He made his way back inside, where his mother and father threw him such a look, he couldn’t for once think of anything to say to them. He turned away from them and returned to the kitchen, where Ruth was still sitting at the table feeding Pud.
‘Ruthy,’ he cleared his throat and made an attempt at a Lou-style apology, the kind of apology that never involved the word sorry, ‘it’s just that Gabe is after my job, you see. You didn’t understand that, I know, but he is. So when he left bright and early this morning to get to work –’
‘He left five minutes ago.’ She cut him off straight away, not turning around, not looking at him. ‘He stayed in one of the spare rooms because I’m not too sure if he’s got anywhere else to go. He got up and made us all breakfast and then I called him a taxi, which I paid for so that he could get to work. He just left five minutes ago and so he, too, is late for work. So you can take your accusations and your behaviour and follow him in there, where you can act the bully-boy.’
‘Ruthy, I –’
‘You’re right, Lou, and I’m wrong. It’s clear from this morning’s behaviour that you’re totally in control of things and not in the least bit stressed,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I was such a fool to think you needed an extra hour’s sleep. Now, Pud,’ Ruth lifted the baby from his chair and kissed his food-stained face, ‘let’s go give you a bath,’ she smiled.
Pud clapped his hands and turned to jelly under her raspberry kisses. Ruth walked towards Lou with Pud in her arms, and for a moment Lou softened at the look on his son’s face, his smile so big it could light up the world if ever the moon lost its beam. He prepared to take Pud in his arms but it didn’t happen. Ruth walked right on by, cuddling Pud tight while he laughed uproariously as though her kisses were the funniest thing that had happened in his short life. Lou acknowledged the rejection. For about five seconds. And then he realised that was five seconds out of the time needed for him to get to work. And so he dashed.
In record time, and thankfully due to Sergeant O’Reilly not being present when Lou put his foot down and fired his way to work, Lou arrived at the office at ten fifteen a.m.; the latest he had ever arrived at the office. He still had a few minutes before the meeting ended, and so, spitting on his hand and smoothing down his hair, which hadn’t been washed, and running his hands across his face, which hadn’t been shaved, he shook off the waves of dizziness that his hangover had brought, took a deep breath and then entered the boardroom.
There was an intake of breath at the sight of him. It wasn’t that he looked so bad, it was just that, for Lou, he wasn’t perfect. He was always perfect. He took a seat opposite Alfred, who beamed with astonishment and absolute delight at his friend’s apparent breakdown.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ Lou addressed the table of twelve more calmly than he felt, ‘I was up all night with one of those tummy bugs, but I’m okay now, I think.’
Faces nodded in sympathy and understanding.
‘Bruce Archer has that very same bug,’ Alfred smirked, and he winked at Mr Patterson.
The switch was flicked and Lou’s blood began to boil, expecting any minute for a loud whistling to drift from his nose as he reached boiling point. He sat through the meeting, fighting flushes and nausea, while the vein in his forehead pulsated at full force.
‘And so, tonight is an important night, lads.’ Mr Patterson turned to Lou, and Lou zoned in on the conversation.
‘Yes, I have the audio-visual conference call with Arthur Lynch,’ Lou spoke up. ‘That’s at seven thirty, and I’m sure it will all go without a hitch. I’ve come up with a great number of responses to his concerns, which we went through during the week. I don’t think we need to go through them again –’
‘Hold on, hold on.’ Mr Patterson lifted a finger to stall him and it was only then that Lou noticed that Alfred’s cheeks had lifted into a great big smile.
Lou stared at Alfred to catch his eye, hoping for a hint, a give-away, but Alfred avoided him.
‘No, Lou, you and Alfred have a dinner with Thomas Crooke and his partner, this is the meeting we’ve been trying to get all year,’ Mr Patterson laughed nervously.
Crumble, crumble, crumble. It was all coming tumbling down. Lou shuffled through his schedule, ran shaky fingers through his hair and wiped the beads of sweat on his forehead. He ran his finger along the freshly printed schedule, his tired eyes finding it hard to focus, his clammy forefinger smudging the words as he moved it along the page. There it was, the visual conference call with Arthur Lynch. No mention of a dinner. No damn mention of a damn dinner.
