Read Online The Friday Tree by Sophia Hillan - Free Book Online

Brigid. They did not take taxis.
    Francis squeezed her arm, quite hard, and said: “What’s the matter, Mama?”
    She put her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not very much, Francis. He just went out too soon, that’s all, and now he has a bit of a headache.”
    “Tea will help him,” said Brigid, her eyes on her mother’s face. “Tea with us will make him better.”
    As if she had not spoken, she heard her mother say: “Isobel, take both of them to the barber’s. I’m going to get my husband home,” and then she said to the children: “We’ll have tea with Daddy another day.”
    That was the end of it. She handed something from her purse to Isobel, then once again, without another word to them, disappeared through the glass door.
    Brigid said: “He promised,” but no one, not even Francis, was listening to her, and she trailed unhappily with Isobel’s hard hand in hers down to the arcade where the barber had his shop. Not even the rocking horse, dappled and smooth and high, could cheer her. She shook her head when Francis offered to lift her up, and when Isobel said she could stand then as long as she wanted, she did not care. She sat down by the side of the horse, pushing its rocker back and forth. She did not care about anything. He had broken his promise.
    Sitting on the ground, she tugged at one of her plaits, as he had done that morning and, as she did, she saw a shining something behind the rocking horse. Moving across on her hunkers, she picked up a pair of scissors, sharp, the kind the barbers used. She made a little cut on her finger just by touching the blade. A fine line of blood appeared, and it hurt just enough for her to feel that she had been wronged. She opened and closed the scissors: she wanted to cut something. And, then, on impulse, she pulled taut one of her plaits and cut it off. The deep, giving thickness of the hair as it suddenly sheared away, releasing itself into her hand, was a satisfying surprise and, hardly looking at the plait as she threw it with its neat blue ribbon across the floor, she pulled the other one tight, until it hurt. In a moment of inspiration, she cut it too, so close to her ear that she felt a sharp stinging pain in her lobe. Then, as she sat on the floor, with one blue-ribboned plait in her hand and the other abandoned under the rocking-horse, she felt suddenly flat. There was nothing else to cut. She was thinking seriously of slitting her shorts along the side when she heard above her a voice she knew.
    “Hello! What’s this: do-it-yourself?”
    She looked up and up and was surprised to see Uncle Conor, looking, from her new low perspective, bigger and wider than ever.
    “What have you been up to?” he said as he stretched out his hand to raise her. “That’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it?” His voice was unexpectedly gentle, and it made Brigid want to cry.
    “Daddy was going to have tea with us,” she said, “and then he didn’t. I had nothing to do.”
    “Ah,” he said, “so you found something. Well, maybe you’d better give me those scissors before you do damage, and we’ll give them to whoever lost them – and maybe we’ll try to get you tidied up before your mammy sees you. Or,” and his voice changed, “perhaps you’re here with Aunt Rose?”
    Brigid thought, she is not your aunt, but all she said was: “Rose is gone,” and then she heard Francis’ voice, and looked round to see his eyes, oddly wide under the newly shortened fringe of hair, looking with anxiety first at her, then at Uncle Conor.
    “Oh, Brigid,” said Francis, reaching down and picking up one plait, like a little dead creature and, as he turned it over in his hand, Brigid felt a first pang of sorrow. Then, with the plait still in his hand, and his voice a little more guarded, he said: “Our Aunt Rose has gone back home, Uncle Conor. We’re here with Isobel.”
    “And there she is,” said Uncle Conor, looking over their heads at Isobel, gazing back at him with