Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

For months Jennifer mourned, refusing to leave her house, refusing to live. But there’s only so much of that you can take, particularly when there was a handsome successful gentleman knocking on her door and wanting to rescue her and take her away. Rosaleen once again was at the helm of that decision. She engineered it all so wonderfully. She hadn’t meant to start the fire, hadn’t meant to hurt poor Laurie like that but it had happened and it worked in her favour. Artie moved in with Paddy and they worked the grounds together. Laurie moved into the bungalow where Rosaleen could care both for him and for her mother. He thanked her everyday but still he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He didn’t love her. He relied on her to keep him alive. She realised then that she’d never have him exactly the way she wanted. She’d never become a Kilsaney.

When Paddy died and Artie was living in the gatehouse alone that she turned her attention to him or, returned the attention he had been giving her ever since she’d been a little girl. Rosaleen finally became a Kilsaney, though they never used their titles, and Laurie was still in her life, needing her. Rosaleen had never liked going to town anyway, had hated hearing the locals gossip about things they knew nothing of. The only times she surfaced were for mass and to sell her vegetables. Any shopping would be done in the further town where nobody could question her.

That was seventeen years ago and it was all going well, not perfectly, but it was going well until George Goodwin, valiant until the end, had protected Kilsaney and refused to let it be taken and messed up her plans and that awful little child who looked so like her father, and who should have been hers, had come back into their lives to throw it into turmoil again. It would all have been all right if Jennifer had stopped asking questions, if she had just been able to heal so that she and Tamara could both move on with their lives in Dublin. But she had reverted back to her time when she grieved for Laurie, had taken on the same behaviour. She was confused, she was grieving for the wrong person. Rosaleen just wanted them to get their finances sorted out so that they could leave as soon as possible, but it hadn’t worked that way.

Rosaleen couldn’t cope with losing anything else. She loved Laurie more than anyone in her life, but the lie he had forced her to keep had led to so much unhappiness for so many people. She could see that now. And she was tired. Tired of fighting for her marriage to the wonderful, lovely Arthur who had never agreed with Laurie’s decision and Rosaleen’s agreement to go along with it. Her beautiful kind and soft husband who was torn apart every day by the lie to Jennifer and Tamara, who deserved more. She was tired of keeping the secret, tired of running back and forth, tired of being unable to look anybody in the eye in the village for fear of them knowing what she had done, guessing what was going on in the bungalow and in the workshed, where smoke funnelled out night and day. She wanted everything to go away. She wanted this bungalow, which had always felt like a prison to her, which had become one for Laurie and her mother, to be gone. She was going to release them all. She made sure her mother was safe before she struck the match.

Why, Rosaleen, why? They asked her over and over outside the burning bungalow. Why? They still didn’t know, they still had to ask her. All that she had been through, her silent torture. But that was why. That was always the reason why. From a little girl to a grown woman, she had loved Laurie too much.

Friday 7 August

I heard Mum and Laurie talking until the sun came up. I don’t know what they were saying, but the tone was a lot more improved than it has been over the past couple of weeks. Sister Ignatius has been helping them talk through everything. It’s like anything bad or scary that happens, when you finish it or get through it you’re so relieved you forget how terrifying it was or how miserable you were and you want to do it again, or you just remember the good parts, or you tell yourself it’s helped you get to the new part of yourself.

All is not well in this household. All is not perfect. But then it never has been. Gone is the elephant from the room, though. He was released, is running riot down the roads, while we all try to tame him. It’s just like when a card dealer shuffles the pack-he messes them all up, ruins the order just so he can deal and the pack will eventually find its way to order again. That’s what had happened to us. A long time ago things were shuffled, we were all dealt our cards. Now, we’re tidying them up, trying to make sense out of them all.

I don’t think Mum or I will ever forgive Laurie, Rosaleen and Arthur for keeping such a secret from us, for propelling such a lie for so long. All that we can do is try to understand that Laurie did it because he wanted the best for us, no matter how misguided it was. He tells us that he did it because he loved us and he thought it would give us a better life. It’s not forgivable, and it’s not enough to hear all that Rosaleen had told him, how she’d swayed his opinion, how she’d fed him and Mum with so many lies that they didn’t know what they were doing. It’s not forgivable, but we have to try to understand. Maybe when I understand it properly I can forgive it. Maybe when I can understand why both Mum and Dad lied to me about my real father, I’ll be able to forgive it. I think that’s all a little too far off for me to imagine. But I can thank Laurie for giving me such a wonderful dad. George Goodwin was a good man, an amazing father, thinking of us, again no matter how misguided, until the end. He fought his father all the way to the end of his father’s life about developing Kilsaney. He knew it was the one thing that my biological father could have left behind for me, had things gone the way they should have, had he not perished in the fire. It was also Mum’s home. Where she grew up, where she carried all of her memories, and when the banks came knocking, he couldn’t let it go. I would rather have my father than Kilsaney, but I know how much he loved us, what he was attempting to do. Both of my fathers gave up so much for us. I can only thank them and feel fortunate to be loved so much by two people. That may be completely incomprehensible to anybody else, but it’s my life, it’s how I’ve learned to cope.

Arthur is back and forth to Rosaleen in the hospital every day. She’s been the luckiest person in the world to have him and she never knew it. She’ll know it now, when everybody else has turned their backs on her. And Arthur is still there, despite discovering all that she’d done, trying to bring back the woman he loves. I find his loyalty to her unfathomable but then again, I’ve never been in love. It seems to do crazy things to people. He just wants her to get better but, between you and me, I don’t think she’ll ever get out of that place. Whatever is wrong with Rosaleen is so deep-rooted that it has reached from her past life and is growing far into her next life, already uprooting whatever is sprouting there.

Arthur and Laurence have been reunited. Arthur will never forgive Laurence for what he did, for making him promise to be a part of this entire thing. But I think he’ll forgive him quicker than he’ll ever forgive himself. He tormented himself every single day about not having stepped forward, for not stopping the plan from going ahead, for allowing the lie to grow, watching me growing up while my father was across the road in a room, watching my mother grieve while her love was right across the road. He says lots of things stopped him, but seeing how much my mum loved George and how much of a great father he was was the greatest reason of all. I suppose it’s easier to see the way out of anything when you’ve found your way out of that maze. When you’re stuck in the middle, in a series of dead-ends making circles, it’s difficult to make any sense of anything. I know that feeling.