‘Mr Patterson, I’m well aware of the long-hoped-for meeting with Thomas Crooke,’ Lou cleared his throat and looked at Alfred with confusion, ‘but nobody confirmed any dinner with me, and I made it known to Alfred last week that I have a meeting with Arthur Lynch at seven thirty p.m. tonight,’ he repeated with some urgency. ‘Alfred? Do you know about this dinner meeting?’
‘Well, yeah, Lou,’ Alfred said in a ridiculing tone, with a shrug that went with it. ‘Of course I do. I cleared my schedule as soon as they confirmed it. It’s the biggest chance we’ve got to make the Manhattan development work. We’ve all been talking about this for months.’
The others around the table squirmed uncomfortably in their seats, though there were some, Lou was certain, who would be enjoying this moment profusely, documenting every sigh, look and word to rehash it to others as soon as they were out of the room.
‘Everybody, you can all get back to work,’ Mr Patterson said with concern. ‘We need to deal with this rather urgently, I fear.’
The room emptied and all that were left at the table were Lou, Alfred and Mr Patterson; and Lou instantly knew by Alfred’s stance and the look on his face, by his stubby fingers pressed together in prayer below his chin, that Alfred had already taken the higher moral ground on this one. Alfred was in his favourite mode, his most comfortable position of attack.
‘Alfred, how long have you known about this dinner and why didn’t you tell me?’ Lou immediately went on the offensive.
‘I told you, Lou.’ Alfred addressed him as though he were slow and unable to comprehend.
With Lou a sweaty, unshaven mess and Alfred so cool, he knew he wasn’t coming out of this looking the best. He removed his shaky fingers from the schedule and clasped his hands together.
‘It’s a mess, a bloody mess.’ Mr Patterson rubbed his chin roughly with his hands. ‘I needed both of you at that dinner, but I can’t have you missing the call with Arthur. The dinner can’t be changed, it took us too long to get it in the first place. How about the call with Arthur?’
Lou swallowed. ‘I’ll work on it.’
‘If not, there’s nothing we can do, except for Alfred to begin things, and Lou, as soon as you’ve finished your meeting, you make your way as quickly as you can to Alfred.’
‘Lou has serious negotiations to discuss, so he’ll be lucky if he makes it to the restaurant for after-dinner mints. I’ll be well able to manage it, Laurence.’ Alfred spoke from the side of his mouth with the same smirk that made Lou want to pick up the water jug from the middle of the table and bash it against Alfred’s head. ‘I’m capable of doing it alone.’
‘Yes, well, let’s hope Lou negotiates fast and that he’s successful, otherwise this entire day will have been a waste of time,’ Mr Patterson snapped, gathering his papers and standing up. Meeting dismissed.
Lou felt like he was in the middle of a nightmare; everything was falling apart, all his good work was being sabotaged.
‘Well, that was a disappointing meeting. I thought he was going to tell us about who was taking over when he leaves,’ Alfred said lazily. ‘Not a word out of him, would you believe. I really think he owes it to us to let us know, but I have been in the company longer than you, so …’
‘Alfred?’ Lou stared at him with amazement.
‘What?’ Alfred took a packet of chewing gum out of his pocket and threw one into his mouth. He offered one to Lou, w
ho shook his head wildly.
‘I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. What the hell is going on here?’
‘You’re hungover is what’s going on. You look more like the homeless man than the homeless man himself,’ Alfred laughed. ‘And you should really take one of these,’ he offered the mint gum again, ‘your breath stinks of vomit.’
Lou waved them away again.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about the dinner, Alfred?’ he said angrily.
‘I told you,’ Alfred said, smacking the gum in his mouth. ‘I definitely told you. Or I told Alison. Or was it Alison? Maybe it was the other one, the one with the really big boobs. You know, the one you were banging?’
Lou stormed off on him then and headed straight to Alison’s desk, where he threw the details of that evening’s dinner on her keyboard, stopping the acrylic nails from tapping.
She narrowed her eyes and read the brief.
