Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘But it wasn’t a wrong number.’ He stops walking and taps his foot impatiently to the sound of the rings.

‘That’s exactly what it was.’

Answering machine. Damn it! Do I leave a message?

He hangs up and frantically dials again.

Bored with his antics, Bea sits on the garden furniture in the living room and looks around the dust-sheet-covered room and the walls filled with dozens of colour samples. ‘When is Doris going to have this place finished?’

‘After she starts,’ Justin snaps, dialling again.

‘My ears are burning,’ Doris sings, appearing at the door in a pair of leopard-print overalls, her face heavily made up as usual. ‘Found these yesterday, aren’t they adorable?’ she laughs. ‘Buzzy-Bea, sweetie, so lovely to see you!’ She rushes to her niece and they embrace. ‘We are so excited about your performance tonight, you have no idea. Little Buzzy-Bea all grown up and performing in the Royal Opera House .’ Her voice rises to a screech. ‘Oh, we are so proud, aren’t we, Al?’

Al enters the room with a chicken leg in his hand. ‘Mmm hhm.’

Doris looks him up and down with disgust, and then back to her niece. ‘A bed for the spare room arrived yesterday morning so you’ll actually have something to sleep on when you stay, won’t that be a treat?’ She glares at Justin. ‘Also, I got some paint and fabric samples so we can start planning your room design but I’m only designing according to feng shui rules. I won’t hear of anything else.’

Bea freezes. ‘Oh gee, great.’

‘I know we’ll have such fun!’

Justin glares at his daughter. ‘That’s what you get for withholding information.’

‘What information? What’s going on?’ Doris ties her hair up in a cerise-pink scarf and makes a bow at the top of her head.

‘Dad is having a conniption fit,’ Bea explains.

‘I told him to go to the dentist already. He has an abscess, I’m sure of it,’ Doris says matter-of-factly.

‘I told him too,’ Bea agrees.

‘No, not that. The woman,’ Justin says intensely. ‘Remember the woman I was telling you about?’

‘Sarah?’ Al asks.

‘No!’ Justin responds as though that was the most ridiculous answer ever given.

‘Who can keep up with you?’ Al shrugs him off. ‘Certainly not Sarah, especially when you’re running at top speed after buses, leaving her behind.’

Justin cringes. ‘I apologised.’

‘To her voice mail,’ he chuckles. ‘She is never going to answer your calls again.’

I wouldn’t blame her .

‘The déjà vu woman?’ Doris gasps, realising.

‘Yes.’ Justin gets excited. ‘Her name is Joyce and she called Bea yesterday.’

‘She may not have.’ Bea’s protests falls on deaf ears. ‘A woman named Joyce rang yesterday. But I do believe there’s more than one Joyce in the world.’

Ignoring her, Doris gasps again. ‘How can this be? How do you know her name?’

‘I heard somebody call her that on a Viking bus. And yesterday Bea got a phone call , on her emergency number, that no one but me has, from a woman in Ireland .’ Justin pauses for dramatic effect. ‘Called Joyce.’

There’s a silence. Justin nods his head knowingly. ‘Yep, I know, Doris. Spooky, huh?’

Frozen in place, Doris widens her eyes. ‘Spooky, all right. Besides from the Viking bus.’ She turns to Bea. ‘You’re eighteen years old and you’ve given your father an emergency number?’

Justin groans with frustration and starts dialling again.

Bea’s cheeks pink. ‘Before he moved over, Mum wouldn’t let him call at certain hours because of the time difference. So I got another number. It’s not technically an emergency number but he’s the only one that has it and every time he calls he seems to have done something wrong.’

‘Not true,’ Justin objects.

‘Sure,’ Bea responds breezily, flicking through a magazine. ‘And I’m not moving in with Peter.’

‘You’re right, you’re not . Peter,’ he spits out the name, ‘picks strawberries for a living.’

‘I love strawberries,’ Al offers his support. ‘If it wasn’t for Petey, I wouldn’t eat ’em.’

‘Peter is an IT consultant .’ Bea holds her hands out in confusion.

Choosing this moment to butt in, Doris turns to Justin. ‘Sweetie, you know I’m all for this stuff with the déjà vu lady—’

‘Joyce, her name is Joyce.’

‘Whatever, but you got nothing but a coincidence. And I’m all for coincidences but this is … well, a pretty dumb one.’

‘I have not got nothing, Doris, and that sentence is atrociously wrong on so many grammatical levels, you wouldn’t believe. I have got a name and now I have a number .’ He kneels before Doris and squeezes her face in his hands, pushing her cheeks together so that her lips puff out. ‘And that, Doris Hitchcock, means that I got something!’

‘It also makes you a stalker,’ Bea says under her breath.

You are now leaving Dublin. We hope you enjoyed your stay .

Dad’s rubber ears go back on his head, his bushy eyebrows lift upward.

‘You’ll tell all the family that I’m asking for them, won’t you, Fran?’ Dad says a little nervously.

‘Of course I will, Henry. You’ll have a great time.’ Fran’s eyes smile at me knowingly in the rearview mirror.

‘I’ll see them all when I come back,’ Dad adds, closely watching a plane as it disappears to the skies. ‘It’s off behind the clouds now,’ he says, looking at me unsurely.

‘The best part,’ I smile.

He relaxes a little.

Fran pulls over at the drop-off section, busy with people conscious they can’t stay for more than a minute and are quickly unloading bags, hugging, taxi drivers being paid, other drivers being moved on. Dad stands still, like the rock thrown into the stream again, and takes it all in, as I lift the bags from the boot. Eventually he snaps out of it and turns his attention to Fran, suddenly filled with warm affection for a woman he usually can’t stop bickering about. Then he surprises us all by offering her a hug, awkward as it is.

Once inside, in the hustle and bustle of one of Europe’s busiest airports, Dad holds on to my arm tightly with one hand and with the other, pulls along the weekend bag I’ve lent him. It had taken me the entire day and night to convince him it wasn’t anything like the tartan trolley-bags Fran and all the other older ladies use for their shopping. He looks around now and I see him registering men with similar bags. He looks happy, if not a little confused. We go to the computers to check in.

‘What are you doing? Getting the sterling pounds out?’

‘It’s not an ATM, this is check-in, Dad.’

‘Do we not speak to a person?’

‘No, this machine does it for us.’

‘I wouldn’t trust this yoke.’ He looks over the shoulder of the man beside us. ‘Excuse me, is your yokey-mabob working for you?’

‘ Scusi? ’

Dad laughs. ‘Scoozy-woozy to you too.’ He looks back at me with a grin on his face. ‘Scoozy. That’s a good one.’

‘ Mi dispiace tanto, signore, la prego di ignorarlo, è un vecchio sciocco e non sa cosa dice ,’ I apologise to the Italian man, who seemed more than taken aback by Dad’s comments. I have no idea what I’ve said but he returns my smile and continues checking in.

‘You speak Italian?’ Dad looks surprised but I haven’t time to respond as he hushes me as an announcement is made. ‘Whisht, Gracie, it might be for us. We better hurry.’

‘We have two hours until our flight.’

‘Why did we come so early?’