The Book of Tomorrow

by Cecelia Ahern

  ‘Mum, please. Come out to the fresh air. We can walk around the trees and the lakes, we can see the swans. I bet you’ve never even walked around these grounds before. Come on. There’s a beautiful castle and lots of lovely walks. There’s even a walled garden.’

  She looked right at me then. I could see her pupils dilate as she focused on me. She said, ‘Secret garden,’ and she smiled.

  ‘Yes, Mum. Have you been there?’

  ‘Roses.’

  ‘Yes, there’s lots of roses.’

  ‘Mmm. Pretty,’ she said softly, then as though she’d suddenly become from the North of England and dropped a few words, she said, ‘Prettier than rose.’ She said this looking out the window and then she looked at me and used her forefinger to trace the outline of my face. ‘Prettier than rose.’

  I smiled. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘She’s walked around here before, hasn’t she?’ I exploded into the kitchen, full of energy, which startled Rosaleen.

  She raised her finger to her lips. Arthur was on the phone, an old-fashioned thing that was stuck to the wall.

  ‘Rosaleen,’ I whispered, ‘she talked.’

  She stopped rolling out dough and turned to me. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said that the walled garden was a secret garden and that I was as pretty as a rose,’ I beamed. ‘Or prettier, actually.’

  Rosaleen’s face hardened. ‘That’s nice, dear.’

  ‘That’s nice? That’s fucking nice?’ I exploded.

  Rosaleen and Arthur both shushed me.

  ‘Yes. That’s Tamara,’ Arthur said.

  ‘Who’s on the phone?’

  ‘Barbara,’ Rosaleen said, strands coming loose around the front of her pinned-back hair and really starting to sweat as she now put some elbow grease into rolling the dough.

  ‘Can I talk to her?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘All right. All right. We’ll come to some sort of arrangement. Yes. All right. Indeed. All right. Bye.’

  He hung up.

  ‘I said I wanted to talk to her.’

  ‘Oh, well, she said she had to go.’

  ‘She’s probably sleeping with the pool boy. Busy, busy,’ I said cattily. I’ve no idea where that came from. ‘So what did she call about?’

  Arthur looked at Rosaleen. ‘Well, unfortunately they’re having to sell the place where all your things were being stored and so they can’t keep them any more.’

  ‘Well, there’s no space here,’ Rosaleen said immediately, turning back to the counter and tossing flour on the worktop.

  This was familiar to me.

  ‘What about the garage?’ I asked, the diary now making sense.

  ‘There’s no space.’

  ‘We’ll find space,’ Arthur said to me, pleasantly.

  ‘We won’t because there is none.’ Rosaleen picked up the next dough ball and threw it down on the counter, and started pushing her hands into it, squeezing it, punching it, making some sort of shape.

  ‘There’s room in the garage,’ Arthur said.

  Rosaleen stalled but didn’t turn around. ‘There’s not.’

  I looked from one to the other, initially intrigued by this, for once, public disagreement.

  ‘Why, what’s in there?’ I asked.

  Rosaleen kept rolling.

  ‘We’ll have to make room, Rosaleen,’ Arthur was saying, really firmly now, and just as she was about to interject he raised his voice: ‘There’s nowhere else.’

  That was final.

  I had a horrible feeling then that the conversation about me and Mum moving in with them wouldn’t have gone too differently.

  They didn’t object when I brought the blanket outside to the garden with a plate of fruit and sat under the tree. The sun shower had left the grass wet but I wasn’t planning on moving. The air was fresh and the sun was fighting its way back out again. From my place on the grass I could see Mum sitting at the window gazing outside. I willed her to come out, for the sake of my own sanity as well as hers. Not surprisingly, she didn’t join me.

  Rosaleen busied herself about the kitchen. Arthur was sitting at the table listening to the radio at full blast and flicking through the paper. I watched Rosaleen leave the kitchen with the tray and a minute later she appeared in Mum’s bedroom. I watched her do her usual fussing about. Window, table, linen, cutlery.

  After Rosaleen had placed the tray down on the table she stood straight and looked at Mum. I sat up. It was unusual, whatever she was doing. Then her mouth opened and closed, as she said something.

