Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

‘She’s not fine. She sits in her bedroom all day looking out the window, smiling.’

‘She sounds happy.’

‘She sounds crazy.’

‘What does Rosaleen think?’

‘Rosaleen thinks that a lifetime’s supply of food in one day will keep anyone going.’

Sister Ignatius’ lips twitched at that but she fought her smile.

‘Rosaleen says it’s just the grief.’

‘Perhaps Rosaleen is right.’

‘What if Mum whipped off her clothes and rolled around in mud singing Enya songs, what then? Would that be the grief?’

Sister Ignatius smiled and her skin folded over like origami. ‘Has your mum done that?’

‘No. But it doesn’t seem far off.’

‘What does Arthur think?’

‘Does Arthur think?’ I responded, slurping the hot soup. ‘No, I take that back, Arthur thinks, all right. Arthur thinks but Arthur does not say. I mean, some brother he is. And he either loves Rosaleen so much, nothing she says bothers him, or he can’t stand her so much he can’t be arsed talking to her. I can’t really figure them out.’

Sister Ignatius looked away, uncomfortable.

‘Sorry. For the language.’

‘I think you’re doing Arthur an injustice. He adores Rosaleen. I think he’d do absolutely anything for her.’

‘Even marry her?’

She glared at me and I felt the slap from her stare.

‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry. It’s just that she’s so…I don’t know…’ I searched for the word, searched for how she made me feel. ‘ Possessive.’

‘Possessive.’ Sister Ignatius pondered that. ‘That’s an interesting choice of word.’

I felt happy for some reason.

‘You know what it means, don’t you?’

‘Of course. It’s as if she owns everything.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I mean, she’s looking after us so well and everything. She feeds us three hundred times a day, in keeping with the dietary requirements of a dinosaur, but I wish she’d just chill out, back off from me a little and let me breathe.’

‘Would you like me to have a little word with her, Tamara?’

I panicked. ‘No, she’ll know I talked to you about her. I haven’t even mentioned I’ve met you. You’re my dirty little secret,’ I joked.

‘Well,’ she laughed, her cheeks pinking, ‘I’ve never been that .’ Once she’d recovered from her embarrassment she assured me she wouldn’t let Rosaleen know that I’d spoken about her. We talked more about the diary, about how and why it was happening and she assured me that I shouldn’t worry, my mind was under a lot of pressure and she was sure I must have written it sleepily, and forgotten. I instantly felt better after our chat, though was more concerned about my sleeping habits by the end of it. If I could write a diary in my sleep, what else was I capable of? Sister Ignatius had the power to make me feel that everything obscure was normal, like everything was divine and wonderous, and nothing worth stressing myself about, that answers would come and the clouds would clear and the complicated would become simple and the bizarre would become ordinary. I believed her.

‘My, look at that weather now.’ She turned to gaze out the window. ‘The sun is back. We should go quickly and see to the bees.’

Back outside in the walled garden I was suited up and feeling like the Michelin man.

‘Do you keep bees for extra time off?’ I asked as we made our way with the equipment to a hive. ‘I do that at school. If you sing in the choir you sometimes get classes off to take part in competitions or at church, things like when the teachers get married. If I was a teacher and I got married, I wouldn’t want some snotty little bitches who give me hell all day to sing at the happiest day of my life. I’d go to St Kitts or Mauritius. Or Amsterdam. It’s legal for a sixteen-year-old to drink there. But only beer. I hate beer. But if it’s legal I wouldn’t say no. Not that I’d be getting married at sixteen. Is that even legal? You should know, you know your man.’ I jerked my head towards the sky.

‘So you sing in a choir?’ she asked, as though she hadn’t heard a word of anything else I’d said.

‘Yeah, but never outside school. I’ve never been there to compete. The first time we were skiing in Verbier, and the second time I had laryngitis.’ I winked. ‘My mum’s friend’s husband is a doctor so he used to give notes whenever. I think he fancied my mum. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of those competitions, though apparently our school is actually really good at the choir competitions. We won the All-Ireland under somethings, twice.’

‘Oh, what kinds of things do you sing. “Nessun Dorma” was always my favourite.’

‘Who’s that by?’

‘“Nessun Dorma?”‘ She looked at me, shocked. ‘Well it’s one of the finest tenor arias from the final act of Puccini’s opera Turandot .’ She closed her eyes, hummed a bit and swayed. ‘Oh, I love it. Famously sang by Pavarotti, of course.’

‘Oh, yeah, he’s the big dude who sang with Bono. I always thought he was a celebrity chef, for some reason, until I saw him on the news the day of his funeral. I must have been confusing him with someone else-you know, the guy who makes pizzas with weird toppings, on The Food Channel. Chocolate and stuff? I asked Mae to make me one once but it totally made me retch. No, we didn’t sing anything like his songs. We sang “Shut Up and Let Me Go” by the Ting Tings. But it sounded completely different with all the harmonies, really serious, like one of those operas.’

‘The Food Channel, now I don’t have that at all.’

‘I know it’s a part of the satellite stations. Neither do Rosaleen and Arthur. You probably wouldn’t like it, but there is The God Channel. There’s probably stuff on that you’d like. They just talk about God all day.’

Sister Ignatius smiled at me again, wrapped her arm around my shoulders, squeezed me close to her and we walked like that towards the garden.

‘Now let’s get down to bizzz-ness,’ she said as we reached the hives. ‘So, very important. First question, and I probably should have asked you this earlier, are you allergic to bees?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Have you ever been stung by a bee?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm. Okay. Well, irrespective of all the protective measures, you may receive the occasional sting. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Tamara. Okay then, off you go to Rosaleen. I’m sure she’s got the lovely hind legs of a cow for you to snack on while you wait for your dinner.’

I was silent.

‘You will not die from this sting,’ she continued. ‘Unless you’re allergic, of course, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take. I’m brave like that.’ Her eyes twinkled mischievously again. ‘There’ll be a slight swelling in the affected area, later followed by some itching.’

‘Like a mosquito.’

‘Exactly. Now this is a smoker. I’m going to blow smoke into the hive before inspecting it.’

Smoke began to exit through the nozzle. I was already feeling a little funny as everything I read from the diary early that morning was coming true, playing out before me like a script. She held the nozzle under the hive.

‘If a beehive is threatened, guard bees will release a volatile pheromone substance called isopentyl acetate, known as an alarm odour. This alerts the middle-aged bees in the hive, which are the ones with the most venom, to defend the hive by attacking the intruder. However, when smoke is blown in first, the guard bees instinctively gorge themselves on honey, a survival instinct in case they must vacate the hive and recreate it elsewhere. This gorging pacifies the bees.’

I watched the smoke drift into their home. Then suddenly I thought about the panic. A wave of dizziness came over me. I reached out to hold on to the wall.