Letter from Chicago by Cathy Kelly

Author:Cathy Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gemma Open Door
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Clodagh’s project filled her mind all day. When she wasn’t answering the phone in Hot Flash, she looked through magazines for ideas. She got gardening books from one of the women at work. She watched television programmes about gardens. Her favourite was one where TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh changed a garden totally in two days. The revamp was always a big secret. The owner was nearly always speechless when they saw how different it all looked.

Clodagh had dreams at night about what she would do to Kim’s garden. She woke Dan up one night with her sleep-talking.

‘Pink, pink, I want pink paint,’ she muttered.

The next day, Dan teased her about it.

‘Aren’t you lucky,’ she laughed. ‘I could be shouting out another fella’s name.’

‘If you shout another fella’s name, it’ll be Alan Titchmarsh,’ Dan said.

In the evenings, she sat at the coffee table and drew plans. She had different pages with colour schemes for each room. Dan said it all looked great.

‘I don’t know,’ Clodagh said slowly. She stared at her plans. ‘How hard is it to lay patio slabs?’

Dan hadn’t a clue. ‘Tom will know,’ he said hopefully.

‘Tom’s an electrician,’ Clodagh pointed out.

The plans for the inside of the house were more simple. Everyone knew how to paint. The twins had promised to help her with the special details.

She was going to paint sea creatures in the bathroom. Emer and Laura were going to paint the fish. Clodagh was going to do the seahorses herself because they were hard to do.

The living room was very dull so Clodagh planned to make it look lively. Bright sunshine colours would be great. And she had a plan to get plenty of big, bright pictures for free. Ones in shops cost a fortune but Clodagh knew a man who had art on the brain. He worked in a boring job and painted at the weekend. He’d be pleased to have his paintings hanging somewhere other than his mother’s house.

Kim would have to make curtains, Clodagh decided. She had a sewing machine. Elsie could help her. Clodagh had already bought some of the material in a fabric sale. She’d bought yards of cheap muslin material in cream. It was for the windows. In one of her decorating books, it explained how to paint a pretty gold pattern onto muslin. She was dying to try it. Then, you draped the muslin on the window. It couldn’t be too hard, could it?

But what she really couldn’t wait to start was the dining room. Charleen and her friend were going to sleep there. Clodagh had it all worked out. She had her eye on a sofa bed that would look perfect with her colour scheme. Kim would probably be a bit shocked by the colour. Kim liked everything cream or white.

Clodagh was planning on a bold russet colour. Clodagh decided to paint that room when Kim and the twins were in Brittas. That way, her sister wouldn’t get upset at the sight of the paint in the tins.

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