Read Online Something in Common by Roisin Meaney - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Roisin Meaney
Tags: FIC044000
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suppose …’ not meeting her eye as he fumbled with the zip ‘… you’d let me buy you dinner some time? I mean, only if you want to.’
He looked up then and she saw his crooked, charming smile.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said, delight fizzing inside her.
‘Good.’ The smile slid further up his face. ‘I can’t guarantee the standard of food would be up to yours, but we might be lucky.’
He took her to Bannigan’s in Kildare town and bought her sirloin steak and strawberry cheesecake. He drove her home and kissed her cheek, and asked to see her again.
The following Saturday night they went to see
Shampoo
at the cinema. He bought her a box of Black Magic and didn’t attempt to put his arm around her in the darkness, which was a bit of a disappointment. He drove her home and leant across to kiss her cheek, and she turned her head and met his mouth with hers. He tasted of chocolate.
For their third date he took her to a performance of
The Field
in a concert hall of a town about twenty miles away. During the interval they drank orange juice and he told her about a garden he was restoring in the grounds of a Tullamore hotel. As they resumed their seats after the interval, he slipped his hand into hers, and she moved closer and touched her thigh to his.
Their goodnight lasted twenty minutes. He cradled her head and whispered that he was very, very happyto have found her, and she wanted more than anything to stay in the dark car, within the warmth of his arms.
They saw each other every Friday and Saturday night. He’d given her a silver bracelet for Christmas, she’d given him Queen’s
A Night at the Opera
LP. All she could think about was him, and all that mattered were the weekends. It was 1976, and she was finally, finally in love.
‘You’reblushing again,’ Christine said, and Sarah threw a cherry across the table at her.
Helen
T wenty-three minutes into the evening she’d knocked back two large glasses of awful red wine, and eaten a single stuffed mushroom, and rejected everything else on offer – sausage rolls, chicken drumsticks, skewered something or other – from the long trestle tables that lined one side of the room.
She couldn’t remember the last party she’d attended, except that it must have been with Cormac, probably before Alice had been born. She was deeply regretting her decision to come to this one – what had possessed her to let Catherine talk her into it?
She’d escaped the newspaper’s last Christmas party by playing the widow card. ‘It’s the first Christmas without my husband,’ she’d told Catherine. ‘I really don’t feel up to it’ – and Catherine had been all sympathy and understanding, as Helen had known she would. Anyway, with just a handful of articles written by then, and no direct contact at that stage with Breen, she hadn’t felt particularly affiliated with the newspaper.
This year she hadn’t got off so lightly.
‘Say hello to him,’ Catherine had urged her on the phone. ‘You needn’t stay long, just enough to show your face and tell him you’re happy to be on the payroll. It’ll stand you in good stead, believe me.And I’d really like to meet you too.’
Catherine might like to meet her, but Helen wasn’t convinced that Breen would. In fact, she considered it a safe bet that he wouldn’t give a damn if they never came face to face. Over the eighteen months or so that she’d been working for him, from the few conversations they’d had over the phone – he called her with commissions, she called him with queries – she’d got the impression of someone who was always on the verge of losing his patience.
‘Breen,’ he’d snap as a greeting, managing to make her feel she was already in trouble. No ‘Hello’, no ‘Hope I’m not interrupting anything’, no small-talk at all. After the briefest possible conversation, his sign-off was usually an equally clipped ‘Right’ – because ‘Goodbye’, presumably, was out of
He looked up then and she saw his crooked, charming smile.
‘That would be lovely,’ she said, delight fizzing inside her.
‘Good.’ The smile slid further up his face. ‘I can’t guarantee the standard of food would be up to yours, but we might be lucky.’
He took her to Bannigan’s in Kildare town and bought her sirloin steak and strawberry cheesecake. He drove her home and kissed her cheek, and asked to see her again.
The following Saturday night they went to see
Shampoo
at the cinema. He bought her a box of Black Magic and didn’t attempt to put his arm around her in the darkness, which was a bit of a disappointment. He drove her home and leant across to kiss her cheek, and she turned her head and met his mouth with hers. He tasted of chocolate.
For their third date he took her to a performance of
The Field
in a concert hall of a town about twenty miles away. During the interval they drank orange juice and he told her about a garden he was restoring in the grounds of a Tullamore hotel. As they resumed their seats after the interval, he slipped his hand into hers, and she moved closer and touched her thigh to his.
Their goodnight lasted twenty minutes. He cradled her head and whispered that he was very, very happyto have found her, and she wanted more than anything to stay in the dark car, within the warmth of his arms.
They saw each other every Friday and Saturday night. He’d given her a silver bracelet for Christmas, she’d given him Queen’s
A Night at the Opera
LP. All she could think about was him, and all that mattered were the weekends. It was 1976, and she was finally, finally in love.
‘You’reblushing again,’ Christine said, and Sarah threw a cherry across the table at her.
Helen
T wenty-three minutes into the evening she’d knocked back two large glasses of awful red wine, and eaten a single stuffed mushroom, and rejected everything else on offer – sausage rolls, chicken drumsticks, skewered something or other – from the long trestle tables that lined one side of the room.
She couldn’t remember the last party she’d attended, except that it must have been with Cormac, probably before Alice had been born. She was deeply regretting her decision to come to this one – what had possessed her to let Catherine talk her into it?
She’d escaped the newspaper’s last Christmas party by playing the widow card. ‘It’s the first Christmas without my husband,’ she’d told Catherine. ‘I really don’t feel up to it’ – and Catherine had been all sympathy and understanding, as Helen had known she would. Anyway, with just a handful of articles written by then, and no direct contact at that stage with Breen, she hadn’t felt particularly affiliated with the newspaper.
This year she hadn’t got off so lightly.
‘Say hello to him,’ Catherine had urged her on the phone. ‘You needn’t stay long, just enough to show your face and tell him you’re happy to be on the payroll. It’ll stand you in good stead, believe me.And I’d really like to meet you too.’
Catherine might like to meet her, but Helen wasn’t convinced that Breen would. In fact, she considered it a safe bet that he wouldn’t give a damn if they never came face to face. Over the eighteen months or so that she’d been working for him, from the few conversations they’d had over the phone – he called her with commissions, she called him with queries – she’d got the impression of someone who was always on the verge of losing his patience.
‘Breen,’ he’d snap as a greeting, managing to make her feel she was already in trouble. No ‘Hello’, no ‘Hope I’m not interrupting anything’, no small-talk at all. After the briefest possible conversation, his sign-off was usually an equally clipped ‘Right’ – because ‘Goodbye’, presumably, was out of
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