Praise for Roisin Meaney
‘Repeatedly and deservedly likened to Maeve Binchy, she is a master of her craft and a gifted storyteller’ Irish Independent
‘Like chatting with a friend over a cup of tea … this touching and intricate story will give back as much as you put in’
Irish Mail on Sunday
‘Warm and engaging’ Woman’s Way
‘Meaney weaves wonderful, feel-good tales of a consistently high standard. And that standard rises with each book she writes’
Irish Examiner
‘Highly engaging and heart-warming’ Melissa Hill
‘If you like Maeve Binchy, this will be a treat’ Stellar magazine
Roisin Meaney was born in Listowel, Co. Kerry. She has lived in England (where she worked as an advertising copywriter), Africa (where she taught High School English), and the USA (where she worked as a waitress). She also spent time teaching at a primary school in Ireland. She is the author of Top Five bestsellers One Summer, Love in the Making, The Last Week of May, and The People Next Door. Something in Common is her ninth novel. Roisin currently shares her home in Limerick city with an extremely picky cat, and tries to balance her chocolate habit with Pilates and juicing.
www.roisinmeaney.com
@roisinmeaney
www.facebook.com/roisinmeaney
Also by Roisin Meaney:
One Summer
The Things We Do For Love
Love in the Making
Half Seven on a Thursday
The People Next Door
The Last Week of May
Putting Out The Stars
The Daisy Picker
Children’s Books
Don’t Even Think About It
See If I Care
First published in 2013 by Hachette Books Ireland
Copyright © Roisin Meaney 2013
The right of Roisin Meaney to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious. All events and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real life or real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1444 743 555
Hachette Books Ireland
8 Castlecourt Centre
Castleknock
Dublin 15, Ireland
A division of Hachette UK Ltd.
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
For Treas, for her unstinting support
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my editor Ciara Doorley, invaluable for the feedback and suggestions, and to the entire hardworking and friendly crew at Hachette Books Ireland. Long may you prosper.
Thanks to Hazel my copy editor for her wonderfully thorough work, and to Aonghus my proofreader for the final checks.
Thanks to Maura, my mother’s late penfriend: their relationship was the inspiration for this book.
Thanks to the internet, which proved very useful in so many ways.
Thanks to my family for their unwavering faith in my abilities.
Thanks to you for doing me the honour of choosing this book: I sincerely hope you enjoy it.
Roisin x
www.roisinmeaney.com
Our lives are written by other people. Some are with us from the start: parents, siblings, first friends, each adding a chapter to our stories as the years go by. Others find us later – teachers, work colleagues, romantic partners, new friends – and these more mature relationships bring further twists to our plots, at times leading us down paths we might not otherwise have chosen, turning new pages and ushering us along.
Of course, many more whose orbits briefly intersect ours leave little or no legacy. The gruff sweet-shop owner who relieves us of our pocket money each Friday, the smiling dentist who subsequently drills and fills our childhood teeth, the librarian who silently stamps our fortnightly teenage borrowings, the boy with the woolly hat pulled over his ginger hair who pushes the newspaper through our first very own letterbox every morning for a year – these minor characters leave us largely unaltered, and are quickly forgotten.
And then occasionally there are others, not looked-for, not anticipated. They are the ones presented to us almost as an afterthought, whose paths cross ours in unexpected ways, and who are destined, whether we like it or not, to change us profoundly.
This is the story of such a relationship. It is the story of the unlikeliest of friendships and its effect on the two women involved, from its traumatic beginning to its most unforeseen end.
This is the story of Helen and Sarah.
Contents
Praise for Roisin Meaney
Also by Roisin Meaney:
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
1975
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
1976
Helen
Sarah
Helen
1978
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
1983
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
1987
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
1990
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
1991
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
1992
Sarah
1995
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
1998
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helen
Sarah
Helan
Helen and Sarah
1975
Sarah
If it hadn’t been for the scarf she’d have kept going. She’d noticed the maroon Beetl
e, of course, as soon as she’d turned onto the bridge – impossible to miss it, so carelessly positioned, front wheels skewed, bonnet poking right out, as if it had been flung there in a temper rather than deliberately parked – but with her mind still picking its way through the interview, the image of the car did little more than skitter across the edges of her vision, gone the minute she’d pedalled past it.
