Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘Oh God, Raphie, we need to call emergency services,’ she shouted to him. ‘Ambulance and fire brigade!’

He stopped his brief jog towards her and made his way back to the car, where he radioed it in.

‘I’m going down!’ she yelled, immediately making her way through the broken trees and down the steep incline.

‘You will not, Jessica!’ she heard Raphie yell back, but she didn’t listen. ‘Get back here, it’s too dangerous!’

She could hear, but quickly zoned out from his shouts and could soon only hear her own breath, fast and furious, her heart beating in her ears.

Jessica, new to the squad, should never have seen a sight like this mangled car, upside down and totally unrecognisable, in her life. But she had. For Jessica, it was all too familiar; it was a sight that haunted her dreams and most of her waking moments. Coming face to face with her nightmare, and the replaying of a memory, dizziness overcame her and she had to hunker down and put her head between her knees. Jessica had secrets, and one of them had come back to haunt her. She hoped to God nobody was in that car; the car was crushed, unrecognisable, with no licence plate, and in the darkness she couldn’t tell whether it was blue or black.

She climbed around the car, the icy wet rain pelting down on her, soaking her in an instant. The surface was wet and mucky beneath her, causing her to lose her footing numerous times, but as her heart beat wildly in her chest and as she found herself back in a distant memory, reliving it, she couldn’t feel the pain in her ankle as she went over on it; she couldn’t feel the scrapes of branches and twigs on her face, the hidden rocks among the gorse that bruised her legs.

Around the far side of the car, she saw a person. Or a body at least, and her heart sank. She shone the light near him. He was bloodied. Covered in it. The door had been smashed shut, she couldn’t pull it open, but the window pane of the driver’s side had shattered, so at least she had access to his upper half. She tried to keep calm as she shone the flashlight.

‘Tony,’ she breathed as she saw the figure. ‘Tony.’ Tears welled in her eyes. ‘Tony.’ She clawed at the man, ran her hands across his face, urged him to wake. ‘Tony, it’s me,’ she said. ‘I’m here.’

The man groaned but his eyes remained closed.

‘I’m going to get you out of here,’ she whispered in his ear, kissing him on the forehead. ‘I’m going to get you home.’

His eyes slowly opened and she felt a jolt. Blue eyes. Not brown. Tony had brown eyes.

He looked at her. She looked at him. She was taken out of her nightmare.

‘Sir,’ she said, her voice shakier than she wanted. She took a deep breath and started again. ‘Sir, can you hear me? My name is Jessica, can you hear me? Help is on the way, okay? We’re going to help you.’

He groaned and closed his eyes.

‘They’re on their way now,’ Raphie panted from above her, starting to make his way down.

‘Raphie, it’s dangerous down here, it’s too slippy, stay up there so they can see you.’

‘Is anyone alive?’ he asked, ignoring her request and continuing to slowly move down one foot at a time.

‘Yes,’ she called back. ‘Sir, give me your hand.’ She shone the torch to look at his hand and her stomach flipped at the sight. She took a moment to adjust her breathing and she brought the flashlight up again. ‘Sir, take my hand. Here I am, can you feel it?’ She gripped him tight.

He groaned.

‘Stay with me now, we’re going to get you out of here.’

He groaned some more.

‘What? I can’t … em … don’t worry, sir, an ambulance is on its way.’

‘Who is it?’ Raphie called. ‘Do you know?’

‘No,’ she called back simply, not wanting to take her attention away from this man, not wanting to lose him.

‘My wife,’ she heard him whisper, so quietly it could have been mistaken for an exhale. She moved her ear to his lips, so close she could feel them on her ear lobe, the stickiness of the blood.

‘You have a wife?’ she asked gently. ‘You’ll see her. I promise, you’ll see her. What’s your name?’

‘Lou,’ he said, then he started to cry softly, and even that was such an effort that he had to stop.

‘Please hang in there, Lou.’ She fought back the tears and then put her ear to his lips again as he breathed some more words.

‘A pill? Lou, I don’t have any –’

He let go of her hand suddenly and started pulling at his coat, thumping his chest with a lifeless hand as though that movement was the equivalent to lifting a car. He grunted with the effort; he whimpered from the pain. Reaching into his breast pocket, which was soaked with blood, Jessica took out the container. There was one white pill left inside.

‘Is this your medication, Lou?’ she asked unsurely. ‘Do I –?’ She looked up to Raphie, who was trying to figure out how to make it down through the tricky terrain. ‘I don’t know if I’m supposed to give you –’

Lou took her hand and squeezed it with such strength that she immediately opened the container, with a shaking hand, and shook the single pill onto her palm. With trembling fingers she lifted his mouth open, placed the pill on his tongue and closed his mouth. She quickly looked around to see if Raphie had seen her. He was still only halfway down the slope.

When she looked back at Lou, he was looking at her, wide-eyed. He gave her such a look of love, of absolute gratitude for that one simple thing, that it filled her heart with hope. Then he gasped for air and his body shuddered, before he closed his eyes and left the world.

28. For Old Time’s Sake

At exactly the same time as Lou Suffern left one world and entered another, he stood in the front garden of his Howth home, drenched to the very core. He was trembling from the experience he’d just had. He didn’t have much time, but there was nowhere in the world he’d rather have been right at that moment.

He stepped through the front door, his shoes squelching on the tiles. The fire in the sitting room was crackling, the floor below the tree was filled with presents, wrapped with pretty ribbons. Lucy and Pud were so far the only children in the family, and so family tradition decided that his parents, Quentin and Alexandra, and this year the newly separated Marcia, would be staying overnight in his house. Their joy at seeing Lucy’s reaction on Christmas morning was too immense to deny them of. Tonight he couldn’t imagine not being with them; he couldn’t think of anything that would fill his heart with any more joy. He entered the dining room, hoping they would see him, hoping that Gabe’s last miraculous gift wouldn’t fail him now.

‘Lou.’ Ruth looked up from the dinner table and saw him first. She leapt out of her chair and ran to him. ‘Lou, honey, are you okay? Did something happen?’

His mother rushed to get a towel for him.

‘I’m fine,’ he sniffed, cupping her face with his hands and not taking his eyes off her. ‘I’m fine now. I was calling,’ he whispered. ‘You didn’t answer.’

‘Pud hid the phone again,’ she said, studying him with concern. ‘Are you drunk?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘I’m in love,’ he whispered back, then raised his voice so that the whole room could hear. ‘I’m in love with my beautiful wife,’ he repeated. He kissed her fully on the lips, then breathed in her hair, kissed her neck, kissed her everywhere on her face, not caring who was there to see. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to her, barely able to get words out of his mouth, his tears were so heavy.

‘Sorry about what? What happened?’

‘I’m sorry for the things that I’ve done to you. For being the way I was. I love you. I never meant to hurt you.’