Seven thirty p.m. came and went without Arthur Lynch appearing on the fifty-inch plasma before Lou at the boardroom table. Aware that at any moment he could be seen by whoever would be present at the meeting, he attempted to relax in his chair, and tried not to sleep. At seven forty p.m., Mr Lynch’s secretary informed him that Mr Lynch would be a few more minutes.
While waiting, the increasingly sleepy Lou pictured Alfred in the restaurant, brash as could be, the centre of attention, loud and doing his best to entertain; stealing the glory, making or breaking a deal that Lou wouldn’t be associated with unless Alfred failed. In missing that – the most important meeting of the year – Lou was losing the biggest chance to prove himself to Mr Patterson. Cliff’s job and the empty office that came with it was dangled at him day in and day out like a carrot on a string. Cliff’s old office was down the hall next to Mr Patterson’s, blinds open and vacant. A larger office, with better light. It called to him. It had been six months since the memorable morning Cliff had had his breakdown – after a long process of unusual behaviour. Lou had finally found Cliff crouched under his desk, his body trembling, with the keyboard held tightly and close to his chest. Occasionally his fingers tapped away in some sort of panicked Morse code. They were coming to get him, he kept repeating, wide-eyed and terrified.
Who exactly they were, Lou had been unable to ascertain. He’d tried to gently coax Cliff out from under the desk, to make him put his shoes and socks back on, but Cliff had lashed out as Lou neared and hit him across the face with the attached mouse, swinging the wire around like a cowboy rope. The force of the small plastic mouse hadn’t hurt nearly as much as the sight of this young successful man falling apart. The office had lain empty for all those months and, as rumours of Cliff’s further demise drifted through offices, the sympathy for him lessened as the competition for his job increased. Lou had recently heard that Cliff had started seeing people again, and he had all the best intentions to visit. He knew he should, and he would at some point, but he just couldn’t seem to find the time …
Lou’s frustration grew as he stared at the black plasma still yet to come alive. His head pounded and he could barely think as his migraine spread from the base of his head to his eyes. Feeling desperate, he retrieved the pills from his pocket and stared at them.
He thought of Gabe’s knowledge of Mr Patterson and Alfred’s meeting and of how Gabe had correctly judged the shoe situation, of how Gabe had provided him with coffee the previous morning, driven him home and somehow won Ruth over. Convincing himself that on every occasion Gabe had never let him down, and that he could trust him now, Lou shook the open container and one small white glossy pill rolled out onto the palm of his sweaty hand. He played with it for a while, rolling it around in his fingers, licked it; and when nothing drastic happened, he popped it into his mouth and quickly downed it with a glass of water.
Lou held on to the boardroom table with both hands, gripping it so hard that his sweaty prints were visible on the glass surface laid to protect the solid walnut. He waited. Nothing happened. He lifted his hands from the table and studied them as though the effects would be seen on his sweaty palms. Still nothing out of the ordinary happened, no unusual trip, nothing life-threatening apart from his head, which continued to pound.
At seven forty-five p.m. there was still no sign of Arthur Lynch on the plasma. Lou tapped his pen against the glass impatiently, no longer caring about how he’d appear to the people on the other side of the camera. Already paranoid beyond reasoning, Lou began to convince himself that there was no meeting at all, that Alfred had somehow orchestrated this staged meeting so that he could have dinner by himself and negotiate the deal. But Lou wouldn’t allow Alfred to sabotage any more of his hard work. He stood quickly, grabbed his overcoat and charged for the door. He pulled it open and had one foot over the threshold when he heard a voice coming from the plasma behind him.
‘I’m very sorry for keeping you waiting, Mr Suffern.’
The voice stalled Lou in his march. He closed his eyes and sighed, kissing his dream of the top office with the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Dublin goodbye. He quickly thought about what to do: run and make it in time for dinner or turn around and face the music. Before he had time to make the decision, the sound of another voice in the office almost stopped his heart.
