Free Hush Hush by Gabrielle Mullarkey

(which she loved) was becoming a strain; all that
scrabbling change out of the till and clawing penny chews out of
bottomless jars.
    Naturally, being Sadie, she’d
hidden the true extent of her pain from Angela.
    But since Robert’s death
and especially since Christmas Day, Sadie had dared to think the
unthinkable. Should the widows cranky live together? Would Angela
cope better if she, Sadie, was on the spot?
    Though frankly, Sadie had felt
worse than inadequate on Christmas Day, rocking Angela in her arms,
aware of Angela’s embarrassment battling with her desolation.
Even as a child, Angela had never been cuddly. If Sadie had picked
her up and tried to cuddle her, she’d squirmed away like an
impatient cat.
    So Angela wept in Sadie’s
arms on Christmas Day, but hated herself for it, and resented Sadie
for seeing her like that. Words of comfort had stuck in Sadie’s
throat like a boiled sweet swallowed too soon. What could she say?
She’d too often damned the living Robert with faint praise.
    He’d been scared of her
forthrightness, for which she’d despised and bullied him a bit,
using humour as her cover. She’d poked gentle but relentless
fun at his golf jumpers, spare tyre, and his dun-coloured hair
brushed so carefully away from a side parting. He’d taken such
pride in his ordinariness, it had irked her.
    ‘I can’t suggest
living together now,’ she reasoned with Binky, who’d
strolled into the bathroom. ‘ Supposing
this Conor bloke has real potential? A live-in mother-in-law might
scare him away. Remember all those Les Dawson jokes?’
    She nodded sagely at Binky,
mindful of where duty and sacrifice lay. ‘ Anyway,
which house would we settle on? Angela wouldn’t want to live
back here.’
    Sadie’s terraced home,
humble as it was, still had the cachet of being larger and more
valuable than Angela’s semi-detached hut. Sadie’s house
was turn-of-the-century stolid redbrick, built before boxy dimensions
and cheek-by-jowl living became the suburban norm. But Angela’s
hut was centrally heated, closer to town and easier to get around.
The stairs were less steep, for a start.
    ‘It’s
all academic,’ she told Binky, rising carefully from the side
of the bath. ‘ I have
to wait and see how things develop with Conor. And if all goes well
on that front, an old battle-axe like me can’t be putting
obstacles in the way.’
    Quickly, Conor McGinlay shut his wardrobe door.
He’d been beaten back by an onslaught of hairy tweed and
mildewed mothballs. Scratching an itchy armpit, he strode into the
bathroom and dived without preamble into the linen basket.
    It was Shane’s turn to load
the washing machine, which explained why the basket was still full.
    Conor emerged clutching a pale
apricot cotton shirt. He sniffed it from a distance and then bravely
snuffled the armpit. Next came the wrinkle inspection.
    Shane loped into the bathroom,
wearing his iPod . He
eyed the shirt.
    ‘Looks a bit past it.’
    Conor lowered the shirt. ‘ Looks
can be deceptive. It was your turn this week to load the machine,
chuck in a couple of detergent scoops and turn the knob. Not too much
to ask, is it? Mrs T still does the tricky bits ‒ unloading, sorting, ironing and magically redistributing.’
    ‘Didn’t know it was
my turn,’ shrugged Shane.
    ‘Ignorance is no defence,’
frowned Conor.
    ‘Ye wot?’ Shane
lengthened his jaw for that village idiot look that irritated (and
didn’t fool) Conor.
    ‘D’you think I need
to iron this shirt?’ he asked, going for manly solidarity.
    ‘Don’t even try, Dad.
You could burn your ear if the phone rings.’
    ‘Is that a Dad joke or an
Irish joke?’ asked Conor dangerously.
    ‘It’s an old joke,’
replied Shane sweetly, and staggered out of the bathroom.
    He wasn’t drunk or stoned,
as Conor had first feared when he’d noticed how much staggering
about Shane did. Uncoordinated lurching, exaggerated by army-sized
backpacks of schoolbooks, was the perambulatory