The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern Page A

crumpled from the drive. She took small breaths and she visibly calmed before us. ‘You’re coming back to the house?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ I frowned. ‘I told Mum where I was going.’
    ‘Yes, but your mother…’
    ‘My mother what?’ My voice hardened. If everything was so okay with my mother, then my telling her should have been fine.
    Marcus’s hand was on my back, his thumb comfortingly circling the small of my back, reminding me of Mexico, of all the other places I could be.
    ‘You should go with her,’ Marcus said quietly. ‘I have to move on now, anyway.You can hold on to that.’ He nodded at the book I was hugging in my arms.
    ‘Thanks. See you again?’
    He rolled his eyes. ‘Of course, Goodwin. Now go.’
    As I walked across the road and sat in the back of the Land Rover, I noticed the three male smokers standing outside the pub, staring. It’s not unusual to be stared at but it was the way they were staring. Arthur nodded at them. Rosaleen kept her head down, her eyes to the floor. The three men’s eyes followed us, and I stared back, hoping to figure out what exactly was their problem. Was it because I was new? But I knew it wasn’t, because they weren’t looking at me. All eyes were on Arthur and Rosaleen. In the car, nobody said a word the entire way home.
    Inside the house, I went to check on Mum despite Rosaleen telling me not to. She was still sitting in the rocking chair, not rocking, and looking out at the garden. I sat with her a while and then left. I went downstairs to the living room, back to the armchair I’d been sitting in before Marcus called. I reached for the photo album but it was gone. Tidied away by Rosaleen again. I sighed and searched for it again on the bookshelf. It was gone. I went through every single book on that shelf, but it was nowhere to be found.
    I heard a creak at the door and I spun round. Rosaleen was standing there.
    ‘Rosaleen!’ I said, hand flying to my heart. ‘You scared me.’
    ‘What were you doing?’ she asked, her fingers creasing and then smoothing the apron over her dress.
    ‘I was just looking for a photo album I saw earlier.’
    ‘Photo album?’ She cocked her head sideways, her forehead wrinkled, her face pinched in confusion.
    ‘Yes, I saw it earlier, before the library came by. I hope you don’t mind, I took it out to look at it but now it’s…’ I held my hands up in the air and laughed. ‘It has mysteriously vanished.’
    She shook her head. ‘No, child.’ She looked behind her and then lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Now hush about it.’
    Arthur entered then, with a newspaper in his hand and she went quiet. He glanced from me to her.
    She looked at Arthur nervously. ‘I better see to the dinner. Rack of lamb tonight,’ she said quietly.
    He nodded and watched her leave the room.
    The way he watched her made me not want to ask Arthur about the album. The way he watched her made me think a lot of things about Arthur.
    Later that evening, I heard them in their bedroom, muffled sounds that rose and fell. I wasn’t sure if it was an argument or not but it felt different from the way they usually talked. It was a conversation, instead of a series of comments thrown to one another. Whatever they were talking about, they were trying hard for me not to hear them. I had my ear up against the wall, wondering about their sudden silence, when my bedroom door opened and Arthur was there staring at me.
    ‘Arthur,’ I said, moving away from the wall, ‘you should knock. I need my privacy.’
    Considering he’d just caught me with my ear to the wall he did well not to say anything.
    ‘Do you want me to bring you to Dublin in the morning?’ he grumbled.
    ‘What?’
    ‘To stay with a friend.’
    I was so delighted, I punched the air and got straight onthe phone to Zoey, either forgetting to pursue or not caring as to the sudden reason for my expulsion. And so that was the time I went to stay with Zoey. It had been only two