A Week in Winter(92)

‘Oh, don’t be such a sourpuss.’

‘Are you going to be talking to him before the party?’

‘Yes, I’m meeting him this evening. He’s coming round to my flat at seven.’

Freda said nothing. Tonight was when he was going to tell her. It was there in her chest like indigestion all day, as if she had eaten something that she couldn’t swallow properly. At nine o’clock she called her sister.

Laura’s voice was unrecognisable.

‘You knew all the time, didn’t you? You knew, and you were laughing at me. Well, are you happy now?’

‘I didn’t know, honestly,’ Freda begged.

‘I hate you for knowing. I’ll never forgive you!’ Laura said.

In the weeks and months that followed, Laura was very cold towards Freda. She cried when Philip’s engagement was announced on Christmas Eve: his marriage to a girl called Lucy would take place in January.

Martha said that Laura would never believe to her dying day that Freda had not known about Lucy way in advance. There was no other explanation.

‘I got a feeling, that’s all,’ Freda admitted.

‘Some feeling!’ Martha sniffed. ‘If you ever get a feeling about me and Wayne just let me know, will you?’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever let anyone know about a feeling ever again,’ Freda said fervently.

The Friends of Finn Road Library will hold their first meeting on Thursday September 12th on these premises at 6.30 p.m. All are welcome, and we hope to have ideas and suggestions about what you want from your Library.

Freda knew within minutes of printing out the notice in the library that all was not well. It didn’t take a psychic to see it: Miss Duffy’s face was stern with disapproval, peering over her shoulder. This Library did not need Friends, the look said. It was not a dating agency. It was a place where people came to borrow books and, even more importantly, to return them. This kind of thing had no place in a library. It was, to use the worst criticism possible, quite inappropriate.

Freda fixed a smile very firmly on to her face. In advance, she had tied her long dark curly hair back with a ribbon to make herself look more serious in preparation for this encounter. This was a time to look businesslike. It most definitely was not the time to get into a serious battle. And if she lost, then she would just wait and try again.

She must never let Miss Duffy know how very determined she was to open up the library to the community, to bring in those who had never crossed its threshold. Freda wanted passionately to make those who did come in feel welcome and part of it all. Miss Duffy came from a different era, a time that believed people were lucky to have a library in their area, and should want no more than that.

‘Miss Duffy, you remember you telling me when I applied to work here that part of our role was to bring more people in . . .?’

‘As library users, yes, but not as Friends.’ Miss Duffy managed to use the word as a term of abuse.

Freda wondered had Miss Duffy always been like this, or had there ever been a time when she had hopes and dreams for this fusty old building.

‘If they sort of thought of themselves as Friends, they might do a lot more to help,’ Freda said hopefully. ‘They might help with fundraising, or getting authors to donate books . . . Lots of things.’

‘I suppose, as you say, that it can’t do any harm. But where will we get seating for them all if they do come?’

‘My friend Lane has lots of fold-up chairs in her theatre. She won’t need them that night.’

‘Oh, the theatre, yes.’ Miss Duffy’s interest in the small experimental playhouse down the street was minimal.

Freda waited. She couldn’t put the notice on the board until she had Miss Duffy’s agreement; she was nearly there, but not quite.

‘I’d be happy to sort of run the meeting, I mean, I’d sort of introduce you as the Librarian, and then when you had spoken I could throw it open to them . . . the Friends, you know.’ Freda held her breath.

Miss Duffy cleared her throat. ‘Well, seeing as you’re so keen on it, then why not put up that notice and let’s see what happens.’

Freda began to breathe properly again. She fixed the paper to the notice board. She forced herself to move slowly and not to show her excitement at having won. When she was quite sure that Miss Duffy was safely installed at her desk, Freda took out her mobile phone and called her friend Lane.

‘Lane, it’s me, I have to speak very quietly.’

‘And so you should. It is a library that you work in,’ Lane said sternly.

‘I got the Friends idea past Miss Duffy. We’re in. It’s going to happen!’

Halfway down the street, Lane paused in the middle of writing begging letters for support of her little theatre.

‘Fantastic, well done Freda! The killer librarian.’

‘No, don’t even say that, it could be such a disaster. Nobody might turn up!’ Freda was delighted that she had got this far, and yet terrified that it would all collapse on her.

‘We’ll get them in somehow. I’ll get all our team here to go, and we can put up a notice about the meeting and pull in our audience as well. Listen, will we go for lunch to celebrate?’ Lane was eager to seize the moment.

‘No, Lane, I can’t, no time. I have work to do on the budget allocations.’ Imagine – people thought there was nothing to do in a library except stand around! ‘But we’re meeting at Aunt Eva’s tonight as planned, aren’t we?’