around on the large plasma in the attached informal living room.

‘I thought you’d eaten with the kids,’ he remarked, after watching her for a while.

‘I did,’ she said, through a full mouth.

‘So why are you eating again?’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s almost eleven. A bit late to eat, don’t you think?’

‘You eat at this hour,’ she frowned.

‘Yes, but I’m not the one who complains that I’m fat and then eats two dinners and a pie,’ he laughed.

She swallowed the food, feeling like a rock was going down her throat. He hadn’t noticed his words, hadn’t intended to hurt her. He never intended to hurt her; he just did. After a long silence in which Ruth had lost the anger and built up the appetite to eat again, Lou joined her at the kitchen table, in the conservatory. On the other side of the window the blackness clung to the cold pane, eager to get inside. Beyond it were the millions of lights of the city across the bay, like Christmas lights dangling from the blackness.

‘It’s been a weird day today,’ Lou finally said.

‘How?’

‘I don’t know,’ he sighed. ‘It just felt funny. I felt funny.’

‘I feel like that most days,’ Ruth smiled.

‘I must be coming down with something. I just feel … out of sorts.’

She felt his forehead. ‘You’re not hot.’

‘I’m not?’ He looked at her in surprise and then felt it himself. ‘I feel hot. It’s this guy at work.’ He shook his head. ‘So odd.’

Ruth frowned and studied him, not used to seeing him so inarticulate.

‘It started out well.’ He swirled his wine around his glass. ‘I met a man called Gabe outside the office. A homeless guy – well, I don’t know if he was homeless, he says he has a place to stay, but he was begging on the streets anyway.’

At that stage the baby monitor began crackling as Pud started to cry softly. Just a gentle sleepy moaning at first. Knife and fork down and with the unfinished plate pushed away, Ruth prayed for him to stop.

‘Anyway,’ Lou continued, not even noticing, ‘I bought him a coffee and we got talking.’

‘That was nice of you,’ Ruth said. Her maternal instincts were kicking in and the only voice she could now hear was that of her child, as his sleepy moans turned to full-blown cries.

‘He reminded me of me,’ Lou said, confused now. ‘He was exactly like me and we had the funniest conversation about shoes.’ He laughed, thinking back over it. ‘He could remember every single pair of shoes that walked into the building, so I hired him. Well, I didn’t, I called Harry –’

‘Lou, honey,’ she cut in, ‘do you not hear that?’

He looked at her blankly, irritated at first that she’d butted in, and then cocked his head to listen. Finally, the cries penetrated his thoughts.

‘Fine, go on,’ he sighed, massaging the bridge of his nose. ‘But as long as you remember that I was telling you about my day, because you’re always giving out that I don’t,’ he mumbled.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ She raised her voice. ‘Your son is crying. Do I have to sit here all night while he wails for help until you’ve finished your story about a homeless man who likes shoes, or would you ever go and check on him of your own accord, do you think?’

‘I’ll do it,’ he said angrily, though not making a move from his chair.

‘No, I’ll do it.’ She stood up from the table. ‘I want you to do it without being reminded. You don’t do it for brownie points, Lou, you’re supposed to want to do it.’

‘You don’t seem too eager to do it yourself now,’ he grumbled, fiddling with his cufflinks.

Halfway from the table to the kitchen door, she stopped. ‘You know you haven’t taken Ross for one single day by yourself?’

‘You must be serious, you’re actually using his real name. Where has all that come from?’

It was all coming out of her now that she was frustrated. ‘You haven’t changed his nappy, you haven’t fed him.’

‘I’ve fed him,’ he protested.

The wails got louder.

‘You haven’t prepared one bottle, made him one meal, dressed him, played with him. You haven’t spent any time with him alone, without me being here to run in every five minutes to take him from you while you send an email or answer a phone call. The child has been living in the world for over a year now, Lou. It’s been over a year .’

‘Hold on.’ He ran his hand through his hair and held it there, clenching a handful of hair with a tight fist, a sign of his anger. ‘How have we gotten from talking about my day, which you always want to know so much about – second for second – to this attack?’

‘You were so busy talking about you that you didn’t hear your child,’ she said tiredly, knowing this conversation was going the same place as every other similar argument they’d had. Nowhere.

Lou looked around the room and held out his hands dramatically, emphasising the house. ‘Do you think I sit at my desk all day twiddling my thumbs? No, I work my hardest trying to juggle everything so that you and the kids can have all this, so that I can feed Ross, so excuse me if I don’t fill his mouth every morning with mashed banana.’

‘You don’t juggle anything, Lou. You choose one thing over another. There’s a difference.’

‘I can’t be in two places at once, Ruth! If you need help around here, I’ve already told you, just say the word and we could have a nanny here any day you want.’

He knew he’d walked himself into a bigger argument, and as Pud’s wails grew louder on the baby monitor, he prepared for the inevitable onslaught. Just to avoid the same dreaded argument, he almost added, ‘And I promise not to sleep with this one.’

But the argument never came. Instead, her shoulders shrank, her entire demeanour altered, as she gave up the fight and instead went to tend to her son.

Lou reached for the remote control and held it towards the TV like a gun. He pressed the trigger angrily and powered off the TV. The sweating spandexed women diminished into a small circle of light in the centre of the screen before disappearing completely.

He reached for the plate of apple pie on the table and began picking at it, wondering how on earth this had all started from the second he walked in the door. It would end as it did so many other nights: he would go to bed and she would be asleep, or at least pretend to be. A few hours later he would wake up, work out, get showered and go to work.