Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

‘I’m going to go down and check it out,’ Weseley said once we’d stepped into the back garden. ‘You’ll be fine, Tamara. Just tell the woman you came over to thank her and take it from there. She might tell you more after that.’

I nervously watched him walk across the lawn, past the workshed and he disappeared into the field of glass.

I turned to the house and looked in at the windows. The kitchen was empty. I lightly rapped on the back door and waited. There was no answer. With a shaky hand, which I admonished myself about being so dramatic, I reached out and pulled down the handle. The door was unlocked. I pulled it open a crack and peered inside. It was a narrow hallway, which turned sharply to the right. There were three doorways off the hallway, all closed, one on the right, two to the left. The first on the left led to the kitchen-I already knew there was nobody in there. I stepped inside, trying to keep the door open so that I wouldn’t feel so trapped and so it wouldn’t feel like I was totally breaking and entering, but the wind was so strong it blew shut. I jumped and once again told myself how stupid I was being. An old woman and the woman who’d given me a gift were hardly going to hurt me. I rapped lightly on the door to my right. There was no answer and so I gently turned the handle and slowly opened the door. It was a bedroom, definitely the bedroom of an old lady. It smelled damp and of talcum powder and TCP. There was an old dark wood bed with floral duvet cover, slippers by the bed and a duck-egg-blue carpet that had seen more than a few Shake ‘n’ Vacs. There was a free-standing wardrobe probably containing all of her worldly outfits. A small dresser with a tarnished mirror sat against the door wall, a hairbrush, medication, the rosary and the Bible all neatly laid out on its surface. Facing the bed was the window overlooking the back garden. There was nothing else, nobody inside.

I closed the door gently and continued down the hall. The carpet was covered by an unusual kind of plastic mat, as if to keep the tiles clean. It made a scraping noise beneath my feet and I was surprised nobody had heard me coming. Unless the woman was in the workshed again, which meant that she’d see Weseley. I froze and almost went back outside but I’d come this far and there was no going back. I reached the end of the hall, where it turned to the right. There was another door at the end of the hall, which led to the television room, which I had already seen through the window. With the television up loud so that I could hear the Countdown clock ticking, I assumed that was where Rosaleen’s mother was, but after all my wondering about her now wasn’t the time for me to introduce myself. It wasn’t her I was looking for. There was a small entrance hall at the front door and to the left of me there was another door, behind which I guessed was the second bedroom.

I knocked so gently the first time I barely even heard it myself. My knuckles brushed against the dark wood as though they were a feather. The second time round I knocked harder and I waited longer, but there was no sound.

I turned the handle. The door was unlocked and it opened.

With my overactive imagination, I had envisaged much about Rosaleen’s secrets over the past few weeks, possibly years, but in reality they had all disappointed me. The findings in the garage, while intriguing and hurtful for me not to have known that Arthur and Mum were friends of Rosaleen since childhood, didn’t live up to the scenarios I had created in my mind. The initial mystery behind the house turned out to be Rosaleen’s ailing mother; the dead bodies in the garage had actually been everything the castle had been stripped of. While intriguing, it was slightly disappointing because it didn’t match up to the level of tension I felt around Rosaleen. It didn’t match up to the level of secrecy she was shrouded in.

But this time I wasn’t disappointed.

This time I wished for seventies carpets and dark wood, for the smell of damp and a badly designed bedroom. Because what I saw shocked me to the core so that I just stood there, frozen, my mouth agape, unable to breath properly.

On each of three walls, covered from floor to ceiling were photographs of me. Me as a baby, me at my Communion, me on a visit to the gatehouse when I was three years old, four years old, six years old. Me at my school plays, me at my birthday parties and other parties, a flower girl at my mum’s friend’s wedding, dressed as a witch at Halloween, a scribbled drawing I’d done during my first year at school. There was a photograph of me at the entrance to the gatehouse from only last week, sitting on the wall, swinging my legs, my face up to the sun. There was a photograph of me and Marcus, him first calling to the house, of another day when we climbed into the bus and went on a journey. There was a photograph of the morning Mum, Barbara and I arrived at the gatehouse for the first time. Then me at the age of around eight years old, standing in the middle of the road to the castle by the house, bored as my mother talked with Arthur and Rosaleen over egg sandwiches and strong tea. There was a photo of me only a fortnight ago at the graveside, placing flowers by Laurence Kilsaney’s grave. There was a photograph of me walking towards the castle. Photographs of me with Sister Ignatius, walking, talking, lazing on the grass, and one of me in the castle, sitting on the steps the morning I first discovered the diary entry, with my eyes closed face up to the sun. I had known somebody was watching. I had written it. The photos were endless like a history of my whole entire life, scenes that I’d long forgotten and some which I never knew had been captured on celluloid.

In the corner of the room there was a single bed, unkempt, untidy. There was a small locker beside that, its surface filled with pills. Before I turned around to leave, my eye caught sight of a familiar picture. I walked to the far wall and took the now crumpled photograph out of my pocket. I held it up to the wall, they were almost a perfect match, though the one on the wall was much clearer. Gone was the finger before the lens and so the priest’s face was visible, Mum beside him with me in her arms. On my pink head was a hand with the ring. This photograph on the wall was much bigger than the one I had found. It had been blown up and zoomed in on and so the ring was very clear, very much in focus and the person who belonged to it was obvious.

Sister Ignatius.

Beneath the christening photograph was my mother holding me over the basin, and the priest trickling water on my head. I recognised that basin. It was filled with spiders and dust now in the chapel in the grounds. Beside that was a flushed face of my mother lying in bed, hair sticking to her damp forehead, me wrapped up in her arms, just born. Another photograph of Sister Ignatius holding me. Just born.

I’m not just a nun. I’m also trained in midwifery. She’d said that only days ago.

‘Oh my God,’ I trembled, my knees buckling from under me. I reached out to the wall but there was nothing for me to cling to apart from photographs of myself. My fingers caught on them and pulled them down as I fell to the floor. I didn’t pass out but I couldn’t stand. I wanted to get out of here. I put my head between my legs and slowly breathed in and out.

‘You’re lucky today,’ I heard a voice say behind me and I snapped to attention. ‘Usually this door is locked. Even I have never seen in here. He’s been busy.’

Rosaleen was standing at the door, leaning against the doorway, her arms behind her back. So calm.

‘Rosaleen,’ I croaked, ‘what’s going on?’

She chuckled. ‘Oh, child, you know what’s going on. Don’t pretend to me you haven’t been snooping.’ She looked at me coldly.