The Book of Tomorrow Read Free

felt sorry for God because I understood his frustration. Sometimes when people offer a helping hand, it gets pushed away. People always want to help themselves first.
    I never used to think about these things before; God, bluebottles, ants. I’d rather have been caught dead than be seen sitting in an armchair with a book in my hand and staring at a dirty fly tapping against a window on a Saturday. Maybe that’s what Dad had thought in his final moments: I’d rather be caught dead here in my study than go through the humiliation of having everything taken from me.
    My Saturdays used to be spent in Topshop with my friends, trying on absolutely everything and laughing nervously while Zoey stuffed as many accessories down her pants as she could manage before leaving the store. If we weren’t in Topshop we’d spend the day sitting in Starbucks having a grande gingersnap latte and banana honey muffin. I’m sure that’s what they’re all doing now.
    I haven’t heard from anyone since the first week I got here, except a text from Laura before my phone was cut off, filling me on all the gossip, the biggest of all being that Zoey and Fiachrá got back together and did it in Zoey’s house when her parents were away in Monte Carlo for the weekend. Her dad has a gambling problem, which Zoey and the rest of us loved because it meant when we all stayed over at her house, her parents would come home much later than everybody else’s. Anyway, apparently Zoey said that sex with Fiachrá hurt worse than the time the lesbian from the Sutton hockey team hit her between the legs with the stick, which was really bad, believe me—I saw —and she isn’t in a rush to do it again. Meanwhile Laura told me not to tell anyone but she was meeting Fiachrá at the weekend to do it. She hopes I don’t mind and please don’t tell Zoey. As if I could tell anyone if I wanted to, where I am.
    Where I am. I haven’t told you that yet, have I? I’ve mentioned my mum’s sister-in-law, Rosaleen, already. She’s the one my mum used to empty her wardrobe of all herunworn impulse buys for and send them down in black sacks with the tags still on. Rosaleen’s married to my uncle Arthur, who is my mum’s brother. They live in a gatehouse in the country in a place called Meath in the middle of nowhere with hardly anybody else around. We visited them only a few times in my life and I was always bored to death. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to get there and the build-up was always a let down. I thought they were hicks in the middle of the sticks. I used to call them the Deliverance Duo. That’s the only time I remember Dad laughing at one of my jokes. He never came with us when we visited Rosaleen and Arthur. I don’t think they ever had an argument or anything, but like penguins and polar bears, they were just too far apart ever to be able to spend any time near one another. Anyway, that’s where we live now. In the gatehouse with the Deliverance Duo.
    It’s a sweet house, a quarter the size of our old one which is no bad thing, and it reminds me of the one in ‘Hansel and Gretel’. It’s built from limestone and the wood around the windows and roof is painted olive green. There are three bedrooms upstairs and a kitchen and a living room downstairs. Mum has an en suite but Rosaleen, Arthur and I all share a bathroom on the second floor. Used to having my own bathroom, I think this is gross, particularly when I have to go in there after my uncle Arthur and his newspaper-reading session. Rosaleen is a neat freak, obsessively tidy; she never ever sits down. She’s always moving things, cleaning things, spraying chemicals in the air, and saying stuff about God and his will. I said to her once that I hoped God’s will was better than the one Dad left behind for us. She looked at me horrified and scuttled off to dust somewhere else.
    Rosaleen has the depth of a shot glass. Everything she talks about is totally irrelevant, unnecessary. The