The Mersey Girls by Katie Flynn Read Free Book Online

waiting for your brain to expand.’
    Lucy sighed deeply and broke into a trot; from here she could see the small kitchen window and Maeve, standing before it, cleaning something in the low stone sink. If she hurried she might persuade Maeve to hand out a bite of bread and cheese and a drink of milk before she began laying up for the family’s tea, because Lucy was starving hungry, she realised, almost dead with it.
    ‘All right, I’ll do a bit of each,’ she called as Caitlin continued past the end of the yard, heading for the Kelly cottage. ‘And I’ll see you later, shall I?’
    ‘Maybe,’ Caitlin called back. ‘Ask Maeve for some carry-out, will you?’
    ‘I said I would, didn’t I?’ Lucy shrieked. ‘Where are you now, Caitlin?’
    ‘Passing the cabbage patch,’ Caitlin yelled. ‘Where’s you, Lu?’
    ‘Halfway across the haggard,’ Lucy bellowed. This was a nightly ritual which drove the other members of both families mad, but she and Caitlin loved it. ‘I’ve got me foot on the back doorstep now – where’s you?’
    ‘Ducking under the lintel . . .’
    The slam of the Kellys’ door told the rest of the story. Lucy threw open her own back door and hurled her satchel across the kitchen, watching it collide with the sturdy legs of the big kitchen table with a certain satisfaction. ‘No more school for two months!’ she shouted.
    Maeve, scrubbing a sinkful of potatoes which she would bake presently in the ashes, said automatically, ‘Shut the door, don’t slam it, and pick up that satchel for goodness sake, we aren’t made o’ money, Lucy Murphy. What do you think your grandad would say if he saw you wearing out your good bag on the old earth floor? He’d want to know why in the name of God you have to hurl your books about, that’s what, and by the same token I’d like to know why you have to tell the whole of Kerry your whereabouts each afternoon?’
    ‘Shan’t have to for another eight weeks,’ Lucy said, begging the question since Maeve knew the answer as well as she herself did. ‘As for me satchel, it’s full of holiday tasks and they ought to be slung in the river, not just across the floor. It isn’t fair is it, Maeve, to give you a holiday with one hand and take it back with the other? That’s what holiday tasks are, they’re trying to make you be at school even when you aren’t.’
    ‘They’re to make sure you use your brain during the summer and don’t just leave it lie and rust,’ Maeve said. She put the last potato on the draining board and turned away from the sink, beginning to dry her hands on a scrap of blue and white striped towelling. ‘Well? How did today go, and aren’t you going to give me a kiss?’
    Lucy struggled out of her school jacket, not without difficulty for it was shrunk from many washes, and slung it across the kitchen table, then hurled herself at Maeve and gave her a squeeze, burrowing her face into Maeve’s flowered wrap-around pinny as she did so.
    ‘Today went great . . . oh, I do love you, Maeve! Do you know you smell of new-baked bread? I love that smell – is there a wee bit to spare? I’m so hungry me belly’s flapping against me backbone, I could murder a slice of bread and some cheese so I could!’
    ‘You’ve a clever nose on you to smell fresh bread when the larder door’s shut and the loaves came out of the bake-oven first thing this morning, I’ll say that for you,’ Maeve said with a chuckle. She dropped a kiss on the top of Lucy’s head and gave her a hug. ‘But since you’re starving to death there’s a loaf cooling on the marble slab in the larder and some cheese in the meat safe. Can you help yourself while I get these potatoes on to cook?’
    ‘Helping meself is what I’m best at,’ Lucy said eagerly. ‘Shall I cut you a slice an’ all, alanna? Can I have some milk, too?’
    ‘It’s a surprise to me you can still do up your school jacket,’ Maeve said. ‘Go on, then, there’s a jug of milk in the