The Book of Tomorrow

by Cecelia Ahern

  The back of the bungalow was as deserted-looking as the front. Again, each window was covered by lace net curtains. There were two windows and a back door. I knew one was the kitchen, as I could just about make out the tap on the sink. The doorway seemed like the newest addition to the house. It was brown with yellow-tinted obscured glass. The second window gave nothing away.

  I turned my attention to the workshed, where the object in the window continued to glisten and beckon me forward. I ignored the bungalow and began to make my way towards it. Halfway down I realised I should have left the tray, but I continued. On closer inspection, what glistened so much appeared to be a twisted piece of glass, hanging from a piece of twine. It spiralled elegantly and smoothly to a sharp point, the same shape as a bunch of grapes and was about sixty inches in length. As the draughty window blew it, it spun in circles, twirling and giving the illusion that it was spiralling down, catching the light at different points over and over again. It was hypnotising.

  As I was staring at the glass, something else caught my eye. A movement. Thinking it was a reflection in the grass, I turned to see who was behind me but there was nothing but the trees moving in the breeze. I thought I’d imagined it but on further inspection, there it was again. A figure inside the shed. I moved slowly closer to the workshed, trying not to make much noise with my tray and really wishing I hadn’t bothered with it now, as the eggs and tea would surely be cold and the buttered toast would be soft. The workshed windowledge was shoulder height. I stood at the corner on my tiptoes to see inside. I didn’t dare look round the rest of the room, but kept my eyes on Rosaleen’s mother in case she saw me and came at me with a sharp piece of glass.

  I could see only her back. Her figure, in a long brown cardigan was hunched over a workbench. She had long scraggy hair, more brown than grey, which looked like she hadn’t brushed it for a month. I watched her for a while, trying to decide whether to knock or not. I didn’t even know her name. I didn’t even know Rosaleen’s maiden name to be able to address her. Eventually I built up the courage. I knocked gently.

  The figure jumped and I hoped I hadn’t given her a heart attack. She halfturned, slowly and stiffly. The side of her face that was towards me was covered mostly by her long tatty hair. Over her eyes were a pair of oversized goggles, protective glasses that covered half her forehead and pinched her cheeks. She was all hair and goggles, like a nutty professor.

  I balanced the tray on one knee and while the cups and plates clinked and slid, wobbled and spilled, I quickly waved, giving the biggest smile I’d ever given a person just so she’d know I wasn’t here to kill her. She just stared at me, no expression, no registering of any kind. I lifted the tray as high as I could, then balanced it on my knee again to quickly make an eating motion. There was still no response. I knew then that I was going to be in big trouble; it had not gone to plan. Rosaleen was right: her mother was not ready for perfect strangers and even if she was, I should have waited for Rosaleen to introduce us. I took a few steps back.

  ‘I’m leaving this here for you,’ I said loudly, hoping she’d hear me. I placed the tray down on the grass and backed away. As I was moving backward, I glanced down past the workshed at the rest of the garden. My mouth dropped and I sidestepped to take a closer look. Rows of washing lines filled the lawn. There must have been between ten and twenty lines. On each line were dozens of glass mobiles, all different shapes, glass twisted and turned to make unique shapes, some ridged, some smooth, dangling in the breeze, catching the light, sparkling and silently swaying. A field of glass.

  I passed by the workshed and went into the back lawn to further investigate. They were all far apart enough not to hit against one another. If they had been even a centimetre closer I’m sure they would surely have smashed. The lines were pulled tight, attached to a wall at the bottom of the garden and run tightly all the way to a pole at the other end. They stood taller than me so I was constantly looking up, seeing the light of the sky through the glass. They were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Some appeared to drip, full and fluid, from the twine like giant tear drops but instead of falling, they’d frozen mid-air. Others had fewer swirls and curves, and were rigid spikes, more angry and sharp, hanging like icicles, like weapons. Each time the wind blew they swayed from side to side, I walked down the middle of one row, stopping occasionally to examine them. I’d never seen anything like them, so clear and pure. Some had bubbles trapped inside, others were completely clear. I held my hand up and looked at it through the glass, seeming obscured in some, perfectly as it was in others. Fascinating and beautiful, some distorted and disturbing others pretty and so fragile, as though touching them would shatter them.

