Read Online Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy - Free Book Online Page A

summer romance kind of thing. He'd say, "See you around," or he'd call me and then it would be finished. No lovely places to go like in Bella Aurora. Only desperate work and rain, and I'd never liked anyone as much as Glenn, not in my whole life, and I'm twenty-three now, so that's been a fair old life.
       Anyway they were all shouting good-byes and kissing one another and swearing that they'd see one another in this club or that, and Glenn just stood there looking at me. I wished to God I could think of something to say instead of what was racing through my head, things like D on't dump me, please, Glenn, or We will be all right even back home when we have to go to work and all . . . I could only think of awful tying-down things—the things fellows dread to hear.
       So I said eventually, "Here we are, then," which wasn't very bright. I mean, of course we were here. Where else would we be?
       Glenn just smiled. "Indeed we are," he said.
       "So it was great fun." I hoped I didn't sound too intense, too tying down.
       "Yeah, but it's not over, is it?" Glenn asked anxiously.
       "No way," I said and I knew I had this big silly grin all over my face.
       Just then Vera came up to say good-bye.
       "Nick will be coming back next week, he had a week longer than we all did, and I was going to have a few people round for a get-together in my house—a sort of reunion. You will come? Todd and Alma are coming. You have my address so it's Chez Vera, Friday of next week, then? About eight o'clock?"
    "Shay Vera?" I asked foolishly.
    She's dead nice, Vera, she'd never make a fool of you.
       "It's a silly expression. It means . . . at the house of someone, Chez Moi at my house, Chez Vous at your house . . . It's just something we used to say a hundred years ago." She was apologetic under her ridiculous hat and with her faded jeans.
       She waved as she went off to catch her bus. Funny little figure, yet everyone was mad about her— and she'd found herself a fellow.
       Glenn said that his brother and some mates were coming in from Santa Ponsa in an hour's time and he was going to meet them in the bar. They'd give him a lift back to Chez Glenn. Would I like to wait and they'd drive me to Chez Sharon too?
       I would have liked to wait very much, to have given our holiday romance some kind of base in Ireland as well as out there under the blue skies. But there was no way I could let him see Chez Sharon. Now Glenn isn't posh, it's nothing like that, but there's about a month's work to be done tarting up our house before I'd even let him see it. This is not putting on airs or anything, this is survival.
       The garden is full of dandelions and bits of old metal that can never be thrown out. The kitchen window is boarded up after the last time Dad started throwing things, and they're unlikely to have got any glass in it since I went away. The paintwork is all peeling. Whatever chance I had with Glenn, it would be wiped out if he saw Chez Sharon.
       So I said no, that I had to run and that I'd hear from him soon, and I sat on a bus and cried the whole way home.
       My mam was getting the supper. She looked tired, as she had always looked tired for as long as I could remember.
       "Don't upset your dad tonight" were her first words.
       "Is he on the piss again?" I asked.
       "He had a bit of bad luck, Sharon, be a good girl now and don't upset things, you've just had a lovely holiday, what have the rest of us had?"
       It was unanswerable.
       My mam had had nothing but dog's abuse, and a desperate job cleaning offices from 4 a.m. until 8 and then turning round and going out to be a washer-up in a place that did all-day breakfasts. I had just had fourteen days of sunshine and sangria and great laughs and I'd met a fabulous fellow. I wasn't going to upset things.
       I nailed a smile on my face when my dad came in, fulminating about some horse and some false friend who had told