‘What’s this?’
‘A dinner tonight. A very important one. At eight p.m. That I have to be at.’ He paced the area before her while she read it.
‘But you can’t, you have the conference call.’
‘I know, Alison,’ he snapped. ‘But I need to be at this.’ He stabbed a finger on the page. ‘Make it happen.’ He rushed into his office and slammed the door. He froze before he got to his desk. On the surface his mail was laid out.
He backtracked and opened his office door again.
Alison, who had snapped to it quickly, hung up the phone and looked up at him. ‘Yes?’ she said eagerly.
‘The mail.’
‘Yes?’
‘When did it get here?’
‘First thing this morning. Gabe delivered it the same time as always.’
‘He can’t have,’ Lou objected. ‘Did you see him?’
‘Yes,’ she said, concern on her face. ‘He brought me a coffee too. Just before nine, I think.’
‘But he can’t have. He was at my house,’ Lou said, more to himself.
‘Em, Lou, just one thing before you go … Is this a bad time to go over some details for your dad’s party?’
She’d barely finished her sentence before he’d gone back into his office and slammed the door behind him.
There are many types of wake-up calls in the world. For Lou Suffern, a wake-up call was a duty for his devoted BlackBerry to perform on a daily basis. At six a.m. every morning, when he was in bed both sleeping and dreaming at the same time, thinking of yesterday and planning tomorrow, his BlackBerry would dutifully and loudly ring in an alarming and screeching tone purposely uneasy on the ear. It would reach out from the bedside table and prod him right in the subconscious, taking him away from his slumber and dragging him into the world of the awakened. When this happened, Lou would wake up; eyes closed, then open. Body in bed, then out of bed; naked, then clothed. This, for Lou, was what waking up was about. It was the transition period from sleep to work.
For other people wake-up calls took a different form. For Alison at the office it was the pregnancy scare at sixteen that had forced her to make some choices; for Mr Patterson it was the birth of his first child that had made him see the world in a different light and affected every single decision he made. For Alfred it was his father’s loss of their millions when Alfred was twelve years of age that forced him to attend state school for a year, and although they had returned to their wealthy state without anybody of importance knowing about the family hiccup, this experience changed how he saw life and people forever. For Ruth, her wake-up call was when, on their summer holidays, she walked in on her husband in their bed with their twenty-six-year-old Polish nanny. For little Lucy at only five years old, it was when she looked out at the audience of her school play and saw an empty seat beside her mother. There are many types of wake-up calls, but only one that holds any real importance.
Today, though, Lou was experiencing a very different kind of wake-up call. Lou Suffern, you see, wasn’t aware that a person could be awakened when their eyes were already open. He didn’t realise that a person could be awakened when they were already out of their bed, dressed in a smart suit, doing deals and overseeing meetings. He didn’t realise a person could be awakened when they considered themselves to be calm, composed and collected, able to deal with life and all it had to throw at them. The alarm bells were ringing, louder and louder in his ear, and nobody but his subconscious could hear them. He was trying to knock it off, to hit the snooze button so that he could nestle down in the lifestyle he felt cosy with, but it wasn’t working. He didn’t know that he couldn’t tell life when he was ready to learn, but that life would teach him when it was good and ready. He didn’t know that he couldn’t press buttons and suddenly know it all; that it was the buttons in him that would be pressed.
Lou Suffern thought he knew it all.
But he was only about to scratch the surface.
17.
Bump in the Night
At seven p.m. that evening, when the rest of his colleagues had been spat out of the office building and then sucked in by the spreading Christmas mania outside, Lou Suffern remained inside at his desk, feeling less like the dapper businessman and more like Aloysius, the schoolboy on detention, whom he’d fought so hard over the years to leave behind. Aloysius stared at the files on the desk before him with all the same excitement as being faced with a plate of veg, their very green existence presiding over his freedom. On discovering there was absolutely no possibility for Lou to cancel or rearrange the conference call, a seemingly genuinely disappointed Alfred had given Lou his best puppy eyes and gone into damage-limitation mode, sucking up any hint of involvement in the cock-up with all the strength of a Dyson, and worked on the best methods to approach the deal. As convincing as always, Alfred left Lou unable to remember what his issue had been with him in the first place, wondering why he’d blamed him for this mess at all. Alfred had this effect on people time and time again, taking the same course as a boomerang that had been dragged through shit yet still managed to find its way back to the same pair of open hands.
