Free The Builders by Maeve Binchy

Chapter One
    Nan at Number Fourteen Chestnut Road heard about the builders from Mr O’Brien, the fussy man at Number Twenty-eight.
    â€˜It will be terrible Mrs Ryan,’ he warned her. ‘Dirt and noise and all sorts of horrors.’
    Mr O’Brien was a man who found fault with everything, Nan Ryan told herself. She would not get upset. And in many ways it was nice to think that the house next door, which had been empty for two years since the Whiteshad disappeared, would soon be a home again.
    She wondered who would come to live there. A family maybe. She might even baby-sit for them. She would tell the children stories and sit minding the house until the parents got back.
    Her daughter Jo laughed at the very idea of a family coming to live in such a small house.
    â€˜Mam, there isn’t room to swing a cat in it,’ she said in her very definite, brisk way. When Jo spoke she did so with great confidence.
She
knew what was right.
    â€˜I don’t know.’ Nan was daring to disagree. ‘It’s got a nice safe garden at the back.’
    â€˜Yes, six foot long and six foot wide,’ Jo said with a laugh.
    Nan said nothing. She didn’t mention the fact that the house inwhich she had reared three children was exactly the same size.
    Jo knew everything. How to run a business. How to dress in great style. How to run her elegant home. How to keep her handsome husband Jerry from wandering away.
    Jo must be right about the house next door. Too small for a family. Perhaps a nice woman of her own age might come. Someone who could be a friend. Or a young couple who both went out to work. Nan might take in parcels for them or let in a man to read the meter?
    Bobby, who was Nan’s son, said that she had better pray it wouldn’t be a young couple. They’d be having parties every night, driving her mad. She would become deaf, Bobby warned. Deaf as a post. Young couples who had spent a lot doing up their house wouldbe terrible. They would have no money. They would want some fun. They would make their own beer and ask noisy friends around to drink it with them.
    And Pat, the youngest, was gloomiest of all.
    â€˜Mam will be deaf already by the time they arrive, whoever they are. Deaf from all the building noise. The main thing is to make sure they keep the garden fence the height it is and in good shape. Good fences make good neighbours they say.’
    Pat worked for a security firm and felt very strongly about these things. Jo and Bobby and Pat were so very sure of themselves. Nan wondered how they had become so confident. They didn’t get it from her. She had always been shy. Timid even.
    She didn’t go out to work because itwas the way everyone wanted it. They needed Nan at home. Their father had been quiet also. Quiet and loving. Very loving. Loving to Nan for a while, and then loving to a lot of other ladies.
    One evening long ago, on her 35th birthday, Nan could take it no longer. She sat in the kitchen and waited until he came home. It was four in the morning.
    â€˜You must make your choice,’ she told him.
    He didn’t even answer, just went upstairs and packed two suitcases. She changed the locks on the doors. It wasn’t necessary. She never saw him again. He went without any speeches. Nan heard from a solicitor that the house had been put in her name. That was all she got and she didn’t ask for any more since she knew it would be in vain.
    She was a practical woman. She hada small terraced house and no income. She had three children, the eldest thirteen, the youngest ten. She went out and got a job fast.
    She worked in a supermarket and even took extra hours as an office cleaner to get the children through school and on their way to earning their own living. Nan had worked for nearly twenty years when the doctors said she had a weak heart and must take a great deal more rest.
    She thought it was odd that they said her heart was weak. She thought it must