The Bright One Read Online Free

Moira said scornfully.
    â€˜Not as stupid as lipstick!’ Breda said.
    Moira blushed. She had had the lipstick from a girl at school, and Mammy did not know about it. Would she ever be allowed to use it, she wondered? Mammy was so old-fashioned. She said little girls did not need such things. But I am twelve, Moira thought rebelliously. I am not a little girl.
    It was evening, and the sea rolling in, before they packed up and left for home. Breda had recovered her spirits. She is never down for long, Molly thought as she watched her youngest count her pebbles. I didn’t want another child after Moira, but think what I would have missed!
    â€˜Will Dada be home when we get back?’ Breda asked. Not that she had forgiven him; not quite.
    â€˜No. I told you. Not until the morning.’
    â€˜Then where will he sleep?’
    â€˜Who knows?’ Molly said. ‘There is no money for beds. They will sleep rough, I expect. In a field, or under a hedge. It was one of the reasons he could not take you.’
    â€˜I would sleep in a field,’ Breda said. ‘I would so!’
    â€˜Not if I could help it,’ Molly said.
    For a little while after they reached home they played in the street, Breda and Moira with a skipping rope, the twins kicking a ball. It was still daylight, though looking towards the sea there were bands of red and gold across the sky. Presently Molly called them in to prepare them for bed; Breda first, because she was the youngest.
    She lay alone in the bed, savouring the space that was hers until Moira came. She could have fallen asleep at once, but there was no way she would allow herself to do that because she enjoyed watching Moira’s nightly ritual: the brushing of her hair before tightly braiding it so that it would have some semblance of waviness in the morning; the massaging into her near-perfect skin of the Ponds Cold Cream for which she had saved her pocket money; the anxious search in the small square of mirror she kept in her treasure box for non-existent spots and blackheads. Breda propped herself up on one elbow, enjoying every minute of her sister’s toilette . But tonight there was a bonus.
    From her box, Moira took out the lipstick and applied it carefully to the cupid’s bow of her mouth, sighing with approval at her image in the glass.
    â€˜You look gorgeous!’ Breda said with true admiration. ‘But why are you putting lipstick on to go to bed?’
    â€˜Because I can’t put it on any other time,’ Moira said crossly.
    â€˜What will Mammy say if she sees it?’ Breda asked.
    â€˜She’ll make me wash it off,’ Moira said. ‘But she won’t see it, because when she comes in I’ll hide under the clothes and pretend to be asleep. And if you tell her I’ll kill you!’
    â€˜I won’t tell her,’ Breda promised. ‘I won’t breathe a word.’
    â€˜Move over,’ Moira said, climbing in. ‘You’re taking far more than half the bed!’
    Breda was asleep before the twins came to bed, and long before Kieran, who was always last. As her eyes closed she thought of the long summer holiday which stretched ahead, and of Dada, who would be home again tomorrow, perhaps with a present.
    Molly, coming into the room much later to look at her children, smiled at the sight of Moira’s red lips, pulled the covers over Breda, looked with satisfaction at her three sleeping sons. Here were her jewels.
    She wished James was home. She hated going to bed without him.

Two
    Four days a week Molly went up to the Big House to give a hand with the cleaning. It was always known as the Big House, though by rights it was Adare House. From leaving school at fourteen she had worked there full time, but when she had met James O’Connor in the autumn of 1920, and married him by Christmas, he would have none of that.
    â€˜Am I not able to keep a wife?’ he’d demanded. ‘Is that