Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

While waiting, the increasingly sleepy Lou pictured Alfred in the restaurant, brash as could be, the centre of attention, loud and doing his best to entertain; stealing the glory, making or breaking a deal that Lou wouldn’t be associated with unless Alfred failed. In missing that – the most important meeting of the year – Lou was losing the biggest chance to prove himself to Mr Patterson. Cliff’s job and the empty office that came with it was dangled at him day in and day out like a carrot on a string. Cliff’s old office was down the hall next to Mr Patterson’s, blinds open and vacant. A larger office, with better light. It called to him. It had been six months since the memorable morning Cliff had had his breakdown – after a long process of unusual behaviour. Lou had finally found Cliff crouched under his desk, his body trembling, with the keyboard held tightly and close to his chest. Occasionally his fingers tapped away in some sort of panicked Morse code. They were coming to get him, he kept repeating, wide-eyed and terrified.

Who exactly they were, Lou had been unable to ascertain. He’d tried to gently coax Cliff out from under the desk, to make him put his shoes and socks back on, but Cliff had lashed out as Lou neared and hit him across the face with the attached mouse, swinging the wire around like a cowboy rope. The force of the small plastic mouse hadn’t hurt nearly as much as the sight of this young successful man falling apart. The office had lain empty for all those months and, as rumours of Cliff’s further demise drifted through offices, the sympathy for him lessened as the competition for his job increased. Lou had recently heard that Cliff had started seeing people again, and he had all the best intentions to visit. He knew he should, and he would at some point, but he just couldn’t seem to find the time …

Lou’s frustration grew as he stared at the black plasma still yet to come alive. His head pounded and he could barely think as his migraine spread from the base of his head to his eyes. Feeling desperate, he retrieved the pills from his pocket and stared at them.

He thought of Gabe’s knowledge of Mr Patterson and Alfred’s meeting and of how Gabe had correctly judged the shoe situation, of how Gabe had provided him with coffee the previous morning, driven him home and somehow won Ruth over. Convincing himself that on every occasion Gabe had never let him down, and that he could trust him now, Lou shook the open container and one small white glossy pill rolled out onto the palm of his sweaty hand. He played with it for a while, rolling it around in his fingers, licked it; and when nothing drastic happened, he popped it into his mouth and quickly downed it with a glass of water.

Lou held on to the boardroom table with both hands, gripping it so hard that his sweaty prints were visible on the glass surface laid to protect the solid walnut. He waited. Nothing happened. He lifted his hands from the table and studied them as though the effects would be seen on his sweaty palms. Still nothing out of the ordinary happened, no unusual trip, nothing life-threatening apart from his head, which continued to pound.

At seven forty-five p.m. there was still no sign of Arthur Lynch on the plasma. Lou tapped his pen against the glass impatiently, no longer caring about how he’d appear to the people on the other side of the camera. Already paranoid beyond reasoning, Lou began to convince himself that there was no meeting at all, that Alfred had somehow orchestrated this staged meeting so that he could have dinner by himself and negotiate the deal. But Lou wouldn’t allow Alfred to sabotage any more of his hard work. He stood quickly, grabbed his overcoat and charged for the door. He pulled it open and had one foot over the threshold when he heard a voice coming from the plasma behind him.

‘I’m very sorry for keeping you waiting, Mr Suffern.’

The voice stalled Lou in his march. He closed his eyes and sighed, kissing his dream of the top office with the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Dublin goodbye. He quickly thought about what to do: run and make it in time for dinner or turn around and face the music. Before he had time to make the decision, the sound of another voice in the office almost stopped his heart.

‘No problem, Mr Lynch, and please call me Lou. I understand how things can run over time so there are no apologies needed. Let’s get down to business, shall we? We have a lot to discuss.’

‘Certainly, Lou. And call me Arthur, please. We do have rather a lot to get through, but before I introduce you to these two gentlemen beside me, would you like to finish your business up there? I see you have company?’

‘No, Arthur, it’s just me here in the office,’ Lou heard himself say. ‘Everyone else has deserted me.’

‘That man there by the door, I can see him on our screen.’

Spotted, Lou slowly turned around and came face to face with himself. He was still seated at the boardroom table, in the same place as he had been waiting before he had planned his escape, grabbed his coat and made for the door. The face that greeted him was also a picture of shock. The ground swirled beneath Lou and he held on to the door frame to stop himself from falling.

‘Lou? Are you there?’ Arthur asked, and both heads in the office turned to face the plasma.

‘Erm, yes, I’m here,’ Lou at the board table stammered. ‘I’m sorry, Arthur, that gentleman is a … a colleague of mine. He’s just leaving, I believe he has an important dinner meeting to get to.’ Lou turned around and threw Lou at the door a warning look. ‘Don’t you?’

Lou simply nodded and left the room, his knees and legs shaking with his every step. At the elevators, he held on to the wall as he tried to catch his breath and let the dizziness subside. The elevator doors opened and he fell inside, thumping the ground-floor button and hunkering down in the corner of the space, moving farther and farther away from himself on the fourteenth floor.

At eight p.m., as Lou was in the boardroom of Patterson Development offices negotiating with Arthur Lynch, at the same time as Alfred and the team of men were being led to their table, Lou entered the restaurant. He offered his cashmere coat to the host, adjusted his tie, smoothed down his hair and made his way over, one hand in his pocket with the other swinging by his side. His body was loose again, nothing rigid, nothing contained. In order to function he needed to feel the swing of his body, the casual motion of a man who personally doesn’t care about the decision either way, but who will do his best to convince you otherwise, because his only concern is the client.

‘Pardon me, gentlemen, for being a little delayed,’ he said smoothly to the men whose noses were buried deep in their menus.

They all looked up and Lou was exceptionally happy to see the expression on Alfred’s face: a Mexican wave of revealing emotions, from surprise, to disappointment, to resentment, to anger. Each look told Lou that this cock-up had indeed been caused deliberately by Alfred. Lou made his way around the table greeting his dinner guests, and by the time he reached Alfred, his friend’s smug face had sent his former look of shock whimpering away into the corner.

‘Patterson is going to kill you.’ He spoke quietly from the side of his mouth. ‘But at least one deal will be done tonight. Welcome, my friend.’ He shook Lou’s hand, his deliriousness in sensing Lou’s sacking tomorrow lighting up his face.

‘It’s all been taken care of,’ Lou simply replied, turning to take his place a few seats away.

‘What do you mean?’ Alfred asked, in a tone that revealed he had forgotten where he was. Lou felt Alfred’s tight grip around his arm preventing him from moving away.