The Daisy Picker Read Online Free PDF

and twenty years of pretending, and she closes her mouth and says nothing. And Mammy lifts the lid on the saucepan of
Brussels sprouts – almost pulpy enough for consumption – and that’s the end of that.
    That afternoon, Daddy gets Lizzie on her own. He comes into the sitting room, where she’s making a list of all she has to do before she goes, and he stands by the couch and says,
‘Lizzie, about this plan of yours –’
    Lizzie puts down her notebook and looks up at him. ‘It’s no good trying to stop me, Daddy – I’ve made my decision.’
    He smiles and shakes his head. ‘I’ve no intention of stopping you. You do what you have to do, and good luck to you.’ And he takes a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of
the cardigan Mammy got him for Christmas and hands it to her. ‘That’ll help you make a start.’
    Lizzie looks down at the cheque and her eyes fill. She blinks. ‘Daddy, I don’t need –’
    ‘I know you don’t, but I do.’ He hesitates. ‘And, Lizzie –’ She looks up at him. ‘I think it might be best if we kept this to ourselves.’ She
wants to hug him, but it’s not something they do, so she just nods and thanks him and tucks the cheque into the pocket of her linen trousers as he leaves the room.
    On New Year’s Eve, Lizzie sits at home with Mammy and Daddy, watching someone from RTÉ counting down the seconds – she was supposed to be going out to dinner with Tony –
and when it’s next year they shake hands and Daddy says, ‘
Go mbeirimid beo ag an am seo arís
,’ and Mammy and Lizzie say, ‘Amen.’ They finish their
drinks – one each, whiskey and 7-Up for Daddy, gin and tonic with lemon and no ice for Mammy, red wine for Lizzie – and then Daddy locks up for the night and they all go to bed. And
Lizzie hugs her plan to herself, and counts the days, and waits. Not long now.
    On Monday the sixth of January, she’s going to haul her stuffed rucksack downstairs and fling it into the back of her blue Fiesta, with her baking books and her portable telly and her CD
player and her cryptic-crossword book and her travel Scrabble and Jones. She’s going to say goodbye to Mammy and Daddy, and she’s going to drive away to the rest of her life.
She’s not planning to travel the world – she has Jones now; and anyway, it’s not how far she goes that matters any more.
    She hasn’t a clue where she’ll end up, or what she’ll do when she gets there – apart from finding a way to bake for a living – and she’s as excited as a child
on Christmas Eve. She wants to open up and reach out and grab hold of whatever is flying past, and just hang on tight.
    She goes into the bank one day and transfers half the joint-account money into a new current account in her name. It’ll keep her going while she finds the bakery job. She notices that Tony
hasn’t touched a cent.
    After dinner on Friday the third of January, she helps Daddy with the washing up. She always washes, he always wipes – she doubts that he knows where the Fairy Liquid is kept – while
Mammy adds a half-bucket of coal to the fire in the sitting room and then puts on her slippers. When every piece of evidence that dinner took place has been destroyed, Lizzie heads upstairs to have
another go at her rucksack. It’s been packed for over a week, but she loves taking it apart and starting all over again. Every time she does this, something else gets left out or put in.
    She decides the hairdryer can come out. She’s going to cultivate a new look – tousled hair and long floaty dresses. The only problem with this is that she doesn’t have any
floaty dresses, long or short. She doesn’t have any dresses, full stop, except a black velvet knee-length one with lacy sleeves that she bought on impulse after Síle got engaged, years
ago, and they went shopping after a couple of glasses of sparkling wine. She let herself be talked into the dress, and now she only takes it out on the rare occasions