The Gift
Cecelia Ahern

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

This edition published by Harper 2016

Copyright © Cecelia Ahern 2008

Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007296583

Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007287741

Version: 2017-10-12

Praise for Cecelia Ahern

‘Cecelia Ahern’s novels are like a box of emeralds … they are, one and all, dazzling gems’

Adriana Trigiani, author of The Shoemaker’s Wife

‘Beautiful and unexpected … both thought-provoking and life-affirming’

Sunday Express

‘Intricate and emotional … really completely lovely’

Grazia

‘A wry, dark drama’

Daily Mail

‘Life-affirming, warm and wise’

Good Housekeeping

‘Cecelia Ahern is an undisputed master when it comes to writing about relationships … Moving, real and exquisitely crafted.’

Heat

‘Exceptional … both heartbreaking and uplifting’

Daily Express

‘Both moving and thought-provoking’

Irish Independent

‘An exquisitely crafted and poignant tale about finding the beauty that lies within the ordinary. Make space for it in your life’

Heat

‘An unusual and satisfying novel’

Woman

‘Ahern cleverly and thoughtfully turns the tables, providing thought-provoking life lessons.’

Sunday Express

‘An intriguing, heartfelt novel, which makes you think about the value of life’

Glamour

‘Insightful and true’

Irish Independent

‘Ahern demonstrates a sure and subtle understanding of the human condition and the pleasures and pains in relationships’

Barry Forshaw

‘Utterly irresistible … I devoured it in one sitting’

Marian Keyes

‘The legendary Ahern will keep you guessing … a classic’

Company

Rocco and Jay; The greatest gifts, Both, at the same time

Contents

Cover
Copyright
Praise for Cecelia Ahern
Dedication
1. AN ARMY OF SECRETS |
2. A MORNING OF HALF-SMILES |
3. THE TURKEY BOY |
4. THE SHOE WATCHER |
5. THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR |
6. A DEAL SEALED |
7. ON REFLECTION |
8. PUDDIN’ AND PIE |
9. THE TURKEY BOY 2 |
10. THE MORNING AFTER |
11. THE JUGGLER |
12. THE FAST LANE |
14. THE TURKEY BOY 3 |
15. HOME SWEET HOME |
16. THE WAKE-UP CALL |
17. BUMP IN THE NIGHT |
18. GRANTED |
19. LOU MEETS LOU |
20. THE TURKEY BOY 4 |
21. MAN OF THE MOMENT |
22. ’TIS THE SEASON … |
23. SURPRISE! |
24. THE SOUL CATCHES UP |
25. THE BEST DAY |
26. IT ALL STARTED WITH A MOUSE |
27. CHRISTMAS EVE |
28. FOR OLD TIME’S SAKE |
29. THE TURKEY BOY 5 |
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author |
Also By Cecelia Ahern |
About the Publisher |

1.

An Army of Secrets

If you were to stroll down the candy-cane façade of a surburban housing estate early on Christmas morning, you couldn’t help but observe how the houses in all their tinselled glory are akin to the wrapped parcels that lie beneath the Christmas trees within. For each holds their secrets inside. The temptation of poking and prodding at the packaging is the equivalent of peeping through a crack in the curtains to get a glimpse of a family in Christmas-morning action; a captured moment that’s kept away from all prying eyes. For the outside world, in a calming yet eerie silence that exists only on this morning every year, homes stand shoulder to shoulder like painted toy soldiers: chests pushed out, stomachs tucked in, proud and protective of all within.

Houses on Christmas morning are treasure chests of hidden truths. A wreath on a door like a finger upon a lip; blinds down like closed eyelids. Then, at some unspecific time, beyond the pulled blinds and drawn curtains, a warm glow will appear, the smallest hint of something happening inside. Like stars in the night sky which appear to the naked eye one by one, and like tiny pieces of gold revealed as they’re sieved from a stream, lights go on behind the blinds and curtains in the half-light of dawn. As the sky becomes star-filled and as millionaires are made, room by room, house by house, the street begins to awaken.

On Christmas morning an air of calm settles outside. The emptiness on the streets doesn’t instil fear; in fact it has the opposite effect. It’s a picture of safety, and, despite the seasonal chill, there’s warmth. For varying reasons, for every household this day of every year is just better spent inside. While outside is sombre, inside is a world of bright frenzied colour, a hysteria of ripping wrapping paper and flying coloured ribbons. Christmas music and festive fragrances of cinnamon and spice and all things nice fill the air. Exclamations of glee, of hugs and thanks, explode like party streamers. These Christmas days are indoor days; not a sinner lingering outside, for even they have a roof over their heads.

Only those in transit from one home to another dot the streets. Cars pull up and presents are unloaded. Sounds of greetings waft out to the cold air from open doorways, teasers as to what is happening inside. Then, while you’re right there with them, soaking it up and sharing the invitation – ready to stroll over the threshold a common stranger but feeling a welcomed guest – the front door closes and traps the rest of the day away, as a reminder that it’s not your moment to take.

In this particular neighbourhood of toy houses, one soul wanders the streets. This soul doesn’t quite see the beauty in the secretive world of houses. This soul is intent on a war, wants to unravel the bow and rip open the paper to reveal what’s inside door number twenty-four.

It is not of any importance to us what the occupants of door number twenty-four are doing, though, if you must know, a ten-month-old, confused as to the reason for the large green flashing prickly object in the corner of the room, is beginning to reach for the shiny red bauble that so comically reflects a familiar podgy hand and gummy mouth. This, while a two-year-old rolls around in wrapping paper, bathing herself in glitter like a hippo in muck. Beside them, He wraps a new necklace of diamonds around Her neck, as she gasps, hand flying to her chest, and shakes her head in disbelief, just as she’s seen women in the black and white movies do.

None of this is important to our story, though it means a great deal to the individual that stands in the front garden of house number twenty-four looking at the living room’s drawn curtains. Fourteen years old and with a dagger through his heart, he can’t see what’s going on, but his imagination was well nurtured by his mother’s daytime weeping, and he can guess.

And so he raises his arms above his head, pulls back, and with all his strength pushes forward and releases the object in his hands. He stands back to watch, with bitter joy, as a fifteen-pound frozen turkey smashes through the window of the living room of number twenty-four. The drawn curtains act once again as a barrier between him and them, slowing the bird’s flight through the air. With no life left to stop itself now, it – and its giblets – descend rapidly to the wooden floor, where it’s sent, spinning and skidding, along to its final resting place beneath the Christmas tree. His gift to them.

People, like houses, hold their secrets. Sometimes the secrets inhabit them, sometimes they inhabit their secrets. They wrap their arms tight to hug them close, twist their tongues around the truth. But after time truth prevails, rises above all else. It squirms and wriggles inside, grows until the swollen tongue can’t wrap itself around the lie any longer, until the time comes when it needs to spit the words out and send truth flying through the air and crashing into the world. Truth and time always work alongside one another.

This story is about people, secrets and time. About people who, not unlike parcels, hide secrets, who cover themselves with layers until they present themselves to the right ones who can unwrap them and see inside. Sometimes you have to give yourself to somebody in order to see who you are. Sometimes you have to unravel things to get to the core.

This is a story about a person who finds out who they are. About a person who is unravelled and whose core is revealed to all that count. And all that count are revealed to them. Just in time.

2.

A Morning of Half-Smiles

Sergeant Raphael O’Reilly moved slowly and methodically about the cramped staff kitchen of Howth Garda Station, his mind going over and over the revelations of the morning. Known to others as Raphie, pronounced Ray-fee, at fifty-nine years old he had one more year to go until his retirement. He’d never thought he’d be looking forward to that day until the events of this morning had grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him upside down like a snow-shaker, and he’d been forced to watch all his preconceptions sprinkle to the ground. With every step he took he heard the crackle of his once-solid tight beliefs under his boots. Of all the mornings and moments he had experienced in his forty-year career, what a morning this one had been.

He spooned two heaps of instant coffee into his mug. The mug, shaped like an NYPD squad car, had been brought back from New York by one of the boys at the station, as his Christmas gift. He pretended the sight of it offended him, but secretly he found it comforting. Gripping it in his hands during that morning’s Kris Kringle reveal, he’d time-travelled back over fifty years to when he’d received a toy police car one Christmas from his parents. It was a gift he’d cherished until he’d abandoned it outside overnight and the rain had done enough rust damage to force his men into early retirement. He held the mug in his hands now, feeling that he should run it along the countertop making siren noises with his mouth before crashing it into the bag of sugar, which – if nobody was around to see – would consequently tip over and spill onto the car.

Instead of doing that, he checked around the kitchen to ensure he was alone, then added half a teaspoon of sugar to his mug. A little more confident, he coughed to disguise the crinkling sound of the sugar bag as the spoon once again pushed down and then quickly fired a heaped teaspoon into the mug. Having gotten away with two spoons, he became cocky and reached into the bag one more time.

‘Drop your weapon, sir,’ a female voice from the doorway called with authority.

Startled by the sudden presence, Raphie jumped, the sugar from his spoon spilling over the counter. It was a mug-on-sugar-bag pile-up. Time to call for back-up.

‘Caught in the act, Raphie.’ His colleague Jessica joined him at the counter and whipped the spoon from his hand.

She took a mug from the cupboard – a Jessica Rabbit novelty mug, compliments of Kris Kringle – and slid it across the counter to him. Porcelain Jessica’s voluptuous breasts brushed against his car, and the boy in Raphie thought about how happy his men inside would be.

‘I’ll have one too.’ She broke into his thoughts of his men playing pat-a-cake with Jessica Rabbit.

‘Please,’ Raphie corrected her.

‘Please,’ she imitated him, rolling her eyes.

Jessica was a new recruit. She’d just joined the station six months ago, and already Raphie had grown more than fond of her. He had a soft spot for the twenty-six-year-old, five-foot-four athletic blonde who always seemed willing and able, no matter what her task was. He also felt she brought a much-needed feminine energy to the all-male team at the station. Many of the other men agreed, but not quite for the same reasons as Raphie. He saw her as the daughter that he’d never had. Or that he’d had, but lost. He shook that thought out of his head and watched Jessica cleaning the spilled sugar from the counter.

Despite her energy, her eyes – almond-shaped and such a dark brown they were almost black – buried something beneath. As though a top-layer of soil had been freshly added, and pretty soon the weeds or whatever was decaying beneath would begin to show. Her eyes held a mystery that he didn’t much want to explore, but he knew that whatever it was, it drove her forward during those stand-out times when most sensible people would go the opposite way.

‘Half a spoon is hardly going to kill me,’ he added grumpily after tasting his coffee, knowing that just one more spoon would have made it perfect.

‘If pulling that Porsche over almost killed you last week, then half a spoon of sugar most certainly will. Are you actually trying to give yourself another heart attack?’

Raphie reddened. ‘It was a heart murmur, Jessica, nothing more, and keep your voice down,’ he hissed.

