Cecelia Ahern 3-Book Collection: One Hundred Names, How to Fall in Love, The Year I Met You. Cecelia Ahern

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СКАЧАТЬ out how to broach that subject. It was fascinating to her and yet it was the one question she felt she probably would never be able to ask and possibly the one issue that would never be broached.

      ‘Childbirth. Complications. She had me here. In the house. They probably would have saved her if she’d had me in a hospital but it’s not what she wanted. So. ’Twas to be.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’ Kitty took a slug of her tea. ‘Eugene seems to be a great help and certainly very knowledgeable,’ she said.

      Ambrose looked up then and smiled. Not at Kitty but out the open door into the garden, which was alive with butterflies and nature. She seemed to light up. Then she faded again. ‘Eugene loves butterflies. I didn’t think it would be possible to find someone who loved them as much as Daddy did. I couldn’t do this. Not without Eugene.’

      ‘He says the same. He said that none of this would be here if it wasn’t for you,’ Kitty told Ambrose, who smiled shyly. ‘How did you find him?’

      ‘His mammy was my tutor. He came to my house with her for my classes. He was always bored stiff. Sometimes he’d sit in on the classes, other times, most times, he wandered around the museum. That’s how he knows so much. He’s been looking at those butterflies in frames for over thirty years.’

      ‘You were homeschooled?’ Kitty prompted.

      ‘Yes.’ Ambrose was silent but Kitty waited, sensing more was to come and beginning to understand her way of stop-start communication. ‘Children can say the cruellest of things. Isn’t that what they say? I was, well, I was unconventional.’

      That was an understatement.

      ‘Daddy thought it best I stay here.’

      ‘Were you happy with that?’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ she said firmly. ‘This place is all I’ve known.’

      ‘Do you mind me asking how old you are?’

      She looked like she did mind. Shoulders hunched, more face disappeared behind yet more hair to have a long discussion with herself, which Kitty could see taking place. ‘Is it important?’

      Kitty thought about it. In some cases it wasn’t, in this it was. ‘If you don’t mind.’

      ‘Forty-four.’

      Kitty’s phone continuously vibrated, four, five, six missed calls in a row. As soon as it would stop it would start again. Sally was mad, and Kitty didn’t want to miss her lift home.

      ‘Excuse me, do you mind if I use your toilet?’ Kitty asked.

      Like being asked about her age, Kitty thought she would mind but Ambrose seemed relieved to have some respite from being questioned. One of Kitty’s favourite things to do was to snoop. She looked into every room she passed, then instead of going right as she was instructed, she took a left. Judging by the other rooms she passed, this must have been Ambrose’s bedroom and it took her breath away. One entire wall of the room, the wall facing the bed, was covered from floor to ceiling with magazine cut-outs of supermodels, actresses, singers, models. Some images were specific – of their hair, their eyes, their noses, their lips – others were of their entire faces. Some faces had been made up entirely of a collage of different women’s features. Just as her museum was covered in framed collections of butterflies, her bedroom was equally such a museum, a celebration of beauty. However, it felt less like a celebration than the museum, one that caused a shudder to run down Kitty’s spine. She quickly left the room.

      When Kitty Logan finally left, Ambrose felt exhausted. She hadn’t had that much contact with anybody, apart from Eugene, of course, for a very long time, and she felt drained, tired from trying to cover her face, hide her emotions, work hard at appearing normal, sounding sane, all of the things that she was by herself in the comfort of her own home but which she struggled with when she came into contact with anyone who wasn’t inside her trusted circle. Those people consisted of Eugene; Harriet, the cleaner; and Sara, the young lady who worked in the museum. She rarely spoke to any of them, only when she absolutely had to, and it was only with Eugene that she could truly be herself because he was only Eugene, and what did he care? He had seen her all her life. The irony was that with everybody else she let her hair down and he was the only person for whom she could truly tie her hair back and look him in the eye.

      She made her way to her bedroom and retrieved the magazine she had been reading that morning. Summertime, apart from the butterflies and her business, wasn’t her favourite time of year. Summer meant revelation, magazines were covered with photos of celebrities and pretty women on beaches in their bikinis, the museum was filled with pretty women who never questioned being able to tie their hair back and wander without self-consciousness through the rooms or down the street. Ambrose liked the winter when she could layer up and disappear. She hadn’t travelled much in her life but if she had her way she would book a holiday to somewhere cold, only she couldn’t leave the business or her butterflies in the summertime.

      She carefully cut out a photograph of a soapstar she didn’t recognise who had been snapped on the beach in a tiny bikini after apparently shedding all the weight after having her baby a mere six weeks ago. She stuck the photo on the wall, making sure it wasn’t blocking any of the others she needed to see and she proceeded to sit on the end of her bed and examine it for fifteen minutes. She looked at her eyes, her nose, her lips, her long neck, the arch of her back, her pert bottom, the way her thighs were firm and tanned, the way her toes were perfectly painted and wore little shoes of sand. She got lost in the photograph; for moments Ambrose was that girl, she was on that beach, she was getting out of the water, feeling eyes on her and feeling the heat on her body, feeling the sea water trickling down her body but knowing that she looked great, feeling light and happy and relaxed as she made her way to her sunbed to sip a cocktail. Ambrose lived it so vividly in her head.

      Kitty Logan had asked her why she collected butterflies, why the fascination? Ambrose hadn’t lied, but hadn’t answered her truthfully as her response was incomplete. Why did she love butterflies? Because they were simply beautiful. And she wasn’t.

      It was the same reason she had always loved the story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ when she was a child, and despite the fact she was twenty-three when the Disney film was released, she went to see it in the cinema time and time again, watching it every day when it was out on video, knowing every word, every look, every single gesture each character made. Her daddy had been bewildered by her childish fascination with a cartoon, but he had misunderstood her love for it. It wasn’t for the romance, it wasn’t because she wanted to see a beast become handsome again, she watched it because, like the Beast capturing Belle, she knew what it was like to recognise beauty, to be so fascinated by it and to feel so alive when around it that she wanted to trap it and keep it locked up inside for her to see and celebrate every day.

      ‘Who on earth is texting you?’ Sally asked as they drove home from Kildare. It was the first thing she had said in a while and Kitty guessed she was slowly being forgiven.

      ‘Why?’ Kitty frowned.

      ‘Because you’ve had that stupid smile on your face since you started that little textersation.’

      ‘Textersation? No, that is not a word.’

      ‘Stop trying to change the subject, who is it?’

      ‘It’s no one, it’s just Pete.’ She said it way too nonchalantly.

      Sally’s eyes widened. ‘Pete, the prince of doom СКАЧАТЬ