Cecelia Ahern: Girl in the Mirror

A stick lands before their feet. She lets out a little high-pitched yelp of fright, then she laughs at herself. He teases her. A little embarrassed, she momentarily rests her head on his shoulder. He smells her shampoo. Water lily. Silly me, she says. He compliments her again. She is the least silly woman he has ever seen, ever touched, ever smelled. She takes the compliment again. A dog races by them on the path, a blonde Labrador, large and clumsy as though his feet don’t belong to him at all, like he’s wearing an oversized pair of shoes. She says so and he laughs. The dog dives on the stick, takes it in his hungry mouth and races back in the direction he came. They turn around and watch him scarper to his master. Eager to please. Sorry, the man waves at them. No problem, she replies. It’s a beautiful day, she says to him, and he agrees. They all agree. They continue on. It’s deep in July, the trees are crammed with leaves and flowers and the air is filled with their scent. It tickles his nose, ignites his hay fever. She hands him a handkerchief though he has not yet sneezed. She knows him so well.

He takes her handkerchief, fresh white, her initials sewn into the corner in pink. JJ. A gift from her mother. He blows his nose and playfully hands it back to her. She laughs again. The lines appearing around her mouth like the ripples in a pond after throwing a pebble. Light, fluid, natural, beautiful.

He is neither a doctor nor a scientist. Some consider him a psychologist, but he is not that either. He is merely a man who has loved, and for that he has acquired a wealth of experience, not just for what he does now and is known around the world for, but for his life.

Tucked away in the basement of a Georgian house in Fitzwilliam Square, the futuristic device finds its home in a historic setting. Dark rooms, despite large windows, and cold, damp furniture, despite constant heating. His clients are often surprised when they take in the surroundings. They didn’t know what they were expecting, but it wasn’t this. He is revered by some but angers most, for they fear that he has contaminated what is most natural in the world - the mind, the memory. And what has caused such debate around the world; what causes some people to adore him and some to curse him?

A device, a machine really. The memory-maker they call it. He doesn’t. It’s the mind that makes the memory - in his opinion it’s more so the heart but he won’t get into that now - and once the mind has made the memory, the machine stamps it into the memory files as though they are as real and true and as honest and unforgettable as all the others. The new memories are memories that people wish they had, or memories people have forgotten and need to refresh, though they never succeed in becoming the original thing no matter how hard they try to recreate them. The mind reinvents all by itself. It does it to survive. And the machine has helped the creator of the machine to survive. No, it hasn’t helped him. It has kept him alive. Gave him reason. A thing he felt his life was deeply lacking in.

He came across the invention by accident. Contrary to popular opinion, he did not spend years working on the contraption, as a means of leaving behind the reality of what happened to him. The great sadness, which he has never discussed with anybody. And he doesn’t believe that fate brought him to where he is now either. Nor does he believe in fate. Accidents happen. That’s just what they are. Accidents. And so when he was playing around at home with his machines and wires and found a way to tell the machine to tell the brain to create a memory, it was an accident. Simple as that. But it was a convenient accident. Most aren’t.

He has now perfected the machine and clients come from near and far to see him; frazzled, hopeless souls searching for peace of mind.

He knows when it’s a journalist sitting before him. He can see it in their eyes. A desire, just like regular clients, but the wrong kind. They are hungry. Though there are those with the intention to write positively about it and about him, he knows that most of them are intent on destroying what he has built up. Those people don’t understand it. Some fear it, but most are too cynical to open their minds to its beauty. He doesn’t care. He can spot them as soon as they step through the door, looking around with their questioning gaze - eyes searching him and his home and his machine like fire-drill interrogation. Their visits are never to self-improve, though each of them could do with the session for why would they hold such loathing for things that have nothing to do with them.

He is known for being particular about his visitors, for cancelling appointments at short notice, sometimes at the mere sight of them, closing the door on faces of anxious arrivees. He can sense the dishonesty, those who are merely there out of curiosity, those who wish to interrogate, replicate and obliterate. He doesn’t want to share it. He doesn’t want it to be misused.

He welcomes people from far and wide - the grieving, the sick, the lost, the occasional misplaced souls.

He realised some years ago that he had garnered quite a reputation. Word had spread about the device, rumours had spread about its creator, write-ups had appeared in the papers; personal accounts of customers, speculative pieces by those who hadn’t set a foot near it or him or his building. He had shut up shop when he learned his machine was in fashion, angry that his work had been reduced to a fad. His desire was for the device to be for people who needed it, because to want it was merely not enough. It appeared that when he took it away, he gained more followers. He had a waiting list as long as Griffith Avenue, and dozens upon dozens of letters arrived each day, more than he could deal with. He reluctantly ended his solitary life and hired an assistant. A girl who called herself Judith, though he doubted that name was as much hers as the clothes on her back. Judith. It was a coincidence, he knew that. He didn’t believe there was much more to it than that … she couldn’t have known … and yet …

He had met her on Parliament Street, with City Hall and its three fronts of Portland stone behind him, the Liffey and the Four Courts ahead of him, as he strolled with cane in hand to yet another court date, as the forces - those who did not understand - attempted to stop his practice. He was representing himself then, knew what he was doing, left-over knowledge from his previous occupation. He’d passed her on the street. Judith that is. A brown little thing sitting on the pavement, a brown blanket wrapped tightly around her, her hair dark brown and slicked down with grease, her face heavily freckled as if each passing shoe had flicked her with dirt. She didn’t even have an umbrella, the wet cold ground was slippy beneath feet and yet there she sat, on the only dry ground it seemed in the whole of Dublin.

He stopped beside her.

She looked up.

‘Sir.’

‘Would you like my umbrella?’

‘You’ll get wet.’

‘But you’re getting wet.’

‘It’s not my umbrella.’

‘I’ll give it to you.’

‘You’ll get wet.’

‘I’ll buy another one.’

He walked into the shop and purchased a new umbrella. A dull brown-and-olive plaid synthetic thing with a wooden handle, which looked as though a gust of wind would blow it inside out.

‘Here.’