  I was going to go further and investigate the other lines when I turned round to make sure I was still alone and I saw Rosaleen’s mother had all of a sudden moved to a window that overlooked this second half of the garden. She was looking at me, her hand pressed up against the glass. I stopped walking and stood in one row, feeling like a Cabbage Patch girl in a field of glass, and smiled back, wondering how long she’d been watching me. I tried to make out her face, to see her features, but it was impossible. She was yet again showing only her silhouette, her long hair falling to her shoulders, not grey as I had thought earlier, but a mouse-brown with white streaks. She seemed to be ageless, faceless, even more mysterious to me now than she was before I’d seen her.

  I left the field of glass mobiles, taking them all in as though I’d never see them again as punishment for trespassing. Once I’d passed into the other garden, I could see her watching me still, not at the window but further away, deeper in the room.

  I waved again, pointed to the tray on the grass, made eating gestures, as though it was feeding time in the zoo. She continued to stare at me making no reaction. Completely uncomfortable-hot sun, good win, very dead-I turned round and quickly walked away from the garden, not looking back once but feeling as I used to feel as a little girl, running from my friend’s house to my own house in the dark, and thinking there was a witch behind me.

  It was twelve o’clock.

  I paced the living room, back and forth, up and down, left and right. Sat down, stood up. Made my way to Mum’s room, then stopped and went back to the room again. I wrung my hands and looked out the window now and then, expecting to see Rosaleen’s mother come racing across the road on her wheelchair, doing wheelies and cracking a whip. I also expected Rosaleen and Arthur to round the corner at top speed too. Rosaleen had lain traps around the bungalow: I’d tripped a wire, a blade of grass was out of place, I’d walked through a beam and triggered an alarm in her handbag. She was going to tie me to a bed, break my legs with a sledgehammer and force me to write her a novel. I couldn’t do that. I could barely keep a diary. I don’t know-I felt something, anything could happen. I broke the rules at home all the time, here it was different. Here it was all so strict and ancient, like living on an excavation site and everybody was tiptoeing around, not walking here, but only walking there, speaking quietly so as not to crumble the foundations, using little brushes and tools to scratch at the surface and blow away dust, but never going any deeper and I’d arrived stomping through the place with a shovel and spade and I’d ruined everything.

  And now I’d have to go back and get the tray or else Rosaleen would know what I’d done. I hoped I hadn’t poisoned her mother-oh God, what if I had? Eggs could be dangerous things and I’d forgotten to wash the berries. Was salmonella lethal? I almost picked up the phone and called Weseley again but I resisted. After spending far too long frantically worrying, I realised nothing was going to happen-not immediately, anyway-and I really hadn’t done anything wrong either. I’d tried to be nice to an old woman. So shoot me. I hoped she was enjoying my eggs.

  I calmed down then. Next on my list was the garage at the bottom of the garden. I opened the back door which led from the kitchen to the garden, and ran down the lawn, then through Rosaleen’s vegetable patch, which ran along the bottom. I looke
d up at Mum’s bedroom window, which was empty as she continued to sleep on.

  As garages go, it was a fine one. It was clad in the same limestone as the house, or near enough to it, and looked better built than any of my dad’s developments. I say that with the greatest respect to my dad who was proud of what he built, I just don’t think he cared much for architecture. It was more about space and how to give the least possible amount of it to everybody. The garage almost filled the full width of the garden, twenty-five metres long. To the right of the house, on the other side of the neatly manicured hedge was a tractor trail, yet another path that meandered around the grounds. But before it left the house’s vicinity there was a turn-off which led to the garage’s double doors. I’d never seen Arthur park the tractor inside. Perhaps Rosaleen was correct, perhaps there wasn’t room inside for our possessions. I favoured this way into the garage because I wouldn’t be visible from the house, but there was a bigger door to open, a bigger lock to pick. I looked in all of the windows but I couldn’t see anything. They’d been covered on the inside by black sacks. I tried the single door, which was locked and then I went round to the double doors again. I pulled and pushed, I kicked and banged. I used a rock to continuously hammer at the lock, but that did nothing but dent the metal.