  Mum looked up at her, said something, then looked away.

  I stood up automatically, watching them both.

  I ran inside, almost knocking Arthur over, and charged up the stairs. I pushed open Mum’s door and I heard a yelp and a smash as it smacked against Rosaleen and her tray. Everything dropped to the floor.

  ‘Oh, my!’ Rosaleen hunkered down and grabbed everything in a panic. Her dress lifted up her thigh and she had surprisingly youthful legs. Mum had twisted around in her chair to see, looked at me, smiled and then faced the window again. I tried to help Rosaleen but she wouldn’t let me, swatting me away and racing to pick up every item I reached for time and time again. I followed her down the stairs, like a puppy, almost nipping at her heels.

  ‘What did she say?’ I tried to keep my voice down so Mum wouldn’t hear us talking about her.

  Rosaleen, still in shock from my attack was trembling and a little pale. She wobbled her way into the kitchen with the big tray.

  ‘Well?’ I asked, following her.

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘What was that noise?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘What did she say?’ I asked.

  Rosaleen looked from Arthur to me, her eyes wide and bright green, her pupils so tiny her green eyes glowed.

  ‘The tray dropped,’ she said to Arthur and then to me, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why are you lying?’

  Her face transformed. Morphed into something so angry, I wanted to take it all back straightaway: it was my imagination, I had made it up, I was looking for attention…I don’t know. I was confused.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I stuttered. ‘I didn’t mean to accuse you of lying. It just looked like she said something. That’s all.’

  ‘She said, thank you. I said she was welcome.’

  I forced myself to remember Mum’s lips. ‘She said sorry,’ I blurted out.

  Rosaleen froze. Arthur lifted his head from the newspaper.

  ‘She said sorry, didn’t she?’ I asked, looking from one to

  the other. ‘Why did she say that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You must know, Arthur.’ I looked at him. ‘Does that mean anything to you? Why would she say sorry?’

  ‘I suppose she just feels she’s being a nuisance,’ Rosaleen jumped in and spoke for him. ‘But she’s not. I don’t mind cooking for her. It’s no bother.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Arthur clearly couldn’t wait to leave and as soon as he’d gone, the day returned to what it always was.

  I wanted to have a look around the garage when Rosaleen was gone and I learned the best thing to do was to pretend you didn’t want her to go. That way, she was never suspicious.

  ‘Can I bring something over with you to the bungalow?’

  ‘No,’ she said, agitated, still annoyed with me.

  ‘Oh, okay, but thank you very much for offering, Tamara.’ I rolled my eyes.

  She took out the freshly baked brown bread, the fresh apple pie. A casserole dish of something else and a few Tupperware boxes. Enough for a week’s dinner.

  ‘Well, who lives there?’

  No answer.

  ‘Come on, Rosaleen. I don’t know what happened to you in your last life but I’m not the Gestapo. I’m sixteen years old and I only want to know because there’s absolutely nothing for me to do. Perhaps there’s somebody over there who I could talk to that’s not nearing death.’
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br />   ‘My mother,’ she said finally.

  I waited for the rest of the sentence. My mother told me to mind my own business. My mother told me to always wear tea dresses. My mother told me never to reveal her apple pie recipe. My mother told me to never enjoy sex. But nothing else came. Her mother. Her mother lived across the road.

  ‘Why have you never mentioned it?’

  She looked a little embarrassed. ‘Oh, you know…’

  ‘No. Is she embarrassing? Sometimes my parents were embarrassing.’

  ‘No, she’s…she’s old.’

  ‘Old people are cute. Can I meet her?’

  ‘No, Tamara. Not yet, anyway,’ she softened. ‘Her health isn’t the best. She can’t move around. She’s not good with new people. It makes her anxious.’

  ‘So that’s why you’re always back and forth. Poor you always having to look after everybody else.’

  She seemed touched by that.

  ‘I’m all she has. I have to take care of her.’

  ‘Are you sure I can’t help you? I won’t talk to her or anything.’

  ‘No, thank you, Tamara. Thank you for asking.’

