Cecelia Ahern - One Hundred Names

Kitty looked at it in surprise. ‘Thank you.’

She stepped inside and found herself in the kitchen. It was a modest home, a charming country cottage that had been updated but kept true to its roots. The Aga took over the room, its heat still emanating from breakfast time. She sat at the kitchen table and watched the woman finish up work, make her way towards the house, head down, all wild red hair covering her, still not meeting Kitty’s eye even as she stepped into the house and asked her if she’d like a cup of tea.

Kitty thought of Sally being lectured on butterflies of Ireland by Eugene and guiltily said yes to the tea. Ambrose did most of her talking with her back turned, and when she finally sat at the rectangular table, which seated eight, she chose to sit not opposite Kitty but at the end of the table, at the corner, looking away. It took a long time and an awkward warming-up conversation for Kitty finally to be able to make eye contact with Ambrose, and when she did she noticed something unusual. Ambrose had eyes of different colours, one a striking green and the other a deep dark brown. And it wasn’t just that: when her thick hair finally did move a centimetre from where it had been strategically placed, Kitty could see the discoloration that spread from the middle of her forehead and went down her nose, over her lips, half her chin, and disappeared beneath her high-collared blouse. The burn, if it was that, looked like a flame licking unevenly at the right side of her face, and as quickly as Kitty had seen it, it disappeared again as the thick veil of red hair was closed, and one bright green eye remained staring out at the kitchen table.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

If Kitty had been told that Ambrose had never before spoken to a human being, she would have believed it. She wasn’t rude but she had no real understanding of how a conversation worked. There was no eye contact, or at least only an accidental one, enough for Kitty to see the disfigured face and the varying eye colours. Perhaps Kitty’s reaction had been reflected in her face because Ambrose had chosen not to look at her again. Apart from failing to look her in the eye, where she positioned herself at the end of the table, she could turn her body away from Kitty. Kitty was looking at Ambrose’s right side. At least the hair there had been tucked behind her ear to show pale porcelain skin. She really was the most unusual person Kitty had ever met, not just physically, but characterwise too.

Her conversation was as unsettling as her demeanour. Her voice was quiet but, as if conscious of it, she spoke up on certain words and then forgot again, other words disappearing in whispers. Kitty had to listen hard to hear.

‘She called me. Yes it was. Last year. I remember. Because it was. Unusual.’ She shouted the word ‘unusual’, and then as if she’d given herself a fright she continued in a whisper, ‘She wanted to come to see me. To interview me. Yes, that’s what it was. I told her no. That I don’t. Do interviews.’

‘Did she say what the interview was about?’

‘Eugene. I told her to talk to Eugene about the museum. He deals with the public. Not me. She said it wasn’t about the museum. She didn’t know about the butterflies.’

‘It was about you personally?’

‘That’s what she said. I told her I didn’t want to. The list. She said she would keep me on the list anyway. I don’t know what that means.’

‘The list of people she wanted to interview,’ Kitty explained. ‘She left a list of one hundred names of people she wished to speak to and write about.’

‘She called me again. A few days later. She had a question about a caterpillar.’

‘The Oleander,’ Kitty smiled.

‘Laughing. She was laughing. She thought it was funny. In a nice way. She was nice,’ she said gently, and finally her eyes lifted and flicked to Kitty for a split second and looked away again, as if she knew Constance was gone. ‘She asked if she could visit. To talk to me. To see the museum. I told her she could visit. Not me. The museum. But it was only open for the summer months. Spring. She called me last spring. She never came.’

Kitty didn’t need to look away to hide her tears. Ambrose would not look at her anyway.

‘She got sick,’ Kitty explained and her voice came out as a croak. She cleared it. ‘She was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and she passed away two weeks ago.’

‘Daddy died of cancer.’

It wasn’t the usual sorry but it was full of empathy.

‘Are you here to collect her order?’

Kitty’s tears automatically stopped. ‘What order?’

‘Oh. I thought that was why you were here. I kept it for her. On display. I put it on display and nobody else bought it. A framed one. An Oleander moth. She said it was a gift.’

Ambrose suddenly upped and left the room, her long hair and loose clothing giving her a fluttering butterfly effect, and while Kitty waited, she wiped her flooding tears and smiled.

‘I ran the museum with Daddy,’ Ambrose explained after Kitty had gone into further detail about why it was she was really there. Ambrose, like most people, had been reluctant to talk to her at first, but when Kitty had suggested, quite honestly, that it would also be good for the business, as well as a personal adventure, and promised there would be no photographs of Ambrose, she agreed to start talking and Kitty kept writing as she talked, her mind racing as she tried to piece everything together.

Story Idea: People intrinsically don’t believe that they are interesting.

or

People who believe that they are not interesting, usually are the most interesting of all.

Kitty was aware of the threatening text messages she was receiving from Sally, who was still stuck in a lecture with Eugene and a group of tourists who kept asking too many questions, but Kitty couldn’t let this opportunity pass her by. She still had no idea why Constance had chosen Ambrose for the story, though she knew it was not for the butterfly museum, and she was determined to discover what it was Constance had already found. Kitty was personally and not just professionally interested in hearing this intriguing woman’s story.

‘Mammy and Daddy had opened it together but Mammy died and Daddy took over.’

Ambrose must have been in her forties, but it was difficult to say. She often sounded childlike, and held the shyness of a child, but equally often stooped her body and appeared like an old woman.

‘How did your mother die?’ Kitty asked gently. She expected her to say a fire or something that would help explain Ambrose’s appearance. She couldn’t figure out how to broach that subject. It was fascinating to her and yet it was the one question she felt she probably would never be able to ask and possibly the one issue that would never be broached.

‘Childbirth. Complications. She had me here. In the house. They probably would have saved her if she’d had me in a hospital but it’s not what she wanted. So. ’Twas to be.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Kitty took a slug of her tea. ‘Eugene seems to be a great help and certainly very knowledgeable,’ she said.

Ambrose looked up then and smiled. Not at Kitty but out the open door into the garden, which was alive with butterflies and nature. She seemed to light up. Then she faded again. ‘Eugene loves butterflies. I didn’t think it would be possible to find someone who loved them as much as Daddy did. I couldn’t do this. Not without Eugene.’

‘He says the same. He said that none of this would be here if it wasn’t for you,’ Kitty told Ambrose, who smiled shyly. ‘How did you find him?’

‘His mammy was my tutor. He came to my house with her for my classes. He was always bored stiff. Sometimes he’d sit in on the classes, other times, most times, he wandered around the museum. That’s how he knows so much. He’s been looking at those butterflies in frames for over thirty years.’