The Kinsella Sisters (12 page)

‘Thank you. It was a present from Fleur.’

‘That shop is beautiful, isn’t it? Every time I go in there I just want to buy it all up!’

‘Yes. She has a great eye.’

‘Daddy got a fabulous nightdress there, in embroidered silk. Oh! He didn’t get it for himself, in case you’re wondering! Ha-ha, no! He got it for his girlfriend.’

Isabella’s little jewel of a phone started to purr at her and she immediately checked out the display. ‘Excuse me. I know it’s so rude of me, but I have to take this call. Please feel at liberty to explore.’

Isabella held the phone to her pretty emerald-studded ear and said: ‘Hello, Lucy! Calling for an update?’

Río stumbled off down the slope, feeling like a badly drawn cartoon character. That girl was not just a princess, she was a demi-goddess inhabiting some celestial realm where ordinary mortals could not tread. She had been perfectly polite, perfectly agreeable, but there was something so steely about the politeness that Río would have preferred open hostility. She had to admit to herself that she, Río, who was normally so easy-going and open, had been badly fazed by the encounter.

Sitting down on the edge of a raised flowerbed, Río took a couple of deep breaths, trying to reinstate the blissful sense of peace she had felt earlier, while reclining on Adair Bolger’s leather rocker. Slowly her heart rate decelerated and the flush that she
had felt creeping over her neck from the moment Isabella had introduced herself receded.

Río had never succumbed to the temptation she’d felt, while passing the Bolgers’ gate on her way to the beach, to climb over it. She was sure she’d be caught on a security camera, and nicked for trespassing. Now she could admire the garden at her leisure. There was the spot where she had used to picnic with her mother, eating squashed tomato sandwiches and drinking MiWadi. There was the stretch of wall upon which she and Dervla had performed balancing tricks, pretending they were circus acrobats. And there was the apple tree, beneath the branches of which Finn had been conceived.

A yew hedge had been planted along the wall. It had not yet grown high enough to disguise the intrinsic ugliness of the grey brick, but it would do so in time. Trees–bay, myrtle and arbutus–were all thriving despite the salt wind that came off the Atlantic. Beyond the wall sprawled the orchard where Río had picnicked and robbed apples as a child. No flowers bloomed at this time of the year, but Río knew that in a couple of months’ time it would be an Impressionist fantasy of blossom and spring bulbs.

It was, she decided, a successful garden, impressive in its own way, but unimaginative. Up on the yoga pavilion Isabella was standing poised as a prima donna, impervious to the cold, still talking on her phone. The watery sun had sunk lower on the horizon, and was now partially obscured by a eucalyptus. That shouldn’t have been planted there, thought Río. It’ll cast a huge shadow over the lawn when it’s grown.

‘You look very thoughtful,’ came a voice from further down the garden. ‘And I’d say they’re worth far more than a penny.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Río turned to see Adair Bolger leaning against the trunk of a Scots pine, further down the path. His hands were in his pockets, he’d rolled up his sleeves, and he had about him the laidback demeanour of a man who was comfortable on his own territory.

‘Your thoughts. I said I’d give more than a penny for them.’

‘Oh!’ Río managed an unconvincing laugh. ‘I’m not thinking anything very profound.’

That was a lie. Because Río was wondering how long Adair had been standing there watching her, and how vulnerable she may have appeared stripped of her habitual wise-cracking facade.

‘Ready for another cocktail?’ he asked.

‘I’d love one.’

She moved down the path and together they strolled back towards the house, where, beyond the expanse of glass, Río could see Dervla taking photographs of the view with her phone.

‘Dervla tells me you’re a dab hand at gardening?’

I am.

‘Our usual caretaker’s done his back in. Do you think you might be interested in looking after the garden here?’

If it had been anyone else, Río might have said, ‘I’m sure I could fit you in’. But the idea of working in the garden of Coral Mansion–maintaining it for Adair Bolger’s biannual delectation–made Río bridle. Who did he think she was? Some luckless countrywoman who’d be glad of an extra few euro to make ends meet? That was, in effect, exactly what she was, but Río had her pride.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘there’s a waiting list for my horticultural services.’

Adair looked taken aback. ‘I didn’t realise you were a trained horticulturalist,’ he said.

‘I’m not,’ Río told him with an enigmatic smile. ‘But I have a magic touch. Folk hereabout call me the plant whisperer.’

Adair looked impressed. ‘The plant whisperer,’ he repeated.

