by Maeve Binchy
‘No, I mean it. You always were. You didn’t have to try so hard, just to prove my mother wrong, to prove me wrong.’
‘But your mother loved me, she said I was a very nice young man.’ He put on her mother’s voice. It was a good imitation.
‘I’m glad about the child,’ she said.
‘Yes, so are we.’
‘And will I see you all when I open my shop in England?’
‘It will be a time before Paulette will be old enough for your clothes.’
‘Oddly enough I’m having a children’s boutique too.’
‘Well then.’ His smile was warm. But not warm enough.
Maureen thought she would discuss it with her father. The old rascal was full of advice. She wasn’t going to let drop a prize like this again.
Father Hurley said he wanted to use the phone, but there appeared to be a queue. Anna was speaking to someone.
‘Sure, come round,’ she was saying. ‘Listen to me, Ken Green, this is 1985, we are all free to make our own choices. My choice is that if you choose to be here that would be great.’ There was a pause.
‘And I love you too,’ she said, hanging up, surprised with herself.
Deidre’s mother was on the phone next.
‘Yes Tony, perfectly satisfactory, no opportunity. No, no, not reneging on anything, but you know the whole art of life is knowing the right time to say things. Yes, yes. Nothing changed. Absolutely. Me too. Lots.’
Father Hurley picked up the telephone to tell Father Hayes that he was getting a mini-cab back, he would be sharing it with several others, a large car had been ordered.
Yes, he said, it had been delightful, he just felt he mustn’t take up the phone, other people might be telephoning people to say they loved them.
No, he said testily to Father Hayes. He wasn’t even remotely drunk, he had just been sitting listening to a woman and her granddaughter talking on the telephone. That was all.
The move to go was general now. But there was a sense of something not quite completed.
Deirdre found the camera. She had a new film in it all ready for the occasion, she ran into the kitchen where Philippa’s team were busy putting polythene on the leftovers and storing them in the fridge. There would even be things for the freezer.
Deirdre explained how the camera worked and Philippa listened patiently. It was a characteristic of this kind of woman that they thought their cameras were complicated.
They gathered around the couple in a semicircle. They smiled. The camera flashed and flashed again.
Amongst the pictures in the roll of twenty-four there would be one which was bound to look good when enlarged, would look just right. There would be the picture of The Silver Wedding on the wall, for everyone to see. Everyone who came to Rosemary Drive from now on.
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409049128
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Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2006
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Copyright © Maeve Binchy, 1988
Maeve Binchy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1988 by Century
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099498629