‘You should be resting,’ she said more quietly.

‘The doctor said I was perfectly normal.’

‘Then the doctor needs his head checked, you’ve never been perfectly normal.’

‘You’ve only known me six months,’ he grumbled, handing her the mug.

‘Longest six months of my life,’ she scoffed. ‘Okay then, have the brown,’ she said, feeling guilty, shovelling the spoon into the brown sugar bag and emptying a heaped spoon into his coffee.

‘Brown bread, brown rice, brown this, brown that. I remember a time when my life was in Technicolor.’

‘I bet you can remember a time when you could see your feet when you looked down too,’ she said without a second’s thought.

In an effort to dissolve the sugar in his mug completely, she stirred the spoon so hard that a portal of spinning liquid appeared in the centre. Raphie watched it and wondered: If he dived into that mug, where would it bring him.

‘If you die drinking this, don’t blame me,’ she said, passing it to him.

‘If I do, I’ll haunt you until the day you die.’

She smiled but it never reached her eyes, fading somewhere between her lips and the bridge of her nose.

He watched the portal in his mug begin to die down, his chance of leaping into another world disappearing fast along with the steam that escaped the liquid. Yes, it had been one hell of a morning. Not much of a morning for smiles. Or maybe it was. A morning for half-smiles, perhaps. He couldn’t decide.

Raphie handed Jessica a mug of steaming coffee – black with no sugar, just as she liked – and they both leaned against the countertop, facing one another, their lips blowing on their coffee, their feet touching the ground, their minds in the clouds.

He studied Jessica, hands wrapped around the mug and staring intently into her coffee as though it were a crystal ball. How he wished it was; how he wished they had the gift of foresight to stop so many of the things they witnessed. Her cheeks were pale, a light red rim around her eyes the only give-away to the morning they’d had.

‘Some morning, eh, kiddo?’

Those almond-shaped eyes glistened but she stopped herself and hardened. She nodded and swallowed the coffee in response. He could tell by her attempt to hide the grimace that it burned, but she took another sip as if in defiance. Standing up even against the coffee.

‘My first Christmas Day on duty, I played chess with the sergeant for the entire shift.’

She finally spoke. ‘Lucky you.’

‘Yeah,’ he nodded, remembering back. ‘Didn’t see it that way at the time, though. Was hoping for plenty of action.’

Forty years later he’d gotten what he’d hoped for and now he wanted to give it back. Return the gift. Get his time refunded.

‘You win?’

He snapped out of his trance. ‘Win what?’

‘The chess game.’

‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘Let the sergeant win.’

She ruffled her nose. ‘You wouldn’t see me letting you win.’

‘I wouldn’t doubt it for a second.’

Guessing the hot drink had reached the right temperature, Raphie finally took a sip of coffee. He immediately clutched at his throat, coughing and spluttering, feigning death and knowing immediately that despite his best efforts to lift the mood, it was in poor taste.

Jessica merely raised an eyebrow and continued sipping.

He laughed and then the silence continued.

‘You’ll be okay,’ he assured her.

She nodded again and responded curtly as though she already knew. ‘Yep. You call Mary?’

He nodded. ‘Straight away. She’s with her sister.’ A seasonal lie; a white lie for a white Christmas. ‘You call anyone?’

She nodded but averted her gaze, not offering more, never offering more. ‘Did you, em … did you tell her?’

‘No. No.’

‘Will you?’

He gazed into the distance again. ‘I don’t know. Will you tell anyone?’

She shrugged, her look as unreadable as always. She nodded down the hall at the holding room. ‘The Turkey Boy is still waiting in there.’

Raphie sighed. ‘What a waste.’ Of a life or of his own time, he didn’t make clear. ‘He’s one that could do with knowing.’

Jessica paused just before taking a sip, and fixed those near-black almond-shaped eyes on him from above the rim of the mug. Her voice was as solid as faith in a nunnery, so firm and devoid of all doubt that he didn’t have to question her certainty.

‘Tell him,’ she said firmly. ‘If we never tell anybody else in our lives, at least let’s tell him.’

3.

The Turkey Boy

Raphie entered the interrogation room as though he was entering his living room and was about to settle himself on his couch with his feet up for the day. There was nothing threatening about his demeanour whatsoever. Despite his height of six foot two, he fell short of filling the space his physical body took up. His head was, as usual, bent over in contemplation, his eyebrows mirroring the angle by dropping to cover his pea-sized eyes. The top of his back was slightly hunched, as though he carried a small shell as shelter. On his belly was an even bigger shell. In one hand was a Styrofoam cup, in the other his half-drunk NYPD mug of coffee.

The Turkey Boy glanced at the mug in Raphie’s hand. ‘Cool. Not.’

‘So is throwing a turkey through a window.’

The boy smirked at the sentence and started chewing on the end of the string on his hooded top.

‘What made you do that?’

‘My dad’s a prick.’

‘I gathered it wasn’t a Christmas gift for being father of the year. What made you think of the turkey?’

He shrugged. ‘My mam told me to take it out of the freezer,’ he offered, as if by way of explanation.

‘So how did it get from the freezer to the floor of your dad’s house?’

‘I carried it most of the way, then it flew the rest.’ He smirked again.

‘When were you planning on having dinner?’

‘At three.’

‘I meant what day. It takes a minimum of twenty-four hours of defrosting time for every five pounds of turkey. Your turkey was fifteen pounds. You should have taken the turkey out of the freezer three days ago if you intended on eating it today.’

‘Whatever, Ratatouille.’ He looked at Raphie like he was crazy. ‘If I’d stuffed it with bananas too would I be in less trouble?’

‘The reason I mention it, is because if you had taken it out when you should have, it wouldn’t have been hard enough to go through a window. That may sound like planning to a jury, and no, bananas and turkey isn’t a clever recipe.’

‘I didn’t plan it!’ he squealed, and his age showed.

Raphie drank his coffee and watched the young teenager.

The boy looked at the cup before him and ruffled his nose. ‘I don’t drink coffee.’

‘Okay.’ Raphie lifted the Styrofoam cup from the table and emptied the contents into his mug. ‘Still warm. Thanks. So, tell me about this morning. What were you thinking, son?’

‘Unless you’re the other fat bastard whose window I threw a bird through, then I’m not your son. And what’s this, a therapy session or interrogation? Are you charging me with something or what?’

‘We’re waiting to hear whether your dad is going to press charges.’

‘He won’t.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘He can’t. I’m under sixteen. So if you just let me go now, you won’t waste any of your time.’

‘You’ve already wasted a considerable amount of it.’

‘It’s Christmas Day, I doubt there’s much else for you to do around here.’ He eyed Raphie’s stomach. ‘Other than eat doughnuts.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Try me.’

‘Some idiot kid threw a turkey through a window this morning.’

He rolled his eyes and looked at the clock on the wall, ticking away. ‘Where are my parents?’

‘Wiping grease off their floor.’

‘They’re not my parents,’ he spat. ‘At least, she’s not my mother. If she comes with him to collect me, I’m not going.’

‘Oh, I doubt very much that they’ll come to take you home with them.’ Raphie reached into his pocket and took out a chocolate sweet. He unwrapped it slowly, the wrapper rustling in the quiet room. ‘Did you ever notice the strawberry ones are always the last ones left over in the tin?’ He smiled before popping it in his mouth.

‘I bet nothing’s ever left in the tin when you’re around.’

‘Your father and his partner –’

‘Who, for the record,’ Turkey Boy interrupted Raphie and leaned close to the recording device, ‘is a whore.’

‘They may pay us a visit to press charges.’

‘Dad wouldn’t do that.’ He swallowed, his eyes puffy with frustration.

‘He’s thinking about it.’

‘No he’s not,’ the boy whined. ‘If he is it’s probably because she’s making him. Bitch.’

‘It’s more probable that he’ll do it because it’s now snowing in his living room.’

‘Is it snowing?’ He looked like a child again, eyes wide with hope.

Raphie sucked on his sweet. ‘Some people just bite right into chocolate; I much prefer to suck it.’

‘Suck on this.’ The Turkey Boy grabbed his crotch.

‘You’ll have to get your boyfriend to do that.’

‘I’m not gay,’ he huffed, then leaned forward and the child returned. ‘Ah, come on, is it snowing? Let me out to see it, will you? I’ll just look out the window.’

Raphie swallowed his sweet and leaned his elbows on the table. He spoke firmly. ‘Glass from the window landed on the ten-month-old baby.’

‘So?’ the boy snarled, bouncing back in his chair, but he looked concerned. He began pulling at a piece of skin around his nail.

‘He was beside the Christmas tree, where the turkey landed. Luckily he wasn’t cut. The baby, that is, not the turkey. The turkey sustained quite a few injuries. We don’t think he’ll make it.’

The boy looked relieved and confused all at the same time.

‘When’s my mam coming to get me?’

‘She’s on her way.’

‘The girl with the’, he cupped his hands over his chest, ‘big jugs told me that two hours ago. What happened to her face by the way? You two have a lovers’ tiff?’

Raphie bristled over how the boy spoke about Jessica, but kept his calm. He wasn’t worth it. Was he even worth sharing the story with at all?

‘Maybe your mother is driving very slowly. The roads are very slippy.’

The Turkey Boy thought about that and looked a little worried. He continued pulling at the skin around his nail.

‘The turkey was too big,’ he added, after a long pause. He clenched and unclenched his fists on the table. ‘She bought the same-sized turkey she used to buy when he was home. She thought he’d be coming back.’

‘Your mother thought this about your dad,’ Raphie confirmed, rather than asked.

He nodded. ‘When I took it out of the freezer it just made me crazy. It was too big.’

Silence again.

‘I didn’t think the turkey would break the glass,’ he said, quieter now and looking away. ‘Who knew a turkey could break a window?’

He looked up at Raphie with such desperation that, despite the seriousness of the situation, Raphie had to fight a smile at the boy’s misfortune.

‘I just meant to give them a fright. I knew they’d all be in there playing happy families.’

‘Well, they’re definitely not any more.’

The boy didn’t say anything but seemed less happy about it than when Raphie had entered.

‘A fifteen-pound turkey seems very big for just three people.’

‘Yeah, well, my dad’s a fat bastard, what can I say.’

Raphie decided he was wasting his time. Fed up, he stood up to leave.

‘Dad’s family used to come for dinner every year,’ the boy caved in, calling out to Raphie in an effort to keep him in the room. ‘But they decided not to come this year either. The turkey was just too bloody big for the two of us,’ he repeated, shaking his head. Dropping the bravado act, his tone changed. ‘When will my mam be here?’

Raphie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Probably when you’ve learned your lesson.’

‘But it’s Christmas Day.’

‘As good a day as any to learn a lesson.’

‘Lessons are for kids.’

Raphie smiled at that.

‘What?’ the boy spat defensively.

‘I learned one today.’

‘Oh, I forgot to add retards to that too.’

