Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

It was twelve-thirty by the time I returned to the house, none the wiser on the garage. I washed my hands and changed my clothes, which were filthy from my breaking-and-entering attempt. I checked on Mum, who was finally awake and taking a shower. I took my time getting dressed, knowing exactly how long I had until Rosaleen and Arthur returned. I sat on my bed and looked across to the bungalow. Something caught my eye.

On the pillar by the front gate was the tray. I stood up, examined the garden, the house. Nobody was in the garden, nobody watched from the window. I checked to see if Rosaleen had returned but the car was still gone.

It was 12.50 p.m.

I ran downstairs and outside, across the road. The tray was covered by the tea-cloth as I had laid it down. Underneath, the food was gone, the tea cup was empty. They gleamed as though they had just been cleaned. On the plate sat the tiniest version of one of the glass mobiles that I had been studying. Like a small tear drop, it was soft and smooth and fit perfectly into the palm of my hand. There was nothing else. No card, nobody to tell me it was for me. I waited, but nobody came. It was dangerously close to one o’clock and I couldn’t wait any longer. I couldn’t risk Rosaleen returning to find me on the wall with a tray and a glass tear drop. I put the piece of glass in my pocket. I ran across the road as quickly as I could without shattering the contents of the tray. Just as I closed the front door behind me, I heard Rosaleen and Arthur’s car return. Shaking, I placed the cleaned cups and saucers, and plate back in the kitchen cupboards. I put the tray back where it belonged. I grabbed my book from the living room, ran upstairs into my Mum’s room and dived on the bed. Mum, who was coming out of the bathroom, looked at me in shock. Seconds later the door opened and Rosaleen looked in.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, as Mum tightened her towel around her.

She stepped back further from the door so that she could only see me.

‘Tamara, is everything okay?’

‘Yes thanks.’

‘What did you do all morning?’ It wasn’t an interested enquiry, it was a concerned one, and not concern for my boredom either.

‘I was just here with Mum all morning, reading my book.’

‘Oh, very good.’ She stalled a bit, always afraid to leave a room, ‘I’ll be downstairs if you need me.’

She closed the door and when I looked at Mum, I realised she was looking at me and smiling. She laughed then and shook her head and I almost felt like cancelling Dr Gedad.

The door opened again. Rosaleen looked at Mum’s breakfast tray.

‘Jennifer you didn’t eat again.’

‘Oh,’ Mum said looking up while putting on another of her cashmere lounge robes. ‘Tamara will eat it for me.’ Then she smiled sweetly at Rosaleen.

‘No, no,’ Rosaleen said hastily coming inside and taking the tray. ‘I’ll take that away.’

Mum kept watching her, blue eyes shining.

‘Tamara, your lunch will be ready soon,’ Rosaleen told me nervously, and backed out of the room.

I looked at Mum in confusion, for an explanation, but she had disappeared again, back into her shell. Turtles either disappear into their shells because they’re scared or because danger lurks and they’re protecting themselves. Either way, as soon as those shells grow, they never lose them because they’re physically a part of them.

During that summer if ever people tried to convince me that Mum was never returning to the way I remember her before Dad died-and some people hinted at it-I kept thinking of those turtles. She would keep the new shell she’d grown over the past few months, and she would carry it around with her for the rest of her life but that didn’t mean she would disappear into it. I saw proof that day that Mum hadn’t disappeared for good, I saw it in her eyes. I remember the exact moment when I saw her again. It was at one o’clock.

Rosaleen looked different today, having made an effort for Sunday mass and market. Her Sunday clothes were a knee-length beige-coloured skirt with a small slit up the middle at the back. She wore a cream slightly see-through blouse with puffy shoulders, which was tied in a bow at the neck and underneath I could see a lacy bra, though I doubted she knew about its transparency. It was actually quite sophisticated. She’d worn a matching beige jacket with a peacock feather brooch on the lapel, and on her feet were nude patent slingback peep-toes. Only an inch or two high but she looked good. I said so and her face brightened and her cheeks pinked.

‘Thank you.’

‘Where did you buy it?’

‘Oh,’ she was embarrassed about talking about herself. ‘In Dunshauglin. About a half-hour away there’s a place that I like. Mary’s very good, God bless her soul…’

I awaited Mary’s tragic news with bated breath. It involved a dead husband and lots of God blessing her.

I tried again with another conversation.

‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

‘A sister in Cork. Helen. She’s a teacher. And I’ve a brother, Brian, in Boston.’

‘Do they ever visit?’

‘Now and then. It’s been a while. Usually Mammy would visit them, Helen in Cork at least, to give her a change of scenery, but now she can’t. She has MS.’ She looked at me then, opening up. ‘Multiple Sclerosis-do you know what that is?’

‘Kind of. Something about your muscles no longer working.’

‘Close enough. It’s got worse over the years. It gives her awful trouble. That’s why I’m back and forth. I can’t travel, I don’t like to leave her, you know. She needs me.’

It seemed like a lot of people needed Rosaleen. But it struck me that with so many people needing one person, maybe it was more that she needed them to need her. I never wanted to need Rosaleen.

Her mother never arrived to point the accusing finger at me, but two o’clock did. I snuck out of the house unnoticed while Rosaleen was getting the makings of her tarts ready. I’d learned that the three thousand various pies she’d made during the week not only fed us and her mother, but she’d brought them to the Sunday farmers’ market where she sold them along with her home-made jam, and organic home-grown vegetables. She’d carried a pouch stuffed with notes and coins to the table, turned her back to take something out of it and then squeezed twenty euro into my hand. I was honestly so touched, I refused to take it but she wasn’t having any of it.

When I reached the castle, Weseley was sitting on the stairs-my stairs. He was wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt with a blue skull on it and blue trainers. Even in the daylight he was cool.

He looked up and pulled his earphones out. ‘He can come tomorrow at ten.’

There was no hello or anything. I was a little put out.

‘Oh. Great, thanks.’ I waited for him to stand up and flutter away, like a little pigeon who’d delivered its message, but he stayed. ‘Actually, could he come at ten fifteen, just in case Rosaleen is delayed leaving?’

‘Yeah, sure, I’ll tell him.’

‘Okay, great, thanks,’ I repeated.

He still didn’t leave and so I stepped in further and leaned against the wall directly opposite him.

‘Do you know the woman who lives in the bungalow?’

‘Rosaleen’s mother? I saw her the first week we moved but not since then. She doesn’t really go out much. She’s old. I think she’s got Alzheimer’s or something.’

‘Have you ever been to her house?’

‘I’ve dropped a few things over for Arthur. Firewood, coal, some furniture, that kind of thing. But Rosaleen always escorts me on and off the premises.’ He smiled. ‘It’s not as if there’s anything over there to steal, if that’s what she’s worried about.’