A Summer Wedding
Best selling author Cathy Kelly has written an original summer short story exclusively for Ireland’s Own readers
Eleanor Byrne was getting married.
‘Finally,’ said her great-aunt Flossie Byrne, who thought that it was a sign of the wildness of modern young people that nobody married in their twenties anymore.
‘She’s thirty-five, after all. I can’t believe she found someone to take her.’
Everyone in Bellevue Gardens Nursing Home agreed because it was easier to agree with Flossie than argue with her over a single thing.
‘I think this is an opportunity to get out my furs and the family jewellery,’ went on Flossie.
‘I don’t think it’s right to wear fur anymore,’ a newcomer, tiny and delicate in her wheelchair, whispered to her neighbour at the lunch table. ‘I’ve seen horrible videos of how they kill the poor animals.’
‘It’s one wizened auld allegedly-mink coat and a foxfur that puts the heart crossways in me when I see it,’ the neighbour whispered back. ‘Looks like a bat’s head with those little claws. I’ve seen foxes: never saw one that looked like that, I can tell you. I’d say it’s all fake’
‘And the jewellery?’
‘Never seen the jewellery. But then this is only my second time here. Hip surgery recovery.’ He indicated his left hip. ‘I think she’s making it up.’
The delicate lady giggled. ‘I’m a hip person too.’
Her neighbour was very handsome: his hair was a gleaming silver white and he had such a dashing profile. A dashing man who hadn’t railed against her when she said she was anti-fur farming. She thought she might like Bellevue after all.