At First Sight Hannah Sunderland (free e books to read online txt) 📖

Chapter Thirteen

I stood beside the unmade bed, my arms fidgeting nervously at my sides.

Charlie stood frozen on the other side of the door, as if he was afraid to step over the threshold.

‘I’ve never told anyone this, so bear with me.’ He exhaled a heavy breath, his top lip clenched between his front teeth.

‘My mammy came home from her knittin’ circle one day when I was fourteen and told me that the ladies had been sayin’ that Siobhan Murphy needed some help,’ he began, his eyes downcast as he talked. ‘Her husband had died about six months back and she was havin’ trouble keepin’ up with the garden and so Mammy had volunteered my services. I wasn’t too happy about it. I was a teenager. The idea of work eatin’ into my band practice time disgusted me, but she told me that I needed to be a good Catholic boy, and go help that poor widowed lady. Patrick, her husband, had had a stroke. He’d come in from the garden after mowing the lawn, sat down in his chair with a glass of beer gettin’ warm on the end table beside him. Next anyone knew he was dead.

‘The kids had been sayin’ things ever since Siobhan had holed herself up in her house. Callin’ her a witch and a madwoman. I didn’t join in with the name-callin’ but I must admit, I felt a little nervous goin’ to that house. When she answered the door, I thought I’d got the wrong place. She’d always been a looker, Mrs Murphy. My Uncle Carrick always said so and stared at her arse when he spotted her around town. But in the six months since Mr Murphy had passed, she’d aged about ten years. Her hair used to be this bright red, the colour of flames on a bonfire, but it’d started to turn white and she’d wrapped herself up in these shawls and scarves like bandages, as if she was tryin’ to hold herself together with them.

‘She did her best to act normally with me, although I could tell that her brain wasn’t really there with me in that kitchen. She told me where I could find the mower and the rest of Patrick’s gardenin’ tools and at the mention of his name, she began to well up. I can’t handle it when people cry in front of me – I get all teary m’self and I need to go do somethin’ else before I start bawlin’ along with them. I went out to the shed, wadin’ through the grass and weeds that were knee-high. The grass was so heavy it was falling down on top of itself under its own weight and mattin’ into clumps with all the dead grass underneath. I had no idea where to start. I’d never done any gardenin’ in my whole life and this seemed like a baptism of fire into the pastime.

‘I found a strimmer in the shed – it was one of the few things that I recognised – and I took it, along with an extension lead, and began hacking away at the grass. It came down easily enough at first, but the thickness of it all was makin’ the blade slow and I was less than a quarter of the way through before I stopped making any progress. I remember sitting down on the pile of cut grass I’d made and sighin’. I was wet through with sweat and stinkin’ to high heaven. I heard this voice call out to me but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. “You don’t know what you’re doin’, do yer?”

‘“What gave it away?” I called back into the open air. There was a rustlin’ up in the tall sycamore tree on the opposite side of the garden and after a few moments, I saw a figure sittin’ in its branches.

‘“Because, Charlie Stone, you’re making a pig’s ear of my father’s lawn.” I squinted against the sun, the figure nothing but a block of human-shaped shadow. I watched as she fiddled with somethin’ in her waistband, grabbed hold of the branch, swung herself around and dropped onto the ground. The sun was so bright that I didn’t see her until she slumped down into the grass beside me.

‘“So, what do you suggest I do then, Abigale Murphy?” I asked, annoyed and embarrassed that she’d borne witness to my attempt. Abigale Murphy, Siobhan’s eldest daughter, was a year below me in school, but she was just as much a looker as her mother had once been. Same red hair, same freckles dashed across her nose.

‘“I suggest that you pick the right tool, for a start. You need a scythe.”

‘“A scythe? Like the grim reaper?” I asked. She grinned and flexed her bushy eyebrows at me, before flingin’ herself into a backwards roll and runnin’ off to the shed. She emerged a few moments later with a scythe, comically large next to the willowy frame of her, and a rake.

‘“If I cut, you can get rid of it.” She tossed me a roll of bin bags and pulled a book from her waistband and placed it carefully on the sill of the shed window. It was a beaten-up book that I’d never heard of, the cover all creased and curled, as if it had been read a hundred times over.

‘“Well come on then,” she said and set to scything the grass like that shirtless guy in that period drama. It was hilarious to see. Tiny, scrawny Abi Murphy cuttin’ through that grass as if it were butter. I raked everything that she cut and put it into bag after bag until it was clear, the dead grass underneath opened up to the sun so it could try to thrive again. She handed me a cardboard box of grass seed and we spread it around without talkin’. I watered it with the hose and we