A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy

when they needed him. She told him long, confused tales about people called Beatrice and Jessica and others long dead. She was totally harmless, but possibly not playing with the full deck.
    Mindful of Chicky’s advice, Rigger realised the importance of being nice to Miss Queenie. He made her a mug of tea every morning and served it in what was called the morning room. At the same time, he fed Gloria.
    Miss Queenie knew that you shouldn’t give cats saucers of milk, just lots of water and a little pouch of kitten food; certainly Gloria seemed to be thriving on it. She slept most of the day, and for sure was not a kitten of great brains: she seemed to have bouts of huge anxiety because she kept thinking that her tail was another animal following her. Miss Queenie said Gloria wasn’t to be blamed for this entirely. After all, her tail was a different colour. Miss Queenie had made up a little cat bed in the corner of the kitchen by the range. As Gloria slept, Miss Queenie would watch her happily for hours.
    Chicky was less forthcoming. She worked very hard and expected him to do the same. She had little time for small talk.
    There was so much to do in the place.
    He dug the wild, unkempt gardens of Stone House until his back ached and his face was roughened by the constant sea spray. The soil was hard and stony and the briars and the brambles were enormous. Even though he tried to protect himself he was covered with scratches and cuts. He liked it best when Gloria decided to keep him company, her triangular little black tail held high in the air as she sniffed at the ground where he dug. She pounced on leaves and chewed on twigs and more than once avoided being decapitated only by a whisker as Rigger dug through the brambles. Her curiosity was infinite and insatiable; she explored tirelessly as he worked on. And as he paused, leaning on his spade, she would solemnly roll on to her back and gaze at him upside down.
    On the days when the Atlantic storms battered the house and the rain came in horizontally, there were old lofts to be cleared out, furniture to be shifted, woodwork to be painted. The old outhouses were dealt with by a couple of builders who were kept busy hacking out and making good. Rigger worked for them, carrying bricks and stones and wooden planks. He chopped wood for the fires and cleaned the grates out every morning, then poured fresh water and breakfast for Gloria and made tea for Miss Queenie.
    She was a nice old thing, away with the fairies, of course, but no harm in her. She was interested in everything and would tell him long stories about the past when her sisters were alive. They would have loved a tennis court, but there was never the money to make one.
    ‘Your mother was wonderful when she was here. We really missed her when she left,’ Miss Queenie would say. ‘Nobody could make potato cakes like Nuala could.’
    This was news to Rigger. He didn’t ever remember potato cakes at home.
    Rigger had a bedroom behind the kitchen where he slept, exhausted, for seven hours a night. On a Saturday, Chicky gave him his bus fare, the price of a cinema ticket and a burger in the next town.
    Nobody ever spoke of why he was there, or the fact that he was in hiding. There was little time to make friends around the place and that was good too, as far as Rigger was concerned. The fewer people who knew about him the better.
    And then he heard the news he had been waiting to hear.
    Nasey phoned him with the details. Two youths had been arrested for the theft of meat from the butcher’s shop. They had been before the court and had been given six-month sentences.
    The Guards had watched Nuala’s house for several weeks, and when there was no sign of Rigger, and nobody knew where he had gone, the matter was dropped.
    ‘How did they catch them?’ Rigger asked in a whisper.
    ‘Someone pointed the Guards in the area of the Mountainview Estates and there they were, as bold as brass, going from door to door selling