Free The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy Page B

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    Halloween was a Friday, Kit wondered could they have a party.
    Mother seemed against it. “We don’t know what we’ll be doing,” she said in a fussed sort of way.
    â€œBut of course we know what we’ll be doing.” Kit was stung by the unfairness of this. “It’s a Friday, we’ll be having scrambled eggs and potatoes like every Friday, and I only asked for a few friends to come in…”
    Mother looked quite different when she spoke. She seemed to underline every word as if she were giving a message or reading a notice, rather than having a normal conversation. “Believe me, I do know what I’m saying. We do not know what we will be doing on Halloween. This is not the time to be thinking of Halloween parties. There will be parties again, but not now.”
    It was very final. It was also very frightening.
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    â€œAre there really ghosts about on Halloween?” Clio asked Sister Madeleine.
    â€œYou know there aren’t ghosts,” Sister Madeleine said.
    â€œWell, spirits.”
    â€œThere are spirits around us all the time.” Sister Madeleine was being remarkably cheerful about it, as if she wouldn’t indulge Clio Kelly’s wish to be dramatic.
    â€œAre you afraid of spirits?” Clio persisted. She wanted to get a bit of terror into the conversation somehow.
    â€œNo, child, I’m not. How could you be afraid of someone’s spirit? A spirit is a friendly thing. It’s the life that was in them once—the memory of it—that stays around a place.”
    This was more promising. “Are there spirits round here, round the lake?”
    â€œOf course there are, the people who loved the place and who lived here.”
    â€œAnd died here?”
    â€œAnd died here, of course.”
    â€œWould Bridie Daly’s spirit be here?”
    â€œBridie Daly?”
    â€œThe woman who said ‘Look in the reeds.’ The woman who was going to have a baby without being married.” Clio sounded too eager, too gossipy, for Sister Madeleine.
    She looked at them thoughtfully. “And are you girls having a party for Halloween?” she asked.
    Kit said nothing.
    Clio grumbled, “Kit was going to have one and then it was all canceled.”
    â€œI only said I might.” Kit was mutinous.
    â€œWell, it’s stupid to say you might and then give no explanation,” Clio said.
    Sister Madeleine looked at Kit sympathetically. The child was distressed about something. The Halloween party was not the right distraction to have made. “Have you ever seen a tame fox?” she asked them with the air of a conspirator.
    â€œYou can’t have a tame fox, can you?” Clio knew everything.
    â€œWell, you can’t have one that you’d trust with the ducklings and the chickens,” Sister Madeleine agreed. “But I have a lovely little fellow I could show you. He’s in a box in my bedroom. I can’t let him out, but you can come in with me and see.”
    Her bedroom! The girls looked at each other in delight. No one knew what was behind the closed door. Forgotten now were bodies in the lake, spirits of the dead, and the intransigence of canceling a Halloween party. In they went and Sister Madeleine closed the door behind them.
    There was a simple bed with a small iron headboard, and a smaller bed-end made the same way. It was covered in a snow-white bedspread. On the wall was a cross, not a crucifix, just a plain cross. There was a small chest of drawers which had no mirror, just a comb and a pair of rosary beads.
    There was a chair, and a prie-dieu facing the cross. This is where Sister Madeleine must say her prayers.
    â€œYou have it very tidy,” Clio said eventually, trying to think of some compliment and finding this the only thing she could say in honesty about a place which had the comfort of a prison