Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

‘Lovely,’ Mum said, addressing the tray before her on a little wooden table and not looking at Rosaleen at all. ‘Thank you.’

I wondered then if Mum knew that what had been placed in front of her was to be eaten by her, and wasn’t just a work of art.

‘You’re very welcome. Now is there anything else you want at all?’

‘Her house back, the love of her life back…’ I said, sarcastically. I didn’t aim the joke at Rosaleen, her being the butt of that particular comment wasn’t the intention at all. I was just letting off steam, generally. But I think Rosaleen took it personally. She looked shaken and-oh I don’t know-if she was hurt, embarrassed or angry. She looked at Mum to make sure she wouldn’t be broken by my words.

‘Don’t worry, she can’t hear me,’ I said, bored and examining the split ends of my dark brown hair. I pretended I wasn’t bothered but really my comments were causing my heart to beat wildly in my chest.

‘Of course she can hear you, child,’ Rosaleen half-scolded me while continuing to move about the room fixing things, wiping things, adjusting things.

‘You think?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you think, Mum? Will we be okay here?’

Mum looked up at me and smiled. ‘Of course we’ll be okay.’

I joined in on her second sentence, imitating Mum’s hauntingly chirpy voice, so that we spoke in perfect unison, which I think chilled Rosaleen. It definitely chilled me as we said, ‘It will all be okay.’

Rosaleen stopped dusting to watch me.

‘That’s right, Mum. It will all be okay.’ My voice trembled. I decided to go a step further. ‘And look at the elephant in the bedroom, isn’t that nice?’

Mum stared at the tree in the garden, the same small smile on her pink lips, ‘Yes. That’s nice.’

‘I thought you’d think so.’ I swallowed hard, trying not to cry as I looked to Rosaleen. I was supposed to feel satisfaction, but I didn’t, I just felt more lost. Up to that point it was all in my head that Mum wasn’t right. Now I’d proven it and I didn’t like it.

Perhaps now Mum would be sent to a therapist or a counsellor and get herself fixed so that we could start moving on with our chemical trail.

‘Your breakfast is on the table,’ Rosaleen simply said, turned her back on me, and left the room.

And that is how the Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don’t go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realised I’d grown up with an elephant in every room. It was practically our family pet.

I took my time getting dressed, knowing that there was very little else I was going to be able to do that day. I stood shivering in the avocado-coloured bath as the hot water trickled down with all the power of baby drool, and I longed for my pink iridescent mosaic-tiled wet room with six power-shower jets and plasma in the wall.

By the time I had managed to wash out all of the shampoo-I couldn’t be bothered battling with conditioner-dried my hair and arrived downstairs for breakfast, Arthur was scraping the last of the food from his plate. I wondered if Rosaleen had told him about what happened in Mum’s bedroom. Perhaps not because if he was in anyway a decent brother, he’d be currently doing something about it. I don’t think tipping the base of a tea cup with his oversized nose was going to fix much.

‘Morning, Arthur,’ I said.

‘Morning,’ he said, into the bottom of his tea cup.

Rosaleen, the busy domestic bee, immediately jumped into action and came at me with giant oven gloves on her hands.

I lightly boxed each of her hands. She didn’t get the joke. Without a word, or a twitch, or a movement of any kind in Arthur’s face, I sensed he got it.

‘I’ll just have cereal, please, Rosaleen,’ I said, looking around. ‘I’ll get it, if you tell me where it is.’ I started opening the cupboards, trying to find the cereal, then had to take a step back when I came across a double cupboard filled from top to bottom with jars of honey. There must have been over a hundred jars.

‘Whoa.’ I stepped back from the opened cupboards. ‘Have you got, like, honey OCD?’

Rosaleen looked confused, but smiled and handed me a cup of tea. ‘Sit yourself down there, I’ll bring you your breakfast. Sister Ignatius gives the honey to me,’ she smiled.

Unfortunately I was taking a sip of tea when she said that and I choked on it as I started laughing. Tea came spurting out my nose. Arthur handed me a napkin, and looked at me with amusement.

‘You’ve a sister called Ignatius?’ I laughed loudly. ‘She’s totally got a man’s name. Is she a tranny?’ I shook my head, still giggling.

‘A tranny?’ Rosaleen asked, forehead crumpled.

I burst out laughing, then stopped abruptly when her smile immediately faded, she closed the kitchen cabinets and went to the aga for my breakfast. She placed a plate piled high with bacon, sausages, eggs, beans, pudding and mushrooms in the middle of the table. I hoped her sister Ignatius was going to join me for breakfast because there was no way I was going to finish this alone. Then she disappeared, flitted about behind me, and came back with a plate piled high with toast.

‘Oh, no, that’s okay. I don’t eat carbs,’ I said as politely as I could.

‘Carbs?’ Rosaleen asked.

‘Carbohydrates,’ I explained. ‘They bloat me.’

Arthur placed his cup on the saucer and looked out at me from under his bushy eyebrows.

‘Arthur, you don’t look anything like Mum at all.’

Rosaleen dropped a jar of honey on the floor tiles, which made me and Arthur jump and turn around. Surprisingly, it didn’t smash. Rosaleen, at top speed, continued on and placed jam, honey and marmalade before me and a plate of scones.

‘You’re a growing girl, you need your food.’

‘The only growing I want right now is here.’ I gestured at my 34B chest. ‘And unless I stuff my bra with black and white pudding, this breakfast isn’t going to make that happen.’

It was Arthur’s turn to choke on his tea. Not wanting to insult them any further, I took a slice of bacon, a sausage and a tomato.

‘Go on, have more,’ Rosaleen said, watching my plate.

I looked at Arthur in horror.

‘Give her time to eat that,’ Arthur said quietly, getting to his feet with his plates in his hands.

‘Leave that down.’ Rosaleen fussed around him, and I felt like grabbing a fly-swatter and attacking her. ‘You get on now to work.’

‘Arthur, does anybody work in the castle?’

‘The ruin?’ Rosaleen asked.

‘The castle,’ I responded, and immediately felt defensive of it. If we were going to start name-calling we may as well start with Mum. She was clearly a broken woman yet we weren’t referring to her as the ruin. She was still a woman. The castle was not as it had been, but it was still a castle. I have no idea where that belief had come from but it had arrived overnight and I knew from then on, I was never going to call it a ruin.

‘Why do you ask?’ Arthur said, slipping his arms into a lumberjack shirt and then putting on a padded vest over it.

‘I was taking a look around there yesterday and just thought I saw something. No big deal,’ I said quickly, eating and hoping that wouldn’t make them stop me from going there again.

‘Could have been a rat,’ Rosaleen said, looking at Arthur.

‘Wow, I really feel better now.’ I looked to Arthur for more but he was silent.

‘You shouldn’t go wandering about there on your own,’ Rosaleen said, pushing the plate of food closer to me.

‘Why?’

Neither of them said anything.