by Maeve Binchy
But she had done it for the children. For her children, who must go and say good-bye to their grandfather, and go with the knowledge that their mother too would mourn the kind old man, no matter what had happened in the past. And her children had a right to meet and know their little half brothers too. These were just innocent little boys—they must not grow up in a shadow, in fear of a household that could never be mentioned.
You didn’t have to like it but you did it. That’s how life and families went on. And oddly it got easier. This was the third time. And there would be more times, weddings, christenings, and funerals.
Maybe if Liliana got married again herself they would all come and dance at her wedding. The whole extended family.
“Speaking of that, do you think that man with the dog fancies you?” Kay asked. “He’s always going past the house.”
Liliana laughed until she cried. “No, he fancies you, Signora Kay. That’s Pietro. He thinks you have beautiful eyes, but did not like to approach you, so he just admires from afar.”
—
Kay telephoned Nick and Julia that night; Helen and Johnny were there, but no significance was to be attached to that.
“You sound great,” Nick said. “Have you found a fancy man?”
“Well, yes, in a way. A man admires me—he keeps walking past the hotel with his dog.”
They were delighted.
“You’re not to make anything of it,” she said, reacting to the way Helen went on. “We haven’t exchanged more than a few good evenings. And I didn’t call about that, it was something else.”
They sounded alarmed.
“No, nothing wrong, just something I forgot when we were talking; you have included Susie, Dad’s Susie, on your wedding list, haven’t you?”
“Well, yes, no, I mean we didn’t really know…you see she’s sort of—”
“Pregnant, yes, I know…Even more important then that she should be included.”
—
Kay went for her walk, she sat under the tree and waited for Pietro to pass by; she would ask him to sit down and they would talk in fractured Italian and English. Kay knew she wouldn’t enjoy seeing Peter and Susie, but Liliana was right, it had to be done.
It was the way life and families went on.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maeve Binchy was born in County Dublin and educated at the Holy Child convent in Killiney and at University College, Dublin. After a spell as a teacher she joined The Irish Times. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982 and she went on to write more than twenty books, all of them best sellers, including Maeve’s Times: In Her Own Words. Several have been adapted for cinema and television, most notably Circle of Friends and Tara Road, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Maeve Binchy received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the British Book Awards in 1999 and the Irish PEN/A.T. Cross Award in 2007. In 2010 she was presented with the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards for A Week in Winter. She was married to the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell for thirty-five years. She died in 2012 at the age of seventy-two. Visit her website at www.maevebinchy.com.
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