Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

place outside of Rossmore, with all the sisters, and the dreadful Eileen, and the whole place talking about you. This is the time for courage, Malka, up and out. Go back to Ireland, you could even move to Dublin, and take your mother, find a place of your own. Start again."
       Yes, it was all very well for her, Americans are accustomed to doing that, new frontiers and covered wagons, but not in Ireland. Living with my mam and all the I-told-you-sos? Not really.
       I advised her to throw in the job at the office, which was cutting across her busy social life, and to go into the travel business like Max, build up an aspect of the holiday business that he hadn't yet done. Let her mother help more in looking after Lida. Her marriage wasn't over yet but it could be, the way she was going.
       Of course she resisted that terribly too but we laughed over it.
       As the days went on, I felt stronger and better than I had for years. Brendan loved it all there.
       "Why do they all call you Malka out there, Mammy?" he asked on the plane coming home.
    "It's American for Maureen," I explained.
       And he was perfectly satisfied. As he was when we moved to Dublin, and when my mam turned out to be miles better than we all thought, and never said "I told you so" once.
       I got a job teaching in a school, where I set up a real library, and Brendan grew up big and strong. I did make sure he went from time to time to see his dad in England, and learned with some pleasure that Eileen was very sharp-tempered and told Declan that he drank too much, and then the principal of the school told him he drank too much.
       I wrote to Rivka every week, and then she got a fax machine, which was quicker still.
       And finally e-mail.
       She was in Europe four times a year now because she ran an art tours section of Max's business and brought people to galleries and exhibitions. They included Ireland in the itinerary so that Rivka could come and see me. Well, there were nice art things to visit too, I suppose.
       Rivka talked less and less about Max and more and more about Lida. Max went to a lot of business meetings and came home only rarely. We didn't think he had another woman but we agreed that he had lost interest in Rivka. Somehow it didn't really matter all that much, any more than Eileen with her sharp temper mattered, nor the fact that Declan had been sacked from his job in England and was back in his place outside Rossmore, helping out his brothers-in-law, where he earned so little that he had to ask Eileen for drinking money to go to Callaghan's every night. But Lida mattered to us and Brendan mattered to us.
       They were our future.
       When Lida was seventeen she came to me for a holiday in Dublin. She wanted to be away from her mother for a bit and, well, Rivka and I understood that. W e could write the textbook on that sort of thing.
       She said that her mother and father hadn't slept in the same room for as long as she could remember; she wondered whether that was natural. Normal?
       I said I hadn't a clue about America, it was probably different there. And that maybe it was all for the best anyway. I had slept in the same bed as my husband for years and it hadn't done me all that bit of good, since he left me for another woman.
       She was very sympathetic. She sat and stroked my hand. She said men were hard to fathom. That a man had said to her she was frigid when she wouldn't have sex with him. Then he had said she was queer like her father. She hadn't said it to anyone.
       I told her she was right, best to forget it, the guy was obviously just mad to have sex with her and was flailing around because she wouldn't.
       We kept in touch over the years, but she never mentioned it again and neither did I.
       Now Lida was in her twenties and headstrong, dark and beautiful. She had studied law. And then this summer she announced that she was going to Greece for two months before