Something in Common by Roisin Meaney Read Free Book Online

Christine’s gift-wrapped box held a pair of chunky tortoiseshell bangles, and Brian gave her a book token.
    ‘When you’re married, you and Christine can give me a present between you,’ she told him, ‘and Christine will pick it out, so you’ll be off the hook.’
    Hegrinned. ‘You mean my mother will be off the hook. I haven’t a clue when it comes to presents.’
    ‘You haven’t done badly with me so far,’ Christine told him.
    ‘Only because you drop loads of hints – I’d have to be blind and deaf not to pick up on them.’
    ‘That’s true.’
    Sarah watched them together, so comfortable, so at home in each other’s company. She thought again how lucky her sister had been to find the man she wanted, and to discover that he wanted her too. Sounded so simple, but here she was at twenty-five still without a single prospect.
    Unless you counted Neil Flannery, whose father Stephen Sarah had been cooking for since she’d got the job in St Sebastian’s. Even though she hadn’t even met the son, she supposed he was a faint possibility.
    Stephen certainly thought so. ‘You’d be ideal for each other,’ he’d told her more than once. ‘He’s a good lad, just hasn’t met the right lady. And he’s about your age.’
    His wife Nuala silenced him whenever he brought up the topic in her company. ‘Stop that, you’ll embarrass Sarah. I’m sure she’s well able to find her own boyfriends.’
    She came to see her husband often, nearly every second day – they were from a small market town less than twenty miles from St Sebastian’s – and she sat by his bedside or armchair for much of the afternoon. Their only son, the mysterious Neil, worked during the week as a gardener and visited his father at weekends, when Sarah was off-duty.
    ‘But he’s starting a job soon just up the road,’ Stephen had told her, ‘and he says he’ll be in more often while that’s going on, so you’ll get to meet him then.’
    ‘Shush, stop that,’ his wife had said automatically.
    What must it be like, Sarah wondered, to have your life partner struck down so young, to watch him deteriorate, see the strength and vitality washing out of him, to be forced eventually to put him into care because you could no longer look after him yourself?
    ‘Ofcourse we would have loved to keep him at home,’ Nuala had told her once, when they happened to be leaving together. ‘This was the last thing Neil and I wanted, but it just became too much. And it wasn’t fair on Neil either. He has his own life, and his work takes him all over the place.’
    Awful to have husband and wife living apart from one another, never sharing a bed at night, never waking up together or sitting down to a family dinner. What kind of a marriage was that for anyone?
    The loneliness Sarah had already witnessed in the nursing home and the poignant stories she’d heard from some of the residents had broken her heart several times over, had reduced her to private tears more than once. But she still felt convinced that the job was right for her – she could make a difference to them. She
was
making a difference.
    She looked around the hotel table at the faces she’d grown up with. So lucky she was to be surrounded by a caring family, with so much heartbreak out there. She smiled at the chocolate cake that was being wheeled across the dining room on the dessert trolley – chocolate for her, coffee on Christine’s birthday – with the half-dozen flickering candles stuck into the top.
    She was aware that everyone in the room was looking at them now, waiting for the birthday girl to blow out her candles. If she were married she’d cook a birthday dinner herself, invite her family around. But without a husband or a home of her own, she was still the child who got taken out by her parents.
    She blew out the candles and watched her mother sipping the single Babycham she ordered each birthday dinner, the only alcohol she ever took. She listened to her father