I was about to protest when I remembered my comments in the diary about being smothered with a cold. Perhaps I could change what was going to happen. I followed her out of the garden and through the trees to her home.

The house was just like Sister Ignatius. It lacked a deceptive brick in its making, as it was as old on the inside as it was on the outside. We entered through the back door, a small hallway filled with Wellington boots, raincoats, umbrellas and sunhats, every necessity for every kind of weather. Uneven, cracked stone flagging floored the walkway to the kitchen. The kitchen was something from the 1970s. Shaker-style cabinets, linoleum flooring, plastic counter tops, avocado and burnt orange in every possible place from an era obsessed with bringing the outside in. There was a long pine table with a bench on either side, long enough to feed the Waltons. From a room off the kitchen a radio blared. Brown swirly carpet led my eyeline to a big television set with a booty that came out thirty inches from the wall. On top, cream lace dangled over the front of the screen and a statue of Mary stood. On the wall above it was a simple wooden cross.

The house smelled old. Musty damp mixed with generations of cooked dinners and greasy cooking oil. Somewhere in there was the scent of Sister Ignatius’ a clean talcum powder soapy smell, like a freshly bathed baby. Like Rosaleen and Arthur’s house, this had the feel that generations of people had lived there before, families had grown up, run and shouted through the hallways, had broken things, grown things, fallen in love and pulled themselves back out of it again. Instead of the occupants owning the house, the house owned a part of each of them. We never had that feeling in our house. I loved our house but every bit of life was cleaned away by our cleaners who everyday rid the rooms of history’s perfume and replaced it instead with bleach. Every three years a room was done up in a new style, old furniture thrown out, new furniture moved in, a painting to match the sofa. There was no eclectic collection of items gathered through the years. No sentimental clutter crammed together oozing secrets. It was all new and expensive, lacked anything of sentiment. Or that’s how it had been.

Sister Ignatius hurried off in her beekeeping suit, walking like a toddler with a bulging nappy. I took off my cardigan, lay it across the radiator. My vest was see-through and stuck to me, my flip-flops squelched but I daren’t take them off in case dirt from the previous family stuck to my sole. Too much of outside had been brought in on these floors.

Sister Ignatius returned with a towel in her hand and a T-shirt.

‘I’m sorry, this is all I could find. We’re not in the habit of dressing seventeen-year-olds.’

‘Sixteen,’ I corrected her, checking out the woman’s pink marathon T-shirt.

‘I ran it every year from ‘61 to ‘71,’ she explained, turning to the Aga to prepare the soup. ‘Not any more, I’m afraid.’

‘Wow, you must have been fit.’

‘What do you mean?’ She struck a pose in her beekeeping suit and kissed a padded bicep. ‘I haven’t lost it yet.’

I laughed. I lifted my vest over my head and lay it on the radiator too, then I put the T-shirt on. It went to mid-thigh. I took off my shorts and used the belt to turn the T-shirt into a dress.

‘What do you think?’ I walked an imaginary runway for Sister Ignatius and posed at the end.

She laughed and wolf-whistled. ‘My word, to have a pair of legs like that again,’ she tutted and shook her head.

She brought two bowls of soup to the table and I devoured mine.

Outside the sun shone, the birds sang again as though the rain had never fallen, as though it had all been a figment of our imaginations.

‘How’s your mother?’

‘She’s fine, thank you.’

Silence. Never lie to a nun.

‘She’s not fine. She sits in her bedroom all day looking out the window, smiling.’

‘She sounds happy.’

‘She sounds crazy.’

‘What does Rosaleen think?’

‘Rosaleen thinks that a lifetime’s supply of food in one day will keep anyone going.’

Sister Ignatius’ lips twitched at that but she fought her smile.

‘Rosaleen says it’s just the grief.’

‘Perhaps Rosaleen is right.’

‘What if Mum whipped off her clothes and rolled around in mud singing Enya songs, what then? Would that be the grief?’

Sister Ignatius smiled and her skin folded over like origami. ‘Has your mum done that?’

‘No. But it doesn’t seem far off.’

‘What does Arthur think?’

‘Does Arthur think?’ I responded, slurping the hot soup. ‘No, I take that back, Arthur thinks, all right. Arthur thinks but Arthur does not say. I mean, some brother he is. And he either loves Rosaleen so much, nothing she says bothers him, or he can’t stand her so much he can’t be arsed talking to her. I can’t really figure them out.’

Sister Ignatius looked away, uncomfortable.

‘Sorry. For the language.’

‘I think you’re doing Arthur an injustice. He adores Rosaleen. I think he’d do absolutely anything for her.’

‘Even marry her?’

She glared at me and I felt the slap from her stare.

‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry. It’s just that she’s so…I don’t know…’ I searched for the word, searched for how she made me feel. ‘Possessive.’

‘Possessive.’ Sister Ignatius pondered that. ‘That’s an interesting choice of word.’

I felt happy for some reason.

‘You know what it means, don’t you?’

‘Of course. It’s as if she owns everything.’

‘Hmm.’

‘I mean, she’s looking after us so well and everything. She feeds us three hundred times a day, in keeping with the dietary requirements of a dinosaur, but I wish she’d just chill out, back off from me a little and let me breathe.’

‘Would you like me to have a little word with her, Tamara?’

I panicked. ‘No, she’ll know I talked to you about her. I haven’t even mentioned I’ve met you. You’re my dirty little secret,’ I joked.

‘Well,’ she laughed, her cheeks pinking, ‘I’ve never been that.’ Once she’d recovered from her embarrassment she assured me she wouldn’t let Rosaleen know that I’d spoken about her. We talked more about the diary, about how and why it was happening and she assured me that I shouldn’t worry, my mind was under a lot of pressure and she was sure I must have written it sleepily, and forgotten. I instantly felt better after our chat, though was more concerned about my sleeping habits by the end of it. If I could write a diary in my sleep, what else was I capable of? Sister Ignatius had the power to make me feel that everything obscure was normal, like everything was divine and wonderous, and nothing worth stressing myself about, that answers would come and the clouds would clear and the complicated would become simple and the bizarre would become ordinary. I believed her.

‘My, look at that weather now.’ She turned to gaze out the window. ‘The sun is back. We should go quickly and see to the bees.’

Back outside in the walled garden I was suited up and feeling like the Michelin man.

‘Do you keep bees for extra time off?’ I asked as we made our way with the equipment to a hive. ‘I do that at school. If you sing in the choir you sometimes get classes off to take part in competitions or at church, things like when the teachers get married. If I was a teacher and I got married, I wouldn’t want some snotty little bitches who give me hell all day to sing at the happiest day of my life. I’d go to St Kitts or Mauritius. Or Amsterdam. It’s legal for a sixteen-year-old to drink there. But only beer. I hate beer. But if it’s legal I wouldn’t say no. Not that I’d be getting married at sixteen. Is that even legal? You should know, you know your man.’ I jerked my head towards the sky.

‘So you sing in a choir?’ she asked, as though she hadn’t heard a word of anything else I’d said.