Putting Out the Stars Read Online Free Page B

was right; maybe the change of scene would do her good.
    She grinned. ‘Hey, remember the secondhand stores, ‘Goodwill’ and ‘Thrift Town’ and that huge Salvation Army shop on Valencia Street?’
    Breffni nodded, smiled back. ‘Remember when I got the Calvin Klein jeans for five bucks? You were raging with me for spotting them first.’
    ‘Remember the giant pizzas in that little place on Twenty-first Street – what was it called?’
    ‘Oh God, yeah – Serrano’s. The size of them, as big as the wheel of a High Nelly. Remember the Greek pizza, with the feta cheese and the olives –’
    ‘And Mitchell’s Ice-cream Parlour – the ginger ice-cream we couldn’t get enough of. And Trader Joe’s sourdough bread.’
    Breffni nodded, amused at Laura’s enthusiasm. ‘See? Is it any wonder I’m heading back to all that? Wouldn’t you give your eye teeth to be coming too? And anyway, I might
only stay a few months – I’m not planning too far ahead. My ticket’s valid for three months, and I can extend it up to a year once I’m there, as long as I keep well hidden.
I’m sure there’ll be plenty of boring office jobs here when I come back.’
    But she hadn’t come back. Not that year – not even for Christmas, in case they wouldn’t let her in again. She wrote to Laura often – long, funny letters full of news and
chat about the people she cleaned for.
    Georgia is such a typical Californian, therapists for every different part of her life. She can’t go to the corner store without some sort of e-mail consultation
     with one of them . . . Jules and Patrick live in this immaculate apartment they think needs cleaning twice a week – and who am I to argue, at fifteen bucks an hour? I have to hoover
     – sorry, vacuum – the ceilings in their two bathrooms. One bedroom, two bathrooms. Only in America, my friend.
    She described the characters she met when she took her little babysitting charges to the local parks: Cloud, the gay eighteen-year-old who took obsessive care of Toby, his little half-brother;
Teresa, the smiling Mexican nanny with a pair of breath-catchingly beautiful toddler twins dressed from head to toe in designer labels – ‘
and you may be sure Mamma went nowhere near
her local thrift store
’.
    Reading Breffni’s letters, Laura could see the charming, litter-strewn city again. She could smell the spices wafting from the ethnic restaurants on Mission Street and see the teenage
Mexicans gathered on the corners in their baggy pants and hoodies, even on the hottest days, whistling and calling to the passing females.
    She could see herself on top of a hilly street at night, looking down at the city lights surrounding the bay. She could close her eyes and wander through Golden Gate Park in the sunshine,
catching snatches of an open-air jazz concert or hearing the
thwack
of a baseball against a bat. She could jog along the path by Ocean Beach and smell the sea, more often than not
surrounded by the fog that was one of the many quirks of San Francisco. She could walk through streets of pastel-coloured wooden houses and pass beggars wrapped in filthy blankets outside chic
little coffee shops and boutiques.
    The summer after Breffni went back to San Francisco, Laura took out a bank loan and flew over to join her for a month. She stayed a week in the tiny two-roomed apartment on Lexington Street that
Breffni shared with another Irish girl, and then they hired a car and drove across to Yosemite National Park, where they hiked through forests of gigantic redwoods and sat by waterfalls to feel the
spray cooling their hot faces.
    Back in San Francisco, they went out to dinner with Breffni’s cousins and their friends, and the day before Laura flew back to Ireland, they had a picnic on the same beach where
they’d eaten barbecued salmon two years before.
    That autumn, Donal walked into The White House on a night Laura was working there, and the next time she and Breffni met was a year