And if you believe that, Mr Bolger, thought Río, you’re even more of an eejit than I first took you for.

Río and Adair’s progress was monitored by watchful eyes. Up on the yoga pavilion, Izzy was giving Lucy a running commentary.

‘There she goes, strutting her stuff back to the house. God, Lucy, you should have seen the way she was posing by the flowerbed, trying to look all pensive. And I could tell that she knew damn well that Dad was watching her.’

‘Is she good-looking?’

‘I guess so–in a kind of boho way. You know the arty Coolnamara type–all flowing skirts and hair.’

‘In other words, the complete opposite of your mum.’

‘Yeah. I wonder is that a good thing or a bad thing? The other sister’s completely different. She’s very nicely put together. One of those suckers who forks out fortunes for handbags.’

‘Hello? And just how much did those new shoes you were telling me about cost?’

‘If I’d known Dad was actually going to buy them, I’d never have admired them. I nearly died when he surprised me with them.’

‘Face it, sweetheart. You’re his princess.’

‘And while that Río dame is about, I’m going to behave like one. I’m going to make it very clear that she’s out of her league here, big time. I’ll be so polite she won’t be able to keep up, and she’ll have to back off. Actually, it’s quite good fun, pretending to be überposh. I even told her she was “at liberty to look around the garden”! Oh, and I let slip that Dad already has a girlfriend.’

‘Does he?’

‘No. But she doesn’t need to know that.’

‘Maybe you should do a bit of matchmaking when you’re back in Dublin.’

‘There’s no one good enough for my dad. The D4 circus is full of Botoxed vampires, and he needs somebody fun. He’s talking about retiring here, Luce, and I just can’t bear the idea of him living all on his own.’

‘That’s years away! He’s bound to have hooked up with someone by then.’

‘Maybe. But not necessarily someone who’ll want to come and live in the back of beyond. I read somewhere that prescriptions
for Prozac go through the roof in Coolnamara off season. Uh-oh, Lucy, she’s wandered out onto the deck to gaze wistfully at the sea. I’d better go put a spanner in the works.’

‘Go get her, Machiavella!’

‘Catch you soon!’

Machiavella was right, Izzy thought, as she slid her phone back into her pocket. There was a war to be won, and the best way to win it was through subterfuge, using guerrilla tactics. Izzy tossed back her hair, narrowed her eyes and prowled down the pathway, wearing her most panther-like smile. By the time she hit the deck, her demeanour had changed. The prowl had become a prance, and the smile was one Kate Hudson might have envied.

Later, standing by the hob in the kitchen, waiting for the milk for Adair’s hot chocolate to warm, Izzy looked back on the afternoon with glee. Río’s second Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Wall had turned out to be a very fast uncomfortable one. She had downed her cocktail in less than twenty minutes, and left the house reeling under Izzy’s onslaught.

Izzy hadn’t been rude, but she had been so determinedly polite that the atmosphere had become almost tangibly frigid. Every time Río had opened her mouth to make some banal observation about the house or the view or the weather, Izzy had fixed her with an expression of such intense interest that it could not but be unsettling for the woman. At one point Río had tried to lighten things up by telling a rambling joke, but by the time she’d reached the end, her audience was left looking bemused and laughing unconvincingly. Whereupon Izzy had told a dazzling story about the forthcoming nuptials of Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni that had left her father and Dervla helpless with laughter, and Río at a complete disadvantage. She clearly had not understood the punch-line, which Izzy had articulated in impeccably accented French.

Izzy stirred Green & Black’s into a mug of hot milk, and
carried it through to her father in the drawing room. Sitting across from him, she tucked her feet underneath her.

‘Aren’t you having chocolate?’ he asked.

‘No. I’m thinking of my figure. I ate far too much over Christmas.’

Adair took a sip of his chocolate. ‘What did you think of the Kinsella sisters?’ he asked.

Izzy shrugged. ‘I thought the one with all the hair a bit–well–
gauche.
She’s not the kind of person I’d invite to dinner. She wouldn’t have a clue.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’d probably use all the wrong cutlery and call a napkin “a serviette” and pudding “sweet”.’

‘Izzy! It’s not like you to be such a snob.’

‘Blame Mum for that. She’s the one who was a stickler for good manners.’

‘She used to host the most perfect dinner parties.’

‘Do you miss them?’

Adair looked thoughtful. Then: ‘I’ve a confession to make,’ he replied with a smile. ‘I used to dread those feckin’ dinner parties. ‘They were like an endurance test.’

