Free Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy

her face. Her eyes were dark and cross under her fringe of black hair . . . her hands thrust into the pockets of her shorts.
    ‘Are you changing things, is that it?’ she said in the tones of someone looking for a fight and determined to find one.
    ‘I have a bit of a plan. I was working it out, that’s all,’ her father said, looking guilty and shifty.
    ‘I bet it’s something new and desperate,’ Dara said.
    ‘It was just a plan to gather the hens all together in a run, that’s all it was,’ John said mildly.
    ‘They’re perfectly all right the way they are, they don’t want to be gathered, they don’t want to be changed, they love things just as they are.’ Her eyes were suspiciously bright as if she could start to cry any minute. Dara had never expressed any view about the hens up to this. The hens were like the river bank and the crates in the yard, they were just part of the background.
    John Ryan sat back on his hunkers and put an arm round his daughter’s knees. ‘Come here and give your old father a hug.’
    ‘There’s no point in hugs,’ Dara said.
    ‘Right.’ He stood up. ‘I know exactly. It’s the same with me. I don’t feel like writing now so I came down to play with the chickens.’
    Dara couldn’t help laughing at the thought of her father playing with chickens. She managed a snort but John Ryan wisely didn’t build on it. He knew she was upset and it would all come out. He supposed it was a row with Kate. But he was wrong.
    ‘Daddy, are we poor?’
    ‘No we’re not poor. You know that.’
    ‘But we’re not rich, are we?’
    ‘You don’t have to be one or the other, you can be in between, like most of us are round here.’
    ‘Will we ever be rich?’
    ‘We’ll be all right. What’s this worry about money?’
    ‘We’re going to need it to buy our house.’ Her face was very determined.
    ‘But we have our house, silly old thing, this is our house.’ He indicated the pub and the whitewashed walls of the house with a wave of his hand.
    ‘Not here, our house across in Fernscourt. You know where they have the diggers. They’re clearing it for someone to live there, some American, he’ll live there unless we can buy it.’
    ‘Now, now, Dara,’ John began soothingly.
    But she was on her feet full of anger and wouldn’t be soothed.
    ‘It’s our house, Michael’s and mine, and everyone’s.’
    John sighed.
    ‘Will you come for a bit of a walk with me?’
    ‘I don’t feel like a walk.’
    ‘I don’t feel like a walk with such a disagreeable weasel as you, but it might help.’
    ‘Where will we go?’
    ‘We could go to Fernscourt.’
    ‘All right then.’
    Kate Ryan was in the bar talking to Jimbo Doyle and Jack Coyne, who were not her idea of the best of company, when she saw through the window the two figures crossing the footbridge. Her husband who was meant to be working on his poetry and her daughter who had been like a bag of hedgehogs all week. Her knuckles ached to rap on the window, but she wouldn’t give that sharp-faced Jack Coyne the satisfaction of seeing her act the bossy wife.
    Kate had always spoken impetuously, and not long ago in confession had told Canon Moran that she was quick-tempered. Canon Moran had suggested that she think of Our Lord’s Blessed Mother whenever she was tempted to say something sharp. She should think what Our Lady might have said. She needn’t actually say what Our Lady would have said, but thinking it might delay the caustic response or the hurtful crack.
    Looking at the man and girl hand in hand walking across the footbridge Kate Ryan thought that the Mother of God might have blessed them and wished them well and happiness and thanked God for her good fortune. Right, Kate Ryan would think similar noble thoughts. She turned round and faced Jack Coyne and Jimbo Doyle with what she thought was a saintly smile.
    ‘Jaysus, Kate, have you a toothache?’ asked Jimbo Doyle in alarm.
    ‘And Michael and I planned to live