Something in Common by Roisin Meaney Read Free Book Online Page B

with the spoken conversation there was another, unarticulated exchange taking place between the older couple:
How’s it going? Are they getting on? Were we right?
Something in the way they both looked from her to Neil, in the heartiness of their voices, in how Nuala’s glance flickered to their hands as they separated at last. All that was needed was for Stephen to say something about how lucky the man would be who got Sarah, but thankfully he didn’t.
    ‘I’d love a cuppa,’ Nuala was saying – Nuala who never took one normally. ‘Can you sit with us and have one yourself?’ Oh, clever Nuala.
    Sarahmade a show of looking at her watch, even though she knew the time practically to the second. ‘I have a few minutes,’ she said.
    Nuala turned to her son. ‘And maybe you’d fancy one?’
    ‘I’d love one, thanks.’ The grey eyes met Sarah’s again. ‘Can I give you a hand?’
    ‘Oh, no, honestly—’
    For goodness’ sake, was she blushing again? You’d think she was fifteen, not twenty-five. It was Stephen and Nuala looking all pleased with themselves – it was the obvious matchmaking that was going on. Really, as if they didn’t think either of them capable of finding a partner on their own.
    She escaped from the room and hurried back to the kitchen, where she made tea and cut slices from one of the coffee cakes she’d baked that morning. ‘Who’s that for?’ Donna wanted to know, and Sarah said Stephen Flannery had a few visitors, and were the salt cellars refilled yet?
    First impressions had been favourable, she decided, taking a tray from the stack on the shelf by the window. Nothing objectionable about his appearance – the glasses made him look intelligent, they were a plus – and clearly he was on good terms with his parents, which reflected well on his character.
    She scalded the teapot and spooned in tea. Had his own house too, which was good; and being a gardener meant he appreciated nature, also a lovely quality in anyone.
    But there was no point in building it into anything at this stage: he might well have a girlfriend his parents knew nothing about, or he mightn’t fancy Sarah in the least. A possibility, that was what he was. A slightly less faint one, maybe, than he’d been before they met, but still just a possibility.
    Chanceswere nothing would happen – life didn’t fall into place as easily as that – but for now she’d keep an open mind. No harm in doing that.

Helen
    D ear MissFitzpatrick
    Thank you foryourpiece on the death of Agatha Christie which you submitted recently. Please find attached our cheque payment.
    Regards
    Typed underneath was
M. Breen, Editor
, but the signature above the typed name was Catherine Fortune’s. Word for word, apart from the subject of Helen’s submission, it was identical to the half-dozen or so other letters – hardly letters, more like notes – that she’d received from the newspaper since the previous August. All signed by Catherine Fortune – M. Breen, Editor, being too busy, presumably.
    And paper-clipped to the note was the identical cheque that had accompanied all the rest. More than she’d expected, enough to keep her and Alice in bread and jam for a month or two, with a few quid left over for a bottle of Powers Gold Label.
    ‘Mama!’
    She opened the kitchen door. ‘What?’
    ‘My sausage fell on the floor. There’s stuff stuck on it.’
    ‘Rub it off and it’ll be fine. I’ll be in in a minute.’
    She slipped the cheque out from under the paper clip. She folded it in two and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans. She tore the note and its envelope in two and dropped the pieces into the ashtray that shared space on a kitchen chair with the phone.
    She opened the front door and lit a cigarette and stood looking out at the garden. Gravelled rectangle roughly the size of a double grave, narrow cement path running alongside it to the gate. A waist-high privet hedge separating her from her neighbour, immaculately cut on