Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

‘Well, there’s no bus service around here. Apparently there’s a town fifteen minutes drive away-how is anybody supposed to get there?’

‘Eh…the answer would be in your question.’

‘Yes, but I can’t drive because I’m-’ I stalled, and he smiled. ‘Because I’m not able to drive,’ I finished.

‘What? You mean Daddy didn’t get you a Mini Cooper yet? That’s totally uncool,’ he imitated me.

‘TouchÉ.’

‘Okay,’ he jumped off the table, filled with energy. ‘I have to go there now. How about we go to this wonderful magical town that no human legs can reach.’

I giggled. ‘Okay.’

‘Don’t you need to run it by somebody? I don’t want to be done for kidnapping.’

‘I may not be a driver but I’m not a child.’ I kept my eye on the bungalow. Rosaleen was gone a long time.

‘You’re sure?’ he asked, looking around. ‘Please just tell someone.’

He looked anxious and just because of that I took out my phone and called Mum’s mobile, which I know she hadn’t touched for a month. I left a message.

‘Hi, Mum, it’s me. I’m outside the house in a bus full of books and a cute guy is going to drive me to the town. I’ll be back in a few hours. In case I don’t come back, his name is Marcus Sandhurst, he’s five foot ten, has black hair, blue eyes…Any tattoos?’ I asked.

He lifted his top. Ooh he was ribbed.

‘He’s got a Celtic cross on his lower abdomen, no chest hair and a silly smile. He likes Scarface , Coldplay and pizza, and is hoping to get into books in a big way. See you later.’

I hung up and Marcus burst out laughing. ‘You know me better than most people.’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said.

‘Are you always so misbehaved?’ he asked.

‘Always,’ I responded, and climbed into the passenger seat in preparation for my adventure out of Kilsaney Demesne.

There were twelve minutes of a comfortable and not-for-one-second awkward conversation with Marcus, before reaching the town. Only ‘the town’ wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Even with my expectations lowered to an all-time low, it was so much worse. It was a one-horse town, with not even a horse in sight. A church. A graveyard. Two pubs. A chipper. A petrol station with a newsagent. A hardware store. Full stop.

I must have whimpered because Marcus looked at me, worried.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong?’ My eyes widened as I turned to him. ‘What’s wrong ? I have a Barbie Village from when I was like, five, bigger than this at home.’

He tried not to but he laughed. ‘It’s not that bad. Another twenty minutes and you’re in Dunshauglin; that’s a proper town.’

‘Another twenty minutes? I can’t even get here, to this shit hole on my own.’ I felt my eyes heat up with frustration, my nose started to itch, my eyes began to fill. I felt like kicking the bus down and screaming. I grunted instead. ‘What the hell am I going to do around here on my own, buy a shovel in there, and dig up the dead over there? And have a bag of chips and a pint while I’m doing it?’

Marcus snorted, and had to look away to compose himself. ‘Tamara, it’s really not that bad.’

‘Yes it is. I want a fucking skinny gingerbread latte and a cinnamon roll, now,’ I said very calmly, aware that I was beginning to sound like Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . ‘And while I’m there I want to use my laptop and avail myself of their Wi-Fi service, go online and check my Facebook page. I want to go to Topshop. I want to Twitter. And then I want to go to the beach with my friends and look at the sea and drink a bottle of white wine and I want to get so drunk, I fall over and vomit. You know, like normal things that normal people do. That is what I want.’

‘Do you always get what you want?’ Marcus looked at me.

I couldn’t answer. A giant lump of oh-my-god-I’m-in-love-kind-of-feeling had gathered in my throat. And so I just nodded.

‘Okay,’ he said, perking up, and I swallowed, my Marcus crush sent flying down my oesophagus into my stomach. ‘Let’s look on the bright side.’

‘There is no bright side.’

‘There’s always a bright side.’ He looked left and then he looked right, he held his hands up and his eyes lit up. ‘There’s no library.’

‘Oh my god…’ I head-butted myself off the dashboard.

‘Right,’ he laughed and turned the engine off, ‘let’s go somewhere else.’

‘Don’t you need the engine on to go somewhere else?’ I asked.

‘We’re not driving,’ he said, and climbed over the top of the driver’s seat and into the bus. ‘So, let’s see…where should we go?’ He moved his finger along the spines of the books in the travel section and walked alongside them reading aloud, ‘ Paris, Chile, Rome, Argentina, Mexico…’

‘ Mexico,’ I said straightaway, kneeling up on the seat to watch him.

‘ Mexico,’ he nodded. ‘Good choice.’ He lifted the book from the shelf and looked at me. ‘Well? Are you coming? Flight’s about to leave.’

I smiled and climbed over the back of the seat. We sat on the floor, side by side, in the back of the bus and that day, we went to Mexico.

I don’t know if he knows how important that moment was to me. How much he actually saved me from myself, from absolute despair. Maybe he does know and that’s exactly what he was doing. But he was like an angel who came into my life with his bus of books at exactly the right time, and who whisked me away from a terrible place to a faraway land.

We didn’t stay in Mexico for as long as we’d hoped. We checked into our hotel, double bed, dumped our bags, and headed straight for the beach. I bought a bikini from a man selling them on the beach, Marcus had ordered a cocktail and was going to go on a jetski alone-I was refusing to get into a wet suit-when the knock came on the bus and an elderly woman who eyed me suspiciously stepped on to find something for her to pass her time in. We got to our feet then and I browsed the shelves while Marcus played host. I came across a book about grief; about learning how to deal with personal grief or a loved one suffering from grief. I hovered by that book for a while, my heart pounding as though I’d found a magic vaccination for all worldly diseases. But I couldn’t bring myself to lift it from the shelf-I don’t know why. I didn’t want Marcus to see, I didn’t want him to ask me about it, I didn’t want to have to tell him about Dad dying. Then that would mean I’d be exactly who I was. I was a girl whose dad had just killed himself. If I didn’t tell him, then I didn’t have to be that girl. Not to him, anyway. I would just be her on the inside. I’d let her rage inside me, bubble under my skin, but I’d go to Mexico and leave her behind in the gatehouse.

My eye fell upon a large leather-bound book in non-fiction. It was brown, thick, no author’s name or title along the spine. I pulled it out. It was heavy. The pages were jagged along the edges as though they’d been ripped. ‘So you’re like a Robin Hood of the book world,’ I said, as soon as the old woman had left with a racy romance under her arm, ‘bringing books to those who have none?’

‘Something like that. What have you got there?’

‘Don’t know, there’s no title on the front.’

‘Try the spine.’

‘Not there, either.’

He picked up a folder from beside him and licked his finger before flicking through some pages. ‘What’s the author’s name?’

‘There’s no author’s name.’

He frowned and looked up. ‘Not possible. Open it up and see what’s on the first page.’