Barefoot Over Stones Read Online Free

Thanks to her dad’s GP practice there was enough money for all her college needs, so she didn’t feel short of anything. She was on talking terms with a good few people in her class, owing in no small measure to Ciara, who had the knack for chat and in whose company Alison tried mostly to stay. Somehow if Alison could join up the scattered dots of her Dublin existence she might manage to have a life outside Caharoe.
    Faced a few days later with Ciara’s note, Alison momentarily thought about phoning home with the change of plan. Her mother would be delighted. She was halfway down the stairs when she pulled herself back from the safety net into which she was about to plunge headlong. ‘Come on, Alison, don’t be such a chicken,’ she chided herself. How hard could it be? It was Wednesday. Four nights and Ciara would be back to the flat. In the meantime she could actually catch up on study. There was no law against going to see a film on your own, was there? The time would fly by if she kept herself busy. ‘Pull yourself together,’ she tutored herself, with only a shard of confidence, before quickly retreating up the stairs.
    Cathy Shepherd had stood on the Main Street in Caharoe until the bus carrying Alison back to Dublin disappeared from her view. Only then did she start the short walk to Michaelmas House on the edge of the town square. Her woollen coat was buttoned up right to the collar to protect against the bitter wind and maybe also against a rising loneliness that threatened to engulf her.
    Michaelmas was one of a quartet of grand houses standing like imposing sentry keepers around the green in Caharoe. It had been their home for twenty years and Cathy thoroughly loved it. The grand navy front door with its glistening brass fittings reminded her of the week of their wedding when she had lovingly painted it, covering her hands with specks of gloss paint that were murder to clean off.
    When Richard had first shown her the house out of which he operated his fledgling GP practice she had been shocked by its near-derelict state. The waiting room and surgery, which Richard had allegedly decorated, were the only rooms that were remotely habitable. Even that was a pretty impossible stretch of the imagination. Richard slept on a couch in a room at the back of the house with at least three layers of bedding to defeat the cold. It was there, in that spartan room, that they had first wrapped up in the delicious warmth of each other’s bodies under a sea of shabby quilts. It was there also, one evening a few months after they had first met, that Richard had asked her to marry him and live with him in Caharoe.
    ‘Here? In this dive?’ Cathy had asked in mock incredulity. It was worth it to see his face but the look of total joy on her face told him the only answer he wanted to hear. ‘Yes, I will marry you, Richard, but this place needs a serious shake-up. I love you but you live in a hovel.’
    ‘It’s not great, is it?’ Richard had said, looking at the wall opposite them from where the hideous flock wallpaper hung precariously, planning its path of descent.
    ‘You keep treating the sick people of Caharoe and I will make sure they don’t vomit at the sight of the house. Is that not a fair deal, Dr Shepherd?’
    ‘Deal.’ Richard grinned before pulling her beneath the quilts again.
    Hugh Lalor, the solicitor who lived in one of the other corner houses of the square, had recommended a builder to Richard when he had first bought the house. Richard had transcribed the details diligently, meaning to do something some day, before filing the information with all the legal papers regarding the sale. Cathy soon unearthed them and so began her transformation of the ‘barn’, as she had taken to calling Richard’s house. She approached Lovett’s Hotel across the square and asked if Richard’s surgery could move there temporarily while its permanent home was being refurbished. Tadhg Lovett was delighted by the