Echoes by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online Page B

and done, and they had the good grace to come and admit their wrongdoing. They were totally forgiven. She would tell all their mothers. They skipped out of the shop free souls again. Clare was disgusted with them. Miss O’Flaherty was horrible and she deserved to be terrified with bits of seaweed. Why were they saying sorry now at this late stage? It was a mystery.
    She didn’t get much enlightenment from Chrissie, who was annoyed to see her.
    â€œI’m sorry, Peg and Kath, but my boring sister seems to be following us around.”
    â€œI’m not following you. I’m coming home from school,” Clare said. “I have to come home this way. It’s too windy to walk on the cliff road.”
    â€œHuh,” said Kath.
    â€œListening,” said Peg.
    â€œYou’re so lucky that you don’t have any sisters younger than you,” Chrissie said. “It’s like having a knife stuck into you to have a younger sister.”
    â€œI don’t see why. We don’t think Ben and Jimmy are like knives,” Clare argued.
    â€œThey’re normal,” Chrissie said. “Not following you round with whinges and whines day in day out.” The other two nodded sympathetically.
    Clare dawdled and looked into the drapery. She knew everything off by heart in that window too. The green cardigan on the bust had been there forever, and the boxes of hankies slightly faded from the summer sun were still on show. Clare waited there until the others had rounded the corner. Then she walked slowly on down the street toward the big gap in the cliffs where the steps went down to the beach, back home to O’Brien’s shop which everyone said should be a little gold mine since it was perched on the road going down to the sea. It was the last shop you saw before you got to the beach so people bought their oranges and sweets there, it was the first shop you met on the way back with your tongue hanging out for an ice cream or a fizzy drink. It was the nearest place if you sent a child back up the cliff for reinforcements on a sunny day. Tom O’Brien should be making a small fortune there people said, nodding their heads. Clare wondered why people thought that. The summer was the same length for the O’Briens as for everyone else. Eleven weeks. And the winter was even longer and colder because they were so exposed to the wind and weren’t as sheltered as people all along Church Street.
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    Molly Power said that it was lonely for David having no friends of his own and perhaps they should let him ask a friend to stay. The doctor thought that there were plenty of young lads in the town, boys he had played with before he went off to boarding school. But Molly said it wasn’t the same at all, and shouldn’t they let him ring his friend James Nolan in Dublin and invite him for a few days? His family could put him on the train and they could meet him. David was delighted, it would be great to have Nolan to stay, Nolan had sounded very pleased on the phone. He said it would be good to get away from home, he hadn’t realized how mad his relations were. They must have got worse since he’d gone to boarding school and he hadn’t noticed. David told him it would be very quiet after the bright lights of Dublin. Nolan said the lights of Dublin weren’t as bright as that, and his mother wouldn’t let him go to the pictures in case he got fleas. He couldn’t wait to get to the seaside.
    â€œAnd will my class increase by a hundred percent?” Angela O’Hara asked him when she heard that Nolan was coming to stay.
    David hadn’t thought of that. He didn’t know. It was something he hadn’t given any thought to.
    â€œNever mind.” Angela had been brisk. “I’ll sort it out with your parents. But we had a plan for twenty days’ work to cover the time you were at home, if Mr. Nolan arrives that will cut six days out of it. What are