Free Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy Page A

coming anyway. She dialled Neil’s mobile phone to leave the message.
    ‘Sorry to disturb you with trivia, but the- twins have apparently brought down the ceiling in Oaklands. Ring your mother soonest. Hope it’s all going well for Jonathan.’
    Then she went to the spare room and made up two beds. The twins would be there before nightfall.

    Tom rang to say he wanted to borrow the van and would that be all right.
    I want to go up into the mountains, I think. It’s just I can’t think or talk about anything else and I’m afraid I’ll drive Marcella demented. Do you want to come? Is Neil bearing up?’
    ‘He’s still out fighting the good fight. I’d better not come with you, though, we have another horror-story brewing. Remember the twins from hell who turned up at Oaklands last night?’
    ‘Have they burned the place down yet?’
    ‘They might have by now. But they’re probably packing their things and getting ready to come to Waterview as we speak.’
    ‘Cathy, they
can’t
Tom was aghast. ‘You don’t have room, apart from anything else.’
    ‘Don’t I know it, but as my father would say, even money we see them here tonight.’
    ‘So what are you doing?’
    ‘Nailing things down, mainly. Removing anything breakable. You know, the usual.’
    ‘I’ll just sneak into the courtyard and take the van away,’ Tom said.
    ‘Don’t even look up at a window, they could fire something at you,’ she said with a laugh.
    ‘Just one word of warning, Cathy and then I’ll shut up about it all. Don’t let Neil take them on and then go off saving the world and leaving them to you.’
    She sighed. ‘And will you take one word of warning from me. Drive carefully, we haven’t half-finished paying for that van and when you get excited you take your eyes off the road and your hands off the wheel.’
    ‘When the business is successful, we’ll get a tank,’ he promised.
    Cathy made yet another cup of tea and thought about Tom. They had met on her first day at catering college; with his shock of thick, light brown hair he had an artlessly graceful way of moving. His enthusiasm and the light in his eyes had been the keynote of their years on the course. There was nothing Tom Feather would not attempt, suggest, carry out.
    There had been the time he had ‘borrowed’ a car from one of the lecturers because it had been left in the college yard for the weekend and Tom thought it could take six of them to Galway and back. Sadly, they’d met the lecturer in Galway and it could have been very difficult.
    ‘We brought your car in case you wanted to drive home,’ Tom had said, with such brio that the lecturer had half-believed him and almost apologised for the wasted journey since he had a return ticket and a girlfriend with him.
    There had been the picnics and barbecues where Tom insisted they must be true to their calling and insisted on marinating kebabs when others would have been content with burned sausages. Cathy could almost smell those nights full of food and herbs and wine on the beaches around Dublin, and the winter evenings in the ramshackle flat that Tom shared with three other guys.
    Cathy had envied him the freedom. She had to go back to St Jarlath’s Crescent every night and, even though Muttie and Lizzie had allowed her a fair amount of freedom, it still wasn’t the same as having your own place.
    ‘You could come and live here,’ Tom had told her more than once.
    ‘I’d only end up doing their ironing and lifting their smelly socks off the floor.’
    ‘That’s probably true,’ Tom had agreed with reluctance.
    He had never been short of girlfriends but took none of them seriously. He had a way of looking at people that seemed to suggest no one else in the world existed. He was interested in the most trivial things people told him and he was afraid of no one. He was kind to his rather difficult parents but it never meant that he missed any of the fun. When they all wanted to go to a black tie event