I don’t know if Mum felt something was wrong with him too. Maybe she did but she has never said. If she didn’t sense it, then I was the only one. I should have said something. Better yet, I should have done something to stop him.

I’m sorry, Dad.

What if, what if, what if…What if we knew what tomorrow would bring? Would we fix it? Could we?

I chose to eat breakfast with Mum in her bedroom the next morning. This seemed to concern Rosaleen, who hung around Mum’s bedroom a little too long, moving furniture, setting up a table for both of us in front of the window, adjusting the curtains, opening a window, closing it a little, opening it a little more, questioning me on whether it was too breezy.

‘Rosaleen, please,’ I said gently.

‘Yes child,’ she said as she continued to make the bed, furiously thumping pillows, tucking in the blankets so tightly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d licked the undersheets before turning them over the blanket and sealing them like an envelope.

‘You don’t have to do that. I’ll make it after breakfast,’ I said. ‘You go downstairs to Arthur. I’m sure he’ll want to see you before he goes to work.’

‘His lunch is on the counter all ready to go-he knows where it is.’ She kept plumping, smoothing, and if it wasn’t right she’d start again.

‘Rosaleen,’ I repeated, gently.

Even though I knew she didn’t want to, she quickly glanced at me. When our eyes clicked, she knew her game was up but she just stared at me and in those eyes she dared me to say it. She didn’t think I would. I swallowed.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, I’d just like to spend a little time with Mum. On our own, please.’ There I’d said it. Tamara Grown-Up had spoken up for herself. But my request was inevitably followed by the wounded look, the slow release of the pillows falling to the bed, followed by a whispery, ‘Well.’

I didn’t feel bad.

Finally she left the room and I remained quiet for a while. Not hearing the creak of the landing, I knew she was still outside the door. Listening, guarding, protecting or locking us in-I wasn’t sure. What was she so afraid of?

Instead of trying to drag conversation out of Mum as I’d been trying to do for the past month, I decided to stop fighting her silence and instead sit with her patiently in the silence that seemed to comfort her. Occasionally I lifted a slice of fruit to her and she took it and nibbled on it. I watched her face. She looked totally enchanted, as though she was watching a great big screen which I couldn’t see, outside in the back garden. Her eyebrows rose and fell as she reacted to something somebody said, her lips smiled coyly as she remembered a secret. Her face hid a million secrets.

Having spent enough time with her, I kissed her on the forehead and left the room. The diary I had been previously hugging proudly was now hidden under my bed. I felt as if I was running off somewhere to hide a big secret. I was also kind of embarrassed, I must admit. My friends and I didn’t keep diaries. We didn’t even write to each other. We kept in touch through Twitter and Facebook, posting up photos of ourselves whilst on holiday, of our nights out, trying on dresses in department-store changing rooms and looking for second opinions. We texted one another continuously, we emailed gossip and forwarded generic funny emails but it was all on-the-surface stuff. We talked about things you can see, things you can touch, nothing deeper. Nothing emotional.

This diary is the kind of thing Fiona would do-the girl in our class who nobody spoke to apart from Sabrina, the other dork, but she was out of school more than in because of some kind of migraine problem. But this is what she used to do: find a quiet place to go to on her own, a corner of a classroom when the teacher wasn’t in, or beneath a tree in the school grounds at lunch time and bury her nose deep in a book or furiously scribble something in a notebook. I used to laugh at her. But the joke was clearly on me. Who knew what she was writing.

There was only one place I could possibly go to write the diary. I reached for it under my bed and ran down the stairs shouting, ‘Rosaleen, I’m going out…’ My flip-flops banged down the creaky stairs, and as I leaped off the final step and landed on the ground with all the grace of an elephant, Rosaleen appeared before me.

‘Jesus, Rosaleen!’ My hand flew to my heart.

Her eyes moved over me quickly, registered my diary, then went to my face. I wrapped my arms around it protectively, making sure one side of my cardigan covered half the book.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked quietly.

‘Just out…and about.’

Her eyes flicked down to the diary again. She just couldn’t help herself.

‘Can I fix you some food to have with you? You’ll be starving hungry.’

Starving hungry. Hot sun. Long goodbye. Very dead.

‘There’s some fresh brown bread and chicken, some potato salad and baby tomatoes…’

‘No, thanks, I’m still full from breakfast.’ I made a move to the door again.

‘Some sliced fruit maybe?’ She raised her voice slightly. ‘A ham and cheese sandwich? There’s leftover coleslaw from-’

‘Rosaleen. No. Thank you.’

‘Okay.’ More wounded looks. ‘Well, be safe now, won’t you? Don’t go wandering too far. Stay within the grounds. Within eyeshot of the house.’

Within eyeshot of her, more like.

‘I’m not going off to war,’ I laughed. ‘Just…around.’

In the closed space of the house, where everyone always knew where everyone else was at any time, I wanted a few hours of my place, my time.

‘All right,’ she said.

‘Don’t look so worried.’

‘I’m just not sure…’ She looked down at the floor, unclasped her hands to smooth down her tea-dress. ‘Would your mother let you go?’

‘Mum? Mum would let me go to the moon, if it kept me from whinging all day.’

I’m not sure if relief was what passed over Rosaleen’s face. Just more worry. Suddenly a few chips fell into place for me, and I relaxed a little. Rosaleen wasn’t a mother, but all of a sudden, in her quiet house, as my mum had switched to sleep mode, Rosaleen had to do the mothering of both of us.

‘Oh, I understand,’ I said softly. I reached out a hand and I touched her. Her body tensed so much that I quickly let go. ‘You don’t have to worry about me. Mum and Dad pretty much let me go wherever I wanted. I used to spend the entire day in town with my friends. I even went to London one day with my friend. We were over and back in a day. Her dad has his own jet. It was totally cool. There were only, like, six seats and it was just for me and Emily-that’s the girl whose plane it was. Then for her seventeenth birthday her parents let us all fly to Paris. Her older sister came with us to keep an eye on us, though. She was nineteen, in college and everything.’

She listened intently; far too eagerly, too anxiously, too quickly, far too desperately.

‘Oh, isn’t that lovely,’ she said brightly, her green eyes hungry for all the words that came from my mouth. I could see her gobbling them up as soon as I’d said them. ‘Your birthday isn’t far off. Is that the kind of thing you’d get for your birthday?’ She looked around the hallway of the gatehouse as if she might find a plane in there somewhere. ‘Well, we wouldn’t be able for the likes of that…’

‘No, no, that’s not what I meant. That’s not why I told you the story. It was just…it doesn’t matter, Rosaleen,’ I said quickly. ‘I’d better go.’ I pushed past her to get to the door. ‘Thanks, though,’ I said. The last thing I saw before I closed the door was her concerned look, as though she’d said something wrong. Worrying about what their life could and couldn’t offer me. Turns out my old life was offering me more than it could, anyway. Like a desperate lover it was offering me the moon and stars when it knew there was no way it could ever deliver. I stupidly believed it. I used to think that it was better to have too much than too little, but now I think if the too much was never supposed to be yours, you should just take what is yours and give the rest back. I’ll take Rosaleen and Arthur’s simplicity any day. That way, you never have to give back the things you love.