‘No problem, Mr Lynch, and please call me Lou. I understand how things can run over time so there are no apologies needed. Let’s get down to business, shall we? We have a lot to discuss.’
‘Certainly, Lou. And call me Arthur, please. We do have rather a lot to get through, but before I introduce you to these two gentlemen beside me, would you like to finish your business up there? I see you have company?’
‘No, Arthur, it’s just me here in the office,’ Lou heard himself say. ‘Everyone else has deserted me.’
‘That man there by the door, I can see him on our screen.’
Spotted, Lou slowly turned around and came face to face with himself. He was still seated at the boardroom table, in the same place as he had been waiting before he had planned his escape, grabbed his coat and made for the door. The face that greeted him was also a picture of shock. The ground swirled beneath Lou and he held on to the door frame to stop himself from falling.
‘Lou? Are you there?’ Arthur asked, and both heads in the office turned to face the plasma.
‘Erm, yes, I’m here,’ Lou at the board table stammered. ‘I’m sorry, Arthur, that gentleman is a … a colleague of mine. He’s just leaving, I believe he has an important dinner meeting to get to.’ Lou turned around and threw Lou at the door a warning look. ‘Don’t you?’
Lou simply nodded and left the room, his knees and legs shaking with his every step. At the elevators, he held on to the wall as he tried to catch his breath and let the dizziness subside. The elevator doors opened and he fell inside, thumping the ground-floor button and hunkering down in the corner of the space, moving farther and farther away from himself on the fourteenth floor.
At eight p.m., as Lou was in the boardroom of Patterson Development offices negotiating with Arthur Lynch, at the same time as Alfred and the team of men were being led to their table, Lou entered the restaurant. He offered his cashmere coat to the host, adjusted his tie, smoothed down his hair and made his way over, one hand in his pocket with the other swinging by his side. His body was loose again, nothing rigid, nothing contained. In order to function he needed to feel the swing of his body, the casual motion of a man who personally doesn’t care about the decision either way, but who will do his best to convince you otherwise, because his only concern is the client.
‘Pardon me, gentlemen, for being a little delayed,’ he said smoothly to the men whose noses were buried deep in their menus.
They all looked up and Lou was exceptionally happy to see the expression on Alfred’s face: a Mexican wave of revealing emotions, from surprise, to disappointment, to resentment, to anger. Each look told Lou that this cock-up had indeed been caused deliberately by Alfred. Lou made his way around the table greeting his dinner guests, and by the time he reached Alfred, his friend’s smug face had sent his former look of shock whimpering away into the corner.
‘Patterson is going to kill you.’ He spoke quietly from the side of his mouth. ‘But at least one deal will be done tonight. Welcome, my friend.’ He shook Lou’s hand, his deliriousness in sensing Lou’s sacking tomorrow lighting up his face.
‘It’s all been taken care of,’ Lou simply replied, turning to take his place a few seats away.
‘What do you mean?’ Alfred asked, in a tone that revealed he had forgotten where he was. Lou felt Alfred’s tight grip around his arm preventing him from moving away.
Lou looked around at the table and smiled, and then turned his back. He discreetly removed each of Alfred’s fingers from his arm. ‘I said, it’s all been taken care of,’ Lou repeated.
‘You cancelled the conference call? I don’t get it.’ Alfred smiled nervously. ‘Let
me in on it.’
‘No, no, it’s not cancelled. Don’t worry, Alfred, let’s pay our guests some attention now, shall we?’ Lou flashed his pearly whites and finally extricated himself from Alfred’s grip so he could move to his chair. ‘Now, gentlemen, what looks good on this menu? I can recommend the foie gras, I’ve had it here before, it’s a treat.’ He smiled at the team and immersed himself in the pleasure of deal-making.