‘Really, Daddy?’

‘Yeah. I’d have been happier sitting on the deck with a beer. But your mother was–well let’s just say that the simple life wasn’t for her. Open the window a little, Izzy. I’d like to listen to the waves.’

She did as he asked, leaning out to breathe the scent of sea air. On the beach below a heron took fright, launching itself upwards on ungainly wings, and from an island opposite came the ghostly call of a curlew.

‘I love that sound,’ said Adair, happily. ‘Maybe I should come down here more often. I reckon I could cobble together a better social life in Lissamore than the non-existent one I have in Dublin.’

Izzy turned back to him. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I run into too many of Felicity’s crowd there. Ironic to think that I can enjoy a drink in any branch of the Four Seasons anywhere in the world, but I don’t dare set foot in the one on my own doorstep.’

‘I hate that place,’ said Izzy, with feeling. ‘It’s full of plastic people.’

‘You’re right. The people in Lissamore are more…genuine, somehow.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Izzy put in hastily.

‘Why?’

She could hardly tell her father that the two women he’d entertained earlier in the day had bitched about him in her mother’s boudoir.

‘Well, take that estate agent woman, Dervla, for instance. Estate agents are notorious for being fakes.’

‘Actually, she was very helpful. She advised me not to put this place on the market right now because of the property slump, but said that she’d be glad to help me sell it in a couple of years’ time, when the market bounces back.’

‘So you really are thinking about selling up?’

‘Just thinking. It’s been on my mind since you suggested it yesterday. This house is too big for just me. When Felicity designed it, she designed it with house parties in mind.’

‘It’s more like a hotel than a house, really, isn’t it?’

‘Well, that’s where the idea came from. From that joint in Miami that your mother loved so much. And it worked for a while. We had some good times here, didn’t we?’

Izzy nodded, even though she had very few fond memories of time spent in the Villa Felicity. She remembered the crowds of people who had used to descend from Dublin to stay in what Felicity had called ‘The Guest Wing’ (the capital letters evident in her tone), and how they’d all pose by the pool or on the deck with their champagne flutes, and how the women had all been
immaculately made up and coiffed–even at breakfast. However Izzy had rather liked the fact that they were too precious about their La Perla swim togs to get them wet, because it meant that she could have the pool all to herself, to pretend she was a selkie.

But Adair’s words–‘when the market bounces back’–made Izzy feel something a little like fear flutter in the pit of her tummy. What if all the doom and gloom merchants and the headlines in the property pages were right, and nobody was buying houses any more? The Villa Felicity might never sell, and it would just sit here crumbling on the beach like a great white whale, its shutters closed for ever. Unless they got tenants in. But who would want to live here full time? Adair was right: the house had been built as a pleasure palace, and might not prove easy to sell. Izzy had always thought that it looked more like a clubhouse than a home. It was a soulless place. And then that vision came to her again, of her father as an old man, rattling around here all by himself. She swallowed hard.

‘Finished your hot chocolate, Dad?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thank you, sweetheart. It was delicious. No one makes hot chocolate like you do.’

Izzy smiled at him, and carried his empty mug into the gleaming Poggenpohl kitchen, her face aching with the effort of trying not to cry.

In Galway airport, just two weeks after she’d buried her father, Río watched her son move towards the departure gate. She watched him pass through security. She watched him make way for an elderly lady with a walking cane. She watched him reclaim his bag from the conveyor belt and sling it over his shoulder. And then he looked back at her, and Río didn’t see a tall, fit dude at whom girls always looked twice; she saw a small boy heading off on an adventure, looking the way he had sixteen years ago when he’d walked away from her into school for the very first time. And then he smiled that fantastic Finn smile, raised a hand in farewell, and was gone, taking her heart with him.

A passing security guard laid a hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and Río realised that there were tears coursing down her cheeks.

‘Yes. No.’ She shook her head, unable to continue.

‘Saying goodbye to somebody?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see it every day. It’s hard. You should get yourself a coffee.’

The man gave her arm a reassuring squeeze, and moved on.

Tears were streaming down her face in rivulets now, and people were staring, but she didn’t care. She wanted to get to the safe haven of her car where she could howl out loud in anguish.

She was barely able to put one foot in front of the other as she negotiated the car park, doubled over in agony, walking like an old lady. When she reached her car, she slid into the driver’s seat, slumped forward and laid her forehead on the steering wheel.