Raphie made his way to the door.

‘So what lesson did you learn then?’ the boy asked quickly, and Raphie could sense in his voice that he didn’t want to be left alone.

Raphie stopped and turned, feeling sad, looking sad.

‘It must have been a pretty shit lesson.’

‘You’ll find that most lessons are.’

The Turkey Boy sat slumped over the table, his unzipped hooded top hanging off one shoulder, small pink ears peeping out from his greasy hair that sat on his shoulders, his cheeks covered in pink pimples, his eyes a crystal blue. He was only a child.

Raphie sighed. Surely he’d be forced into early retirement for telling this story. He pulled out the chair and sat down.

‘Just for the record,’ Raphie said, ‘you asked me to tell you this.’

The Beginning of the Story

4.

The Shoe Watcher

Lou Suffern always had two places to be at the one time. When asleep, he dreamed. In between dreams, he ran through the events of that day while making plans for the next, so that when he was awakened by his alarm at six a.m. every morning, he found himself to be very poorly rested. When in the shower, he rehearsed presentations and, on occasion, with one hand outside of the shower curtain he responded to emails on his BlackBerry. While eating breakfast he read the newspaper, and when being told rambling stories by his five-year-old daughter, he listened to the morning news. When his thirteen-month-old son demonstrated new skills each day, Lou’s face displayed interest while at the same time the inner workings of his brain were analysing why he felt the exact opposite. When kissing his wife goodbye, he was thinking of another.

Every action, movement, appointment, a doing or thought of any kind, was layered by another. Driving to work was also a conference call by speakerphone. Breakfasts ran into lunches, lunches into pre-dinner drinks, drinks into dinners, dinners into after-dinner drinks, after-dinner drinks into … well, that depended on how lucky he got. On those lucky nights at whatever house, apartment, hotel room or office that he felt himself appreciating his luck and the company of another, he of course would convince those who wouldn’t share his appreciation – namely his wife – that he was in another place. To them, he was stuck in a meeting, at an airport, finishing up some important paperwork, or buried in the maddening Christmas traffic. Two places, quite magically, at once.

Everything overlapped, he was always moving, always had someplace else to be, always wished that he was elsewhere or that, thanks to some divine intervention, he could be in both places at the same time. He’d spend as little time as possible with each person and leave them feeling that it was enough. He wasn’t a tardy man, he was precise, always on time. In business he was a master timekeeper; in life he was a broken pocket watch. He strove for perfection and possessed boundless energy in his quest for success. However, it was these bounds – so eager to attain his fast-growing list of desires and so full of ambition to reach new dizzying heights – that caused him to soar above the heads of the most important. There was no appointed time in his schedule for those whom, given the time of day, could lift him higher in more ways than any new deal could possibly accomplish.

On one particular cold Tuesday morning along the continuously developing dockland of Dublin city, Lou’s black leather shoes, polished to perfection, strolled confidently across the eyeline of one particular man. This man watched the shoes in movement that morning, as he had yesterday and as he assumed he would tomorrow. There was no best foot forward, for both were equal in their abilities. Each stride was equal in length, the heel-to-toe combination so precise; his shoes pointing forward, heels striking first and then pushing off from the big toe, flexing at the ankle. Perfect each time. The sound rhythmic as they hit the pavement. There was no heavy pounding to shake the ground beneath him, as was the case with the decapitated others who raced by at this hour with their heads still on their pillows despite their bodies being out in the fresh air. No, his shoes made a tapping sound as intrusive and unwelcome as raindrops on a conservatory roof, the hem of his trousers flapping slightly like a flag in a light breeze on an eighteenth hole.

The watcher half-expected the slabs of pavement to light up as he stepped on each, and for the owner of the shoes to break out into a tap dance about how swell and dandy the day was turning out to be. For the watcher, a swell and dandy day it was most certainly going to be.

Usually the shiny black shoes beneath the impeccable black suits would float stylishly by the watcher, through the revolving doors and into the grand marble entrance of the latest modern glass building to be squeezed through the cracks of the quays and launched up into the Dublin sky. But that morning the shoes stopped directly before the watcher. And then they turned, making a gravelly noise as they pivoted on the cold concrete. The watcher had no choice but to lift his gaze from the shoes.

‘Here you go,’ Lou said, handing him a coffee. ‘It’s an Americano, hope you don’t mind, they were having problems with the machine so they couldn’t make a latte.’

‘Take it back then,’ the watcher said, turning his nose up at the cup of steaming coffee offered to him.

This was greeted by a stunned silence.

‘Only joking.’ He laughed at the startled look, and very quickly – in case the joke was unappreciated and the gesture was rethought and withdrawn – reached for the cup and cradled it with his numb fingers. ‘Do I look like I care about steamed milk?’ he grinned, before his expression changed to a look of pure ecstasy. ‘Mmmm.’ He pushed his nose up against the rim of the cup to smell the coffee beans. He closed his eyes and savoured it, not wanting the sense of sight to take away from this divine smell. The cardboard-like cup was so hot, or his hands so cold, that it burned right through them, sending torpedoes of heat and shivers through his body. He hadn’t known how cold he was until he’d felt the heat.

‘Thanks very much indeed.’

‘No problem. I heard on the radio that today’s going to be the coldest day of the year.’ The shiny shoes stamped the concrete slabs and his leather gloves rubbed together as proof of his word.

‘Well, I’d believe them all right. Never mind the brass monkeys, it’s cold enough to freeze my own balls off. But this will help.’ The watcher blew on the drink slightly, preparing to take his first sip.

‘There’s no sugar in it,’ Lou apologised.

‘Ah well then.’ The watcher rolled his eyes and quickly pulled the cup away from his lips, as though in it there was contained a deadly disease. ‘I can let you off the steamed milk, but forgetting to add sugar is a step too far.’ He offered it back to Lou.

Getting the message, and the joke this time, Lou laughed. ‘Okay, okay, I get the point.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers, isn’t that what they say? Is that to say choosers can be beggars?’ The watcher raised an eyebrow, smiled, and finally took his first sip. So engrossed in the sensation of heat and caffeine travelling through his cold body, he hadn’t noticed that suddenly the watcher became the watched.

‘Oh. I’m Gabe.’ He reached out his hand. ‘Gabriel, but everyone who knows me calls me Gabe.’

Lou reached out and shook his hand. Warm leather to cold skin. ‘I’m Lou, but everyone who knows me calls me a prick.’

Gabe laughed. ‘Well, that’s honesty for you. How’s about I call you Lou until I know you better.’

They smiled at one another and then were quiet in the sudden sliver of awkwardness. Two little boys trying to make friends in a schoolyard. The shiny shoes began to fidget slightly, tip-tap, tap-tip, Lou’s side-to-side steps a combination of trying to keep warm and trying to figure out whether to leave or stay. They twisted around slowly to face the building next door. He would soon follow in the direction of his feet.

‘Busy this morning, isn’t it?’ Gabe said easily, bringing the shoes back to face him again.

‘Christmas is only a few weeks away, always a hectic time,’ Lou agreed.

‘The more people around, the better it is for me,’ Gabe said as a twenty cent went flying into his cup. ‘Thank you,’ he called to the lady who’d barely paused to drop the coin. From her body language one would almost think it had fallen through a hole in her pocket rather than being a gift. He looked up at Lou with big eyes and an even bigger grin. ‘See? Coffee’s on me tomorrow,’ he chuckled.

Lou tried to lean over as inconspicuously as possible to steal a look at the contents of the cup. The twenty-cent piece sat alone at the bottom.

‘Oh, don’t worry. I empty it now and then. Don’t want people thinking I’m doing too well for myself,’ he laughed. ‘You know how it is.’

Lou agreed, but at the same time didn’t.

‘Can’t have people knowing I own the penthouse right across the water,’ Gabe added, nodding across the river.

Lou turned around and gazed across the Liffey at Dublin quay’s newest skyscraper, which Gabe was referring to. With its mirrored glass it was almost as if the building was the Looking Glass of Dublin city centre. From the re-created Viking longship that was moored along the quays, to the many cranes and new corporate and commercial buildings that framed the Liffey, to the stormy, cloud-filled sky that filled the higher floors, the building captured it all and played it back to the city like a giant plasma. Shaped like a sail, at night the building was illuminated in blue and was the talk of the town, or at least had been in the months following its launch. The next best thing never lasted for too long.

‘I was only joking about owning the penthouse, you know,’ Gabe said, seeming a little concerned that his possible pay-off had been sabotaged.

‘You like that building?’ Lou asked, still staring at it in a trance.

‘It’s my favourite one, especially at night-time. That’s one of the main reasons I sit here. That and because it’s busy along here, of course. A view alone won’t buy me my dinner.’

‘We built that,’ Lou said, finally turning back around to face him.

‘Really?’ Gabe took him in a bit more. Mid to late thirties, dapper suit, his face cleanly shaven, smooth as a baby’s behind, his groomed hair with even speckles of grey throughout, as though someone had taken a salt canister to it and, along with grey, sprinkled charm at a ratio of 1:10. Lou reminded him of an old-style movie star, emanating suaveness and sophistication and all packaged in a full-length black cashmere coat.

‘I bet it bought you dinner,’ Gabe laughed, feeling a slight twinge of jealousy at that moment, which bothered him as he hadn’t known any amount of jealousy until he’d studied Lou. Since meeting him he’d learned two things that were of no help, for there he was, all of a sudden cold and envious when previously he had been warm and content. Bearing that in mind, despite always being happy with his own company, he foresaw that as soon as this gentleman and he were to part ways, he would experience a loneliness he had never been previously aware of. He would then be envious, cold and lonely. The perfect ingredients for a nice homemade bitter pie.

The building had bought Lou more than dinner. It had gotten the company a few awards, and for him personally, a house in Howth and an upgrade from his present Porsche to the new model – the latter after Christmas, to be precise, but Lou knew not to announce that to the man sitting on the freezing cold pavement, swaddled in a flea-infested blanket. Instead, Lou smiled politely and flashed his porcelain veneers, as usual doing two things at once. Thinking one thing and saying another. But it was the in-between part that Gabe could clearly read, and this introduced a new level of awkwardness that neither of them was comfortable with.

‘Well, I’d better get to work. I just work –’

‘Next door, I know. I recognise the shoes. More on my level,’ Gabe smiled. ‘Though you didn’t wear those yesterday. Tan leather, if I’m correct.’

Lou’s neatly tweezed eyebrows went up a notch. Like a pebble dropped in a pool, they caused a series of ripples to rise on his as yet un-botoxed forehead.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not a stalker.’ Gabe allowed one hand to unwrap itself from the hot cup so he could hold it up in defence. ‘I’ve just been here a while. If anything, you people keep turning up at my place.’

Lou laughed, then self-consciously looked down at his shoes, which were the subject of conversation. ‘Incredible.’

‘I’ve never noticed you here before,’ Lou thought aloud, and at the same time as saying it he was mentally reliving each morning he’d walked this route to work.

