Things We Never Say by Sheila O'Flanagan

Author:Sheila O'Flanagan [O'Flanagan, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780755378463
Google: CX3sN5K2Nk0C
Amazon: B00ABLJ2O8
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2013-06-19T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

There was another stunned silence, this time eventually broken by Lisette.

‘A nun? A Catholic nun? That can’t be possible. She’s your mother! She’s had a child!’

‘My mom is a widow,’ Abbey said. ‘And there’s no problem with a widowed woman who’s had a child becoming a nun, as long as the child isn’t dependent. In any event, the monastery she’s a part of isn’t exclusively Catholic. It’s Christian.’

‘Monastery? You mean convent,’ said Suzanne.

‘No. Benedictines live a monastic life.’

‘Holy Mother of God,’ cried Deirdre. ‘He’s left his house to the Moonies.’

‘No,’ said Abbey steadily. ‘This is a proper Christian community of sisters.’

‘You have got to be kidding me.’ Donald’s face was like thunder. ‘You’re saying that Dad’s house, the house he’s always loved and worked so hard to get, is now half owned by a gang of lunatic lesbian nuns?’

‘They’re not lesbians!’ cried Abbey. ‘Although even if they were, there’s no need for you to be so insulting.’

‘There’s something very weird about a gang of women holing themselves up together behind high walls,’ said Donald. ‘I think I’m perfectly entitled to call them whatever I like.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about this when I first met you and asked about your mother?’ asked Ryan, who’d been listening in total astonishment.

‘People can be very judgemental about religion. They can be equally judgemental about choices,’ said Abbey. ‘Especially when they concern someone who had a late vocation, like Mom. I wanted to protect her.’

‘I wouldn’t have been judgemental,’ said Ryan. ‘I’m a solicitor. I don’t get to be judgemental.’

‘But my father bloody well would have been!’ Gareth cried. ‘After all, he decided to leave you all this because he wanted to compensate your mother for what allegedly happened to her own mother in those damn Magdalene laundries. Which were run by nuns. So you can’t tell me that he would’ve left her anything if he’d known she was a nun herself.’

‘I think this strengthens our hand,’ said Donald. He looked at Alex. ‘Dad would never have left his property to a nun.’

‘Just because he was upset by what happened to children in the care of religious orders years ago doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have left the money to his daughter all the same,’ said Alex.

‘Never!’ cried Gareth. ‘And you know what – Abbey Andersen probably knew that. Which is why she pretended she couldn’t contact her mother and why she came here herself. And now she’s found that she’s getting what’s rightfully ours and all you want to do is help her.’

‘That’s not true,’ protested Abbey. ‘I didn’t even want to come.’

‘You were playing hard to get,’ said Gareth. ‘Making him feel even more guilty. Pushing sob stories at him until he had a heart attack.’

‘No!’ Abbey was close to tears. ‘Of course I wasn’t.’

‘And you were keeping your mother out of it because you knew that her being a nun would muddy the waters.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Abbey. ‘I didn’t have the opportunity to tell him about Mom.’

‘You had plenty of

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