Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [140]
“I have a lovely lamb stew for you,” Emily said. She had actually cooked it for Hat and herself but this was more important. Josie must not be given any excuse to put off telling Charles about her decision. Josie was easily distracted by things like having to put a meal on the table.
Emily would make something else for herself and Hat.
· · ·
They did their roster every Sunday night. A page was put up on the kitchen wall. You could easily read who was minding Frankie every hour of the day. Noel and Lisa each had a copy as well. Soon Frankie would be old enough to go to Miss Keane’s day nursery: that would be three hours accounted for each day. Only the name of who was to collect her would be needed for the mornings.
Lisa would take her to Miss Keane’s and a variety of helpers would pick her up. Lisa wasn’t free at lunchtime. She had a job making sandwiches in a rather classy place on the other side of the city. It wasn’t a skilled job, but she brought all the skills she had to it. It paid her share of the groceries, and little by little she told them her ideas.
A gorgonzola and date sandwich? The customers loved it, so she suggested little posters advertising the sandwich of the week, and when they said it would be too expensive to do them, she drew them herself. She even designed a logo for the sandwich bar.
“You’re much too good to be here,” said Hugh, the young owner.
“I’m too good for everywhere. Weren’t you lucky to get me?”
“We were, actually. You’re a mystery woman.”
He smiled at her. Hugh was rich and confident and good-looking. He fancied her, but Lisa realized that she had got out of the way of looking at men properly.
She had forgotten how to flirt.
She did other things to keep busy.
She joined Emily in the window box patrol and learned a lot about plants as well as about the lives of the people in St. Jarlath’s Crescent. Feeding plants and repotting—it was a different world, but she picked it up quickly. Emily said she was a natural. She could run her own plant nurseries.
“I used to be bright,” Lisa said thoughtfully. “I was really good at school and then I got a great job in an agency … but it all drifted away …”
Emily knew when to leave a silence.
Lisa went on almost dreamily, “It was like driving into a fog, really, meeting Anton. I forgot the world outside.”
“And is the world coming back to you yet?” Emily asked gently.
“Sort of peering through the foggy curtains.”
“Are there things you meant to do before and didn’t get to do?”
“Yes, a lot of things, and I’m going to do them. Starting with these exams.”
“It will concentrate the mind,” Emily agreed.
“Yes, and keep me away from Anton’s …,” Lisa said ruefully.
She knew very clearly that if she went back to the restaurant they would all greet her warmly. Her absence would not need to be explained. They would assume she had just had a hissy fit and had now come to her senses. April would look put out and Anton would look at her lazily and say she was lovely and the days had been lonely and colorless since she had gone. On the surface nothing would have changed. Deep down, though, it was all changed. He didn’t love her. She had just been available, that was all.
But as she had said to Emily, there were still a lot of things that had to be done about other aspects of her life. One of these was meeting her mother.
Since she had discovered that her father brought prostitutes home, Lisa’s meetings with her mother had been sparse. They met for coffee every now and then and they had lunch before Christmas. A dutiful exchange of gifts was made and they both engaged in a polite fiction of a conversation.
Her mother had asked about Lisa’s design work for Anton’s.
Lisa had asked about Mother’s garden and whether she had decided on having a greenhouse or not. They had both talked a lot about Katie’s salon and how well it was doing. Then, with relief, they had parted.
Nothing dangerous had been said, no forbidden roads had been opened up.
But this was no way to live, Lisa told herself. She must urge Mother