‘All day, every day,’ Gabe said, with false perkiness in his voice.

‘Sorry, I never noticed you …’ Lou shook his head. ‘I’m always running around the place, on the phone to someone or late for someone else. Always two places to be at the same time, my wife says. Sometimes I wish I could be cloned, I get so busy,’ he laughed.

Gabe gave him a curious smile at that. ‘Speaking of running around, this is the first time I haven’t seen those boys racing by.’ Gabe nodded towards Lou’s feet. ‘Almost don’t recognise them standing still. No fire inside today?’

Lou laughed. ‘Always a fire inside there, believe you me.’ He made a swift movement with his arm and, like the unveiling of a masterpiece, his coat sleeve slipped down just far enough to reveal his gold Rolex. ‘I’m always the first into the office so there’s no great rush now.’ He observed the time with great concentration, in his head already leading an afternoon meeting.

‘You’re not the first in this morning,’ Gabe said.

‘What?’ Lou’s meeting was disturbed and he was back on the cold street again, outside his office, the cold Atlantic wind whipping at their faces, the crowds of people all bundled up and marching in their armies to work.

Gabe scrunched his eyes shut tight. ‘Brown loafers. I’ve seen you walk in with him a few times. He’s in already.’

‘Brown loafers?’ Lou laughed, first confused, then impressed and quickly concerned as to who had made it to the office before him.

‘You know him – a pretentious walk. The little suede tassels kick with every step, like a mini can-can, it’s like he throws them up there purposely. They’ve got soft soles but they’re heavy on the ground. Small wide feet, and he walks on the outsides of his feet. Soles are always worn away on the outside.’

Lou’s brow furrowed in concentration.

‘On Saturdays he wears shoes like he’s just stepped off a yacht.’

‘Alfred!’ Lou laughed, recognising the description. ‘That’s because he probably has just stepped off his ya—’ but he stopped himself. ‘He’s in already?’

‘About a half-hour ago. Plodded in, in a kind of a rush by the looks of it, accompanied by another pair of black slip-ons.’

‘Black slip-ons?’

‘Black shoes. Male shoes. A little shine but no design. Simple and to the point, they just did what shoes do. Can’t say much else about them apart from the fact they move slower than the other shoes.’

‘You’re very observant.’ Lou examined him, wondering who this man had been in his previous life, before landing on cold ground in a doorway, and at the same time his mind was on overdrive in its attempt to figure out who all these people were. Alfred showing up to work so early had him flummoxed. A colleague of theirs – Cliff – had suffered a nervous breakdown and this had left them excited, yes, excited, about the opening up of a new position. Providing Cliff didn’t get better, which Lou secretly hoped for, major shifts were about to take place in the company, and any unusual behaviour by Alfred was questionable. In fact, any of Alfred’s behaviour at any stage was questionable.

Gabe winked. ‘Don’t happen to need an observant person in there for anything, do you?’

Lou parted his gloved hands. ‘Sorry.’

‘No problem, you know where I am if you need me. I’m the fella in the Doc Martens.’ He laughed, lifting the blankets to reveal his high black boots.

‘I wonder why they’re in so early.’ Lou looked at Gabe as though he had special powers.

‘Can’t help you out there, I’m afraid, but they had lunch last week. Or at least, they left the building at what’s considered the average joe’s lunchtime, and came back together when that time was over. What they did in between is just a matter of clever guesswork,’ he chuckled. ‘No flies on me. Not today anyway,’ he added. ‘Far too cold for flies.’

‘What day was that lunch?’

Gabe closed his eyes again. ‘Friday, I’d say. He’s your rival, is he, brown loafers?’

‘No, he’s my friend. Kind of. More of an acquaintance really.’ On hearing this news Lou, for the first time, showed signs of being rattled. ‘He’s my colleague, but with Cliff having a breakdown it’s a great opportunity for either of us to, well, you know …’

‘Steal your sick friend’s job,’ Gabe finished for him with a smile. ‘Sweet. The slow-moving shoes? The black ones?’ Gabe continued. ‘They left the office the other night with a pair of Louboutins.’

‘Lou— Loub— what are they?’

‘Identifiable by their lacquered red sole. These particular ones had one-hundred-and-twenty-millimetre heels.’

‘Millimetres?’ Lou questioned, then, ‘Red sole, okay,’ he nodded, absorbing it all.

‘You could always just ask your friend-slash-acquaintance-slash-colleague who he was meeting,’ Gabe suggested with a glint in his eye.

Lou didn’t respond directly to that. ‘Right, I’d better run. Things to see, people to do, and both at the same time, would you believe,’ he winked. ‘Thanks for your help, Gabe.’ He slipped a ten-euro note into Gabe’s cup.

‘Cheers, man,’ Gabe beamed, immediately grabbing it from the cup and tucking it into his pocket. He tapped his finger. ‘Can’t let them know, remember?’

‘Right,’ Lou agreed.

But, at the exact same time, didn’t agree at all.

5.

The Thirteenth Floor

‘Going up?’

There was a universal grunt and nodding of heads from inside the crammed elevator as the enquiring gentleman on the second floor looked at sleepy faces with hope. All but Lou responded, that was, for Lou was too preoccupied with studying the gentleman’s shoes, which stepped over the narrow gap that led to the cold black drop below, and into the confined space. Brown brogues shuffled around one hundred and eighty degrees, in order to face the front. Lou was looking for red soles and black shoes. Alfred had arrived early and had lunch with black shoes. Black shoes left the office with red soles. If he could find out who owned the red soles, then he’d know who she worked with, and then he’d know who Alfred was secretly meeting. This process made more sense to Lou than simply asking Alfred, which said a lot about the nature of Alfred’s honesty. This, he thought about at the exact same time as sharing the uncomfortable silence that only an elevator of strangers could bring.

‘What floor do you want?’ a muffled voice came from the corner of the elevator, where a man was well-hidden – possibly squashed – and, as the only person with access to the buttons, was forced to deal with the responsibility of commandeering the elevator stops.

‘Thirteen, please,’ the new arrival said.

There were a few sighs and one person tutted.

‘There is no thirteenth floor,’ the body-less man replied.

The elevator doors closed and it ascended quickly.

‘You’d better be quick,’ the body-less man urged.

‘Em …’ The man fumbled in his briefcase for his schedule.

‘You either want the twelfth floor or the fourteenth floor,’ the muffled voice offered. ‘There’s no thirteen.’

‘Surely he needs to get off on the fourteenth floor,’ somebody else offered. ‘The fourteenth floor is technically the thirteenth floor.’

‘Do you want me to press fourteen?’ the voice asked a little more tetchily.

‘Em …’ The man continued to fumble with papers.

Lou couldn’t concentrate on the unusual conversation in the usually quiet elevator, as he was preoccupied with studying the shoes around him. Lots of black shoes. Some with detail, some scuffed, some polished, some slip-ons, some untied. No obvious red soles. He noticed the feet around him beginning to twitch and shift from foot to foot. One pair moved away from him ever so slightly. His head shot up immediately as the elevator pinged.

‘Going up?’ the young woman asked.

There was a more helpful chorus of male yeses this time.

She stepped in front of Lou and he checked out her shoes while the men around him checked out other areas of her body in that heavy silence that only women feel in an elevator of men. The elevator moved up again. Six … seven … eight …

Finally, the man with the brown brogues emerged from his briefcase empty-handed, and with an air of defeat announced, ‘Patterson Developments.’

Lou pondered the confusion with irritation. It had been his suggestion that there be no number thirteen on the elevator panel, but of course there was a thirteenth floor. There wasn’t a gap with nothing before getting to the fourteenth floor; the fourteenth didn’t hover on some invisible bricks. The fourteenth was the thirteenth, and his offices were on the thirteenth. But it was known as the fourteenth. Why it confused everybody, he had no idea: it was as clear as day to him. He exited on the fourteenth and stepped out, his feet sinking into the spongy plush carpet.

‘Good morning, Mr Suffern.’ His secretary greeted him without looking up from her papers.

He stopped at her desk and looked at her with a puzzled expression. ‘Alison, call me Lou, like you always do, please.’

‘Of course, Mr Suffern,’ she said perkily, refusing to look him in the eye.

While Alison moved about, Lou tried to get a glimpse of the soles of her shoes. He was still standing at her desk when she returned and once again refused to meet his eye as she sat down and began typing. As inconspicuously as possible, he bent down to tie his shoelaces and peeked through the gap in her desk.

She frowned and crossed her long legs. ‘Is everything okay, Mr Suffern?’

‘Call me Lou,’ he repeated, still puzzled.

‘No,’ she said rather moodily and looked away. She grabbed the diary from her desk. ‘Shall we go through today’s appointments?’ She stood and made her way around the desk.

Tight silk blouse, tight skirt, his eyes scanned her body before getting to her shoes.

‘How high are they?’

‘Why?’

‘Are they one hundred and twenty millimetres?’

‘I’ve no idea. Who measures heels in millimetres?’

‘I don’t know. Some people. Gabe,’ he smiled, following her as they made their way into his office, trying to get a glimpse of her soles.

‘Who the hell is Gabe?’ she muttered.

‘Gabe is a homeless man,’ he laughed.

As she turned around to question him, she caught him with his head tilted, studying her. ‘You’re looking at me the same way you look at the art on these walls,’ she said smartly.

Modern impressionism. He’d never been a fan of it. Regularly throughout the days he’d find himself stopping to stare at the blobs of nothing that covered the walls of the corridors of these offices. Splashes and lines scraped into the canvas that somebody considered something, and which could easily be hung upside down or back to front with nobody being any the wiser. He’d contemplate the money that had been spent on them too – and then he’d compare them to the pictures lining his refrigerator door at home; home art by his daughter Lucy. And as he’d tilt his head from side to side, as he was doing with Alison now, he knew there was a playschool teacher out there somewhere with millions of euro lining her pockets, while four-year-olds with paint on their hands, their tongues dangling from their mouths in concentration, received gummy bears instead of a percentage of the takings.

‘Do you have red soles?’ he asked Alison, making his way to his gigantic leather chair that a family of four could live in.

‘Why, did I step in something?’ She stood on one foot and hopped around lightly, trying to keep her balance while checking her soles, appearing to Lou like a dog trying to chase its tail.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ He sat down at his desk wearily.

She viewed him with suspicion before returning her attention to her schedule. ‘At eight thirty you have a phone call with Aonghus O’Sullibháin about needing to become a fluent Irish speaker in order to buy that plot in Connemara. However, I have arranged for your benefit for the conversation to be as Béarla …’ She smirked and threw back her head, like a horse would, pushing her mane of highlighted hair off her face. ‘At eight forty-five you have a meeting with Barry Brennan about the slugs they found on the Cork site –’

‘Cross your fingers they’re not rare,’ he groaned.

