Minding Frankie - Maeve Binchy [5]
I know that I should say that I hope you will find all your heart’s desire in Dublin, but in a way I don’t want you to. I want you to say it was wonderful for six weeks and then for you to come back home again.
It’s not going to be the same without you here. There’s an exhibit opening and it’s just up the street and I can’t bring myself to go to it on my own. I won’t go to nearly as many theater matinees as I did with you.
I’ll collect your rent every Friday from the student who’s renting your apartment. I’ll keep an eye open in case she is growing any attitude-changing substances in your window boxes.
You must write and tell me all about the place you are staying—don’t leave anything out. I am so glad you will have your laptop with you. There will be no excuse for you not to stay in touch. I’ll keep telling you small bits of news about Eric in the suitcase store. He really IS interested in you, Emily, whether you believe it or not!
I’ll hear all about your arrival in the land of the Shamrock when you get your laptop up and running and read this.
Love from your lonely friend,
Betsy
Hi, Betsy,
What makes you think that I would have to wait to get to Ireland to hear from you? I’m at Kennedy Airport and the machine works.
Nonsense! You won’t miss me—you and your fevered imagination! You will have a thousand fantasies. Eric does not fancy me, not even remotely. He is a man of very few words and none of them are small talk. He speaks about me to you because he is too shy to speak to you. Surely you know that?
I’ll miss you too, Bets, but this is something I have to do.
I swear that I will keep in touch. You’ll probably get twenty e-mails from me every day and wish you hadn’t encouraged me!
Love,
Emily
“I wonder, should we have gone out to the airport to meet her?” Josie Lynch said for the fifth time next morning.
“She said she would prefer to make her own way here,” Charles said, as he had on the previous four occasions.
Noel just drank his mug of tea and said nothing.
“She wrote and said the plane could be in early if they got a good wind behind them.” Josie spoke as if she were a frequent flyer herself.
“So she could be here any time …,” Charles said with a heavy heart. He hated having to go in to the hotel this morning knowing that his days there were numbered. There would be time enough to tell Josie once this woman had settled in. Martin’s daughter! He hoped that she hadn’t inherited her father’s great thirst.
There was a ring at the doorbell. Josie’s face was all alarm. She snatched Noel’s mug of tea from him and swept up the empty eggcup and plate from in front of Charles. Patting her new hairdo again, she spoke in a high, false voice.
“Answer the door please, Noel, and welcome your cousin Emily in.”
Noel opened the door to a small woman, forty-something, with frizzy hair and a cream-colored raincoat. She had two neat red suitcases on wheels. She looked entirely in charge of the situation. First time in the country and she had found St. Jarlath’s Crescent with no difficulty.
“You must be Noel. I hope I’m not too early for the household.”
“No, we were all up. We’re about to go to work, you see, and you are very welcome, by the way.”
“Thank you. Well, shall I come in and say hello and good-bye to them?”
Noel realized that he might have left her forever on the doorstep, but then he was only half awake. It took him until about eleven a.m., when he had his first vodka and Coke, to be fully in control of the day. Noel was absolutely certain that nobody at Hall’s knew of his morning injection of alcohol and his midafternoon booster. He covered himself very carefully and always allowed a bottle of genuine Diet Coke to peek out of his duffel bag. The vodka was added from a separate source when he was alone.
He brought the small American woman into the kitchen, where his mother and father kissed her on the cheek and said this was a great day that Martin Lynch’s daughter had come back to the land of her ancestors.
“See you