The Book of Tomorrow (27 page)

‘No,’ Mrs Kilsaney would cry, ‘I can’t let them visit us as though we’re a zoo. And still how will we afford the place? A few pounds admission fee per adult won’t fix the roof, it won’t pay Paddy’s wages, it won’t pay the heating bills.’

They found a solution, though. Developers Timothy and George Goodwin arrived in Kilsaney in their Bentley on the most beautiful day of the year and they couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw the grounds, the view, the lakes, the deer, the pheasants. It was like a theme park. They saw money everywhere they looked. Timothy Goodwin, a dapper but rude old gentleman in a three-piece suit, and with a cheque-book in his inside pocket, fell in love with the property. George Goodwin fell in love with Jennifer Byrne. This was the happiest day of Rosaleen’s life. While serving them during their banquet meal in the great dining room, she couldn’t help but observe how George Goodwin had eyes only for Jennifer, how he had little to say to Laurie and a lot of time to play with the child. Everybody at the table saw this, certainly Laurie. Jennifer was kind to him but she adored Laurie.

The Goodwins returned over and over, to measure, to bring builders, architects, engineers, surveyers. George returned far more often than his father, taking over the project. Rosaleen saw her opportunity to get Laurie back.
One night she overheard George offering Jennifer the sun, the moon, and the stars. Everybody fell for Jennifer. It was her fault—she sent out vibes, caught people in her web, had no idea how many lives she ruined in the process. But while she found George Goodwin a pleasant and kind man, she rejected his advances.

Not so in Rosaleen’s eyes.

Laurie caught her in the scullery crying her eyes out. She wouldn’t tell him at first, she didn’t want to hurt him. It was none of her business, Jennifer was her friend. But he gently coaxed her into telling him what she’d seen. She’d felt bad for causing the hurt that went through his eyes. So bad that she almost took it back right there and then, but then he’d taken her hand and squeezed it, given her a hug and told her what a great friend she’d always been, how he hadn’t always acknowledged that. Well, how could she take it back then?

It was a long night, a long argument. Rosaleen allowed them to fight it out between themselves, their own words then doing more damage than hers ever could. Laurie didn’t tell Jennifer that it was Rosaleen that had told him. She was glad of that. Instead she let Jennifer cry on her shoulder, while she gave half-hearted advice. Jennifer was sleeping in the gatehouse that night, Laurie didn’t want her anywhere near him. Jennifer came to Rosaleen as she was happily clearing up the kitchen, contented with the latest argument she’d started. She came to Rosaleen with a letter. A letter that Rosaleen read and, though she rarely cried, it made her do so. Jennifer’s wish was for her to pass it on to Laurie. Rosaleen burned it. But the child wandered in, the toddler who looked so like her father that she got a shock. Rosaleen shook out the letter and the fire subsided and she threw it in the bin. She picked up the child and returned her to her bed. Rosaleen went home then.

That was the night of the fire. She can’t be sure if it was the burned letter that caused it, though they say it came from the kitchen, but nobody ever blamed her. The child was saved by Laurie. Then he went back in to fetch some valuables. As far as Jennifer knew, he died in that fire. Laurie didn’t want Jennifer to take him back just because she felt she had to. As far as he was concerned, George Goodwin had her heart and could offer her more. Though it was his own decision, a little probing from Rosaleen helped Laurie to decide that was the best thing. He could offer them nothing. No castle, land that was sold, he’d lost the use of an arm and a leg. He was badly burned, beyond recognition. Ugly as though he’d rotted away. Artie didn’t agree, but he couldn’t talk his brother out of the decision to deceive Jennifer. The brothers never spoke again, not even when living across the road from one another.

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.

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.