Cecelia Ahern - The Marble Collector - The life-affirming, gripping and emotional bestseller about a father’s secrets

And in the week that Mammy stops wearing black and bakes us plum pie for dessert, I don’t tell anybody why. One thing I learned about carrying marbles in my pockets in case Father Murphy locked me in the dark room, and going out with Hamish and pretending to other kids that I’ve never played marbles before, is that keeping secrets makes me feel powerful.

Mid-morning and back home, I lug Dad’s boxes into the middle of the living room floor and separate two I already know, boxes of sentimental and important items that we had to keep. I move them aside to make way for the three that are new to me. I’m mystified. Mum and I packed up his entire apartment, but I did not pack these boxes. I make myself a fresh cup of tea and begin emptying the same box I opened earlier, wanting to pick up where I left off. It is peculiar to have time to myself. Taking care and time, I start to go through Dad’s inventory.

Latticino core swirls, divided core swirls, ribbon core swirls, Joseph’s coat swirls. I take them out and line them up beside their boxes, crouched on the floor like one of my sons with their cars. I push my face up to them, examining the interiors, trying to compare and contrast. I marvel at the colours and detail; some are cloudy, some are clear, some appear to have trapped rainbows inside, while others have mini tornadoes frozen in a moment. Some have a base glass colour and nothing else. Despite being grouped together under these various alien titles I can’t tell the difference no matter how hard I try. Absolutely every single one of them is unique and I have to be careful not to mix them up.

The description of each marble boggles my mind too as I try to identify which of the core swirls is the gooseberry, caramel or custard. Which is the ‘beach ball’ peppermint swirl, which is the one with mica. But I’ve no doubt Dad knew, he knew them all. Micas, slags, opaques and clearies, some so complex it’s as though they house entire galaxies inside, others one single solid colour. Dark, bright, eerie and hypnotic, he has them all.

And then I come across a box that makes me laugh. Dad, who hated animals, who refused every plea for me to get a pet, has an entire collection of what are called ‘Sulphides’. Transparent marbles with animal figures inside, like he has his own farmyard within his tiny marbles. Dogs, cats, squirrels and birds. He even has an elephant. The one which stands out the most to me is a clear marble with an angel inside. It’s this that I hold and study for some time, straightening my aching back, trying to grasp what I’ve found, wondering when, what part of his life did this all occur. When we left the house did he watch us drive off and disappear to his ‘farmyard animals’? Tend to them privately in his own world. Was it before I was born? Or was it after he and Mum divorced, filling his solitude with a new hobby?

There is a little empty box, an Akro Agate Company retailer stock box, to be precise, which Dad has valued at a surprising $400–$700. There’s even a glass bottle with a marble inside, listed as a Codd bottle and valued at $2,100. It seems he didn’t just collect marbles, he also collected their presentation boxes, probably hoping to find the missing pieces of the jigsaw as the years went by. I feel a wave of sadness for him that that won’t happen now, that these marbles have been sitting in boxes for a year and he never knew to ask for them because he forgot that they were there.

I line them up, I watch them roll, the movement of colours inside like kaleidoscopes. And then when every inch of my carpet is covered, I sit up, straighten my spine till it clicks. I’m not sure what else to do, but I don’t want to put them away again. They look so beautiful lining my floor, like a candy army.

I pick up the inventory and try once more to see if I can identify them myself, playing my own little marble game, and as I do so, I notice that not everything written on the list is on my floor.

I check the box again and it’s empty, apart from some mesh bags and boxes which are collectable for their condition alone, despite there being no marbles inside them. I flip the top of the third box open and peer inside, but it’s just a load of old newspapers and brochures, nothing like the Aladdin’s cave of the first two boxes.

After my thorough search, which I repeat two more times, I can confirm that there are two missing items from the inventory. Allocated turquoise and yellow circular stickers, one is described as an Akro Agate Company box, circa 1930, the original sample case carried by salesmen as they made their calls. Dad has priced it at $7,500–$12,500. The other is what’s called World’s Best Moons. A Christensen Agate Company original box of twenty-five marbles, listed between $4,000–$7,000. His two most valuable items are gone.

I sit in a kind of stunned silence, until I realise I’m holding my breath and need to exhale.

Dad could have sold them. He went to the trouble of having them valued, so it would make sense for him to have sold them, and the most expensive ones too. He was having money troubles, we know that; perhaps he had to sell his beloved marbles just to get by. But it seems unlikely. Everything has been so well documented and catalogued, he would have made a note of their sale, probably even included the receipt. The two missing collections are written proudly and boldly on the inventory, as present as everything else in the inventory that sits on the floor.

First I’m baffled. Then I’m annoyed that Mum never told me about this collection. That objects held in such regard were packed away and forgotten. I don’t have any memory of Dad and marbles, but that’s not to say it didn’t happen. I know he liked his secrets. I cast my mind back to the man before the stroke and I see pinstripe suits, cigarette smoke. Talk about stock markets and economics, shares up and down, the news or football always on the radio and television, and more recently car-talk. Nothing in my memory bank tells me anything about marbles, and I’m struggling to square this collection – this careful passion – with the man I recall from when I was growing up.

A new thought occurs. I wonder if in fact they’re Dad’s marbles at all. Perhaps he inherited them. His dad died when he was young, and he had a stepfather, Mattie. But from what I know about Mattie it seems unlikely that he was interested in marbles, or in such careful cataloguing as this. Perhaps they were his father’s, or his Uncle Joseph’s, and Dad took the time to get them valued and catalogue them. The only thing I am sure of is the inventory being his writing; anything beyond that is a mystery.

There’s one person who can help me. I stretch my legs and reach for the phone and call Mum.

‘I didn’t know Dad had a marble collection,’ I say straight away, trying to hide my accusatory tone.

Silence. ‘Pardon me?’

‘Why did I never know that?’

She laughs a little. ‘He has a marble collection now? How sweet. Well, as long as it’s making him happy, Sabrina.’

‘No. He’s not collecting them now. I found them in the boxes that you had delivered to the hospital today.’ Also an accusatory tone.

‘Oh.’ A heavy sigh.

‘We agreed that you would store them for him. Why did you send them to the hospital?’

Though I didn’t recognise the marbles, I do recognise some of the other boxes’ contents as items we packed away from Dad’s apartment before putting it on the market. I still feel guilty that we had to do this, but we needed to raise as much money as possible for his rehabilitation. We tried to keep all the precious memories safe, like his lucky football shirt, his photographs and mementos, which I have in our shed in the back garden, the only place I could store them. I didn’t have room for the rest, so Mum took them.