Star Sullivan by Maeve Binchy Read Free Book Online Page A

then.’
    ‘Not really, someone sort of helped him. Now he’s much more interested in the family, not the horses, so it’s a lot better.’
    ‘Does he like your sister’s boyfriend, do you think?’
    ‘Lilly? Oh, I don’t think that Nick is a boyfriend, I think he’s only a journalist,’ Star said.
    Kenny laughed. ‘He could be both, you know, there isn’t a law against it.’
    He looked so nice and normal when he laughed she felt a wave of anger that she couldn’t like him more.
    ‘You’re so good, Kenny,’ she said, laying her hand on his on the tablecloth. ‘You deserve someone much better than me.’
    ‘There
is
no one better than you,’ he said, and he meant it. ‘Star, you are the very, very best person I have ever met. I
love
being in your company, I just hope you like me, that’s all.’
    ‘I
do
like you, Kenny. It’s just that . . . it’s just that . . .’ Her voice trailed away.
    ‘It’s just that you are too young to get involved with anyone yet, is that it?’ His face was full of hope.
    ‘Not really,’ she began.
    ‘No, don’t say anything. I
know
. You are very young, but I’ll wait, Star, I won’t put pressure on you, I’ll look out for you at work, but I won’t nag at you to come out with me. I didn’t before,remember, it’s only that you suggested this picnic and I wondered . . . I hoped . . .’
    Star said nothing.
    ‘I think you are wonderful,’ he said simply.
    ‘You don’t know. You don’t know anything.’
    ‘No, but you’ll tell me what you want me to know.’
    ‘I can’t, Kenny, it’s too complicated. Everyone thinks I’ve slept with Laddy. That’s just for starters.’
    ‘Why do they think that?’ He was calm.
    ‘Because I
said
that I did, in order to cover up for him and my brother who were moving stolen goods.’
    ‘And why did you say that, Star?’
    ‘It seemed the easiest thing to do, and Laddy was very pleased with me.’
    ‘I bet he was,’ Kenny said.
    ‘And he was very nice to me for a while afterwards, but then he kept bringing in lots of girlfriends, parading them past me. And it’s very hard, you see, very upsetting.’
    ‘Because you like him?’
    ‘I don’t like him at all, that’s the point. I
really
don’t like him, specially now. Now that he’s sleeping with his stepmother.’
    ‘
What?
’
    ‘Well, Biddy who lives with Laddy’s father, she’s about thirty. Yes, that’s what she must be today, I didn’t think. Laddy’s twenty-two, and his father is about fifty. It’s so sick and awful. It shouldn’t have happened between them. It’s so wrong.’ She spoke fast now, just like the woman in the supermarket, in a great wail.
    ‘But you don’t
know
if any of this is true. Maybe it’s a mistake,’ Kenny said.
    ‘I do know it’s true.’
    ‘But he couldn’t be having all that party for her, together with his father, if he had . . . if they . . . you know.’
    ‘They did, believe me, they did.’
    ‘Listen, you say you don’t like him, so what does it matter? What does he matter? Put him out of your mind.’
    ‘I can’t, I really can’t. You see, all day and all night I don’t think of anything or anyone else. Nothing but Laddy. It’s driving me mad.’
    ‘You
love
him!’ Kenny was astonished.
    ‘I have no idea what love is any more, but all I can tell you is that I think about him night and day and wish that I
had
gone to bed with him in the big shed like I said I did. Then hemight not find it so easy to ignore me and hurt me so much.’
    ‘Oh poor little Star,’ Kenny said. ‘You poor, lovely thing.’
    And she laid her head on his shoulder while he patted her beautiful, shiny hair and her shaking shoulders under the blue and white dress as she sobbed her heart out to him.
    Nobody forgot Biddy’s thirtieth birthday. That was the day that a friend of Shay Sullivan’s rang him and told him about a greyhound that could not lose. Real and serious money could be made. Anyone who had access to 5,000