‘Well, you never know, sir, they could be relatives of yours. You have some family in Cork, don’t you?’ She still wouldn’t look at him. ‘At nine thirty –’

‘Hold on a minute.’ Despite knowing he was alone with her in the room, Lou looked around hoping for back-up. ‘Why are you calling me sir? What’s gotten into you today?’

She looked away, mumbling what Lou thought sounded like, ‘Not you, that’s for sure.’

‘What did you say?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’ve a busy day, I could do without the sarcasm, thank you. And since when did the day’s schedule become a morning announcement?’

‘I thought that if you heard how packed your day is, aloud, then you might decide to give me the go-ahead to make less appointments in future.’

‘Do you want less work to do, Alison, is that what this is all about?’

‘No,’ she blushed. ‘Not at all. I just thought that you could change your work routine a little. Instead of these manic days spent darting around, you could spend more time with fewer clients. Happier clients.’

‘Yes, then me and Jerry Maguire will live together happily ever after. Alison, you’re new to the company so I’ll let this go by, but this is how I like to do business, okay? I like to be busy, I don’t need two-hour lunchbreaks and schoolwork at the kitchen table with the kids.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘You mentioned happier clients; have you had any complaints?’

‘Your mother. Your wife,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘Your brother. Your sister. Your daughter.’

‘My daughter is five years old.’

‘Well, she called when you forgot to pick her up from Irish dancing lessons last Thursday.’

‘That doesn’t count,’ he rolled his eyes, ‘because my five-year-old daughter isn’t going to lose the company hundreds of millions of euro, is she?’ Once again he didn’t wait for a response. ‘Have you received any complaints from people who do not share my surname?’

Alison thought hard. ‘Did your sister change her name back after the separation?’

He glared at her.

‘Well then, no, sir.’

‘What’s with the sir thing?’

‘I just thought,’ her face flushed, ‘that if you’re going to treat me like a stranger, then that’s what I’ll do too.’

‘How am I treating you like a stranger?’

She looked away. ‘Not something He lowered his voice. ‘Alison, we’re at the office, what do you want me to do? Tell you how much I enjoyed screwing your brains out in the middle of discussing our appointments?’

‘You didn’t screw my brains out, we just kissed.’

‘Whatever.’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘What’s this about?’

She had no answer to that but her cheeks were on fire. ‘Perhaps Alfred mentioned something to me.’

Lou’s heart did an unusual thing then, that he hadn’t experienced before. A fluttering of some sort. ‘What did he mention?’

She looked away, began fidgeting with the corner of the page. ‘Well, he mentioned something about you missing that meeting last week –’

‘Not something, I want specifics here, please.’

She bristled. ‘Okay, em, well, after the meeting last week with Mr O’Sullivan, he – as in Alfred –’ she swallowed, ‘suggested that I try to stay on top of you a bit more. He knew that I was new to the job and his advice to me was not to allow you to miss an important meeting again.’

Lou’s blood boiled and his mind raced. He’d never felt such confusion. Lou spent his life running from one thing to another, missing half of the first in order just to make it to the end of the other. He did this all day every day, always feeling like he was catching up in order to get ahead. It was long and hard and tiring work. He had made huge sacrifices to get where he was. He loved his work, was totally and utterly professional and dedicated to every aspect of it. To be pulled up on missing one meeting that had not yet been scheduled when he had taken the morning off, angered him. It also angered him that it was family that had caused this. If it was another meeting he had sacrificed it for, he would feel better about it, but he felt a sudden anger at his mother. It was her that he had collected from hospital after a hip replacement, the morning of the meeting. He felt angry at his wife for talking him into doing it when his suggestion to arrange a car to collect his mother had sent her into a rage. He felt anger at his sister Marcia and his older brother Quentin for not doing it instead. He was a busy man, and the one time he chose family over work, he had to pay the price. He stood up and paced by the window, biting down hard on his lip and feeling such anger he wanted to pick up the phone and call his entire family and tell them, ‘See? See, this is why I can’t always be there. See? Now look what you’ve done!’

‘Did you not tell him that I had to collect my mother from the hospital?’ He said it quietly because he hated saying it. He hated hearing those words that he despised other colleagues using. Hated the excuses, their personal lives being brought into the office. To him, it was a lack of professionalism. You either did the job, or you didn’t.

‘Well, no, because it was my first week and Mr Patterson was standing with him and I didn’t know what you would like me to say –’

‘Mr Patterson was with him?’ Lou asked, his eyes almost popping out of his head.

She nodded up and down, wide-eyed, like one of those toys with a loose neck.

‘Right.’ His heart began to slow down, now realising what was going on. His dear friend Alfred was up to his tricks. Tricks that Lou had assumed up until now that he was exempt from. Alfred could never get by a day doing things by the book. He looked at things from an awkward angle, came at conversations from an unusual perspective too; always trying to figure out the best way he could come out of any situation.

Lou’s eyes searched his desk. ‘Where’s my post?’

‘It’s on the twelfth floor. The work-experience boy got confused by the missing thirteenth floor.’

‘The thirteenth floor isn’t missing! We are on it! What is with everyone today?’

‘We are on the fourteenth floor, and having no thirteenth floor was a terrible design flaw.’

‘It’s not a design flaw,’ he said defensively. ‘Some of the greatest buildings in the world have no thirteenth floor.’

‘Or roofs.’

‘What?’

‘The Colosseum has no roof.’

‘What?!’ he snapped again, getting confused. ‘Tell the work-experience boy to take the stairs from now on and count his way up. That way he won’t get confused by a missing number. Why is a work-experience person handling the mail anyway?’

‘Harry says they’re short-staffed.’

‘Short-staffed? It only takes one person to get in the elevator and bring my bloody post up. How can they be short-staffed?’ His voice went up a few octaves. ‘A monkey could do his job. There are people out there on the streets who’d die to work in a place like …’

‘In a place like what?’ Alison asked, but she was asking the back of Lou’s head because he’d turned around and was looking out of his floor-to-ceiling windows at the pavement below, a peculiar expression on his face reflected in the glass for her to see.

She slowly began to walk away, for the first moment in the past few weeks feeling a light relief that their fling, albeit a fumble in the dark, was going no further, for perhaps she’d misjudged him, perhaps there was something wrong with him. She was new to the company and hadn’t quite sussed him out yet. All she knew of him was that he reminded her of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, always seeming late, late, late for a very important date but managing to get to every appointment just in the nick of time. He was a kind man to everybody he met and was successful at his job. Plus he was handsome and charming and drove a Porsche, and those things she valued more than anything else. Sure, she felt a slight twinge of guilt about what had happened last week with Lou, when she had spoken to his wife on the phone, but then it was quickly erased by, in Alison’s opinion, his wife’s absolute naiveté when it came to her husband’s infidelities. Besides, everybody had a weak spot, and any man could be forgiven if their Achilles heel just happened to be her.

‘What shoes does Alfred wear?’ Lou called out, just before she closed the door.

She stepped back inside. ‘Alfred who?’

‘Berkeley.’

‘I don’t know.’ Her face flushed. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘For a Christmas present.’

‘Shoes? You want to get Alfred a pair of shoes? But I’ve already ordered the Brown Thomas hampers for everyone, like you asked.’

‘Just find out for me. But don’t make it obvious. Just casually enquire, I want to surprise him.’

She narrowed her eyes with suspicion. ‘Sure.’

‘Oh, and that new girl in accounts. What’s her name … Sandra, Sarah?’

‘Deirdre.’

‘Check her shoes too. Let me know if they’ve got red soles.’

‘They don’t. They’re from Top Shop. Black ankle boots, suede with water marks. I bought a pair of them last year. When they were in fashion.’

With that, she left.

Lou sighed, collapsed into his oversized chair and held his fingers to the bridge of his nose, hoping to stop the migraine that loomed. Maybe he was coming down with something. He’d already wasted fifteen minutes of his morning talking to a homeless man, which was totally out of character for him, but he’d felt compelled to stop. Something about the young man demanded he stop and offer him his coffee.

Unable to concentrate on his schedule, Lou once again turned to look out at the city below. Gigantic Christmas decorations adorned the quays and bridges; giant mistletoe and bells that swayed from one side to the other thanks to the festive magic of neon. The river Liffey was at full capacity and gushed by his window and out to Dublin Bay. The pavements were aflow with people charging to work, keeping in time with the currents, following the same direction as the tide. They pounded the pavement as they powerwalked by the gaunt copper figures dressed in rags, which had been constructed to commemorate those during the famine forced to walk these very quays to emigrate. Instead of small parcels of belongings in their hands, the Irish people of this district now carried Starbucks coffee in one hand, briefcases in the other. Women walked to the office wearing trainers with their skirts, their high heels tucked away in their bags. A whole different destiny and endless opportunities awaiting them.

The only thing that was static was Gabe, tucked away in a doorway, near the entrance, wrapped up on the ground and watching the shoes march by, the opportunities for him still not quite as equal as for those that trampled by. Though only slightly bigger than a dot on the pavement thirteen floors down, Lou could see Gabe’s arm rise and fall as he sipped on his coffee, making every mouthful last, even if by now it was surely cold. Gabe intrigued him. Not least because of his talent for recalling every pair of shoes that belonged in the building as though they were a maths timetable, but, more alarmingly, because the person behind those crystal-blue eyes was remarkably familiar. In fact, Gabe reminded Lou of himself. The two men were similar in age and, given the right grooming, Gabe could very easily have been mistaken for Lou. He seemed a personable, friendly, capable man. It could so easily be Lou sitting on the pavement outside, watching the world go by, yet how different their lives were.

At that very instant, as though feeling Lou’s eyes on him, Gabe looked up. Thirteen floors up and Lou felt like Gabe was staring straight at his soul, his eyes searing into him.

This confused Lou. His involvement in the development of this building entitled him to the knowledge that, beyond any reasonable doubt, from the outside the glass was reflective. Gabe couldn’t possibly have been able to see him as he stared up, his chin to the air, with a hand across his forehead to block out the light, almost in salute. He could only have been looking at a reflection of some kind, Lou reasoned, a bird perhaps had swooped and caught his eye. That’s right, a reflection was all it could be. But so intent was Gabe’s gaze, which reached up the full thirteen floors to Lou’s office window and all the way into Lou’s eyes, that it caused Lou to put aside his water-tight belief. He lifted up his hand, smiled tightly and gave a small salute. Before he could wait for a reaction from Gabe, he wheeled his chair away from the window and spun around, his pulse rate quickening, as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

The phone rang. It was Alison and she didn’t sound happy.

‘Before I tell you what I’m about to tell you, I just want to let you know that I qualified from UCD with a business degree.’

‘Congratulations,’ Lou said.

She cleared her throat. ‘Here you go. Alfred wears size eight brown loafers. Apparently he’s got ten pairs of the same shoes and he wears them every day, so I don’t think the idea of another pair as a Christmas gift would go down too well. I don’t know what make they are but the sad thing is I can find out for you.’ She took a breath. ‘As for the shoes with the red soles, Louise bought a new pair and wore them last week but they cut the ankle off her so she took them back, but the shop wouldn’t take them back because it was obvious she’d worn them because the red sole had begun to wear off.’

