Free The September Girls by Maureen Lee Page A

on the gas.
    ‘Why?’ Brenna asked.
    ‘You’re too happy, luv.’
    ‘Don’t be an eejit, Colm. How can anyone be too happy?’
    ‘You’re acting like everything’s perfect, but it’s not.’
    ‘It will be soon,’ Brenna said serenely. ‘The Blessed Virgin’s answered two of my prayers by sending us this house and letting us have our lads back. She’s bound to answer the third and find you a job.’
    ‘I wouldn’t bank on it, Bren. Anyway, I thought it was our Paddy responsible for getting us the house, not you know who.’
    ‘It was her who prompted Mr Allardyce to cut the notice out the paper.’
    Colm looked confused, but didn’t bother to argue, just as Nancy had given up pointing out that if the Blessed Virgin was all she was cracked up to be, she wouldn’t have allowed Paddy to be killed and let the Caffreys spend nearly three months in a disgusting cellar. ‘I don’t want you coming down to earth with a bump one of these days,’ Colm said fondly. ‘It might hurt.’
    She sat on his knee and put her arms around his neck. They’d never had a honeymoon, but it was how the last few days had felt, as if they’d only just got married and everything was new and fresh. ‘Don’t be such an old misery, Colm Caffrey,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Come on, darlin’. Let’s go to bed.’
    ‘In our Paddy’s room?’ Colm wiggled his dark eyebrows.
    ‘We’ll stop off in your Paddy’s room on the way.’
     
    ‘Our Cara can sleep here when she’s bigger,’ Brenna said as she stretched out on the narrow bed, ‘and we can have our own big bed to ourselves. This is awful cramped.’
    ‘I can’t wait.’ Colm lay beside her and put his arms around her waist. Brenna’s head fell back and became painfully lodged between the mattress and the wall.
    ‘Me head hurts,’ she complained.
    Colm slid his hand beneath her neck and pulled her towards him. ‘What’s that?’ he muttered.
    ‘Me head, you eejit.’
    ‘No, under your head. There’s something inside the mattress.’
    ‘Let’s feel.’ Brenna smoothed her hand over the place where her head had been. It felt hard and lumpy. ‘It makes a noise,’ she said, ‘a jingling sound.’ She leapt out of the bed, sending Colm crashing to the floor, and pulled the mattress off. ‘Will you light the mantle, luv? Did you leave the matches downstairs?’
    ‘No, they’re in me pocket.’ Colm got painfully to his feet, rubbing his elbow.
    For a few impatient minutes, she waited for him to find the matches, strike one and hold it to the gas mantle. A pale light flickered, revealing his mystified features, turning brighter until the room was fully lit. She sat on the bedsprings and examined the striped mattress, and saw that the seam was undone leaving a gap wide enough for a hand to go inside.
    She reached and pulled out a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. ‘You undo it, luv.’ She shoved the package at a still mystified Colm. ‘It’s likely to be your Paddy who put it there.’
    Colm took ages untying the string. He removed the paper. The package had been wrapped again in a dirty piece of rag that he unfolded and lay on the floor so they could see the contents.
    Money! A pile of coins and quite a few notes. After a long silence, Brenna asked in an awed voice, ‘How much is there?’ She didn’t speak again until Colm had finished counting.
    ‘Eight pounds, five shillings and threepence,’ he said.
    There was another long silence. This time it was Colm who spoke first. ‘It’s the stake money,’ he said.
    ‘The what?’
    ‘The stake money. This’ll be part of our ten pounds. I didn’t think of it before, but if our Paddy won the card game, he’d have got his own money back an’ all - our money. The thirty-five bob or so that’s missing is probably what he was throwing around in the pub the night he died.’
    ‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph, Colm, are we not the luckiest family