Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

‘We’ll give you three guesses,’ Mum almost squeals with excitement.

‘Oh, gee, this is impossible, Mum. How can I guess?’ I’d say, trying to be all confused and flustered and excited, thinking hard. ‘Okay,’ I’d bite my lip. ‘Aunt Rosaleen and Uncle Arthur’s for the weekend?’ I’ve learned that if you aim low first then it makes the parents more excited about your imminent shock and awe. I’d guess two more crappy places and watch as Mum would almost explode with excitement. Bless her.

‘We’re going to Eurodisney, Paris!’ Mum would exclaim, hopping up and down, and Dad would dive for the brochure to show me where we’re staying. Mum would search my face for the emotion; Dad head down with brochure in hand, would immediately point out the things. Things to do, things to see, things we can get, things that we’ll have. Look at this, flick through the pages, look at that. Things, things, things.

No matter how clever and rewarding parents think they are, children are one step ahead.

So to get back to my point, I kicked up an awful lot of fuss one night before they went out. I hurled a lot of abuse at them, not to make them feel guilty but because, back then, I actually meant it. But they went out anyway and because they probably felt so guilty about leaving me I didn’t get into any trouble for all the nasty things I’d said. I learned that they were always going to go no matter what I said, and so instead of feeling sad and embarrassed in front of Mae to be left behind at home, I pushed them away. I was in control.

Dad had been acting oddly in the weeks leading up to his death, maybe longer but I’m not too sure. I didn’t speak to anybody about this. I guess this is what diaries are for. I thought that he was going to leave us. I felt there was something peculiar, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. He was unusually nice. Like I said, he was always nice to Mum, usually nice to me if I was nice back, but this kind of nice was like a long and drawn-out wave goodbye from the door. A very long and very nice last impression. Long goodbye, very dead. I felt something was coming. Either we were leaving or he was.

Even when lots of people asked about his behaviour after his death, I maintained the same innocent and confused expression as Mum: ‘No, no, I didn’t notice anything wrong.’ Well, what was I going to tell them? For the week before Dad died I felt he was standing at the door waving us off, even long after we were out of view.

I felt something was coming and I did what I always did: I started to push him away. I was bitchier than usual, worse behaved than usual; smoked in the house, came home drunk, that kind of thing. I challenged him a lot more. Our fights were more vicious, my retorts more personal. Horrible stuff. I did what I’d done ever since I was a kid when I didn’t want them to go. I basically told him to leave. I hate him that he did what he did, when he did it. Any other night and I could have just mourned him. Now I’m mourning him and hating me and it’s almost too much for me to bear. Could he not at least have thought about how I’d feel, particularly after our last conversation? I gave him the worst goodbye and he did the worst thing in response. Maybe not because of me but I can’t have helped.

I don’t know if Mum felt something was wrong with him too. Maybe she did but she has never said. If she didn’t sense it, then I was the only one. I should have said something. Better yet, I should have done something to stop him.

I’m sorry, Dad.

What if, what if, what if…What if we knew what tomorrow would bring? Would we fix it? Could we?

I chose to eat breakfast with Mum in her bedroom the next morning. This seemed to concern Rosaleen, who hung around Mum’s bedroom a little too long, moving furniture, setting up a table for both of us in front of the window, adjusting the curtains, opening a window, closing it a little, opening it a little more, questioning me on whether it was too breezy.

‘Rosaleen, please,’ I said gently.

‘Yes child,’ she said as she continued to make the bed, furiously thumping pillows, tucking in the blankets so tightly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d licked the undersheets before turning them over the blanket and sealing them like an envelope.

‘You don’t have to do that. I’ll make it after breakfast,’ I said. ‘You go downstairs to Arthur. I’m sure he’ll want to see you before he goes to work.’

‘His lunch is on the counter all ready to go-he knows where it is.’ She kept plumping, smoothing, and if it wasn’t right she’d start again.

‘Rosaleen,’ I repeated, gently.

Even though I knew she didn’t want to, she quickly glanced at me. When our eyes clicked, she knew her game was up but she just stared at me and in those eyes she dared me to say it. She didn’t think I would. I swallowed.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’d just like to spend a little time with Mum. On our own, please.’ There I’d said it. Tamara Grown-Up had spoken up for herself. But my request was inevitably followed by the wounded look, the slow release of the pillows falling to the bed, followed by a whispery, ‘Well.’

I didn’t feel bad.

Finally she left the room and I remained quiet for a while. Not hearing the creak of the landing, I knew she was still outside the door. Listening, guarding, protecting or locking us in-I wasn’t sure. What was she so afraid of?

Instead of trying to drag conversation out of Mum as I’d been trying to do for the past month, I decided to stop fighting her silence and instead sit with her patiently in the silence that seemed to comfort her. Occasionally I lifted a slice of fruit to her and she took it and nibbled on it. I watched her face. She looked totally enchanted, as though she was watching a great big screen which I couldn’t see, outside in the back garden. Her eyebrows rose and fell as she reacted to something somebody said, her lips smiled coyly as she remembered a secret. Her face hid a million secrets.

Having spent enough time with her, I kissed her on the forehead and left the room. The diary I had been previously hugging proudly was now hidden under my bed. I felt as if I was running off somewhere to hide a big secret. I was also kind of embarrassed, I must admit. My friends and I didn’t keep diaries. We didn’t even write to each other. We kept in touch through Twitter and Facebook, posting up photos of ourselves whilst on holiday, of our nights out, trying on dresses in department-store changing rooms and looking for second opinions. We texted one another continuously, we emailed gossip and forwarded generic funny emails but it was all on-the-surface stuff. We talked about things you can see, things you can touch, nothing deeper. Nothing emotional.

This diary is the kind of thing Fiona would do-the girl in our class who nobody spoke to apart from Sabrina, the other dork, but she was out of school more than in because of some kind of migraine problem. But this is what she used to do: find a quiet place to go to on her own, a corner of a classroom when the teacher wasn’t in, or beneath a tree in the school grounds at lunch time and bury her nose deep in a book or furiously scribble something in a notebook. I used to laugh at her. But the joke was clearly on me. Who knew what she was writing.

There was only one place I could possibly go to write the diary. I reached for it under my bed and ran down the stairs shouting, ‘Rosaleen, I’m going out…’ My flip-flops banged down the creaky stairs, and as I leaped off the final step and landed on the ground with all the grace of an elephant, Rosaleen appeared before me.

‘Jesus, Rosaleen!’ My hand flew to my heart.