‘Who’s Louise?’

‘Mr Patterson’s secretary.’

‘I’ll need you to find out from her who she left work with every day last week.’

‘No way, that’s not in my job description!’

‘You can leave work early if you find out for me.’

‘Okay.’

‘Thank you for cracking under such pressure.’

‘No problem, I can get started on my Christmas shopping.’

‘Don’t forget my list.’

So, despite Lou learning very little, the same odd feeling rushed into his heart, something others would identify as panic. But Gabe had been right about the shoes and so wasn’t a lunatic, as Lou had secretly suspected. Earlier, Gabe had asked if Lou needed an observant eye around the building, and so, picking up the phone, Lou rethought his earlier decision.

‘Can you get me Harry from the mailroom on the phone, and then get one of my spare shirts, a tie and trousers from the closet and take them downstairs to the guy sitting at the door. Take him to the men’s room first, make sure he’s tidied up, and then take him down to the mailroom. His name is Gabe and Harry will be expecting him. I’m going to cure his little short-staffing problem.’

‘What?’

‘Gabe. It’s short for Gabriel. But call him Gabe.’

‘No, I meant –’

‘Just do it. Oh, and Alison?’

‘What?’

‘I really enjoyed our kiss last week and I look forward to screwing your brains out in the future.’

He heard a light laugh slip from her throat before the phone went dead.

He’d done it again. While in the process of telling the truth, he had the almost admirable quality of telling a total and utter lie. And through helping somebody else – Gabe – Lou was also helping himself; a good deed was indeed a triumph for the soul. Despite that, Lou knew that somewhere beneath his plotting and soul-saving there lay another plot, which was the beginning of a saving of a very different kind. That of his own skin. And even deeper in this onion man’s complexities, he knew that this outreach was prompted by fear. Not just by the very fear that – had all reason and luck failed him – Lou could so easily be in Gabe’s position at this very moment, but in a layer so deeply buried from the surface that it almost wasn’t felt and certainly wasn’t seen, there lay the fear of a reported crack – a blip in Lou’s engineering of his own career. As much as he wanted to ignore it, it niggled. The fear was there, it was there all the time, but it was merely disguised as something else for others to see.

Just like the thirteenth floor.

6.

A Deal Sealed

While Lou’s meeting with Mr Brennan about the – thankfully not rare but still problematic – slugs on the development site in County Cork was close to being wrapped up, Alison appeared at his office door, looking anxious, and with the pile of clothes for Gabe still draped in her outstretched arms.

‘Sorry, Barry, we’ll have to wrap it up now,’ Lou rushed. ‘I have to run, I’ve two places to be right now, both of them across town, and you know what the traffic is like.’ And just like that, with a porcelain smile and a firm warm handshake, Mr Brennan found himself back in the elevator descending to the ground floor, with his winter coat draped over one arm and his paperwork stuffed into his briefcase and tucked under the other. Yet, at the same time, it had been a pleasant meeting.

‘Did he say no?’ Lou asked Alison.

‘Who?’

‘Gabe? Did he not want the job?’

‘There was no one there.’ She looked confused. ‘I stood at reception calling and calling his name – God it was so embarrassing – and nobody came. Was this part of a joke, Lou? I can’t believe that after you made me show the Romanian rose-seller into Alfred’s office that I’d fall for this again.’

‘It’s not a joke.’ He took her arm and dragged her over to his window.

‘But there was no man there,’ she said with exasperation.

He looked out the window and saw Gabe still in the same place on the ground. A light rain was starting to fall, spitting against the window at first and then quickly making a tapping sound as it turned to hailstones. Gabe pushed himself back further into the doorway, tucking his feet in closer to his chest and away from the wet ground. He lifted the hood from his sweater over his head and pulled the drawstrings tightly, which from all the way up on the thirteenth floor seemed to be attached to Lou’s heartstrings.

‘Is that not a man?’ he asked, pointing out the window.

Alison squinted and moved her nose closer to the glass. ‘Yes, but –’

He grabbed the clothes from her arms. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ he said.

As soon as Lou stepped through the lobby’s revolving doors, the icy air whipped at his face. His breath was momentarily taken away by a great gush and the rain alone felt like ice-cubes hitting his skin. Gabe was concentrating intently on the shoes that passed him, focusing his mind on something else, no doubt to try to ignore the elements that were thrashing around him. In his mind he was elsewhere, anywhere but there. On a beach where it was warm, where the sand was like velvet and the Liffey before him was the endless sea. While in this other world he felt a kind of bliss that a man in his position shouldn’t.

His face, however, didn’t reflect that. Gone was the look of warm contentment of that morning. His blue eyes were colder than the heated pools of earlier as they followed Lou’s shoes from the revolving doors all the way to the edge of his blanket.

As Gabe watched the shoes, he was imagining them to be the feet of a local man working at the beach he was currently lounging on. The local was approaching him with a cocktail balanced dangerously in the centre of a tray, the tray held out and high from his body like the arms of a candelabra. Gabe had ordered this drink quite some time ago but he’d let the man away with the small delay. It was a hotter day than usual, the sand was crammed with glistening coconut-scented bodies and so he would forgive this local his shortcomings. The muggy air was slowing everybody down. The flipflop-clad feet that approached him sank into the sand, spraying grains of sand into the air with each step. As they neared him, the grains of sand became splashes of raindrops, and the flipflops became a familiar pair of shiny shoes. Gabe looked up, hoping to see a multicoloured cocktail filled with fruit and umbrellas on a tray. Instead, he saw Lou with a pile of clothes over his arm, and it took him a moment to adjust once again to the cold, the noise of the traffic and the hustle and bustle that had replaced his tropical paradise.

Lou’s appearance of earlier that morning had also altered. His hair had lost its Cary Grant-like sheen and neatly combed quiff, and the shoulders of his suit appeared to be covered in dandruff as the little white balls of ice falling from the sky nested in his expensive suit and took their time to melt. When they did, they left dark patches on the fabric. He was uncharacteristically windswept and his usually relaxed shoulders were instead hunched high in an effort to shield his ears from the cold. His body trembled, missing his cashmere coat like a sheep who’d just been sheared and now stood knobbly-kneed and naked.

‘You want a job?’ Lou asked confidently, but it came out quiet and meek as half of his volume was taken away by the wind and the question asked instead to a stranger further down the pavement.

Gabe simply smiled. ‘You’re sure?’

Confused by his reaction, Lou nodded. He wasn’t expecting a hug and a kiss but his offer seemed almost expected. This he didn’t like. He was more atuned to a song and a dance, an ooh and an ahh, a thank you and a declaration of indebtedness. But he didn’t get this from Gabe. What he did get was a quiet smile and, after Gabe had thrown off the blanket from his body and raised himself to his full height, a firm, thankful – and, in spite of the temperature, a surprisingly warm – handshake. Without Gabe hearing another word, it was as though they were already sealing a deal Lou couldn’t recall negotiating.

Standing at exactly the same height, their blue eyes gazed directly into one another’s, Gabe’s from under the hood that was pulled down low over his eyes, monk-like, boring into Lou’s with such intensity that Lou blinked and looked away. At the same time as that blink occurred, a doubt entered Lou’s mind, now that the mere thought of a good deed was becoming a reality. The doubt came breezing through like a stubborn guest through a hotel lobby with no booking, and Lou stood there, confused as to what decision to make. Where to put this doubt. Keep it or turn it away. He had many questions to ask Gabe, many questions he probably should have asked, but there was only one that he could think of right then.

‘Can I trust you?’ Lou asked.

He had wanted to be convinced, for his mind to be put at ease, but he did not count on receiving the kind of response he was given.

Gabe barely blinked. ‘With your life.’

The Presidential Suite for the gentleman and his word.

7.

On Reflection

Gabe and Lou left the icy air and entered the warmth of the marble entrance hall. With walls, floors and pillars of granite covered by swirls of creams, caramels and Cadbury-chocolate colours, Gabe was just short of licking the surfaces. He had known he was cold, but until he felt this warmth he’d had no idea of the extent. Lou felt all eyes on him as he led the rugged-looking man through reception and into the Gents on the ground floor. Unsure of why, Lou took it upon himself to check each toilet cubicle before talking.

‘Here, I brought you these.’ Lou handed Gabe the pile of clothes, which were slightly damp now. ‘You can keep them.’

He turned to face the mirror to comb his hair back into its perfect position, wiped away the hailstones and raindrops from his shoulders and tried his best to return to normality, physically and mentally, as Gabe slowly sifted through the belongings. Grey Gucci trousers, a white shirt, a grey and white striped tie. He fingered them all delicately as though a single touch would reduce them to shreds.

While Gabe discarded his blanket in the sink and then went into one of the cubicles to dress, Lou paced up and down the urinals responding to phone calls and emails. He was so busy with his work that when he looked up from his device, he didn’t recognise the man before him and returned his attention to his BlackBerry. But then he slowly reared his head again, realising with a start that it was Gabe.

The only thing to show that this was the same man were the dirty pair of Doc Martens beneath the Gucci trousers. Everything fitted perfectly, and Gabe stood before the mirror, looking himself up and down as though in a trance. The woollen hat that had covered Gabe’s head now revealed a thick head of black hair, similar to Lou’s, though far more tousled. The warmth had replaced the coldness in his body and his lips were now full and red, his cheeks a nice rosy instead of the frozen pallid colour of before.

Lou didn’t quite know what to say but, sensing a moment that was far deeper than he was comfortable with, he splashed around in the shallow end instead.

‘That stuff you told me about the shoes, earlier?’

Gabe nodded.

‘That was good. I wouldn’t mind if you kept your eyes open for more of that kind of thing. Let me know now and then about what you see.’

Gabe nodded.

‘Have you somewhere to stay?’

‘Yes.’ Gabe looked back at his reflection in the mirror. His voice was quiet.

‘So you’ve an address to give Harry? He’s your boss.’

‘You won’t be my boss?’

‘No.’ Lou took his BlackBerry out of his pocket and began scrolling for nothing in particular. ‘No, you’ll be in another … department.’

‘Oh, of course.’ Gabe straightened up, seeming a little embarrassed for thinking otherwise. ‘Right. Great. Thanks so much, Lou, really.’

Lou nodded it off, feeling embarrassed. ‘Here.’ He handed Gabe his comb while looking the other way.

‘Thanks.’ Gabe took it, held the comb under the tap and then began to shape his messed hair. Lou hurried him on and led him back out of the Gents and through the marble lobby to the elevators.

Gabe offered the comb back to Lou.

Lou shook his head and waved his hand dismissively, looking around to make sure nobody waiting with them by the elevators had seen the gesture. ‘Keep it. You have an employer number, PRSI number, things like that?’ he rattled off at Gabe.