  ‘So did she move closer to you so you could take care of her?’

  ‘No.’ She spooned chicken and tomato sauce into a casserole dish.

  ‘Did you move closer to her so that you could take care of her?’

  ‘No.’ She put two boil-in-the-bag rice sachets into another Tupperware box. ‘She’s always lived there.’

  I thought about that for a minute while watching her.

  ‘Hold on, so that’s where you grew up?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply, placing everything on a tray. ‘That’s the house I grew up in.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t move far away, did you? So did you and Arthur move in here after you were married?’

  ‘Yes, Tamara. Now that’s enough questions. You know curiosity killed the cat.’ She smiled briefly before leaving the kitchen.

  ‘Boredom killed the fucking cat,’ I shouted at the closed door.

  I sloped into the living room as I had done every morning and watched her scurry across the road, like a little paranoid hamster anxious for a hawk to swoop down and grab her.

  She dropped a dishtowel and I waited for her to stop and pick it up. But she didn’t. She didn’t appear to notice. I quickly went outside and down the garden path, stalling at the gate like an obedient child as I waited for her to come running back out.

  I bravely stepped beyond the gate. And then once I’d done that, I walked to the entrance of the grounds, expecting by now for her to have noticed her missing dishtowel. Red alert; there was an apple pie somewhere omitting heat. The bungalow was a red-brick boring-looking thing, two windows covered in white netting, like two eyes with glaucoma, and separated by a snot-green door. The windows seemed dark and even though they weren’t, the glass seemed tinted and only reflected the light from outside, showing no signs of life inside. I picked up the blue chequered dishtowel from the middle of the road, which was mostly always-mostly always, very dead-empty of traffic. The gate to the front garden was so low I could lift my leg over it. I thought it would be the safest way, or fifty years of rusted gate would give me away. I slowly walked up the path and looked through the window on the right of the building. I pressed my face up against the glass and tried to see through the horrific netting. After all the mystery I don’t quite know what I was expecting to see. Some great secret, a crazy sect, dead bodies, a hippy commune, some weird sex thing with a lot of keys in an ashtray…I don’t know. Anything, anything, but an electric heater in place of a real fire, surrounded by dodgy brown tiles and tiled mantel, green carpet and jaded chairs with wooden handles and green crushed-velvet cushions. It was all a bit sad, really. It was all a bit like a dentist’s waiting room, and I felt a little bad. Rosaleen hadn’t been hiding anything at all. Well, not quite: she’d been hiding the biggest home design disaster of the century.

  Instead of ringing the doorbell I walked round the side of the house. Immediately as I turned the corner I could see that there was a small garden with a large garage, just like the one at the back of the gatehouse, at the bottom of the land. From the window of the workshed something sparkled. At first I thought it was a camera flash, but then I realised that whatever had dazzled my eyes and momentarily blinded me only did so each time it caught the sunlight. As I neared the end of the side passage I yearned to see what was around the corner.

  Rosaleen stepped in front of me and I jumped, my scream echoing down the narrow alleyway. Then I laughed.

  Rosaleen instantly shushed me, seeming jittery.

  ‘Sorry,’ I smiled. ‘I hope I didn’t scare your mum. You dropped this on the road. Just came to give it to you. What is that light?’

  ‘What light?’ She stepped a little to her right and my eyes were protected but my view blocked.

  ‘Thanks.’ I rubbed my eyes.

  ‘You best go back to the house,’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh, come on, can I not at least say hello? It’s all a bit too Scooby-Doo for me. You know, mysterious.’

  ‘There’s no mystery. My mother isn’t good in the company of strangers. Perhaps we’ll have her over for dinner some day if she’s up to it.’

  ‘Cool.’ Another over-fifty to add to my list of acquaintances.

  I was going to try again one last time, seeing as she’d softened so much but I heard a vehicle coming down the road and hoping it was Marcus, I saluted Rosaleen, turned around and ran.

  If it hadn’t been Marcus, then that five seconds of hope would have been the most exciting thing that had happened that day. But it turned out it was him. He was standing at the porch of the gatehouse by the time I ran across the road, running his hand through his hair and glancing at his reflection in the glass.

