Free The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy

of his childhood robbed from him had been a good training for life as well as a high price to pay. The lad should not have to take part in a sham ceremony.
    â€œI think the whole thing can be arranged very quietly at the Home. That is often done in such cases, and just the family attend a Mass there. Father Baily will arrange it, I know.”
    Kathleen Sullivan looked at him gratefully. “You’re very good, Doctor. I just wish it had all been different.” Her face was set and hard as she spoke. “I can’t go to anyone for sympathy or anything because they’ll all say it was for the best, and we’re all well rid of him.”
    â€œI know what you mean, Kathleen.” Peter Kelly did, only too well, and if he didn’t have any suitable words of comfort, no one else in Lough Glass would be able to find them. “You could always call on Sister Madeleine,” he said. “She’ll be the very one to comfort you at a time like this.”
    He sat in his car after he left the house, and watched while Kathleen Sullivan, now wearing her coat and head scarf, followed his advice. He saw her heading down toward the path that led to the lake. As he drove home he passed Helen McMahon walking with her hair blowing in the wind. The wind was cold and she wore a woolen dress but had no coat. She looked flushed and excited.
    He stopped the car. “Will I drive you back, take the weight off your legs?” he asked.
    She smiled at him, and he realized again how very beautiful she was. Sometimes he forgot, and didn’t really see the beauty that had broken all their hearts in Dublin. The girl with the perfect face, who had chosen Martin McMahon, of all people, to be her consort.
    â€œNo, Peter, I love to walk on an evening like this…it’s so free. Do you see the birds over the lake? Aren’t they magnificent?”
    She looked magnificent. Her eyes were bright, her skin was glowing. He had forgotten that for a slight woman she had such a voluptuous figure, her breasts seemed to strain at the blue wool dress. With a shock he realized that Helen McMahon was pregnant.
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    â€œPeter, what is it?”
    â€œYou keep asking me that.” He was irritated with Lilian. “What is what?”
    â€œYou haven’t said a word all evening. You just keep staring into the fire.”
    â€œI have things on my mind.”
    â€œObviously you have. I was just asking what things.”
    â€œAre you some kind of Grand Inquisitor? Can I not even think now without your permission?” he snapped.
    He saw the tears jump into Lilian’s eyes and her plump face pucker. It was very unjust of him. They had the kind of relationship where each would ask the other how they felt and what they were thinking. It was monstrous of him to behave like this.
    He admitted it.
    â€œI only asked because you looked worried.” Lilian was almost mollified.
    â€œI’m wondering did I do the right thing over Kathleen Sullivan, telling her to have the funeral above in the home,” said Peter Kelly, and listened with part of his mind to some of his wife’s views on the subject while he tried to work out the implications of Helen McMahon’s pregnancy. In the pit of his stomach was the feeling that all was not as it should be.
    There was no reason why Martin and Helen should not try for a late baby. Helen must be thirty-seven or thirty-eight, an age when most women around here would think nothing of having children. But Peter Kelly was uneasy. Just scraps of conversation floating around in the air coming back to disturb him: Clio saying that Kit McMahon’s parents slept in different rooms, something Martin said one night down in Paddles’ place about the old days, some reference to making love as if it were all in the past, something Helen had said when Emmet was a toddler, about there being no younger brothers and sisters for him. It all made