Brilliant Read Free Page A

conversation about how people were having difficulty paying for all sorts of things—houses, clothes, heating—and about how the government was doing nothing. They weren’t chatting anymore. They were talking.
    Then something would happen.
    â€œWell, at least we have our health.”
    â€œThat’s true.”
    â€œSpeaking of health. Did you see the state of your man next door? He has a belly on him that’d stop the tide from coming in.”
    â€œAnd she’s thin as a rake.”
    They’d be chatting again, and whatever they’d been talking about was forgotten.
    â€œThat’s often the way, isn’t it? Fat fella, skinny girl.”
    â€œOr the other way round. Big girls aren’t exactly an endangered species.”
    â€œWhat?”
    When their granny said
Who?
or
What?
, one of her dog slippers always jumped a bit, like it was talking too. It was really funny.
    Sometimes, without Raymond or Gloria noticing—they were busy trying not to laugh or groan—the chatting would swerve back to talking. Talking often came with sighs and
I don’t know
s.
    â€œWe’ll stay at home this year, will we?”
    â€œHere? In the house, like?”
    â€œWe can go somewhere different every day. It’ll be nice.”
    â€œIt could end up being as expensive as going somewhere for the two weeks.”
    â€œNot really. If we’re careful.”

    â€œI don’t know . . .”
    â€œIt’ll be grand.”
    â€œAh, sure, Dublin’s great.”
    That was their granny. Her slippers were jumping up and down.
    â€œSure, they come from all over the world to see Dublin.”
    â€œGod love them. Did I say sugar?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œOn the list. Sugar. Is it there?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSugar.”
    â€œWho?”
    Then there was mumbling.
    Now, the night before Saint Patrick’s Day, as Gloria very carefully opened the bedroom door, they could hear the mumbling coming from downstairs.
    â€œMimm-bill, mimm-bill,” she whispered.
    â€œMummm-bull,” Raymond whispered back.
    Mumbling was different. Chatting often changed into talking, and back to chatting. But mumbling was always mumbling. It was like a foreign language, heard through walls and floors.
    Gloria held the door handle down as far as it would go. She pressed her other hand flat against the door as she pulled it open. This stopped the hinges from groaning. She opened the door slowly but without stopping or hesitating.
    Raymond and Gloria didn’t like the mumbling. They didn’t understand it. But one thing about it was clear: Mumbling was very serious. There was never any laughter mixed in with it.
    They were on the landing now, about to creep down the stairs. They knew the stairs by heart. They knew the bumps and squeaks of every step. They could have gone up and down with their eyes shut and not holding the banister. Actually, they did that quite a lot—because they’d been told not to. It was brilliant. Especially going down. And they did it for practice, so it would be perfect when they were sneaking down at night. There was only one really loud step, the second one from the bottom. The noise it made—a long spooky metally groan—was caused by a loose nail under the carpet. They knew this because every time he heard the groan their dad would say, “That nail’s on my list for the weekend.” He’d been saying it all their lives. Or sometimes, “That nail’s on my list,” or just, “That’s on the list.”
    It was a family joke. If any of them heard a groan, they’d say, “That’s on the list.” It didn’t have to be a stair. Anything that groaned, they said it. A metal gate, a wooden bench. They even said it when they heard a human groan.
    Their Uncle Ben had fractured two of his ribs a few years before he’d come to live with them. He wasn’t wrapped in bandages,