What had they thought of her, the three people who’d just spent forty-five minutes picking their way through her background? She had no idea. There’d been no frowns, no indication of dissatisfaction at anything she’d said, but she’d seen no sign that they’d approved of her either, as they’d scribbled God knows what into their identical navy hard-backed notebooks.
At least she was female, and everyone knew that women made better cooks. But maybe they’d been hoping for someone a bit older than twenty-four, someone with a bit more experience: all she’d done since her Leaving Cert was work, with varying degrees of responsibility, in the kitchen of her uncle’s small country hotel.
Not that she hadn’t been grateful to Uncle John for taking her in – with her mediocre Leaving Cert there hadn’t been a lot of choice. Jobs were scarce, and a lot of businesses preferred to employ a man, who wouldn’t leave the minute he got married, or became a parent. Small wonder so many of her friends had emigrated the minute they’d left school, or found husbands as soon as they could.
But emigration hadn’t appealed to Sarah, and no man had offered to marry her, so she’d made the most of her time in the hotel. She’d watched others and learnt from them, and she’d devoured cookery books in her spare time. She understood food, she respected it – and she felt she was ready for bigger things. She liked the idea of being head cook, even if it was only in a smallish County Kildare nursing home, forty-odd miles from Dublin. It was a perfectly respectable job, and she’d be doing pretty well to get it.
Christine didn’t agree.
‘Why you want to work in St Sebastian’s is beyond me,’ she’d said, drawing her kohl pen in a slow black arc beneath her left eye.
‘What’s wrong with it?’ They’d grown up three miles from the nursing home; it was down the road from their old primary school.
‘Nothing as such – well, I presume it’s decent enough, as nursing homes go – but, honestly, who are you going to meet there under seventy-five? What hope have you got of finding anyone if you’re stuck in some kitchen surrounded by old-age pensioners?’
‘I’m not looking for a job just to find a husband,’ Sarah had protested. ‘I can meet men socially.’
But her sister’s words had struck a nerve. Impossible, unbearable scenario, never to walk down the aisle on someone’s arm, never to become a wife and a mother – and it was a fact that a lot of women met their future husbands in the workplace. What hope did Sarah have of finding anyone in a nursing home?
It had been so easy for Christine, paired up with Brian since their early teens, engaged to him now at twenty-three, getting married the year after next. All set to give up her part-time job in the library whenever the first baby was on the way. Ready to be supported by her husband as she cooked his dinners and ironed his shirts for the rest of her life.
And look at Sarah, a year older and currently unattached, and still living at home. Still sleeping in the single bed she’d had since childhood, her Beatles and Dickie Rock and Joe Dolan posters covering the flowery wallpaper her mother had chosen. And two of Sarah’s friends were already mothers themselves: Goretti Tobin had two little boys and Avril Delaney had had a baby girl just after Christmas. Where was the man Sarah was destined – must be destined – to marry?
But she had to work, and she loved working with food, which was why she’d answered the St Sebastian’s ad. If she got the job she’d take it, whatever about Christine’s reservations, and hope for the best.
She wondered if the green trouser suit had made any difference in the end, or if she should have gone with her pink dress, like she’d wanted to. Her mother, not surprisingly, had favoured the suit.
‘The colour is better on you,’ she’d said, drawing her darning needle through the heel of one of her husband’s many dark grey socks. ‘And you look much more professional in it.’
‘I’m interviewing for a cook’s job,’ Sarah had pointed out. ‘I won’t need to look professional when I’m chopping onions or peeling spuds.’
But she knew, of course, that the real objection to the dress was that it was too short. Sarah didn’t think it was that short, not compared to some of the ones she saw on Top of the Pops every week. Minis were in, everyone was wearing them – and her legs weren’t bad, if she said so herself.
Mind you, that woman on the interview panel, the one from the nursing home’s board of management – Bernice? Beatrice? – with her blue rinse and lavender cardigan buttoned all the way up, would probably have found fault with anything above the knee, and of course it was a lot easier to cycle in trousers.
She’d be glad when she got home though, already caught in a small shower and by the look of it, a lot more on—
And there was the scarf, spread like a puddle on the wooden surface of the bridge, nearly under Sarah’s wheels before she spotted it. She swerved and pulled on the brakes, and doubled back for a closer look.
It weighed nothing, a wisp of a thing – 100% wild silk, the label said – in gorgeous swirly blues and turquoises and lilacs. She held it by the ends and opened it out, and found a rectangle about the size of a bath towel. She brought it to her nose and smelt sweetish perfume, and cigarettes.