Outside was black and cold. Lines of traffic filled every bridge and quay as people made their way home, counting down the days of this mad rush to Christmas. Harry was right, it was all moving too quickly, the build-up feeling more of an occasion than the moment itself. Lou’s head pulsated more than it had that morning, and his left eye throbbed as the migraine worsened. He lowered the lamp on his desk, feeling sensitive to the light. He could barely think, let alone string a sentence together, and so he wrapped himself up in his cashmere coat and scarf and left his office to get to the nearest shop or pharmacy for some headache pills. He knew he was hungover but he was also sure he was coming down with something; the last few days he’d felt extraordinarily unlike himself. Disorganised, unsure of himself; traits that were surely due to illness.
The office corridors were dark; lights were out in all the private offices apart from a few emergency lights that were lowly lit for security guards doing their rounds. He pressed the elevator call button and waited for the start-up sound of the ropes pulling the elevator up the shaft. All was silent. He pressed the button again and looked up at the displayed levels. The ground floor was lit up but there was no movement. He pressed the button again. Nothing happened. He pressed it a few more times until the anger could no longer be suppressed and so he began punching. Out of service. Typical.
He moved away from the elevator in search of the fire escape and his head continued to pound. With thirty minutes until his meeting, he had just enough time to run up and down thirteen floors with the pills. Leaving the familiarity of the main office corridor, he pushed through a few doors he’d never really noticed before, and found himself in corridors that had narrowed and where the plush carpets disappeared. The thick walnut doors and wall panelling of his section were replaced by white paint and chipboard and the office sizes were reduced to box rooms. Instead of the fine art collection he studied each day in the corridors of his office, photocopiers and fax
machines lined the halls.
Turning the corner, he stalled and chuckled to himself, Gabe’s secrets of speed revealed. Before him was a service elevator, and it all made sense. The doors were wide open, a ghastly white light of a long fluorescent strip illuminating the small grey cube. He stepped inside, his eyes aching from the light, and before he could even reach for the buttons on the panel, the doors closed and the elevator descended speedily. Its speed was twice as fast as the regular elevators, and again Lou was satisfied to have caught on to how Gabe had managed to make it from one place to another so quickly.
While the elevator continued to move downward he pressed the ground-floor button but it failed to light up. He thumped it a few times and, with growing concern, watched as the light moved from each floor number. Twelve, eleven, ten … The elevator picked up speed as it descended. Nine, eight, seven … It showed no signs of slowing. The elevator was rattling now as it sped along the ropes, and with growing fear and anxiety Lou began to press all of the buttons he could find, alarm included, but it was to no avail. The elevator continued to fall through the shaft on a course of its own choosing.
Only floors away from the ground level, Lou moved away from the doors quickly and hunched down, huddling in the corner of the elevator. He tucked his head between his knees, crossed his fingers and braced himself for the crash position.
Seconds later, the elevator slowed and suddenly stopped. Inside the elevator shaft, the cube bounced on the end of the ropes and shuddered from its sudden halt. When Lou opened his eyes, which had been scrunched shut, he saw that he’d stopped on the basement floor. As though the elevator had functioned normally the entire time, it omitted a cheery ping and the doors slid open. He shuddered at the sight, it was hardly the welcoming committee that greeted him each time he stepped off on the fourteenth floor. The basement was cold and dark, and the ground concrete and dusty. Not wanting to get off on this floor, he pressed the ground-floor button again to quickly get back to marble surfaces and carpets, to creamy toffee swirls and chromes, but again the button failed to light up, the elevator failed to respond and its doors stayed open. He had no choice but to step out and try to find the fire escape so that he could climb up a level to the ground floor. As soon as he stepped out of the elevator and placed both feet on the basement floor, the doors slid closed and the elevator ascended.
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 12
