Read Online Heartstones by Kate Glanville - Free Book Online Page B

Sour?’
    Katrina nodded. ‘Yes, just like that. But I like her, she is letting me live here with Fibber, she is giving me this job at the pub, good pay. Underneath her bitter, sour lemon she is kind.’ Katrina lowered her voice. ‘Also, Fibber he tell me this, Mrs Flannigan’s mother was not right up here,’ Katrina tapped her head with a long finger nail. ‘She was, I think, a little mad, and also when Mrs Flannigan was a schoolgirl the teachers always beat her because she couldn’t learn to read and write.’
    ‘Poor Mrs Flannigan.’ Phoebe stared out of the window on to an overgrown back garden. She thought about the class of children she had left behind in England. She couldn’t imagine ever thinking it would be a good idea to beat them. She felt guilty that she hadn’t had a chance to tell them she was leaving. Maybe she should just go back to England, face up to Nola, ask Mrs Leach for her job back before she found another Year One teacher to take her place.
    ‘Katrina!’ The shout came from another room.
    Katrina chopped the final stick of rhubarb and stood up. ‘I must go and help Fibber in the bar. There will many be wanting the hairs of the dog today.’ Katrina took off the apron and hung it on a hook. Phoebe noticed that she took the letter from the apron pocket and slipped it into the back pocket of her skin-tight jeans. With a wave to Phoebe Katrina went through an adjoining door into the bar, and as the door slowly closed, Phoebe caught a glimpse of Fibber wiping away the smudged mascara on her cheek.

Chapter Six
    Phoebe shivered as she stepped out onto the blustery high street. It felt bitterly cold despite the bright sunlight of the day. Delving into her coat pocket she drew out a dark brown bobble hat. She pulled it down on her aching head and thought of David. He used to tease her when she wore the hat on yard-duty at school: You look like you’re wearing a tea-cosy!
    As she headed down the high street towards the sea she could hear the high-pitched shrieks of children playing in the Carraigmore school playground behind her. A buzzer sounded, the shrieking stopped, and Phoebe imagined the small boys and girls lining up to file back into the building for afternoon lessons. She thought of her own class doing just the same in England. She hoped it wouldn’t be too late to get her job back.
    ‘Hi, Phoebe,’ a heavily tattooed man shouted from the open window of a van. ‘How’s the hangover today?’
    Before Phoebe could even feel surprised that a complete stranger knew her name, and that she had a hangover, a middle-aged woman with a tartan shopping bag called out.
    ‘Beautiful singing, Phoebe. It brought a tear to my eye.’
    ‘Did you have a good night, Phoebe?’ from an elderly, flat-capped man sitting outside the butchers.
    ‘Hiya, Phoebe! Enjoying the Irish climate?’
    ‘Hello, Pheebs, how are you doing?’
    ‘Nice hat, Phoebe! How’s the head?’
    She continued being hailed by people down the length of the street until Phoebe wondered if there had been anyone in Carraigmore who hadn’t been in Fibber Flannigan’s the night before. Though she had little recollection of the evening, she seemed to have made quite an impression. She would definitely leave as soon as possible; she had managed to embarrass herself in front of an entire village.
    By the time she reached the end of the high street, Phoebe had decided to forget the boathouse, turn around, get in her car, and drive away, but a gang of young men were suddenly coming towards her. In padded check shirts and dusty boots they looked like builders – they were bound to have been in Fibber’s the night before. Rather than wait to see what they had to say she veered into the Carraigmore Art and Craft Centre.
    Inside, Phoebe looked around the vast interior of the converted church. It was very beige; beige mugs and bowls, beige wool, beige linen, beige watercolours on beige walls, a few shamrock-decorated things for