Where had it come from? It couldn’t have been here long – no tyre marks on it that she could see, no sign that anything had disturbed it since its arrival. Perfectly dry, although the bridge itself was damp from the short shower Sarah had cycled through not ten minutes before – and surely such a feathery thing would have been blown away on the tiniest breeze, whisked up and carried off?
She imagined it billowing upwards, skirting the treetops, wrapping itself eventually around a church steeple, to the bemusement of the parishioners below. Or maybe swooping gently into the river and floating away to sea, like the Owl and Pussycat, catching the attention maybe of a passing fisherman, who might scoop it up and take it home to his wife.
She glanced behind her and saw again the carelessly parked car – and only then did she notice a figure standing on its far side, between the car and the waist-high metal railing that spanned the bridge on either side, thirty yards or so from where Sarah stood.
She squinted to get a better view of the person she was looking at. As far as she could see, whoever it was wore a dark coat, brown or black. Big hair, also dark, above it – or maybe a hat, one of those furry ones that Russian secret agents wore in James Bond films.
She got off her bike and wheeled it over to lean it against the railing. As she covered the short distance back towards the car, rubbing her hands to get some warmth into them, the narrow heels of the only presentable shoes she owned made a loud clacking sound on the wooden surface that reminded her, for some reason, of a teacher she’d had in second or third class – Sister Mary Assumpta, or was it Attracta?
Brought a ruler down hard three times on Sarah’s palm once when she hadn’t known the Irish for something. Gave her such a fright she’d wet her pants. Sister Mary Whatever-her-name-was, everyone terrified of her, slap you soon as look at you. Dead now, died not long after Sarah had moved on to secondary school, keeled over with a brain haemorrhage, or a massive stroke or something. Poor creature, you couldn’t hold a grudge when you heard something like that.
As she drew nearer to the other figure, she saw that it wasn’t a hat: it was hair with the glossy red-brown richness of a just-hatched conker. It was masses of glorious Shirley Temple curls that Sarah would have traded her boring straw-coloured bob for in an instant. They tumbled down the back of the woman’s black sheepskin coat, shielding her face completely as Sarah approached.
She must have heard the ridiculous c
lippity-clop of Sarah’s shoes, but she didn’t look around. Her palms were braced against the metal railing – no gloves, she must be cold – the too-long sleeves of her coat, miles too big for her, almost covering her hands, the furry cuff of the left one dangerously close to the tip of the half-smoked cigarette that was clamped between her first and second fingers. The smoke from it drifted straight upwards, no breeze to push it sideways.
Sarah stopped about six feet away. No movement from the other woman, apart from a tiny, rapidly vanishing puff of steam around her face each time her warm breath met the January air. Would she appreciate an interruption? But if it was her scarf, and surely it was, she’d be glad to have it returned to her, wouldn’t she?
‘Excuse me.’
No response. No reaction, no sign at all that she’d heard.
‘Excuse me.’ A little louder.
Still nothing. Didn’t she want her scarf back? Sarah held it out. ‘I found this lying on the bridge up ahead, and I wondered if it was yours.’
The woman continued to ignore her. This was getting ridiculous. Maybe she was deaf.
Sarah stepped closer. ‘Excuse me, I just wanted to—’
‘Go away.’
Softly said, the words practically inaudible, the head still turned away. Ash dropped off the end of her cigarette and tumbled towards the water.
‘Pardon? I didn’t quite catch—’
‘Leave me alone.’
Sarah was thrown. Maybe she’d missed the mention of the scarf. ‘Oh, well … but I found this—’
‘Just go away, would you?’ Louder, sharper, the voice quite deep for a woman. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘But your scarf—’
‘Keep it.’
Keep it? She was giving her beautiful, and probably very expensive, scarf to a stranger, just like that? Why on earth would anyone just hand over—
The thought stopped short in Sarah’s head, snagged on a new and disturbing one. Clearly, the woman was in a distressed state. She was standing on a bridge, and she wasn’t interested in having her scarf returned to her. Why wouldn’t she want it back, unless she was planning never to wear it again?
A green car drove onto the bridge from the opposite direction. The driver, an elderly man, glanced at the two of them as he passed. Too late, as he reached the far end of the bridge, for Sarah to be wondering if she should have flagged him down.
Something in Common Page 1