Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

The next page there was a photograph of Mum, Arthur, Rosaleen and another boy.

I gasped.

‘Your Mum and Rosaleen knew each other as kids,’ Weseley said. ‘Did you know that?’

‘No.’ I was breathless, dizzy. ‘No way. Nobody ever mentioned it.’

‘Who’s the guy at the end?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Does your mum have another brother? He looks the oldest.’

‘No, she doesn’t. Not that she ever mentioned…’

Weseley slipped his hand underneath the plastic covering and pulled the photo from the paper.

‘Weseley!’

‘We’ve gone this far-you want to know all this or not?’

I swallowed and nodded.

Weseley turned the photograph over.

It read: ‘Artie, Jen, Rose, Laurie. 1979’.

‘Laurie, apparently,’ Weseley said. ‘Ring any bells? Tamara, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Laurence Kilsaney RIP’ on the gravestone.

Arthur had called Rosaleen ‘Rose’ in the car on the way back from Dublin.

‘Laurie and Rose’ engraved on the apple tree.

‘He’s the man who died in the fire in the castle. Laurence Kilsaney. His name is on a grave in the Kilsaney graveyard.’

‘Oh.’

I stared at the photograph of the four of them, all smiling, the innocence on their face, everything ahead of them, a future of possiblities. Mum and Arthur were holding hands tightly, Laurence had his arm draped coolly around Rosaleen’s neck; it dangled limply across her chest. He stood on one leg, the other crossed it in a pose. He seemed confident, cocky even. His chin was lifted and he smiled at the camera with a grin as if he’d just shouted something at the photographer.

‘So, Mum, Arthur and Rosaleen hung around with a Kilsaney,’ I thought aloud. ‘I didn’t even know she lived here.’

‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she came here on holidays.’ Weseley continued flicking. All of the photographs were of the same four people, all at different ages, all huddled close together. Some pictures were of them on their own, some in couples, but most of them together. Mum was the youngest, Rosaleen and Arthur closer in age and Laurence the oldest, always with a great smile, a mischievous look in his eye. Even as a young girl Rosaleen had an older look, a hardness in her eye, a smile that never grew as large as the others’.

‘Look, there they all are in front of the gatehouse,’ Weseley pointed at the four of them sitting on the garden wall. Nothing much had changed apart from some of the garden trees, which were now big and full, but then had just been planted or were merely shrubs. But the gate, the wall, the house, everything was exactly the same.

‘There’s Mum in the living room. That’s the same fireplace.’ I studied the photo intently. ‘The bookcase is exactly the same. Look at the bedroom,’ I gasped. ‘That’s the one I’m in now. But I don’t understand. She lived here, she grew up here.’

‘You really didn’t know any of this?’

‘No.’ I shook my head, feeling a headache coming on. My brain was overloaded with so much information and not enough answers. ‘I mean, I knew she lived in the country but…I remember when we visited Arthur and Rosaleen when I was young, my granddad was always here. My grandma died when my mum was young. I thought he was just visiting Arthur and Rosaleen too but…my God, what’s going on? Why did they all lie?’

‘They didn’t really lie though, did they?’ Weseley tried to soften the blow. ‘They just didn’t tell you they lived here. That’s not exactly the most exciting secret in the world.’

‘And they didn’t tell me that they’d known Rosaleen practically all their lives, that they lived in the gatehouse and they once knew the Kilsaneys. It’s not a big deal, but it is if you keep it a secret. But why did they hide it? What else are they keeping from me?’

Weseley looked away from me then, continued flicking through the photo album as if to find my answers. ‘Hey, if your granddad lived in the gatehouse, that made him the groundskeeper here. He had Arthur’s job.’

A startling image flashed through my mind, I was young, my granddad was down on his knees with his hands deep in muck. I remember the black beneath his fingernails, a worm in the soil wriggling around, Granddad grabbing it and dangling it near my face, me crying, and him laughing, and wrapping his arms around me. He always smelled of soil and grass. His fingernails were always black.

‘I wonder if there’s a photo of the woman.’ I flicked through the pages further.

‘What woman?’

‘The woman in the bungalow who makes the glass.’

We studied the following pages, my heart thudding so loudly in my chest, I thought I was going to keel over. I came across another photograph of Rosaleen and Laurence together. ‘Rose and Laurie, 1987’.

‘I think Rosaleen was in love with Laurence,’ I said, tracing their faces with my finger.

‘Uh-oh,’ Weseley said, turning over a page. ‘But Laurence didn’t love Rosaleen.’

I looked at the next photograph, eyes wide. On the next page was a picture of Mum, as a teenager, beautiful, long blonde hair, big smile, perfect teeth. Laurence had his arms thrown around her, was kissing her cheek by the tree with the engraving.

I looked at the back of the photograph. ‘Jen and Laurie, 1989’.

‘They could have been just friends…’ Weseley said slowly.

‘Weseley, look at them.’

That’s all I had to say. The rest was plain to see. it was right there in front of us. They were in love.

I thought about what Mum had said to me when I’d returned from the rose garden the first day I’d met Sister Ignatius. I’d thought she hadn’t been speaking properly, I thought she was telling me that I was prettier than a rose. But what if she’d meant exactly what she’d said: ‘You’re prettier than Rose’?

And away from them, at the other edge of the photograph, Rosaleen sat on a tartan rug with a picnic basket beside her, staring coldly at the camera.

I didn’t know how long we had until Rosaleen and Arthur returned with Mum, if they were returning with her at all, but I had given up caring about being caught. I was done with their secrets, tired of tiptoeing around and trying to peak underneath things when nobody was looking. Weseley, in full support of my next move led me to the bungalow across the road. We were both looking for answers and I had never in my life met anybody like Weseley who was going out on a limb to help me so much. I thought of Sister Ignatius and my heart tugged. I had abandoned her. I needed to see her too. I remembered how during one of our first meetings she had grabbed my arm and told me she’d never lie to me. That she would always tell me the truth. She knew something. She had practically told me then that she knew something, now that I look back, had quite obviously asked me to question her, and I hadn’t realised it until now.

Weseley led me down the side passage. My knees trembled as I walked and I expected them at any time to give way and send me to the ground like a house of cards. The morning was darkening and the wind was picking up. It was only noon and already the sky had clouded over, great big grey clouds gathering as though the sky’s eyes were covered by bushy eyebrows, its forehead furrowed in concern as it watched me.

‘What’s that noise?’ Weseley asked as we neared the end of the passageway.

We stopped and listened. It was a tinkling sound.

‘The glass,’ I whispered. ‘It’s blowing in the wind.’

It was a slightly disturbing sound. Unlike the tinkling of a chime, it sounded as though the glass was smashing, as the little pieces, the round and the jagged, hit against each other in the wind. Multiplied by hundreds, it was an eerie sound.