She’d always known–of course she had–that Finn wasn’t hers for keeps. But she had never thought that the pain of letting him go was going to be such a sickening, visceral pain, and now there was a hole where her heart had been, and no joy in her soul.

In her bag, the strains of a melody began to play. Finn must have changed the ringtone on her phone: it was playing Duran Duran’s ‘Río’. Río’s sobs became even more ragged–she was hyperventilating as she fumbled in her bag. Get a grip! she told herself. You don’t want him to hear you like this!

But the caller ID wasn’t Finn’s. Letting the phone drop, she allowed it to ring out.

When a love affair ends, you could talk about it. You could talk to a girlfriend or a sister or a mother and know that they would understand what it means to lose a lover. Losing lovers happens to every woman. Losing lovers is commonplace. But how could Río tell anyone that the only man she wanted to hold in her arms was her own grown-up son? If she let that slip, people would be aghast, or embarrassed, or repelled. They’d tell her to wise up and go get a life, or counselling, or both. How could she expect anyone to understand that Finn was her life, he was her
soul?.

Why,
why
did the smutty Oedipal thing have to rear its head when mothers spoke of the love they felt for their sons? She’d heard an actress on the radio recently talk about how she had spent the final day before her daughter went off on her gap year, lying in bed with her arms around her, swapping secrets and singing the nursery rhymes that she’d once sung to her at bedtime, and everybody had said: ‘Ahhh…’ and thought it so lovely that mother and daughter had such a good relationship. She could
just picture Finn’s face if she, Río, had gone up to his bedroom and suggested that they lie down and hug and sing nursery rhymes together.

But, oh! how jealous Río had been of that actress’s relationship with her daughter! How she would love to have Finn confide stuff in her, and know that any opinions she proffered would be listened to rather than falling on deaf ears as they generally did. But you can’t do that with boy children, once they start becoming men. When boys turn into men, they stop sharing secrets with their mothers.

Her ringtone sounded again. The number displayed meant nothing to Río. She dropped the phone back in her bag, then raised her head and saw a world that had no Finn in it, and what she saw was a bleak and ugly and wholly meaningless place.

It was official. She hated her life.

Dervla was kept busy issuing orders. She was issuing orders to her architect and to bloody bureaucrats and to construction companies, and because Dervla was so very good at issuing orders (and because she had contacts in the Planning Department), she was getting results. Her architect had come up with some excellent ideas for the conversion of the attic that was to be Río’s eyrie–including a balcony to the front and a small cantilevered deck to the rear where her sister could grow a garden in miniature. Dervla was determined that Río should occupy as cosy a nest as possible, because she had an idea that she might be going through the doldrums a bit now that Finn was gone.

She’d done some research on empty-nest syndrome, and found out that it had an effect on some women akin to bereavement. For those in middle age, the knowledge that their function as child-bearers was over apparently made the grief even more intense, and while Río was hardly hitting the menopause yet, the fact remained that she’d had her tubes tied and would never be able to conceive another baby. Or maybe she
was
menopausal?
It was hard to tell. Dervla’s online surfing had revealed all kinds of stuff that was news to her, including the fact that early-onset menopause was hereditary. However, because their mother had died so young she had no way of knowing if it ran in the family.

Her own menstrual cycle had been erratic recently, but, because it had been so long since she’d had sex, Dervla had put that down to stress. Times were bad in the property market, and she was working her ass off to sell houses that would once have sold themselves. She was using all the tricks of the trade to try to shift properties, but she couldn’t be in two places at once and oversee every little detail, much as she’d like to. It made her heart sink sometimes when she’d open up a house for a viewing to see just how little care the owners had taken to make their interiors inviting. Some people didn’t even bother to flush their loo, and Dervla now made a point of visiting every bathroom in every joint on her books, and flushing the pan before potential buyers showed up. She’d drawn the line at buying a pooper-scooper for the resident canines.

The only house that had sold in the past month had been an unprepossessing-looking two-up, two-down in Galway city. The front door gave no indication of what lay beyond, but once inside, the house was an Aladdin’s Cave of unusual furniture and paintings and curios–a real home. The sellers had been clever, setting the table for dinner with gleaming silverware and crystal and a good bottle of wine, and baking bread before each viewing so that the house smelled glorious. Nothing ostentatious–just little touches that lent the interior an atmosphere that made viewers think, Ooh! I’d like to live like this!

