Maeve Binchy - Evening Class

'So I suppose in the end I realised that I was a grown up and that I was never going to please everyone,' Suzi explained. 'And I decided to please myself, and I have good legs so I wear short skirts, but not stupid ones, and I did tone down the make-up a bit. And now that I've stopped worrying about it nobody seems to be giving out to me at all.'

'Do you think I should get my hair cut?' Fiona whispered to her trustingly.

'No I don't, and I don't think you should leave it long. It's your hair and your face and you should do what you think about it, don't take my advice or Bartolomeo's advice or your mother's advice, otherwise you'll always be a child. That's my view anyway.'

Oh it was so easy for the beautiful Suzi to talk like that. Fiona felt like a mouse in spectacles. A long-haired mouse. But if she got rid of the glasses and the long hair, she would just be a blinking short-haired mouse. What would make her grown up, and able to make decisions like ordinary people? Maybe something would happen, something that would make her strong.

Barry had enjoyed the evening. He drove Fiona home on his motorbike and as she clung to his jacket she wondered what she would say if he asked her to another match. Should she be courageous and, like Suzi, say she'd prefer to meet him afterwards? Or should she work out the offside rule with someone at work and go with him? Which was the better thing to do? If only she could choose which she wanted to do herself. But she hadn't grown up yet like Suzi, she was someone who had no opinions.

'It was nice to meet your friends,' she said, when she got off the bike at the end of her street.

'Next time we'll do something that you choose,' he said. 'I'll drop in and see you tomorrow. That's the day I'm taking my mother home.'

'Oh, I thought she'd be home by now.' Barry had said he would ask her out when his mother had settled in at home, obviously she had thought Mrs. Healy had been discharged. Fiona had not dared to go near the ward in case of being identified as the woman who had left the freesias.

'No. We thought she'd be well enough but she had a set-back.'

'Oh I'm sorry to hear that,' Fiona said.

'She got it into her head that my dad had sent her flowers. And of course he hadn't, and when she realised that she had a relapse.'

Fiona felt hot and cold at the same time. 'How awful,' she said. And then in a small voice: 'Why did she think he had?'

Barry's face was sad. He shrugged his shoulders. 'Who knows. There was a bunch of flowers with her name printed on it. But the doctors think she got them for herself.'

'Why do they think that?'

'Because nobody else knew she was in there,' Barry said simply.

Another night without sleeping for Fiona. Too much had happened. The match, the rules, the meeting with Luigi and Suzi, the possibility of a trip to Italy, people thinking she was Barry's girlfriend. The whole idea that once you grow up you know what to do and think and decide for yourself. And then the horrible, awful realisation that she had set Barry's mother back by her gift of the flowers. She had thought it would be something nice for the woman to wake up to. Instead it had made everything a thousand times worse.

Fiona was very pale and tired-looking when she went into work. She had taken the wrong day from her pile of tee-shirts. She created great confusion. People kept saying that they thought it was Friday and other people told her that she must have got dressed in the dark. One woman who saw Monday on Fiona's chest left before her appointment because she thought she had got the wrong day. Fiona went to the cloakroom and turned her shirt back to front. She just made sure that nobody saw her from the back.

Barry came in around lunchtime. 'Miss Clarke the supervisor let me have a couple of hours off, she's really nice. She's in the Italian class too, I call her Francesca there and Miss Clarke at work, it's a scream,' he said.

Fiona was beginning to think that half of Dublin was in this class masquerading under false names. But she had more on her mind than to feel envious of all these people who were playing childish games up in that tough school in Mountainview. She must find out about his mother without appearing to ask.

'Everything all right?'

'No, it's not, as it happens. My mother doesn't want to come home and she's not bad enough for them to keep here, so they'll have to get her referred to a mental home.' He looked very bleak and sad.

'That's bad, Barry,' she said, her face tired with lack of sleep and anxiety.

'Yes well, I'll have to cope somehow. I just wanted to say, that you know I said we'd have another outing and you could choose what we did…?'

Fiona began to panic, she hadn't dared to choose yet. God, he wasn't going to ask her now on top of everything else.

'I haven't exactly made up my mind what…'

'No I mean, we may have to put it off a bit, but it's not that I'm going out with anyone else, or don't want to or anything…' he was stammering his eagerness.

Fiona realised that he did like her. About three-quarters of the weight on her heart lifted. 'Oh no , for heaven's sake, I understand, whenever things have sorted themselves out, well I'll hear from you then.' Her smile was enormous, the people waiting for their tea and coffee were ignored.

Barry smiled just as broadly and left.

Fiona learned the rules for offside in soccer but she couldn't understand how you could make sure there were always two people between you and the goal. No one gave her a satisfactory answer.

She rang her friend Brigid Dunne.

Brigid's father answered the phone. 'Oh yes. I'm glad to have an opportunity of talking to you, Fiona. I'm afraid I was rather discourteous to you when you were in our house last. Please forgive me.'

'That's fine, Mr. Dunne. You were upset.'

'Yes, I was very upset and still am. But it's no excuse for behaving badly to a guest. Please accept my apologies.'

'No, maybe I shouldn't have been there.'

'I'll get Brigid for you,' he said.

Brigid was in great form. She had lost a kilo in weight, she had found a fantastic jacket that made you look positively angular, and she was going on a free trip to Prague. No awful nude beaches there showing people up for what they were.

'And how's Grania getting on?'

'I haven't an idea.'

'You mean you haven't been to see her?' Fiona was shocked.

'Hey, that's a good idea. Let's go up to Adultery Mews and see her tonight. We might meet the geriatric as well.'

'Shush, don't call it that. Your father might hear.'

'That's what he calls it, it's his expression.' Brigid was unrepentant.

They fixed a place to meet. It would be a laugh anyway, Brigid thought. Fiona wanted to know if Grania had survived.

Grania opened the door. She wore jeans and a long black sweater. She looked amazed to see them. 'I don't believe it,' she said, delighted. 'Come in. Tony, the first sign of an olive branch has come to the door.'

He came out smiling, good looking, but very old. Fiona wondered how could Grania see her future with this man.

'My sister Brigid, and our friend Fiona.'

'Come in, you couldn't have come at a better time. I wanted to open a bottle of wine. Grania said we were drinking too much, which meant that I was drinking too much… so now we have to.'

He led them into a room filled with books, tapes and CDs. There was some Greek music on the player.

'Is that the Zorba dance?' Fiona asked.

'No, but it's the same composer. Do you like Theodorakis?' His eyes lit up at the thought that he might have found someone who liked his era of music.

'Who?' said Fiona, and the smile fell sadly.

'It's very plush.' Brigid looked around in grudging admiration.