Cecelia Ahern 2-Book Gift Collection: The Gift, Thanks for the Memories. Cecelia Ahern
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one thing over another. There’s a difference.’
‘I can’t be in two places at once, Ruth! If you need help around here, I’ve already told you, just say the word and we could have a nanny here any day you want.’
He knew he’d walked himself into a bigger argument, and as Pud’s wails grew louder on the baby monitor, he prepared for the inevitable onslaught. Just to avoid the same dreaded argument, he almost added, ‘And I promise not to sleep with this one.’
But the argument never came. Instead, her shoulders shrank, her entire demeanour altered, as she gave up the fight and instead went to tend to her son.
Lou reached for the remote control and held it towards the TV like a gun. He pressed the trigger angrily and powered off the TV. The sweating spandexed women diminished into a small circle of light in the centre of the screen before disappearing completely.
He reached for the plate of apple pie on the table and began picking at it, wondering how on earth this had all started from the second he walked in the door. It would end as it did so many other nights: he would go to bed and she would be asleep, or at least pretend to be. A few hours later he would wake up, work out, get showered and go to work.
He sighed, then on hearing his exhale only then noticed that the baby monitor had become silent of Pud’s cries, but it still crackled. As he walked towards it to turn it off, he heard other noises that made him reach for the volume dial. Turning it up, his heart broke as the sounds of Ruth’s quiet sobs filled the kitchen.
‘So you let him get away?’ A young voice broke into Raphie’s thoughts.
‘What’s that?’ Raphie snapped out of his trance and turned his attention back to the young teen who was sitting across the desk from him.
‘I said, you let him get away.’
‘Who?’
‘The rich guy in the flash Porsche. He was speeding and you let him get away.’
‘No, I didn’t let him get away.’
‘Yeah you did, you didn’t give him any points or a ticket or anything. You just let him off. That’s the problem with you lot, you’re always on the rich people’s sides. If that was me, I’d be locked up for life. I only threw a bloody turkey and I’m stuck here all day. And it’s Christmas Day, and all.’
‘Shut your whining, we’re waiting for your mother, you know that, and I wouldn’t blame her if she does decide to leave you here all day.’
The Turkey Boy sulked for a while at that.
‘So you’re new to the area. You and your mother moved here recently?’ Raphie asked.
The boy nodded.
‘Where from?’
‘The Republic of Your Arse.’
‘Very clever,’ Raphie said sarcastically.
‘So why did you leave the Porsche guy so quickly?’ he finally asked, curiosity getting the better of him. ‘Did you chicken out or something?’
‘Don’t be daft, son, I gave him a warning,’ Raphie said, straightening up defensively in his chair.
‘But that’s illegal, you should have given him a ticket. He could kill someone speeding around like that.’
Raphie’s eyes darkened and the Turkey Boy knew to stop his goading.
‘Are you going to listen to the rest of the story or what?’
‘Yeah, I am. Go on.’ The boy leaned forward on the table and rested his hand under his chin. ‘I’ve got all day,’ he smiled cheekily.
At 5.59 a.m., Lou awoke. The previous evening had gone exactly as predicted: by the time he had made it to bed, Ruth’s back had been firmly turned with the bedclothes tightly tucked around her, leaving her as accessible as a fig in a roll. The message was loud and clear.
Lou couldn’t find it within himself to comfort her, to cross over that line that separated them in bed, and in life, to make things okay. Even as students, broke and staying in the worst accommodations he had ever experienced, with the temperamental heating and bathrooms they had had to share with dozens of others, things had never been like this. They’d shared a single bed in a box-bedroom so small that they had to walk outside for a change of mind, but they didn’t mind, in fact they loved being so close to each other. Now they had a giant six-foot-six bed, so big that even when they both lay on their backs their fingers just about brushed when they stretched out. A monstrosity of space and cold spots covered the sheets that couldn’t be reached to be warmed.
Lou thought back to the beginning, when he and Ruth had first met – two young nineteen-year-olds, carefree and drunk, celebrating the end of first-year university Christmas exams. With a few weeks’ break ahead of them and concerns about results far from their minds, they had met on comedy night in the International Bar on Wicklow Street. After that night, Lou had thought about her every day while back home with his parents for the holidays. With every slice of turkey, every sweet wrapper he unravelled, every family fight over Monopoly, she was in his mind. Because of her he’d even lost his title in the Count the Stuffing competition he’d had with Marcia and Quentin. Lou stared at the ceiling and smiled, remembering how each year he and his siblings – paper crowns on their heads and tongues dangling from their mouths – would get down to counting every crumb of stuffing on their plate, long after his parents had left the table. Every year, Marcia and Quentin would join together to beat him, but they couldn’t sustain the desire, and his dedication – some would say obsession – could never be matched. But it was matched that year, and then beaten by Quentin, because the phone had rung and it had been her, and that had been it for Lou. Childish ways were put behind. Or that was supposed to be the theory of when he became a man. Perhaps he wasn’t one yet.
The nineteen-year-old of that Christmas would have longed for this moment right now. He would have grabbed the opportunity with both hands, to be transported to the future just to have her right beside him in a fine bed, in a fine house, with two beautiful children sleeping in the next rooms. He looked at Ruth beside him in bed. She had rolled onto her back, her mouth slightly parted, her hair like a haystack on top of her head. He smiled.
She’d done better than him in those Christmas exams, which was no hard task, but she had repeated that performance the following three years too. Study had always come so easily to her, while he, on the other hand, seemed to have to burn the candle at both ends in order just to scrape by. He didn’t know where she ever found the time to think, let alone study, she was so busy leading the way through their adventurous nights on the town. They’d crashed parties on a weekly basis, then been thrown out, slept on fire escapes, and Ruth still made it into college for the first lecture with her assignments completed. She could do it all at once. Ruth had led the way for everybody, always bored with sitting around. She’d needed adventure, she’d needed outrageous situations and anything that wasn’t ordinary. He was the life and she had been the soul of every party and every day.
Any time he’d failed an exam and had been forced to repeat, she’d been there, writing out essays for him to learn. She’d spend the summers turning study into quiz-show games, introducing prizes and buzzers, quick-fire rounds and punishments. She’d dress up in