Read Online Something in Common by Roisin Meaney - Free Book Online

out of the puddle of ketchup on the plate.
    Helen went to the back door and opened it. ‘Granny’s here,’ she told Alice. ‘Come in and say hello.’
    Alice was no conversationalist,but she’d do. Anyone would do.

Sarah
    ‘Y ou’ll be glad to hear I’ve made a start on the book.’
    ‘About time – you’ve talked about it for long enough. How far have you got?’
    ‘Well, I haven’t begun the actual writing yet. I’m still thinking up a plot and getting the characters together.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘Still, it’s a start … Stop eating those cherries. I’ll have none left for the cake.’
    Christine pushed the tub across the table. ‘So where’s Lover Boy taking you tonight?’
    ‘The cinema,
Barry Lyndon.
Why don’t you make yourself useful and line those cake tins?’
    ‘You’re blushing.’
    Sarah laughed. ‘I am not.’
    Still too soon to tell, only a few months since they’d laid eyes on one another; and even though this felt so right, she would hug it to herself and let nobody know how she was really feeling, not even Christine. Not yet.
    It had begun slowly, with a handful of further encounters in his father’s room, during which Sarah noticed that he had a habit of placing a finger at the corner of his mouth andtilting his head to the side when he was listening. And his smile was delightfully crooked, sliding up more on the right. And his aftershave, or maybe it was whatever shampoo he was using, reminded her of the sea. And she liked the shoes he wore, and the fact that his fingernails were always clean, despite his job.
    On the whole, she’d decided, she approved of Neil Flannery. As potential boyfriends went, he was definitely in with a chance. Once or twice their eyes had met, and he’d held her gaze for a scatter of seconds, and she’d thought, with a delicious flip in her stomach, that maybe there was something there.
    But she was also acutely conscious, during each of these episodes, that they were being observed by his parents, who, no doubt, had had them marched down the aisle and happily married after their second meeting. Even if Neil was at all interested in her – and she had no real idea that he was – what chance did any kind of a relationship have of developing in Stephen and Nuala’s well-meant but terribly inhibiting presence?
    And then one afternoon towards the end of November, about two weeks after they’d first come face to face, there was a knock on the kitchen door as Sarah was putting cups onto trays in preparation for the tea.
    ‘I’ll go,’ Bernadette said, wiping her hands on her apron. Callers to the kitchen at this time were commonplace: someone looking for a mid-afternoon cuppa or glass of milk, or maybe a hot-water bottle refilled. Sarah continued to assemble the cups as she planned the next day’s lunch in her head: stuffed pork steak with roast potatoes and turnip, followed by treacle pudding and—
    ‘It’s for you.’ Bernadette winked at her. ‘Stephen Flannery’s son.’
    Sarah added another two cups to the tray, feeling the blood rushing to her face. ‘Probably wants another round of tea.’
    ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s what he wants,’ Bernadette replied, plunging her mop once again into the bucket of steaming water. ‘That’ll be why he asked for you specially. He must haveheard I can’t make tea.’
    ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said, his leather jacket slung over an arm. ‘I know you’re busy, but I just wanted to say thanks for looking after my father so well. I’m starting another job in Tullamore next week, so I’ll be back to visiting here at the weekends.’
    Sarah forced a smile. Not interested then, just being polite. Just saying thanks before he left. ‘It’s my pleasure. He’s a lovely man.’
    He began to shrug on his jacket. ‘Well, he thinks the world of you, I know that, and it means a lot to my mother too, that he’s being looked after so well.’
    She remained silent, the smile stiff on her face.
    ‘I don’t