Read Online The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay - Free Book Online Page B

had gone permanently missing. Also she was hungry. She had eaten all the food they had; there was nothing left but a jar of pickle. That morning,when she had finished the last slice of bread, she had briefly weighed her options. There was no one she could telephone. She never had a visitor except, on occasion, Father O’Connor, unsolicited, and the doctor. Your woman from the Social had been round a year or two ago but, assured by Mary-Margaret that everything was quite all right, she had not been back. How long would half a jar of pickle keep body and soul together? Fidelma dug a finger into the jar and scooped out a sticky cube of something brown that was both sweet and acid in her mouth.
    Well, no real need to worry. Although she had never done it, Fidelma knew you could ring for a pizza. Or Chinese. Myriad leaflets saying so came floating through the letter box and fetched up in a drift on the kitchen counter until Mary-Margaret got round to throwing them away. All you had to do was call a number. But then, of course, you’d have to open the front door. You’d have to heave yourself up when you heard the doorbell; you’d have to squeeze yourself down the narrow hall. Stand there at the door and count out the money, on show for the world and his wife to see.
    So the sound of Mary-Margaret’s key was a relief. Fidelma stayed where she was and Mary-Margaret came in. A proper mess and all she was: brown streaks on her skirt, her hair unwashed, a clump of it all matted and a lump of it apparently cut off. Her wrist in a tight bandage. I was on the radio, she said.
    You’d better get yourself cleaned up, Fidelma answered.
    Oh no, this skirt’s a holy relic. They nearly had it off me then and there, but I promised that I’d bring it back. It did feel funny, though, when I realized I was walking throughthe streets in my Savior’s precious blood! But otherwise I’d only have my knickers.
    Fidelma considered Mary-Margaret. She would not have had her down as an imaginative girl. Quite the opposite, indeed; she had always been distressingly attached to the plain truth. When Mary-Margaret was a little girl, Fidelma was forever having to translate for her the things that people said. “Once in a blue moon,” for instance, or “He’d talk the hind legs off a donkey.” When is the moon blue? her child would ask. Can a donkey stand up on three legs? It would try the patience of a saint, having to explain things to her all the time. But that was in the days when she and Mary-Margaret had still gone out a bit together; now Mary-Margaret went off on her own and made what sense she might of the outside world with no assistance from her mother.
    That cut on the head must have been more serious than it looked, Fidelma thought. Odd that the hospital had let her daughter out in such a bad way, still deranged. The embers of a feeling that had not burned in Fidelma for a long time shifted a little to reveal the faintest glow. She had taken care of Mary-Margaret once, had fed her, clothed her, rocked her, sung for her the sad songs of her own childhood. She had kept her, which was much more to the point. Oh, it would have been the simplest thing to do what everybody urged her to, or ordered her to do, in fact. Back into the convent, have the wretched thing. Keep your eyes averted as they bear it off. A good Catholic couple standing by, pacing in the waiting room, desperate to be a mummy and a daddy, but needing outside help with that achievement. Never fear, the babe willwant for nothing, these decent folk will love it as if it were their own.
    It happened all the time, Fidelma knew. The trick, she had been told, was not to see the wean at all. Close your eyes when it comes out, don’t ask if it’s a boy or girl, don’t give it a second thought. There’s something you can take to dry the milk up, when it comes, although it has to be admitted that your chest will fairly ache. But putting the baby to the breast, even for a few days,