A Week in Winter Read Online Free Page A

everything reminding you of him. Come home now, if you like, and I’ll move into the downstairs breakfast room. I’m not too good on the old stairs anyway.’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Queenie. It’s your house. I can’t take any of this in. And what would I do with a big house like this all on my own?’
    ‘You’d turn it into a hotel, wouldn’t you?’ To Miss Queenie, it was obvious. ‘Those O’Haras have been wanting to buy the place from me for years. They’d pull it down. I don’t want that. I’ll help you turn it into a hotel.’
    ‘A hotel? Really? Run a hotel?’
    ‘You’d make it special, a place for people like you.’
    ‘There’s no one like me, no one as odd and complicated.’
    ‘You’d be surprised, Chicky. There are lots of them. And I won’t be around here for long, anyway; I’m going to join my sisters in the churchyard soon, I’d say. So you should really have to decide to do it now, and then we can plan what we are going to do to make Stone House lovely again.’
    Chicky was wordless.
    ‘You see, it would be very nice for me if you did come here before I go. I’d just love to be part of the planning,’ Queenie pleaded. And they sat down at the kitchen table in Stone House and talked about it seriously.
    When Chicky got back to New York, Mrs Cassidy listened to the plans, nodding with approval.
    ‘You really think I can do it?’
    ‘I’ll miss you, but you know it’s going to be the making of you.’
    ‘Will you come to see me? Come to stay in my hotel?’
    ‘Yes, I’ll come for a week one winter. I like the Irish countryside in winter, not when it’s full of noise and show and people doing leprechaun duty.’
    Mrs Cassidy had never taken a holiday. This was ground-breaking.
    ‘I should go now while Queenie is alive, I suppose.’
    ‘You should have it up and running as soon as possible.’ Mrs Cassidy hated to let the grass grow beneath her feet.
    ‘How will I explain it all . . . to everybody?’
    ‘You know, people don’t have to explain things nearly as much as you think they do. Just say that you bought it with the money Walter left you. It’s only the truth, after all.’
    ‘How can it be the truth?’
    ‘It’s because of Walter you came here to New York. And because he left you you went and earned that money and saved it. In a way, he did leave it to you. I don’t see any lie there.’ And Mrs Cassidy put on the face that meant they would never speak of it again.
    In the following weeks, Chicky transferred her savings to an Irish bank. There were endless negotiations with banks and lawyers. There were planning applications to be sorted, earth movers to be contacted, hotel regulations to be consulted, tax considerations to be made. She would never have believed how many aspects of it all there were to put in place before the announcement was made. She and Miss Queenie told nobody about their arrangement.
    Eventually it all seemed ready.
    ‘I can’t put it off much longer,’ Chicky said to Mrs Cassidy as they cleared the table after supper.
    ‘It breaks my heart, but you should go tomorrow.’
    ‘Tomorrow?’
    ‘Miss Queenie can’t wait much longer, and you have to tell your family some time. Do it before it’s leaked out to them. It will be better this way.’
    ‘But to get ready to go in one day? I mean, I have to pack and say my goodbyes . . .’
    ‘You could pack in twenty minutes. You have hardly any possessions. The men in this house aren’t great on big flowery goodbye speeches, any more than I am myself.’
    ‘I’m half cracked to do this, Mrs Cassidy.’
    ‘No, Chicky, you’d be half cracked if you didn’t do it. You were always great at taking an opportunity.’
    ‘Maybe I’d have been better if I hadn’t seized the opportunity of following Walter Starr.’ Chicky was rueful.
    ‘Oh yes? You’d have been promoted in the knitting factory. Married a mad farmer, have six children that you’d be trying to find jobs for. No, I