  ‘There’s a hair out of place just over your ear,’ I called from the gate.

  He spun round with a smile. ‘Goodwin. Good to see you.’

  ‘Have you come for the book?’

  He smiled. ‘Eh, yeah, the book, of course. Couldn’t stop thinking about…that damn book.’

  ‘Actually, there’s a problem with the book.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘No, I mean the actual book, the real book.’

  ‘You lost it.’

  ‘No I didn’t lose it…’

  ‘Don’t believe you. Do you know what the punishment for losing library books is?’

  ‘Spend a day with you?’

  ‘No, Goodwin. If you do the crime you have to do the time. I am, revoking your travelling library card.’

  ‘Nooo, anything but my travelling library card.’

  ‘Yes. Come on, give it to me.’ He came close and started poking and prodding my body. ‘Where is it? Is it in here?’ His hands were everywhere, in my jeans pockets, padding down my stomach.

  ‘I refuse to give it up,’ I laughed. ‘Seriously, Marcus, I haven’t lost it but you can’t have it back.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand the rules of the travelling library. You see, you borrow a book, you read it, or dance around with it if that makes you happy, and then you return it to the handsome librarian.’

  ‘No, you see, what happened, was that somebody broke the lock and discovered that it wasn’t a book, but in fact a diary. All the pages were totally blank.’

  Totally blank. Very dead.

  ‘So then, somebody wrote in it.’

  ‘Ah…somebody. That wouldn’t happen to be you?’

  ‘Actually, no. I don’t know who wrote in it.’ I smiled but of course I was being serious. ‘It’s just the first few pages. I could rip them out and give you back the book but…’

  ‘You could just say you lost it. It would be easier.’

  ‘Stay there a minute.’

  I ran into the house and upstairs, lifted the floorboard and took the diary out. I brought it outside, hugged it close to my chest.

  ‘You can’t read it but here’s proof th
at I haven’t lost it. I’ll pay or do whatever…I just can’t give it back.’

  He realised I was serious.

  ‘No, that’s fine. One book isn’t going to make a difference. Can I read it? Is there anything in there about me?’

  I laughed and lifted it out of his reach. But he was too good for me, much taller, and he grabbed it. I panicked. He opened the first page and I waited for him to read the embarrasing admittance that Dad had killed himself.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told Weseley about dad,’ he read. ‘Who’s Weseley?’ he asked, looking at me.

  ‘I have no idea.’ I tried to grab it from him, no longer laughing. ‘Give it back, Marcus.’

  He handed it back. ‘Sorry I shouldn’t have read it but you got the date wrong. The fifth is tomorrow.’

  I just shook my head. At least it wasn’t just me imagining it. This diary thing was really happening.

  ‘I’m sorry for reading it.’

  ‘No, it’s really okay. I didn’t write this.’

  ‘Maybe it was one of the Kilsaneys.’

  I shuddered and closed the book. I wanted so much to read it again.

  ‘Oh, by the way, I found Sister Ignatius!’

  ‘Alive, I hope.’

  ‘She lives on the other side of the grounds. I’ll direct you.’

  ‘No, Goodwin, I don’t trust you. The last residence you led me to was a dilapidated castle.’

  ‘I’ll bring you to her myself. Come on, Bookman, to the Bookmobile!’ I ran down the path and hopped on the bus.

  He laughed and followed me.

  We pulled up outside the sisters’ house and I pressed down on the horn.

  ‘Tamara, you can’t do that. It’s a convent.’

  ‘Honestly, this isn’t a regular convent.’ I sounded the horn again.

  A woman dressed in a black skirt, black jumper, white shirt with a gold cross and a black and white veil opened the door, looking very cross. She was older than Sister Ignatius. I jumped out of the car.

  ‘What’s all this racket?’

  ‘We’re looking for Sister Ignatius. She wanted to borrow a book.’

  ‘It’s prayer time, she can’t be disrupted.’

  ‘Oh. Well, hold on a minute.’ I rummaged around in the back of the bus. ‘Could you please give her this and tell her it’s from Tamara. It’s a special delivery. She ordered it last week.’