A Week in Winter Read Online Free Page B

think you make great judgements. You made a decision, contacted me for a job and that turned out all right for twenty years, didn’t it? You did fine by coming here to New York, and now you’re going back home to own the biggest house in the neighbourhood. I don’t see much wrong with that career path.’
    ‘I love you, Mrs Cassidy,’ Chicky said.
    ‘It’s just as well you’re going back to the Celtic mists and twilight if you’re going to start talking like that,’ Mrs Cassidy said, but her face was much softer than usual.
    The Ryan family sat open-mouthed as she told them her plans.
    Chicky coming home for good? Buying the Sheedy place? Setting up a hotel to be open summer and winter? The main reaction was total disbelief.
    The only one to show pure delight in the idea was her brother Brian.
    ‘That will soften the O’Haras’ cough,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘They’ve been sniffing after that place for years. They want to knock it down and build six top-of-the-market homes up there.’
    ‘That was exactly what Miss Queenie didn’t want!’ Chicky agreed.
    ‘I’d love to be there when they find out,’ Brian said. He had never got over the fact that the O’Haras hadn’t thought him worthy of their daughter. She had married a man who had managed to lose a great deal of O’Hara money on the horses, Brian often noted with satisfaction.
    Her mother couldn’t believe that Chicky was going to move in with Miss Queenie the very next day.
    ‘Well, I’ll need to be on the premises,’ Chicky explained. ‘And anyway, it’s no harm to have someone there to hand Miss Queenie a cup of tea every now and then.’
    ‘And a bowl of porridge or packet of biscuits wouldn’t go amiss either,’ Kathleen said. ‘Mikey saw her picking blackberries a while ago. She said they were free.’
    ‘Are you sure you own the place, Chicky?’ Her father was worried, as always. ‘You’re not just going in there as a maid, like Nuala was, but with a promise that she will leave it to you?’
    Chicky patted them down, assured them it was hers.
    Little by little they began to realise that it was actually going to happen. Every objection they brought up she had already thought of. Her years in New York had made her into a businesswoman. They had learned from the past not to underestimate Chicky. They would not make the same mistake a second time.
    Her family had arranged for yet another Mass to be said for Walter, as Chicky hadn’t been at home for the first one they said. Chicky sat in the little church in Stoneybridge and wondered if there really was a God up there watching and listening.
    It didn’t seem very likely.
    But then everyone here appeared to think it was the case. The whole community joined in prayers for the repose of Walter Starr’s soul. Would he have laughed if he could have known this was happening? Would he have been shocked by the superstition of these people in an Irish seaside town where he had once had a holiday romance?
    Now she was back here, Chicky knew that she would have to be part of the church again. It would be easier; Mrs Cassidy had gone to Mass every Sunday morning in New York. It was yet one more thing that they had never discussed.
    She looked around the church where she was baptised, made her First Communion and her Confirmation, the church where her sisters had been married and where people were praying for the repose of the soul of a man who had never died. It was all very odd.
    Still she hoped that the prayers would do someone somewhere some good.
    There were a series of minefields that had to be walked very carefully. Chicky must make sure not to annoy those who already ran bed-and-breakfast accommodation around the place, or who rented out summer cottages. She began a ceaseless diplomatic offensive explaining that what she was doing was creating something totally new for the area, not a premises that would take business away from them.
    She visited the many public houses dotted