Gabe shook his head, looking concerned. His fingers ran up and down the silk tie, as though it were a pet and he was afraid it would run off.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll sort that out. Okay,’ Lou started to move away as his phone began ringing, ‘I’d better run, I’ve so many places to be right now.’

‘Of course. Thanks again. Where do I –?’

But Gabe was cut off as Lou wandered around the lobby, his movements jittery as he spoke on the mobile in that half-walk, half-dance that people on mobile phones do. His left hand was jingling the loose change in his pocket, his right hand glued to his ear. ‘Okay, gotta run, Michael.’ Lou snapped the phone shut and tutted when he found an even bigger crowd still waiting at the elevators. ‘These things really need to be fixed,’ he said aloud.

Gabe fixed him with a look that Lou couldn’t quite read.

‘What?’

‘Where do I go?’ Gabe asked again.

‘Oh, sorry, you’re going down a floor. The mailroom.’

‘Oh.’ Gabe looked taken aback at first, and then his pleasant face returned again. ‘Okay, great, thanks,’ he nodded.

‘Ever worked in one before? I bet they’re, um … exciting places to be.’ Lou knew that offering Gabe a job was a great gesture, and that there was nothing wrong with the job he was being offered, but somehow he felt that it wasn’t enough, that the young man standing before him was not only capable but expectant of much more. There was no reasonable explanation for why on earth he felt this, as Gabe was as soft, friendly and appreciative as he had been the very first moment Lou had met him, but there was something about the way he … there was just something.

‘Do you want to meet for lunch or anything?’ Gabe asked hopefully.

‘No can do,’ Lou replied, his phone starting to ring again in his pocket. ‘I’ve such a busy day ahead and I’ve …’ He trailed off as the elevator doors opened and people began filing in. Gabe moved to step in with Lou.

‘This one’s going up,’ Lou said quietly, his words a barrier to Gabe’s entrance.

‘Oh, okay.’ Gabe took a few steps back. Before the doors closed and a few last people ran to scurry in, Gabe asked, ‘Why are you doing this for me?’

Lou swallowed hard and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. ‘Consider it a gift.’ And the doors closed.

When Lou finally reached the fourteenth floor, he was more than surprised to enter his office area and see Gabe pushing a mail cart around the floor, depositing packages and envelopes on people’s desks.

Unable to think of what to say but running through the time in which it had taken him to get to his floor, he merely stared at Gabe open-mouthed.

‘Eh,’ Gabe looked left and right with uncertainty, ‘this is the thirteenth floor, isn’t it?’

‘It’s the fourteenth,’ Lou replied breathlessly, speaking the words more out of habit and barely noticing what he was saying. ‘Of course you should be here, it’s just that …’ He held his hand to his forehead, which was hot. He hoped his moments in the rain without his coat hadn’t made him ill. ‘You got here so quickly that I just … never mind.’ He shook his head. ‘Those bloody lifts,’ he mumbled to himself, making his way to his office.

Alison jumped up from her chair and blocked him from entering his office. ‘Marcia’s on the phone,’ she called loudly. ‘Again.’

Gabe pushed his cart down to the end of the plush corridor to another office, one of the wheels squeaking loudly. Lou watched him for a moment in wonder, and then snapped out of it.

‘I don’t have time, Alison, really, I’ve somewhere else to be right now and I have a meeting before I can even leave. Where are my keys?’ He searched through the pockets of his coat, which was hanging from the coat stand in the corner.

‘She’s called three times this morning,’ Alison hissed, blocking the receiver and holding it away from her body as though it were poison. ‘I don’t think she believes that I’m passing on her messages.’

‘Messages?’ Lou teased. ‘I don’t remember any messages.’

Alison squeaked with panic, moving the receiver high up in the air, further from Lou’s grasp. ‘Don’t you dare do that to me, don’t blame me! There are three messages already on your desk from this morning alone! And besides, your family hate me as it is.’

‘They’re right to, aren’t they?’ He stood close against her, backing her into her desk. Giving her a look that withered every part of her insides, he allowed two of his fingers to slowly crawl up her arm and to her hand, where he took the phone from her grasp. He heard a cough coming from behind him and he quickly moved away and pulled the phone to his ear. Pretending he didn’t care, he casually spun around to check out who had interrupted them.

Gabe. With the squeaking mail cart that had miraculously failed to alert Lou this time.

‘Yes, Marcia,’ he said down the phone to his sister. ‘Yes, of course I received your ten thousand messages. Alison very kindly passed them all on.’ He smiled sweetly at Alison, who stuck her tongue out at him before leading Gabe into Lou’s office. Lou stood up a little taller then and watched Gabe.

Following Alison into Lou’s office, Gabe looked around the huge room like a child at the zoo. Lou noticed him take in the large en suite to the right, the floor-to-ceiling windows that displayed the city, the giant oak desk that took up more room than necessary, the couch area in the left-hand corner, the boardroom table to seat ten, the fifty-inch plasma on the wall. It was as big or bigger than any Dublin city apartment.

Gabe’s head moved around the room, his eyes taking in everything. His expression was curiously unreadable and then their eyes met and Gabe smiled. It was an equally curious smile. It wasn’t quite the face of admiration that Lou was hoping for, it most certainly wasn’t of jealousy. More a look of amusement. Whatever it was, it immediately killed the pride and satisfaction that were lined up in the queue of emotions Lou planned to experience next. It was a smile that seemed only for Lou, but the problem was, Lou wasn’t sure whether the joke was on him or if he and Gabe were sharing it. Feeling a lack of confidence he wasn’t used to, he nodded back at Gabe in acknowledgement.

Meanwhile, over the phone, Marcia continued her mindless chat, and Lou felt as though his head was getting hotter and hotter.

‘Lou? Lou, are you listening?’ she asked in her soft voice.

‘Absolutely, Marcia, but I really can’t stay on right now because I’ve two places to be and neither of them are here,’ he said, then, after a pause, added a laugh to soften the blow.

‘Yes, I know you’re so busy,’ she said, and without any jibes intended she added, ‘I wouldn’t disturb you at work if we saw you on a Sunday once in a while.’

‘Oh, here we go.’ He rolled his eyes and waited for the usual rant.

‘No, I’m not going there, please, just listen. Lou, I really need your help on this. Usually I wouldn’t bother you, but Rick and I are going through the divorce papers and …’ she sighed. ‘Anyway, I want to get this right and I can’t do it alone.’

‘I’m sure you can’t.’ He wasn’t sure of what it was she could or could not do as he had no idea what she was talking about, and he was so preoccupied with his growing paranoia over Gabe’s movements around his office.

He stretched the phone cord to the corner of the room so that he could reach for his coat. In a messy twist of trying to get his coat on while keeping the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, he dropped the receiver. He fixed his coat before swooping down to retrieve the receiver. Marcia was still talking.

‘So can you at least answer my one question about the venue?’

‘The venue,’ he repeated. His phone rang in his pocket and he covered the speaker to silence the ring tone, wanting nothing more than to answer it.

She was quiet for a moment. ‘Yes. The venue,’ she said, her voice so quiet now he had to strain his ear to hear.

‘Ah, yes, the venue for the …’ He looked at Alison with his best look of alarm and she abandoned her study of Gabe to charge out from his office towards him with a bright yellow Post-it.

‘A-ha!’ Lou exclaimed, plucking it from her hand, saying the words as though clearly reading them. ‘For your dad’s – that would be my dad’s – birthday party. You want a venue for Dad’s birthday party.’

Lou felt a presence behind his back once again.

‘Yes,’ Marcia said, relieved. ‘But I don’t need a venue, we already have two, remember, I told you this? I just need you to help me choose one. Quentin thinks one and I think the other, and Mum just really wants to stay out of it, and –’

‘Can you call my mobile, Marcia, I really have to run. I’m going to be late for a lunch meeting.’

‘No, Lou! Just tell me where –’

‘Look, I’ve got a great venue,’ he interrupted her again, looking at his watch. ‘Dad will love it and everyone will have a great time,’ he rushed her off the phone.

‘I don’t want to introduce somewhere new at this point. You know what Dad’s like. Just a small, intimate family gathering somewhere he feels comfort—’

‘Intimate and comfortable. Got it.’ Lou grabbed a pen from Alison’s fingers and made a note of the party he was entrusting her to start organising. ‘Great. What date are we having it?’

‘On his birthday.’ Marcia’s voice was quieter with each response.

‘Right, his birthday.’ Lou looked up at Alison questioningly, who dove for her diary and began flicking at top speed. ‘I thought we’d want to have it on a weekend so that everybody could really let themselves go. You know, let Uncle Leo really go for it on the dancefloor,’ he smirked.

‘He’s just been diagnosed with prostate cancer.’

‘Not really my point. So what date is the nearest weekend?’ he improvised.

‘Daddy’s birthday falls on a Friday,’ she said, tired now. ‘It’s December twenty-first, Lou. The same as it was last year and every year before that.’

‘December twenty-first, right.’ He looked at Alison accusingly, who wilted for not getting there first. ‘That’s next weekend, Marcia, why have you left it so late?’

‘I haven’t, I told you, everything’s arranged. Both venues are ready to go.’

Lou stopped listening to her response once again, grabbed the diary from Alison and started flicking through it. ‘Ah, no can do, would you believe. That’s the date of the office party, and I really have to be here. We’re having some important clients over. Dad’s party can be on the Saturday, I’ll have to move some things around,’ he thought aloud, ‘but the Saturday could work.’

‘It’s your father’s seventieth, you can’t change the date because of an office party,’ she said disbelievingly. ‘Besides, the music, the food, everything has already been decided on for that date. All we need is to decide which one of the two venues –’

‘Well, cancel all that,’ Lou said, hopping off the corner of the desk and getting ready to hang up. ‘The venue I have in mind does its own catering and music, you won’t have to lift a finger, okay? So that’s all sorted. Great. I’ll put you back on to Alison so she can take all the details.’ He put the phone down on the desk and grabbed his briefcase.

Despite feeling Gabe’s presence behind him, he didn’t turn around. ‘Everything okay, Gabe?’ he asked, lifting files from Alison’s desk and arranging them into his open briefcase.

‘Yep, great. I just thought I’d ride down in the elevator with you, seeing as we’re going the same way.’

‘Oh.’ Lou snapped the case closed, turned and didn’t slow in his walk to the elevator, suddenly afraid that he’d made a big mistake and that he’d now have to show Gabe that his intentions behind getting him a job were not to find a playdate. He pressed the elevator button and, while waiting for the floor numbers to climb up, busied himself with his phone.

‘So you have a sister?’ Gabe asked softly.

‘Yep,’ Lou replied, still texting, feeling like he was back at school and trying to shake off the nerd he’d once been nice to. Of all the times his phone decided not to ring.

‘That’s great.’

‘Mmm.’

‘What was that?’

