Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘When was that?’

Lou thought hard. ‘Last Christmas. No phone calls, no computer. Last Christmas.’

The barman was dubious. ‘You didn’t take a holiday this year?’

‘Took a week. With the kids.’ He ruffled up his nose. ‘Fucking sand everywhere. On my laptop, in my phone. And this.’ He reached into his pocket and took out his BlackBerry and slammed it on the bar counter.

‘Careful.’

‘This thing. Follows me everywhere; sand in it and it still works. The drug of the nation. This thing.’ He poked it, mistakenly pressing some buttons, which lit up the screen. Ruth and the kids smiled back at him. Pud with his big silly toothless grin, Lucy’s big brown eyes peeping out from under her fringe, Ruth holding them both. Holding them all together. He studied it momentarily with a smile on his face. The light went out, the picture faded to black and the device sat staring at him. ‘In the B’hamas,’ he continued, ‘and beep-beep , they got me. Beep-beep, beep-beep , they get me,’ he laughed again. ‘And the red light. I see it in my sleep, in the shower, every time I close my eyes, the red light and the beep-beep . I hate the fucking beep-beep .’

‘So take a day off,’ the barman said.

‘Can’t. Too much to do.’

‘Well, now that you’re cloned, you can take all the days off that you want,’ the barman joked, looking around so that nobody else could hear him.

‘Yeah,’ Lou smiled dreamily, ‘there’s so much I want to do.’

‘Like what? What do you want to do now, more than anything in the world?’

Lou closed his eyes and, taking advantage of his closed eyelids, the dizziness swept in to knock him off his stool. ‘Whoa –’ He opened his eyes quickly. ‘I want to go home, but I can’t. He won’t let me. I called him earlier and said I was tired and wanted to go home. He wouldn’t let me,’ he snorted. ‘Mr High Almighty said no.’

‘Who said?’

‘The other me.’

‘The other you told you to stay out?’ The barman tried not to laugh.

‘He’s at home, so there can’t be two of us. But I’m tired now.’ His eyelids drooped. They opened wide again as he thought of something. He leaned in close to the barman, dropped his voice. ‘I watched him from the window, you know.’

‘The other you?’

‘Now you’re getting it. I went home and watched him from outside. He was in there, moving about with his sheets and his towels, running upstairs, running downstairs, running from room to room like he thought he was something special.’ He snorted. ‘One minute I’m watching him tell his stupid jokes at dinner and then the next he’s making beds at home. Thinks he can do both.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘So I came back in here.’

‘So maybe he can,’ the barman smiled.

‘Maybe he can what?’

‘Maybe he can do both,’ the barman winked. ‘Go home,’ he said, taking Lou’s empty glass before moving down the end of the bar to serve another customer.

As the young customer rattled off his order, Lou thought long and hard about that. If he couldn’t go home, he had nowhere else to go.

* * *

‘It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay, Daddy’s here,’ Lou said, holding Lucy’s hair back from her face and rubbing her back as she leaned over the toilet and vomited for the twentieth time that night. He sat on the cold bathroom tiles, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and leaned against the bath as her tiny body convulsed one more time and expelled more vomit.

‘Daddy …’ Her voice was tiny through her tears.

‘It’s okay, sweetie, I’m here,’ he repeated sleepily. ‘It’s almost over.’ It had to be, how much more could her tiny body get rid of?

Every twenty minutes he’d gone from sleeping in Lucy’s bed to assisting her in the bathroom, where she’d thrown up, her body going from freezing to boiling and back again in a matter of minutes. Usually it was Ruth’s duty to stay up all night with the children, sick or otherwise, but unfortunately for Lou, and for Ruth, she was having the same experience as Lucy in their own bathroom down the hall. Gastroenteritis, always an end-of-year gift brought around the Christmas season for those whose systems were ready to wave goodbye to the year before the calendar was.

Lou carried Lucy to her bed again, her small hands clinging around his neck. Already she was asleep, exhausted by what the night had brought her. As he laid her down on the bed, he wrapped her now cold body in blankets and tucked her favourite bear close to her face, as Ruth had shown him before running for the toilet again. His mobile vibrated again on the pink princess bedside locker. At four a.m., it was the fifth time he’d received a phone call from himself. Glancing at the caller display, his own face flashed up on the screen.

‘What now?’ he whispered into the phone, trying to keep his voice and anger at a low.

‘Lou! It’s me, Lou!’ came the drunken voice at the other end, followed by a raucous laugh.

‘Stop calling me,’ he said, a little louder now.

In the background there was music thumping, voices loud and a gabble of non-specific words. He could hear glasses clinking, various levels of shouts and laughter exploding every few moments from different corners of the room. Alcohol fumes almost drifted down the phone and penetrated the peaceful innocent world of his daughter. Subconsciously, he blocked the receiver with his hand, to protect her from the intrusion of the adult world seeping into her sleeping world.

‘Where are you?’

‘Leeson Street. Somewhere,’ he shouted back. ‘I met this girl, Lou,’ came the voice. ‘Fucking amazing! You’ll be proud of me. No, you’ll be proud of you!’ Raucous laughter again.

‘What?!’ Lou barked loudly. ‘No! Don’t do anything!’ he shouted, and Lucy’s eyes fluttered open momentarily like two little butterflies, big brown eyes glancing at him with fright, but then on seeing him – her daddy – the alerted look disappeared, a small smile crept onto her lips and her eyes closed again with exhaustion. That look of trust, the faith she had put in him in that one simple look, did something to him right then. He knew he was her protector, the one that could take away the fright and put a smile on her face, and it gave him a better feeling than he’d ever felt in his life. Better than the deal at dinner; better than seeing the look on Alfred’s face when he’d arrived. It made him hate the man at the end of the phone, loathe him so much that he felt like knocking him out. His daughter was at home, throwing her guts up, so much so that her entire body was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open or stand, and there he was, out getting drunk, chasing skirts, expecting Ruth to do all this without him. He hated the man at the end of the phone.

‘But she’s hot, if you could just see her,’ he slurred.

‘Don’t you even think about it,’ he said threateningly, his voice low and mean. ‘I swear to God, if you do anything, I will …’

‘You’ll what? Kill me?’ More raucous laughter. ‘Sounds like you’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face, my friend. Well, where the hell am I supposed to go, huh? Tell me that? I can’t go home, I can’t go to work?’

The door to the bedroom opened then and an equally exhausted Ruth appeared.

‘I’ll call you back.’ He hung up quickly.

‘Who was on the phone at this hour?’ she asked quietly. She was dressed in her robe, her arms hugging her body protectively. Her eyes were bleary and puffed, her hair pulled back in a ponytail; she looked so fragile, a raised voice might blow her over and break her. For the second time that night his heart melted again and he moved towards her, arms open.