At nine twenty p.m., after the visual conference call with Arthur Lynch, an exhausted yet exhilarated and triumphant Lou stood outside the window of The Saddle Room restaurant. He was wrapped up in his coat as the December wind picked up, his scarf tight around his neck, yet he didn’t feel the cold as he watched himself through the window, suave and sophisticated and holding everyone’s attention as he told a story. Everybody’s face was interested, all but Alfred, and after five minutes of his animated hand gestures and facial expressions, all the men started laughing. Lou could tell from his body movements that he was telling the story of how he and his colleagues had wandered into a gay bar in London instead of the lapdancing bar they had thought it was. Looking at himself telling the story, he decided then and there never to tell it again. He looked like a prat.
He felt a presence beside him, and he didn’t need to look around to know who it was.
‘You’re following me?’ he asked, still watching through the window.
‘Nah, just figured you’d come here,’ Gabe responded, shivering and stuffing his hands into his pockets. ‘How are you doing in there? Entertaining the crowd as usual, I see.’
‘What’s going on, Gabe?’
‘Busy man like you? You got what you wished for. Now you can do everything. Mind you, it’ll wear off by the morning so watch out for that.’
‘Which one of us is the real me?’
‘Neither of you, if you ask me.’
Lou looked at him then and frowned. ‘Enough of the deep insights, please. They don’t work on me.’
Gabe sighed. ‘Both of you are real. You both function as you always do. You’ll merge back into one and be as right as rain again.’
‘And who are you?’
Gabe rolled his eyes. ‘You’ve been watching too many movies. I’m Gabe. The same guy you dragged off the streets.’
‘What’s in these?’ Lou took the pills out of his pocket. ‘Are they dangerous?’
‘A little bit of insight. And that never killed anyone.’
‘But these things, you could really make some money from these. Who knows about them?’
‘All the right people – the people who made them – and don’t you go trying to make a fortune from them or you’ll have a few people to answer to.’
Lou backed off for the moment. ‘Gabe, you can’t just double me up and then expect me to accept it without question. This could have dire medical consequences for me, not to mention life-changing psychological reactions. And the rest of the world really needs to know about this, this is insane! We really need to sit down and talk about it.’
‘Sure we will.’ Gabe studied him. ‘And then, when you tell the world, you’ll either be locked up in a padded cell or become a freakshow act, and every day you can read about yourself in exactly the same amount of column inches as Dolly the cloned sheep. If I were you I’d just keep quiet about it all and make the best of a very fortunate situation. You’re very pale. Are you okay?’
Lou laughed hysterically. ‘No! I’m not okay. This is not normal, why are you behaving like this is normal?!’
Gabe just shrugged. ‘I’m used to it, I guess.’
‘Used to it?’ Lou gritted his teeth. ‘Well, where do I go now?’
‘Well, you’ve taken care of business at the office, and it looks like your other half is taking care of business here.’ Gabe smiled. ‘That would leave one special place for you to go.’
Lou thought about that and then slowly a smile crawled onto his face and light entered his eyes as he finally understood Gabe for the first time that evening. ‘Okay, let’s go.’
‘What?’ Gabe seemed taken aback. ‘Let’s go where?’
‘The pub. First drink is on me. Christ, the look on your face! Why, where else were you expecting me to go?’
‘Home, Lou.’
‘Home?’ Lou scrunched up his face. ‘Why would I do that?’ He turned back to watch himself at the dinner table, launching into yet another story. ‘Oh, that’s the one about the time I was stranded in Boston airport. There was this woman on the same flight as me …’ He smiled, turning around to Gabe to tell the story, but Gabe was gone.
‘Suit yourself,’ Lou mumbled. He watched himself for a little bit longer, in shock and unsure whether he was really experiencing this night. He definitely deserved a pint, and if the other half of him was heading home after the dinner, that meant he could stay out all night and nobody would notice – nobody, that was, but the person he was with. Happy days.
19.
Lou Meets Lou
A triumphant Lou rolled up to his home, gratified by the sound of the gravel beneath his wheels and the sight of his electronic gates closing behind him. The dinner meeting had been a success: he had commanded the conversation, had done some of the best convincing, negotiating and entertaining that he’d ever done. They’d laughed at his jokes, all his best ones, they’d hung on his every word. All gentlemen had left the table in agreement and content. He’d shared a final drink with an equally jubilant Alfred before driving home.
