Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘I want to go home,’ he said, suddenly appearing very old. ‘I want today to be over so that I can go home to my wife. And my daughter.’

‘You have a daughter?’ she asked with surprise.

‘Yes,’ he said, simple words filled with emotion. ‘I do. She lives up there on Howth summit. That’s why I’m there in the car every evening. I just like to keep an eye on her. Even if she doesn’t know it.’

They stared at one another for a while, knowing that something strange had overcome them that morning, something strange that had changed them forever.

‘I had a husband,’ she said finally. ‘Car crash. I was there. Holding his hand. Just like this morning.’ She swallowed and lowered her voice. ‘I always said I’d have done anything to give him at least a few more hours.’ There, she’d said it. ‘I gave Lou a pill, Raphie,’ she said firmly, looking him straight in the eye now. ‘I know I shouldn’t have, but I gave him a pill. I don’t know if all that stuff about the pills is true or not – we can’t locate Gabe now – but if I helped Lou have a few more hours with his family, I’m glad, and I’d do it again if anyone asks.’

Raphie simply nodded, acknowledging her two confessions. He’d put it in their statement but he didn’t need to tell her that; she knew.

They just looked at one another, staring at but not seeing each other. Their minds were elsewhere; on the times gone by, the lost time that could never return.

‘Where’s my son?’ A woman’s urgent voice broke their silence. As she had opened the door, light filled the dark station. The cold of the day crept in, snowflakes were trapped in the woman’s hair and clothes and fell from her boots as she stamped them on the ground. ‘He’s only a boy,’ she swallowed. ‘A fourteen-year-old boy.’ Her voice shook. ‘I sent him out to get gravy granules. And the turkey’s missing now.’ She spoke as though delirious.

‘I’ll take care of this.’ Jessica nodded at Raphie. ‘You go home now.’

And so he did.

One thing of great importance can affect a small number of people. Equally so, a thing of little importance can affect a multitude. Either way, a happening – big or small – can affect an entire string of people. Occurrences can join us all together. You see, we’re all made up of the same stuff. When something happens, it triggers something inside us that connects us to a situation, connects us to other people, lighting us up and linking us like little lights on a Christmas tree, twisted and turned but still connected on a wire. Some go out, others flicker, others burn strong and bright, yet we’re all on the same line.

I said at the beginning of this story that this was about a person who finds out who they are. About a person who is unravelled and their core is revealed to all that count. And that all that count are revealed to them. You thought I was talking about Lou Suffern, didn’t you? Wrong. I was talking about us all.

A lesson finds the common denominator and links us all together, like a chain. At the end of that chain dangles a clock, and on the face of the clock the passing of time is registered. We hear it, the hushed tick-tock sound that breaks any silence, and we see it, but often we don’t feel it. Each second makes its mark on every single person’s life; comes and then goes, quietly disappearing without fanfare, evaporating into air like steam from a piping hot Christmas pudding. Enough time leaves us warm; when our time is gone, it too leaves us cold. Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or any valuable treasures. It is time that we do not have enough of; it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely. Time cannot be packaged and ribboned and left under trees for Christmas morning.

Time can’t be given. But it can be shared.

CECELIA AHERN

THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES

Dedicated, with love, to my grandparents,

Olive & Raphael Kelly and Julia & Con Ahern,

PROLOGUE

Close your eyes and stare into the dark.

My father’s advice when I couldn’t sleep as a little girl. He wouldn’t want me to do that now but I’ve set my mind to the task regardless. I’m staring into that immeasurable blackness that stretches far beyond my closed eyelids. Though I lie still on the ground, I feel perched at the highest point I could possibly be; clutching at a star in the night sky with my legs dangling above cold black nothingness. I take one last look at my fingers wrapped around the light and let go. Down I go, falling, then floating, and, falling again, I wait for the land of my life.

I know now, as I knew as that little girl fighting sleep, that behind the gauzed screen of shut-eye, lies colour. It taunts me, dares me to open my eyes and lose sleep. Flashes of red and amber, yellow and white speckle my darkness. I refuse to open them. I rebel and I squeeze my eyelids together tighter to block out the grains of light, mere distractions that keep us awake but a sign that there’s life beyond.

But there’s no life in me. None that I can feel, from where I lie at the bottom of the staircase. My heart beats quicker now, the lone fighter left standing in the ring, a red boxing glove pumping victoriously into the air, refusing to give up. It’s the only part of me that cares, the only part that ever cared. It fights to pump the blood around to heal, to replace what I’m losing. But it’s all leaving my body as quickly as it’s sent; forming a deep black ocean of its own around me where I’ve fallen.

Rushing, rushing, rushing. We are always rushing. Never have enough time here, always trying to make our way there. Need to have left here five minutes ago, need to be there now. The phone rings again and I acknowledge the irony. I could have taken my time and answered it now.

Now, not then.

I could have taken all the time in the world on each of those steps. But we’re always rushing. All, but my heart. That slows now. I don’t mind so much. I place my hand on my belly. If my child is gone, and I suspect this is so, I’ll join it there. There … where? Wherever. It; a heartless word. He or she so young; who it was to become, still a question. But there, I will mother it.

There, not here.

I’ll tell it: I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m sorry I ruined your chances, my chance – our chance of a life together. But close your eyes and stare into the darkness now, like Mummy is doing, and we’ll find our way together.

There’s a noise in the room and I feel a presence.

‘Oh God, Joyce, oh God. Can you hear me, love? Oh God. Oh God. Oh, please no, Good Lord, not my Joyce, don’t take my Joyce. Hold on, love, I’m here. Dad is here.’

I don’t want to hold on and I feel like telling him so. I hear myself groan, an animal-like whimper and it shocks me, scares me. I have a plan, I want to tell him. I want to go, only then can I be with my baby.

Then, not now.

He’s stopped me from falling but I haven’t landed yet. Instead he helps me balance on nothing, hover while I’m forced to make the decision. I want to keep falling but he’s calling the ambulance and he’s gripping my hand with such ferocity it’s as though it is he who is hanging on to dear life. As though I’m all he has. He’s brushing the hair from my forehead and weeping loudly. I’ve never heard him weep. Not even when Mum died. He clings to my hand with all of the strength I never knew his old body had and I remember that I am all he has and that he, once again just like before, is my whole world. The blood continues to rush through me. Rushing, rushing, rushing. We are always rushing. Maybe I’m rushing again. Maybe it’s not my time to go.