Something in Common by Roisin Meaney

cranky.
    On Sunday afternoons Martina steered clear of the two common rooms, where the others congregated to show off the sons and daughters and in-laws who dropped in with boxes of Double Centre and plastic bags of dog-eared magazines. Unless the weather was unusually warm, Martina generally stayed in her room – and for the three Sundays she’d been filling in for Austin, Sarahhad paid her a visit.
    Martina would be sitting by the window where she always sat. ‘Is that you heading home?’ she’d ask, and Sarah would tell her no, not quite, she’d just taken the currant loaves from the oven and was letting them cool down before putting a bit of icing on them. And without waiting for an invitation she’d take the chair opposite Martina and stay for a quarter of an hour or so, and Martina wouldn’t seem in the least bit pleased to see her. But she had nobody else, and Sarah couldn’t bear the thought of her sitting alone there all afternoon.
    Back in the bedroom she pulled on cream cotton trousers and a navy top. Didn’t matter what she wore to work, with a big white apron to throw over it as soon as she got there.
    Neil watched her from the bed. ‘You’ll be home about half five so.’
    ‘Yes, should be.’ She crossed the room and bent to kiss his mouth. ‘Try to behave till then.’
    His hand cupped the back of her head. ‘Only if I can be very bad afterwards.’
    ‘We’ll see about that.’
    She left the house and got her bike from the shed, smiling already at the thought of their evening ahead, just the two of them. Still wonderful to think of herself as someone’s wife. Engaged on her twenty-sixth birthday, a year after they’d met. Married the following September, just five months ago. Despite Christine’s predictions of the nursing home being a non-starter for meeting men, St Sebastian’s – and, of course, Stephen Flannery – had brought Sarah and Neil together.
    Poor Stephen had been so delighted with the engagement, so thrilled that he’d played his part. ‘Just call me Cupid,’ he’d said as Sarah had held his trembling hands in hers, the day they’d broken the news to him. Gone from them now, bless the man – a massive stroke three months before the wedding had denied him the chance to be her father-in-law.
    She wheeled her bike down the front path and set off. Still cycling to work, even though Neil’s house – their house – was five miles further from St Sebastian’s than her parents’. Around trip of fifteen miles wasn’t a problem for her: she had grown up on a bike, had cycled all over the county as a teenager. Rain and wind were challenges, that was all. And, of course, cycling that distance every day kept her figure trim – no mean feat when she had to cook and bake so much, and had so little willpower.
    Brian had taught Christine to drive when she was eighteen. Sarah remembered her crawling down the road behind the wheel of his battered blue Anglia, traded in since for a Morris Minor. He’d offered to teach Sarah too – and so had Neil, when they were going out – but she had no desire to learn. A bike would always be her transport of choice, no matter what the weather did. And since she’d moved house her route to work was different, so she no longer crossed the bridge where she’d met the woman in the sheepskin coat, the day she’d had the interview for St Sebastian’s.
    Three years ago now – where had the time gone? So much had changed since then, her life so much better now: she was in a fulfilling job and married to a wonderful man. And considering that she and Neil had met at St Sebastian’s, you could say that the day of her interview had been the beginning of a whole new future for her.
    She wondered if the curly-haired woman was any happier now. Was she still alive? Had she found peace of mind? Sarah hoped so.
    For the rest of the day, the letter she planned to write to Helen O’Dowd was on her mind. As she slit scones in two for the residents’ tea,