A Few of the Girls by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online

where she lived. She must have told me. Surely? We couldn’t have talked about
me
all that time. But sleep was stronger than puzzlement. I didn’t even turn off the light.
    I was on my second cup of coffee when she rang. She had taken down the number, she said. I was too distressed to be bothered with trivialities. Would we go to the park? It was such a lovely day, we could walk and talk without anyone disturbing us. I felt a little twinge that surely I had talked enough, but she seemed so caring it would almost have been throwing her friendship back in her face.
    And indeed that sunny day while lovers entwined, and mothers talked between screaming for toddlers, when old men read newspapers and told each other about things that had happened years ago, Fenella and I walked the length and the breadth of one of London’s big parks.
    And sometimes we sat, and she had brought small sandwiches and a flask of coffee so that we didn’t have to leave until my legs were tired and my eyes were aching for all the tears they had wept as I told her of the first night with John and of how he had always loved me even before Maria had gone to this clairvoyant, which had tilted her mind and sent her in search of unsuitable love and unreachable dreams.
    Fenella remembered everything. Every single thing.
    “It must have been hard for you both when Maria took up all this card business herself. You know, dealing and redealing,” she said.
    I had forgotten that I told her about Maria and the Tarot cards. By Sunday I felt strong enough to go to see John, this time without making a scene. I had known two good nights’ sleep. I had talked out every heartbeat of the thing. There would be no emotion, no drama, no terrible recriminations.
    On the way back from John’s house, through the blurry tears I wondered what kind of self-absorption had allowed me to let Fenella go without asking her where she lived, or for her phone number. But when I got to my flat she was sitting in the courtyard. It was a warm evening and she sat, calmly unhurried, on one of the rather folksy carved benches under the old cherry tree.
    “I thought you might need me,” she said.
    “You must think I’m very weak,” I sobbed as I sat on my bed drinking the honey, lemon, and hot water that she said was soothing. Fenella sat in a chair.
    She was so good to me, Fenella was; she had all the time in the world. Of course I did take her address and her phone number and found out that she worked in a book rights agency. It sounded fascinating, but Fenella didn’t talk much about it—she said she didn’t want to bore me with the technicalities of her job. They just acted as brokers between literary agents in Britain and on the Continent. They suggested books that might be translated into Greek or Italian or whatever, and they got a commission on them. Did she meet a lot of fascinating people? I wondered. Not many, they didn’t deal with the authors directly, you see. I saw, and asked little more about Fenella’s job. Because I talked so much about my own.
    I told her what stick-in-the-muds they were at school and how they never tried to set up anything new for the children. How I longed to invite authors in to tell them what it was
really
like to write. To let them meet living writers instead of assuming that anyone who wrote was long-buried. I had been hoping for the woman who wrote
Open Windows.
Not really a children’s book, of course, but surprising how many of the Sixth Form had read it and identified with the rage against mothers that went through it. But I had not been able to find out where the author lived and was sure that the publishers would never forward a letter, especially if it was a speaking request.
    “I can give you her address,” Fenella said surprisingly. It turned out that they had handled deals for the translations and European sales.
    “Is she nice?” I couldn’t believe that anyone knew her.
    “I used to know her quite well when her mother