  It was twelve-thirty by the time I returned to the house, none the wiser on the garage. I washed my hands and changed my clothes, which were filthy from my breaking-and-entering attempt. I checked on Mum, who was finally awake and taking a shower. I took my time getting dressed, knowing exactly how long I had until Rosaleen and Arthur returned. I sat on my bed and looked across to the bungalow. Something caught my eye.

  On the pillar by the front gate was the tray. I stood up, examined the garden, the house. Nobody was in the garden, nobody watched from the window. I checked to see if Rosaleen had returned but the car was still gone.

  It was 12.50 p.m.

  I ran downstairs and outside, across the road. The tray was covered by the tea-cloth as I had laid it down. Underneath, the food was gone, the tea cup was empty. They gleamed as though they had just been cleaned. On the plate sat the tiniest version of one of the glass mobiles that I had been studying. Like a small tear drop, it was soft and smooth and fit perfectly into the palm of my hand. There was nothing else. No card, nobody to tell me it was for me. I waited, but nobody came. It was dangerously close to one o’clock and I couldn’t wait any longer. I couldn’t risk Rosaleen returning to find me on the wall with a tray and a glass tear drop. I put the piece of glass in my pocket. I ran across the road as quickly as I could without shattering the contents of the tray. Just as I closed the front door behind me, I heard Rosaleen and Arthur’s car return. Shaking, I placed the cleaned cups and saucers, and plate back in the kitchen cupboards. I put the tray back where it belonged. I grabbed my book from the living room, ran upstairs into my Mum’s room and dived on the bed. Mum, who was coming out of the bathroom, looked at me in shock. Seconds later the door opened and Rosaleen looked in.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, as Mum tightened her towel around her.

  She stepped back further from the door so that she could only see me.

  ‘Tamara, is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes thanks.’

  ‘What did you do all morning?’ It wasn’t an interested enquiry, it was a concerned one, and not concern for my boredom either.

  ‘I was just here with Mum all morning, reading my book.’

  ‘Oh, very good.’ She stalled a bit, always afraid to leave a room, ‘I’ll be downstairs if you need me.’

  She closed the door and when I looked at Mum, I realised she was looking at me and smiling. She laughed then and shook her head and I almost felt like cancelling Dr Gedad.

  The door opened again. Rosaleen looked at Mum’s breakfast tray.

  ‘Jennifer you didn’t eat again.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mum said looking up while putting on another of her cashmere lounge robes. ‘Tamara will eat it for me.’ Then she smiled sweetly at Rosaleen.

  ‘No, no,’ Rosaleen said hastily coming inside and taking the tray. ‘I’ll take that away.’

  Mum kept watching her, blue eyes shining.

  ‘Tamara, your lunch will be ready soon,’ Rosaleen told me nervously, and backed out of the room.

  I looked at Mum in confusion, for an explanation, but she had disappeared again, back into her shell. Turtles either disappear into their shells because they’re scared or because danger lurks and they’re protecting themselves. Either way, as soon as those shells grow, they never lose them because they’re physically a part of them.

