Cecelia Ahern 2-Book Gift Collection: The Gift, Thanks for the Memories. Cecelia Ahern
his heart and straight into his gut. Those two places. Right at the same time.
It was ten thirty at night by the time the city spat Lou out and waved him off to the coast road that led him home to his house in Howth, County Dublin. Bordering the sea, a row of houses lined the coast, like an ornate frame to the perfect watercolour. Windswept and eroded from a lifetime of salty air, they got into the great American spirit of housing giant Santas and reindeers on twinkling rooftops. Every window with open curtains twinkled with the lights of Christmas trees, and Lou recalled, as a boy, trying to count as many trees on show as possible to pass the time while travelling. To Lou’s right he could see across the bay to Dalkey and Killiney. The lights of Dublin city twinkled beyond the oily black of the sea, like electric eels flashing beneath the blackness of a well.
Howth had been the dream destination for as long as Lou could remember. Quite literally, his first memory began there, his first feeling of desire, of wanting to belong and then of belonging. The fishing and yachting port in north County Dublin was a popular suburban resort on the north side of Howth Head, fifteen kilometres from Dublin city. It was a village with history; cliff paths that led past Howth village and its ruined abbey, an inland fifteenth-century castle with rhododendron gardens, and many lighthouses that dotted the coastline. It was a busy, popular village filled with pubs, hotels and fine fish restaurants. It had breathtaking views of Dublin Bay and the Wicklow Mountains or Boyne Valley beyond. Howth was a peninsular island with only a sliver of land to attach it to the rest of the country. Only a sliver of land to connect Lou from his daily life to that of his family. A mere shred, so that when the stormy days attacked, Lou would watch the raging Liffey from the window of his office and imagine the grey ferocious waves crashing over that sliver, licking at the land like flames, threatening to cut his family off from the rest of the country. Sometimes in those daydreams he was away from his family, cut off from them forever. In the nicer moments he was with them, wrapping himself around them to shield them from the elements.
Behind their large landscaped garden was land, wild and rugged, of purple heather and waist-high uncultivated grasses and hay that looked out over Dublin Bay. To the front they could see Ireland’s Eye, and on a clear day the view was so stunning it was almost as though a green screen had been hung from the clouds and rolled down to the ocean floor. Stretching out from the harbour was a pier, that Lou loved to take walks along, though he walked alone. He hadn’t always; his love for the pier had begun when he was a child when his parents brought him, Marcia and his elder brother Quentin to Howth every Sunday, come rain or shine, for a walk along the pier. Those days were either made up of a sun so hot he could still taste the ice-cream as soon as he set foot on the pier, or were so stormy that the wind whipped with such strength they would hang on to one another to avoid being whisked off land and lost to the sea.
On those family days, Lou would disappear into his own world. For on those days he was a pirate on the high seas. He was a lifeguard. He was a soldier. He was a whale. He was anything he wanted to be. He was everything he wasn’t. For the first few moments of every walk along the pier, he would begin by walking backwards, looking at their car in the car park until the bright red colour was no longer visible and the people had turned into penguins; dark dots that waddled about the place without any defined movements.
Lou still loved walking that pier; his runway to tranquillity. He loved watching the cars and the houses perched along the cliff edges fade away as he moved further and further from land. He would stand shoulder to shoulder with the lighthouse, both of them looking out. Here, after a long week at work, he could throw all of his concerns and worries out to the water and watch them land with a plop on the waves and float down to the floor below.
But the night Lou drove home after first meeting Gabe, it was too late to walk the pier. The power button on his view was off, all he could see was blackness and the occasional standby light flashing on a lighthouse. Despite the hour and the fact it was midweek, the village wasn’t its usual quiet hideaway. So close to Christmas, every restaurant was throbbing with diners, Christmas parties and annual meetings and celebrations. All the boats would be in for the night, the seals gone from the pier, their bellies full with the mackerel purchased and thrown to them by visitors. The winding road that led uphill to the summit was black and quiet now, and, sensing that home was near and that nobody else was around, he put his foot down on the accelerator of his Porsche 911. He lowered his window and felt the ice-cold air blow through his hair, and he listened to the sound of the engine reverberating through the hills and trees as he made his way to Howth summit. Below him, the city twinkled with a million lights, spying him winding his way up the wooded mountain like a spider among the grass.
As icing on the cake to the day he had just had, he heard a whoop, and then, looking in his rear-view mirror, cursed loudly at the garda car that came up behind him, lights ablazing. He eased his foot off the accelerator, hoping he’d be overtaken, but to no avail, the emergency was indeed him. He indicated and pulled in, sat with his hands on the steering wheel and watched the familiar figure climbing out of the garda car. The man slowly made his way to Lou’s side of the vehicle, looking around at the night as though taking a leisurely stroll, giving Lou enough time to rack his brain for the sergeant’s name. Lou turned off the music he’d been blaring and took a closer look at the man in the wing mirror, hoping it would trigger the memory of his name.
The man parked himself outside Lou’s door and leaned down to look into the open window.
‘Mr Suffern,’ he said, without a note of sarcasm, much to Lou’s relief.
‘Sergeant O’Reilly.’ He remembered the name right on cue and threw the man a smile, showing so many teeth he resembled a tense chimpanzee.
‘We find ourselves in a familiar situation,’ Sergeant O’Reilly said with a grimace. ‘Unfortunately for you, we both head home at the same hour.’
‘Yes, indeed, sir. My apologies, the roads were quiet, I thought it would be okay. There’s not a sinner around.’
‘Just a few innocents. That’s always the problem.’
‘And I’m one of them, your honour,’ Lou laughed, holding his hands up in defence. ‘It’s the last stretch of road before getting home, trust me, I only put the foot down seconds before you pulled me over. Dying to get home to the family. No pun intended.’
‘I could hear your engine from Sutton Cross, way down the road.’
‘It’s a quiet night.’
‘And it’s a noisy engine, I know that, but you just never know, Mr Suffern. You just never know.’
‘Don’t suppose you’d let me off with another warning,’ Lou smiled, trying to work sincerity and apology into his best winning smile. Both at the same time.
‘You know the speed limit, I assume?’
‘Sixty kilometres.’
‘Not one hundred and …’
The sergeant suddenly stopped talking and bolted up to stand upright, causing Lou to lose eye contact with him and instead be faced with his belt buckle. Unsure of what the sergeant was up to, he stayed seated and looked out the window to the stretch of road before him, hoping he wasn’t about to gain more points on his licence. With twelve as the maximum before losing his licence altogether, he was perched dangerously close with eight points already. He peeked at the sergeant and saw him grasping at his left pocket.
‘You looking for a pen?’ Lou called, reaching his hand into his inside pocket.
The sergeant winced and turned his back on Lou.
‘Hey, are you okay?’ Lou asked with concern. He reached for the door handle and then thought better of it.
The sergeant