Quentins Read Online Free PDF

cinema with Deirdre and for a drink afterward. They talked normally, as always. Or so Ella thought. Then Deirdre ordered another drink and asked Ella, “They’re serving sandwiches. Do you want one?”
    â€œWhat?” Ella said. “Oh, yes, whatever.”
    â€œI’ll get you one with mouse’s dirt and bird droppings in it, then,” Deirdre said cheerfully.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOh, good. Welcome back, you’re awake again,” Deirdre laughed.
    â€œI don’t know what you mean.”
    â€œElla, you saw none of the movie, you haven’t said a word to me, you’ve bitten your lip and shuffled about. Are you going to tell me or are you not?”
    She had told Deirdre everything since they were thirteen, but she couldn’t. It was odd—there was too much to tell and too little. Too much in that she had fallen in love with an entirely wrong man and that her own parents’ thirty-year-old marriage, which she had always thought was very happy, was fairly empty. And yet too little to tell. To Deirdre it would all be simple. She would say that Ella should go for the man, married or not. Take what she wanted and not get hurt. And Deirdre would say that everyone’s parents had rotten marriages, it’s just the way things were.
    â€œNothing, Dee, just fussing, ruminating, being neurotic . . . that’s all it is, honestly.”
    â€œThat’s all it ever is, honestly, but you always tell me,” Deirdre grumbled.
    â€œYou’ve got such a great, uncomplicated way of looking at things. I’m envious.”
    â€œNo, you’re not, you think I’m sexually indiscriminate, that I have a hard heart . . . come on, you’re not envious.”
    â€œI am. Tell me of your latest drama, whatever it was.”
    â€œWell, I had a great session with that Don Richardson, you know, the consultant guy you see all over the papers. Very good he is too, insatiable nearly.”
    Deirdre watched Ella’s face. After a few seconds she was contrite. “Ella, you clown, I was just joking.”
    Ella said nothing. She had both hands on her head, as if trying to clear it.
    â€œ Ella! I didn’t, I never even met him, you silly thing, I was only on a fishing expedition to see if that’s who you fancied.”
    Ella took her hands away from her face.
    â€œAnd it seems as if I was right,” Deirdre said.
    â€œHow did you know?” Ella’s voice was a whisper.
    â€œBecause I’m your best friend, and also because you couldn’t take your eyes off him when he came up to you at Nuala’s do the other night.”
    â€œWas that only the other night?” Ella was amazed.
    â€œWill I get a half bottle of wine?” Deirdre suggested.
    â€œGet a full bottle,” Ella said, some of the color coming back to her face.
    The next Saturday the Bradys left Tara Road in the middle of the afternoon so that they could take a tour of Wicklow Gap before going to Holly’s. Ella was determined to do it well if she was doing it at all. Give them a day and night out to remember. Oddly, Deirdre had seemed highly approving that she had refused the date with Don for Saturday night. To have agreed would make Ella too available. He would call again, mark Deirdre’s words, she knew about such things. Ella had brought a flask of coffee and three little mugs and they stood in the afternoon sunshine to admire the scenery. There was bright yellow gorse on the bare hills, and some flashes of deep purple heather. Here and there thin, vague-looking sheep wandered as ifbemused that there wasn’t mire-green grass for them to eat.
    â€œImagine, you can’t see a house or a building anywhere and yet be so near Dublin, isn’t it amazing?” Ella said.
    â€œLike the Yorkshire moors. I was there once,” her father said.
    Ella hadn’t known that. “Were you there too, Mam?”
    â€œNo, before my