Cathy Kelly - Letter from Chicago

Letter From Chicago

Cathy Kelly

Copyright

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers

Letter from Chicago was first published as a charity literacy novella for New Island, 2002

LETTER FROM CHICAGO. Copyright © Cathy Kelly 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Cathy Kelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2011 ISBN: 9780007444465

Version: 2017-11-21

Contents

Title Page Letter From Chicago Cathy Kelly

Copyright

Letter from Chicago

Christmas Magic

About the Publisher

Letter from Chicago

Elsie loved her letters from Chicago. She adored the fat envelopes with their colourful American stamps. Even the postmarks looked exotic and exciting. On the first Monday in March, she was as usual the first person up in the McDonnell house. She was making a cup of tea in the kitchen when she heard the rattle of the postbox.

She put down the milk carton and went slowly into the hall to collect the mail. Elsie went everywhere slowly. She was sixty-five and suffered from arthritis. Sometimes, every part of her body ached. This morning, only her hands were sore, which was a mixed blessing. Good in that her knees weren’t hurting, but bad in that it had taken her ages to turn on the tap to fill the kettle. Tom, her son-in-law, said he’d get her a special gadget to help her turn the tap on, but Elsie had said no. She wasn’t an invalid. She didn’t want to be treated like one. Once you yielded to the arthritis, it was winning. And she didn’t want it to win, not yet.

There was only one letter on the mat. It was for her and it was from Chicago.

Smiling, she went back into the kitchen and sat at the table to read it over her tea.

From upstairs, came the sounds of activity.

Kim was begging the twins to get out of bed.

‘I won’t let you watch television late on Sunday if you can’t get up for school,’ she warned.

She said the same thing every Monday morning. She was too soft on those girls, Elsie thought.

But then, Kim was soft on everyone. Elsie had no idea how Kim managed to keep a class of eight-year-olds under control at St Mary’s Primary School.

Elsie heard Tom stomping into the bathroom. He was a big man and made as much noise as an elephant.

Next, the twins turned their CD player on. Loud music could be heard all over the house. It was all incomprehensible to Elsie. When she was alone here, she liked a bit of gentle music, something classical from Lyric FM, perhaps.

‘Turn that rubbish down!’ roared Tom at his daughters.

He had a headache, he added.

Emer roared back that it wasn’t loud at all. Just because he didn’t like Lady Gaga, didn’t mean the rest of them shouldn’t listen to her.

Satisfied that everything was normal in the McDonnell house, Elsie began to read her sister’s letter. Maisie had emigrated to America forty-five years before. And every month since, she’d written home. In the early years, the letters had been short, but these days she had time to sit and write at length, telling her sister all about the wonderful life she now had.

Elsie loved hearing about Maisie’s two children and her four grandchildren. Maisie liked to detail every proud moment in their lives, from school and college, to work successes and first homes.

In turn, Elsie wrote happily about her own three children. She had six grandchildren, two more than Maisie. Elsie was pleased about that.

Dear Elsie, today’s letter said,

I have the most amazing news for you. Charlene is going to visit you in Ireland in the last week of August. Isn’t that exciting? She wants to meet all the family. I can’t tell you how happy I am that my grand-daughter is going to visit Dublin.

I told Charlene she’d be welcome to stay with you. Her friend is going with her as they are only eighteen. I hope I did the right thing.

Elsie stopped reading and took a shaky sip of tea. She was stunned. No, it was worse than that. She was shocked, really shocked. Whatever was she going to do?

Kim McDonnell was the last person to get into the bathroom. That was the routine in their house. Tom used the bathroom first.

It was go first, he said, or never get in the door, what with two fifteen-year-old girls in the house.

He somehow managed to leave a mess behind him, no matter what Kim said. He didn’t mean to, she knew that. It was his upbringing. Tom had been born into a house with four older sisters and an adoring mother. When he’d married Kim, he had never washed up after a meal in his life. He had to be told how to use the washing machine, and he still thought you could wash black clothes with white clothes. Kim wasn’t the sort of woman to think her marriage was over because Tom was hopeless at putting towels in the basket. He was such a good man in every other way: she could cope with tidying up towels.

The twins used the bathroom after Tom. They left more towels on the floor and forgot to close the shampoo bottle properly. Toothpaste would be smeared all over the sink and smudges of sparkly eyeshadow – forbidden in school but somehow worn every day anyhow – would dust the basin.

‘Ah, Mum, don’t nag,’ they would say when she complained.

They were studying for their exams. As a teacher, Kim knew that it was important not to upset kids before big exams.

‘Young people doing exams need to have a calm home life,’ said all the experts.

Kim liked a calm home life herself, but it wasn’t easy to feel calm with two fifteen-year-olds in the house. The exams were in three months and Kim couldn’t wait for them to be over. On the first Saturday in August, the whole family were going to the beautiful beach in Brittas to stay in a mobile home for three weeks. Kim thought about relaxing in the sun and not having to go to work. She thought about nice meals on the deck outside the mobile home, time to lie on a sun lounger and read. Roll on August.

Kim had a quick shower and washed her long, dark hair, which she didn’t have time to dry. Instead, she brushed it neatly and tied it back with a band, which was pretty much all the styling it ever got. She put on a bit of lipstick and mascara, and thought of how the girls used far more make-up than she did. Tom said she didn’t need it.

‘You’re gorgeous as you are,’ he’d say, kissing her.

Tom was an awful liar, Kim thought with a smile. She wasn’t bad looking. She had big dark eyes, creamy pale skin and nice hair. But she wasn’t Julia Roberts.

People who looked like Julia Roberts didn’t have to work long hours to pay the mortgage. They didn’t worry about money or about the children doing well at school. They went to parties in big cars and bought expensive clothes. Kim buttoned up the pink blouse she had bought for twenty euros. Still, she was happy.