Gabe had responded so curtly that Lou’s head snapped up.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ Gabe said, like a schoolteacher.

Then, for some unknown reason, guilt overcame Lou and he placed his phone into his pocket. ‘Sorry, Gabe,’ he wiped his brow, ‘it’s been a funny day. I’m not myself today.’

‘Who are you then?’

Lou looked at him with confusion but Gabe just smiled.

‘You were saying about your sister.’

‘I was? Well, she’s just being the usual Marcia.’ Lou sighed. ‘She’s driving me crazy about organising my dad’s seventieth party. Unfortunately it’s on the same day as the office party, which causes some problems, you know. Always a good night here.’ He looked at Gabe and winked. ‘You’ll see what I mean. But I’m taking the whole organisation off her hands now, to give her a break,’ he said.

‘You don’t think she’s enjoying organising it?’ Gabe asked.

Lou looked away. Marcia loved organising the party, she’d been planning it for the past year. In taking it out of her hands he was in fact making it easier on himself. He couldn’t stand the twenty calls a day about cake-tasting and whether or not he’d allow three of their decrepit aunts to stay overnight in his house or if he’d lend a few of his serving spoons for the buffet. Ever since her marriage had ended she’d focused on this party. If she’d given her marriage as much attention as she did the bloody party, she wouldn’t find herself crying to her friends at Curves every day, he thought. Taking this off her hands was a favour for her and a favour for him. Two things accomplished at once. Just what he liked.

‘You will go to your dad’s party, though, won’t you?’ Gabe asked. ‘Your dad turning seventy,’ he whistled. ‘That’s not one you want to miss.’

Irritation and uneasiness settled in on Lou again. Unsure if Gabe was preaching or was just trying to be friendly, he quickly stole a glance at him to judge, but Gabe was just looking through the envelopes on his trolley, figuring out which floor to go to next.

‘Oh, of course I’ll go.’ Lou plastered a fake smile on his face. ‘I’ll drop in for a while, at some stage. That was always the plan.’ Lou’s voice sounded forced. Why the hell was he explaining himself?

Gabe didn’t respond and, after a few loaded seconds of silence, Lou punched the elevator call button a few times in a row.

‘These things are so bloody slow,’ he grumbled.

Finally, the doors opened and the crammed lift revealed room for only one person.

Gabe and Lou looked at one another.

‘Well, one of you get in,’ a crank barked from the lift.

‘Go ahead,’ Gabe said. ‘I’ve got to bring this down.’ He nodded at the cart. ‘I’ll get the next one.’

‘You sure?’

‘Just kiss already,’ one man called, and the rest laughed.

Lou rushed in and couldn’t take his eyes away from Gabe’s cool stare as the doors closed and the lift slowly lowered.

After only two stoppages, they reached ground level and, finding himself crammed at the back, Lou waited for everybody to unload. He watched the workers rush to the doors of the lobby for lunch, bundled up and ready for the elements.

The crowd cleared and his heart skipped a beat as he caught sight of Gabe standing by the security desk with the trolley beside him, searching the crowds for Lou.

Lou slowly disembarked and made his way towards him.

‘I forgot to leave this on your desk.’ Gabe handed him a thin envelope. ‘It was hidden beneath someone else’s stack.’

Lou took the envelope and didn’t even look at it before crushing it into his coat pocket.

‘Is something wrong?’ Gabe asked, but there was no concern detectable in his voice.

‘No. Nothing’s wrong.’ Lou didn’t move his eyes away from Gabe’s face once. ‘How did you get down here so quickly?’

‘Here?’ Gabe pointed at the floor.

‘Yeah, here,’ Lou said sarcastically. ‘The ground level. You were going to wait for the next elevator. From the fourteenth floor. Just less than thirty seconds ago.’

‘Oh yeah,’ Gabe agreed, and he smiled. ‘I wouldn’t say it was quite thirty seconds ago, though.’

‘And?’

‘And …’ he stalled. ‘I guess I got here quicker than you.’ He shrugged, then unlatched the brake at the wheel of the trolley with his foot, and prepared to move. At the same time, Lou’s phone started ringing and his BlackBerry signalled a new email.

‘You’d better run,’ Gabe said, moving away. ‘Things to see, people to do,’ he echoed Lou’s words. Then he flashed a porcelain smile that had the opposite effect to the warm fuzzy feeling it had given Lou that same morning. Instead, it sent torpedoes of fear and worry right to his heart and straight into his gut. Those two places. Right at the same time.

8.

Puddin’ and Pie

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 grunted something inaudible, the tone suggesting a warning of some sort. Through the wing mirror, Lou watched him walk slowly back to his car. He had an unusual gait. He seemed to be dragging his left leg slightly as he walked. Was he drunk? Then the sergeant opened his car door, got back inside, started up the engine, did a u-turn and was gone. Lou frowned, his day – even in its twilight hours – becoming increasingly more bizarre by the moment.

Lou pulled up to the driveway feeling the same sense of pride and satisfaction he felt every night when he arrived home. To most average people, size didn’t matter, but Lou didn’t want to be average and he saw the things that he owned as being a measure of the man that he was. He wanted the best of everything and, to him, size and quantity were a measure of that. Despite being in a safe cul-de-sac of only a few houses on Howth summit, he’d arranged for the existing boundary walls to be built up higher and for oversized electronic gates, with cameras, at the entrance.

The lights were out in the children’s bedrooms at the front of the house, and Lou instantly felt an inexplicable relief.

‘I’m home,’ he called to the quiet house.

There was a faint sound of a breathless and rather hysterical woman calling out movements from the television room down the hallway. Ruth’s exercise DVD.

He loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt, kicked off his shoes, felt the warmth of the underfloor heating soothe his feet through the marble, and started to sort through the mail on the hall table. His mind slowly began to unwind, the conversations of various meetings and telephone calls all beginning to slow. Though they were still there, the voices seemed a little quieter now. Each time he took off a layer of his clothes – his overcoat flung over the chair, his suit jacket on the table, his shoes kicked across the floor, his tie onto the table but slithering to the floor, his case here, loose change and keys there – he felt the events of the day fall away.

‘Hello,’ he called again, louder this second time, realising that nobody – i.e. his wife – had come to greet him. Perhaps she was busy breathing to the count of four, as the hysterical woman in the television room was doing.

‘Sssh,’ he heard, coming from the second level of the house, followed by the creak of floorboards as his wife made her way across the landing.

This bothered him. Not the creaking, for it was an old house and not much could be done about that, but the being silenced was a problem. After a day of non-stop talking, of clever words of jargon, persuasion and intelligent conversation, deal opening, deal development and deal closing, not one person he had met with had at any point told him to Sssh. This was the language of teachers and of librarians. Not of adults in their own homes. He felt like he’d left the real world and entered a crèche. After only one minute of stepping through his front door, he felt irritated. That had been happening a lot lately.

‘I’ve just put Pud down again. He’s not having a good night,’ Ruth explained from the top of the stairs, in a loud whisper. This kind of speech, though Lou understood, he did not like. Like the Sssh language, this adult-whispering was for children in class or teenagers sneaking out of or into their homes. He didn’t like limitations, particularly in his own home. So that irritated him too.

The ‘Pud’ she referred to was their son Ross. A little over a year old now, he still held on to his baby fat, his flesh resembling the uncooked dough of a croissant or that of a pudding. Hence the nickname Pud, which, unfortunately for the already christened Ross, seemed to be sticking around.

‘What’s new?’ he mumbled, referring to Pud’s lack of desire to sleep, while searching through the mail for something that didn’t resemble a bill. He opened a few and discarded them on the hall table. Pieces of ripped paper drifted from the surface and onto the floor.

Ruth made her way downstairs, dressed in a velour tracksuit-cum-pyjamas outfit, he couldn’t quite tell the difference between what she wore these days. Her long brown chocolate hair was tied back in a high ponytail and she shuffled towards him in a pair of slippers – the noise grating on his ears, worse than the sound of a vacuum cleaner, which, until that point, had been his least loved.

‘Hi,’ she smiled, and the tired face disappeared and there was a glimpse, a tiny flicker, of the woman he had married. Then, as quickly as he saw it, it disappeared again, leaving him to wonder if it was he who had imagined it, or if that part of her was there at all. The face of the woman he saw every day stepped up to kiss him on the lips.

‘Good day?’ she asked.

‘Busy.’

‘But good?’

The contents of a particular envelope took his interest. After a long moment he felt the intensity of a stare.

‘Hmm?’ He looked up.

‘I just asked if you had a good day.’

‘Yeah, and I said, “busy”.’

‘Yes, and I said, “but good”? All your days are busy, but all your days aren’t good. I hope it was good,’ she said, in a strained voice.

‘You don’t sound like you hope it was good,’ he replied, eyes down, reading the rest of the letter.

‘Well, I sound like I did the first time I asked.’ She kept an easiness in her voice.

‘Ruth, I’m reading my post!’

‘I can see that,’ she mumbled, bending over to pick up the empty ripped envelopes that lay on the ground and on the hall table.

‘So what happened around here today?’ he asked, opening another envelope. The paper fluttered to the floor.

‘The usual madness. And then I tidied the house just before you got back, for the millionth time,’ she said, making a point as she bent down to pick up another crumpled ball of paper. ‘Marcia called a few times today, looking for you. When I could finally find the phone. Pud hid the handset again, it took me ages to find it. Anyway, she needs help with deciding a venue for your dad’s party. She liked the idea of the marquee here, and Quentin, of course, didn’t. He wants it in the yacht club. I think your dad would like either of them – no, that’s a lie, I think your father would prefer none of them, but seeing as it’s going ahead without his say-so, he’d be happy with either. Your mum is staying out of it. So what did you tell her?’

Silence. She patiently watched him reading the last page of the document and waited for an answer. When he had folded it and dropped it on the hall table, he reached for another.

‘Honey?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘I asked you about Marcia,’ she said, through gritted teeth, and proceeded to pick up the scraps of new paper that had fallen to the ground.

‘Oh yeah.’ He unfolded another document. ‘She was just, eh …’ He became distracted by the contents.

‘Yes?’ she said loudly.

He looked up and gazed at her, as though noticing for the first time that she was there. ‘She was calling about the party.’ He made a face.

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’ He started reading again.

‘Because she – never mind.’ Start again. ‘She’s so excited about this party, isn’t she? It’s great seeing her really getting her teeth into something after the year she’s had. She’s been talking a mile a minute about food and the music …’ She trailed off.

Silence.

‘Hmm?’

‘Marcia,’ she said, rubbing her tired eyes. ‘We’re talking about Marcia, but you’re busy so …’ She began making her way to the kitchen.

‘Oh, that. I’m taking the party off her hands. Alison’s going to organise it.’

Ruth stopped. ‘Alison?’

‘Yes, my secretary. She’s new. Have you met her?’

‘Not yet.’ She slowly made her way towards him. ‘Honey, Marcia was really excited about organising the party.’

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