The lights in the downstairs rooms were all out, but upstairs, despite this late hour, all were on, bright enough to help land a plane.
He stepped inside, into the blackness. Usually, Ruth left the entrance-hall lamp on, and he felt around the walls for the lights. There was an ominous smell.
‘Hello?’ he called. His voice echoed three flights up to the skylight in the roof.
The house was a mess, not the usual tidiness that greeted him when he came home. Toys were scattered around the floor. He tutted.
‘Hello?’ He made his way upstairs. ‘Ruth?’
He waited for her shushing to break the silence, but it didn’t.
Instead, once he reached the landing, Ruth ran from Lucy’s bedroom, dashing by him, hand over her mouth, eyes wide and bulging. She hurried into their bathroom and closed the door. This was followed by the sound of her vomiting.
Down the hall, Lucy started to cry and call for her mother.
Lou stood in the middle of the landing, looking from one room to the other, frozen on the spot, unsure what to do.
‘Go to her, Lou,’ Ruth just about managed to say, before another encounter with the toilet bowl.
He was hesitant and Lucy’s cries got louder.
‘Lou!’ Ruth yelled, more urgently this time.
He jumped, startled by her tone, and made his way to Lucy’s room. He slowly pushed open the door, peeking inside, feeling like an intruder as he entered a world he had rarely ventured into before. Dora the Explorer welcomed him inside. The smell of vomit was pungent in his daughter’s room. Her bed was empty, but her sheets and pink duvet unkempt from where she’d slept. He followed her sounds into the bathroom and found her on the tiles, bunny slippers on her feet and throwing up into the toilet. She was crying, weeping quietly as she did so. Spitting and crying, crying and spitting, her sounds echoing in the base of the toilet.
Lou stood there, looking around, briefcase still in hand, unsure of what to do. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and covered his nose and mouth, to block the smell and to prevent the infection from spreading to him.
Ruth returned, much to his relief, and noted him just idly standing by watching his five-year-old daughter being ill, and then barged by him to tend to her.
‘It’s okay, sweetheart.’ Ruth fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around her daughter. ‘Lou, I need you to get me two damp facecloths.’
‘Damp?’
‘Run them under some cold water and rinse them out so they’re not dripping wet,’ she explain
ed calmly.
‘Of course, yes.’ He shook his head at himself. He wandered slowly out of the bedroom, then froze once again on the landing. Looked left, looked right. He returned to the bedroom. ‘Facecloths are in the …’
‘Hotpress,’ Ruth said.
‘Of course.’ He made his way to the hotpress and, still with his briefcase in hand and his coat on, with one hand he fingered the various colours of facecloths. Brown, beige or white. He couldn’t decide. Choosing brown, he returned to Lucy and Ruth, ran them under the tap and handed them to her, hoping what he’d done was correct.
‘Not just yet,’ Ruth explained, rubbing Lucy’s back as her daughter took a break.
‘Okay, erm, where will I put them?’
‘Beside her bed. And can you change her sheets? She had an accident.’
Lucy started to weep again, tiredly nuzzling into her mother’s chest. Ruth’s face was pale, her hair tied back harshly, her eyes tired, red and swollen. It seemed it had already been a hectic night.
‘The sheets are in the hotpress too. And the Deoralite is in the medicine cabinet in the utility room.’
‘The what?’
‘Deoralite. Lucy likes blackcurrant. Oh God,’ she said, jumping up, hand over her mouth again, and running down the hall to their own en suite.
Lou was left in the bathroom alone with Lucy, whose eyes were closed as she leaned up against the bath. Then she looked at him sleepily. He backed out of the bathroom and started to remove the soiled sheets from her bed. As he was doing so, he heard Pud’s cries from the next room. He sighed, finally put down his briefcase, took off his coat and suit jacket, and threw them out of the way, into Dora’s tent. He opened the top button of his shirt, loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves.
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 14