Read Something in Common for Free Online Page B

assistant? She’d witnessed enough in her ten years behind the counter at Burke’s to fill a book. She could write about the long hours on her feet, the pitifully short breaks, the uniform that had to be kept spotless, even if it meant hand-washing it at midnight. She could write about the injustice of earning just over half the salary of a male assistant doing precisely the same job, only with less efficiency.
    But she could also pull awkward customers from her memory, detail the odd requests she’d heard over the years, make it funny as well as revealing.
    She’d have to make up a pseudonym, so nobody at her old workplace would know it was her. She couldn’t be Fitzpatrick or D’Arcy: they’d recognise her married and maiden names. But she could use her grandmother’s name. O’Dowd, she could be.
    ‘HelenO’Dowd,’ she said to Alice. ‘Like that?’
    Alice shook her head irritably. ‘I’m
hungry
.’
    ‘OK, we’re going now.’
    She’d write the piece and send it off, and if it was rejected she’d write another. She’d wear M. Breen down, she’d make a nuisance of herself until he gave in.
    The more she thought about it, the more the idea appealed to her. She could write in the afternoons when Alice took her nap, and in the evenings after she’d been put to bed. She could work from home so no childminder would be needed, and she wouldn’t have to call on her parents for help. If she had to interview anyone, she’d do it over the phone.
    It would be even easier when Alice started school, just two months from now. And if – when – Helen began reading books again, she could try submitting a few reviews. A whole new career at the age of thirty-three.
    Or maybe not. Maybe when she tried it, she’d discover that she wasn’t half as good as she thought. And even if she did well, even if editors loved her, it wouldn’t make her any happier. It wouldn’t take her pain away, or even lessen it. But she had to earn money somehow, and this seemed like something she might manage, a thing she might have a flair for.
    At the counter she paid for the newspaper and got jelly babies for Alice. She pushed the buggy out of the shop, and as she turned onto the street she caught sight of her reflection in the window.
    Now that she’d got used to it, she quite liked her short hair. So much easier to manage – towel it dry after washing and that was it. Her mother’s face when she’d seen it, though: not a word said, but the look had been enough.
    ‘It was time for a change,’ Helen had told her, as if the question had been asked, and thankfully her mother had left it at that. She’d been lucky with the man she’d got to fix her botched attempt, only two quid he’d charged, and no comment made on the state of it, which she’d appreciated. She’d given him a two-bob tip, and been back twice for a trim since.
    She walkedhome with Alice, starting her shop-assistant piece in her head.

Sarah
    T hey went toher uncle’s hotel for dinner, her old workplace – hard to believe that she’d been gone for over nine months. They always went to Uncle John’s when one of them had a birthday. They sat at the same table, set into the left bay window, a reserved sign on it until they arrived.
    It was 1975, with America finally admitting defeat and pulling troops out of Vietnam, and three members of an Irish showband massacred by terrorists, and the British Conservative Party getting its first female leader. The world was full of change, every week bringing new upheaval, and the Kelly birthday celebrations carried on merrily. Sarah wondered if she’d be blowing out the candles on her sixtieth birthday cake here, accompanied maybe by Christine’s children, who would turn up for their unmarried aunt’s party out of pity.
    The presents were good though. From her parents she got the black jacket she’d picked out the previous week. Not at all fashionable but handy for the bike, zipped and hooded and not too heavy.