  During that summer if ever people tried to convince me that Mum was never returning to the way I remember her before Dad died-and some people hinted at it-I kept thinking of those turtles. She would keep the new shell she’d grown over the past few months, and she would carry it around with her for the rest of her life but that didn’t mean she would disappear into it. I saw proof that day that Mum hadn’t disappeared for good, I saw it in her eyes. I remember the exact moment when I saw her again. It was at one o’clock.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Things You Find in a Pantry

  Rosaleen looked different today, having made an effort for Sunday mass and market. Her Sunday clothes were a knee-length beige-coloured skirt with a small slit up the middle at the back. She wore a cream slightly see-through blouse with puffy shoulders, which was tied in a bow at the neck and underneath I could see a lacy bra, though I doubted she knew about its transparency. It was actually quite sophisticated. She’d worn a matching beige jacket with a peacock feather brooch on the lapel, and on her feet were nude patent slingback peep-toes. Only an inch or two high but she looked good. I said so and her face brightened and her cheeks pinked.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Where did you buy it?’

  ‘Oh,’ she was embarrassed about talking about herself. ‘In Dunshauglin. About a half-hour away there’s a place that I like. Mary’s very good, God bless her soul…’

  I awaited Mary’s tragic news with bated breath. It involved a dead husband and lots of God blessing her.

  I tried again with another conversation.

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘A sister in Cork. Helen. She’s a teacher. And I’ve a brother, Brian, in Boston.’

  ‘Do they ever visit?’

  ‘Now and then. It’s been a while. Usually Mammy would visit them, Helen in Cork at least, to give her a change of scenery, but now she can’t. She has MS.’ She looked at me then, opening up. ‘Multiple Sclerosis-do you know what that is?’

  ‘Kind of. Something about your muscles no longer working.’

  ‘Close enough. It’s got worse over the years. It gives her awful trouble. That’s why I’m back and forth. I can’t travel, I don’t like to leave her, you know. She needs me.’

  It seemed like a lot of people needed Rosaleen. But it struck me that with so many people needing one person, maybe it was more that she needed them to need her. I never wanted to need Rosaleen.

  Her mother never arrived to point the accusing finger at me, but two o’clock did. I snuck out of the house unnoticed while Rosaleen was getting the makings of her tarts ready. I’d learned that the three thousand various pies she’d made during the week not only fed us and her mother, but she’d brought them to the Sunday farmers’ market where she sold them along with her home-made jam, and organic home-grown vegetables. She’d carried a pouch stuffed with notes and coins to the table, turned her back to take something out of it and then squeezed twenty euro into my hand. I was honestly so touched, I refused to take it but she wasn’t having any of it.

  When I reached the castle, Weseley was sitting on the stairs-my stairs. He was wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt with a blue skull on it and blue trainers. Even in the daylight he was cool.

  He looked up and pulled his earphones out. ‘He can come tomorrow at ten.’

  There was no hello or anything. I was a little put
out.

  ‘Oh. Great, thanks.’ I waited for him to stand up and flutter away, like a little pigeon who’d delivered its message, but he stayed. ‘Actually, could he come at ten fifteen, just in case Rosaleen is delayed leaving?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Okay, great, thanks,’ I repeated.

  He still didn’t leave and so I stepped in further and leaned against the wall directly opposite him.

  ‘Do you know the woman who lives in the bungalow?’

  ‘Rosaleen’s mother? I saw her the first week we moved but not since then. She doesn’t really go out much. She’s old. I think she’s got Alzheimer’s or something.’

  ‘Have you ever been to her house?’

  ‘I’ve dropped a few things over for Arthur. Firewood, coal, some furniture, that kind of thing. But Rosaleen always escorts me on and off the premises.’ He smiled. ‘It’s not as if there’s anything over there to steal, if that’s what she’s worried about.’

  ‘Well she’s worried about something. So Arthur never goes over to the bungalow himself…’ I thought aloud. ‘They mustn’t get along. I wonder why.’

  ‘Check you out, Nancy Drew. Or how about, I’m now Arthur’s dogsbody so he couldn’t be arsed carrying over dodgy rocking chairs to his mother-in-law when he’s paying me next to nothing to do it for him.’

  ‘But he never even visits her.’

  ‘You’re really looking for something, aren’t you?’

  It reminded me of what Sister Ignatius had said about my mind doing unusual things when it searches. She had known before I did that I was looking for something.