Cecelia Ahern - The Book of Tomorrow

Me? I’m a little wobbly but oddly, I feel stronger. I’ve said goodbye to Zoey and Laura completely after they asked for photographs of my burned hand for their Facebook pages. I’m planning on inviting Fiona, the girl who gave me the book at the funeral, to this house very soon. When things have calmed down at least a little.

So that’s the story. The whole story. As I said at the beginning, I don’t expect you to believe it but it’s the truth, every single word of it. All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, there are gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered once and never again. We all have our secrets. At least ours are unearthed now, or at least, are beginning to be. I constantly wonder how much of my life I would have learned if it hadn’t been for the diary. Sometimes I think I would have found out sooner or later, most of the time I think that’s what the diary’s purpose was, because it most certainly had a purpose. It led me to here. It helped me discover the secrets but it also made me a better person. That sounds really slushy, I know, but it helped me to realise that there are tomorrows. Before, I concentrated on just now. I would say and do things in order to get what I wanted in that instant. I never gave a second thought to how the rest of the dominoes would fall. The diary helped me to see how one thing affects another. How I can actually make a difference in my life and in other people’s lives. I always think back to how I was drawn to that book in Marcus’s travelling library, almost like it was there just for me that day. I think that most people go into bookshops and have no idea what they want to buy. Somehow, the books sit there, almost magically willing people to pick them up. The right person for the right book. It’s as though they already know whose life they need to be a part of, how they can make a difference, how they can teach a lesson, put a smile on a face at just the right time. I think about books a lot differently now.

When I was in primary school the teacher used to tell us to write a paragraph at the end of every day titled ‘What I Learned Today’. I feel in this circumstance it would take far less to say ‘What I Haven’t Learned’, for what haven’t I learned? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’ve learned so much, I’ve grown so much and it’s never ending.

I thought this whole thing-finding out who I am-was the purpose for the diary. I thought after the fire the diary would become a notepad again and I would have returned it to the travelling library and replaced it on the non-fiction shelf and allowed somebody else to benefit from it. But I can’t do it. I can’t let it go. It continues to tell me about tomorrow and I continue to live it and sometimes I try to live it better.

I closed the diary, left the castle and made my way toward the orchard where I’d arranged to meet Weseley by the apple tree with the engravings.

‘Uh-oh,’ he said eyeing the diary under my arm. ‘What now?’

‘Nothing bad.’ I sat down beside him on a blanket.

‘I don’t believe you. What is it?’

‘It’s actually about you and me,’ I laughed.

‘What about us?’

I raised my eyebrows suggestively at him.

‘Oh, no!’ He threw his arms up dramatically. ‘So now, as well as saving you from burning houses, I have to kiss you?’

I shrugged. ‘Whatever.’

‘Where does it happen? Here?’

I nodded.

‘Okay. So.’ He looked at me seriously.

‘So,’ I replied. I cleared my throat. Readied myself.

‘Does it say that I kiss you or that you kiss me?’

‘You definitely kiss me.’

‘Okay.’

He was silent for a moment and then he leaned in and kissed me tenderly on the lips. In the middle of the most luscious nicest kiss I’d ever had, he opened his eyes and pulled away.

‘You just made that up, didn’t you?’ he asked, eyes wide.

‘What do you mean?’ I laughed.

‘Tamara Goodwin, you just made that up!’ he grinned. ‘Give me that book.’ He swiped it from my hands and pretended to hit me over the head with it.

‘We have to make our own tomorrows Weseley,’ I teased. I fell back on the blanket and looked up at the apple tree that had seen so much.

Weseley leaned over me, our faces close together, our noses almost touching.

‘What did it really say?’ he asked softly.

‘That I think it’ll all be okay. And that I’ll write again tomorrow.’

‘You always say that.’

‘And I always do.’

‘Are you ready?’ he asked, studying me closely.

‘I think so,’ I whispered.

‘Right.’ He sat up and pulled me up with him. ‘I brought this.’

He took a clear plastic bag from beside him and held it open. I dropped the diary in. Reluctantly at first, then as soon as it was in, I knew it was the right decision.

He wrapped the diary up in the plastic bag and handed it back to me.

‘You do it.’

I looked up at the apple tree, at the engravings of the names of my Mum, Laurie, Arthur, Rosaleen and the dozens of others who had so many hopes for tomorrow under this tree, and then I kneeled down and placed the diary in the hole that Weseley had dug and we filled it again with soil.

I didn’t lie when I said I couldn’t let it go. I can’t let it go. Not completely. Maybe some day when I’m in trouble again I’ll dig it up and see what it has to say. But in the meantime, I’ll have to find my own way.

Thanks for reading my story. I’ll write again tomorrow.

David, Mimmie, Dad, Georgina, Nicky, Rocco and Jay, (and Star, Doggy and Sniff)-I feel like I couldn’t wake up in the morning without you, never mind write a book. Thanks for holding my hand all the way along this long, exciting and intriguing path. “Carry you…?!”

For the yesterdays and todays, and the tomorrows I can hardly wait for-Thank you.

The Kellys (somebody will write a book about you lot yet), Aherns, Keoghans, and my dear full-time friends and part-time therapists. Thank you.

Marianne Gunn O’Connor. Thank you.

Vicki Satlow, Pat Lynch, Liam Murphy, Anita Kissane, Gerard O’Herlihy, Doo Services. Thank you.

Lynne Drew, Claire Bord-my books wouldn’t be what they are without your comments, advice and guidance. Thank you, thank you.

Amanda Ridout-there’s an empty chair at the “anything is possible” table and you’ll be missed. For all your encouragement and belief in me, thank you.

The entire army at HarperCollins-for working so hard on so many fantastically new and exciting ideas. I’m extraordinarily lucky to be a part of the team. Thank you.

Fiona McIntosh, Moira Reilly and Tony Purdue-I do enjoy our road trips! Thank you.

I do want to pay tribute to Killeen Castle. While this book is certainly not about Killeen, I was looking for a setting for this story and suddenly came upon this extraordinary place. Something clicked in my head and an entire world for Tamara and her family began to form. Thank you to those at Killeen Castle for, although unknowingly, unlocking the world for The Book of Tomorrow.

The Booksellers-for your incredible support. In The Book of Tomorrow I share my belief in the magic of books, how I believe books must contain some sort of homing device, which allows them to draw the correct reader to them. Books choose their readers, not the other way around. I believe that booksellers are the matchmakers. Thank you.

Before embarking on her writing career, Cecelia Ahern completed a degree in Journalism and Media Communications. At twenty-one years old, she wrote her first novel, PS, I Love You which instantly became an international bestseller and was adapted into a major motion picture starring Hilary Swank. Her successive novels, Where Rainbows End, If You Could See Me Now , A Place Called Here, Thanks for the Memories and The Gift were all number one bestsellers. Her books are published in forty-six countries and have collectively sold over ten million copies. Cecelia has also co-created the award-winning television comedy series Samantha Who? In 2008 Cecelia won the award for the Best New Writer at the Glamour Women of the Year Awards. Cecelia lives in Dublin, Ireland.