Stir-Fry Read Free Page B

corridor Maria glimpsed black-and-white posters of a cityscape. Something brushed her ear; she put up one hand and found an asparagus fern hanging overhead, its points sharp against her palm. They had no plants at home; her dad claimed they gave him hay fever.
    “This room’s a bit bare, I’m afraid.” Ruth’s voice reverberated in a narrow doorway. As the light snapped on, Maria narrowed her eyes, taking in pale orange walls and flame-striped curtains. “If you really loathe the colour … I mean, we keep meaning to get around to repainting it.”
    “It’s distinctive,” said Maria warily.
    “Ruthie babe,” came a bellow. “I’m off to the off-license. Don’t suppose you’d have a tenner on you?”
    She was gone, fumbling in her jeans pocket. Maria’s palms bounced on the bed tentatively. The nut-brown chest of drawers looked antique; when she tugged at the top drawer, the wrought iron handle came off in her hand, so she stuck it back in hastily and sat on the edge of the bed.
    Their voices trickled down the passage. It occurred to her to cover her ears, but that seemed juvenile. She concentrated on the old calendar hanging from a nail beside her.
Ireland’s Underwater Kingdom
, it read; the picture for October was a crab that seemed to be signalling frantically at her with a strip of seaweed.
    “So she’s gone at last.” That was Jael, husky.
    Maria held her breath.
    “Really?”
    “Her flight was at eleven this morning. Unless she missed it, which is unlikely.”
    “Well.” Ruth again, distant. “Hope she finds a job all right. There’s not much for her in Dublin.”
    Jael’s voice lifted to a call as she clattered down the stairs. “See you later, ladies. Be good.”
    Cold air was coming off the bare window. Maria pulled the sleeves of her jumper down to cover her fingers and leaned on the sill. Her breath made a circle of glittering condensation; she touched her little finger to its chill, and made a small
m
in the center. When she heard steps in the passage,her hand poised to rub out the mark, but instead she reached for the curtains and drew them across. The room was safer now, but smaller. “Couldn’t see anything but roofs,” she told Ruth.
    “Yes, but this room faces west; it’s glorious in the late afternoons. Come and see the rest?”
    It would be strange to live up so many steps, without a garden to wander into. The elegant and the shabby met in every corner of this flat. She craned her neck to examine the moulding around a bare light bulb.
    “Georgian,” Ruth explained. “Gorgeous fanlight over the front door, did you notice? Three floors of the building got converted into offices in the fifties, but the penthouse was too oddly shaped for anything but a flat. A bugger to heat in the winter, but I love these high ceilings. They elevate the mind, don’t they?”
    Maria nodded, rapt. The highest ceiling she had ever slept under, she remembered now, was in Uncle Malachy’s smelly barn one night when she’d gotten locked out by mistake; she hadn’t wanted to throw a stone and wake Mam, who was still weak after the operation. “So who’s down below?”
    “You’re unlikely to meet them; they use the front staircase. There’s a firm of chartered surveyors, an optician, and the Girl Guides HQ. In the basement there’s what purports to be a baldness clinic, but we suspect it’s a brothel for businessmen. Is there a brothel in your town, Maria?”
    “I wouldn’t know,” she answered, after a puzzled moment. “I’ve lived there all my life, but I’ve no idea. There’ve been rumours about the flashy cars outside Mrs. Keogh’s, but I’ll bet that’s because she’s a redhead.”
    Ruth chuckled under her breath. “Must tell Jael about that.”
    The bathroom was lined with white tiles, clean but cracked in places. Opening the hot press, Ruth prodded a foldedtowel into line. When she turned, her face looked tired in the hard fluorescent light. “I’d better be honest