In Waterstone’s recently, Dervla had helped herself to a big, glossy coffee-table book called
The Way We Live–Making Homes I Creating Lifestyles.
It was crammed with images of dwelling places in different countries and cultures from all over the world: photographs of French villas and Irish cottages and Swiss chalets and English stately homes and Renaissance palaces and New York
lofts. It was a treasure-trove of a book for anyone interested in property or interior design, and Dervla was pleased to observe that her own home compared favourably with any of those smart New York interiors.

And then one day she looked again at the title,
The Way We Live…Creating Lifestyles
, and she thought how weird it was that people these days really did aspire to live life
styles
–but not necessarily satisfying lives. Everything was for show. The dozens upon dozens of expensive, shiny magazines that lined the shelves in newsagents were testimony to that–magazines carrying ads for the latest must-have kitchen appliances or bed linen or garden furniture. What happened to readers of those magazines when they rushed lemming-like to max out their credit cards on handcrafted solid wood floors or three-door refrigerators or bespoke English bookcases? Did their extravagant purchases make them happier? What if a dog got sick on your fabulous Roberto Tapinassi sofa, or a toddler scribbled on it? What then?

Dervla loved her sofa, but then Dervla had neither dog nor toddler to trash it. As long as she remained living solo, her Corinthian leather upholstery was safe–as was the upholstery belonging to countless other singletons living in countless other exclusive gated communities all over Ireland.

Since Frank’s funeral, Dervla had been spending more time in Lissamore village, prepping her father’s house for its metamorphosis. She’d witnessed at first hand the community spirit at work there, and the laidback ambience that Río had told her she set such store by. Dervla had witnessed, too, the starring role her sister played in village life. People greeted Río on the street with beaming smiles; tourists gravitated towards her to ask for directions; even the local cats got off their arses and stretched when Río went by, as if inviting her to pet them. She’d seen Río in O’Toole’s, pulling pints, flirting effortlessly with male punters and sharing secrets with the women. She’d seen her smile, laugh,
blag and charm, and she knew that what Río had was more precious than handcrafted floors or three-door fridges or bespoke bookcases. Río had a life, not a life style.

How fine it must feel to be Río!

Río was lying in bed, trying to decide whether or not it was worth making the effort to roll over from her left side to her right. She decided against it. She didn’t have the energy. The sheets felt horrible against her naked skin. She hadn’t changed them in a week, and that was most unlike Río. She hadn’t washed her hair for a week, either, and she hadn’t had a shower for two days. One of life’s greatest pleasures, in Río’s mind, was to take a leisurely bath with a book and a glass of wine, and then slide into bed between freshly laundered sheets. Ironically, a website on empty-nest syndrome that she’d looked at shortly after Finn had gone travelling had recommended that she ‘treat’ herself by having a long lie in a scented bath. As if! Río didn’t even have the energy to turn on the taps.

She’d tried cuddling her old velour elephant for comfort but that hadn’t worked, so instead she’d wrapped one of Finn’s T-shirts around her pillow, and cuddled that instead, saturating it with tears of self-pity. She was ugly, ageing, stupid, and she was sure she stank. Her eyes were red from constant crying, and from all the booze she was putting away. She was drinking far, far too much. She’d taken to buying wine boxes from the supermarket in Galway when she drove fares there, because empty wine boxes were easier to dispose of in a village where the bottle bank was situated directly opposite the church.

Hackney fares had been sporadic, which was good news for Río because she was pretty certain that much of the time she was over the limit from the amount of alcohol consumed the night before. Because the season didn’t get underway until after St Patrick’s Day, Fleur’s shop was only open at weekends, so she had no window-dressing job, and only two evenings a week
behind the bar in O’Toole’s. She wasn’t painting because her creative drive was non-existent–and anyway, hadn’t Isabella Bolger been right? Her paintings were crap; they weren’t even selling. And to top everything, her landlord had put the rent up, as he had threatened. So as well as being useless, ugly, ageing, stupid, smelly and a crap artist, Río was broke. Life really couldn’t get very much worse. Not even the prospect of moving into the loft space in her former family home could energise her. She kept seeing herself through Dervla’s eyes–the poor relation who was such a loser that she even needed someone to provide a roof over her head. She was fearful of moving, suddenly, she felt safer here in the familiar surroundings of her rented doll’s house, even though she had done no housework for weeks and the place was looking neglected and uncared for.

Shortly after Finn had gone she had read all of the letters that the man called Patrick had written to her mother. They were so redolent with love that Rosaleen had written eight words in the margin of the very last letter she’d received from him. The words were in violet ink, in her mother’s distinctive, swirly script, and they read: ‘I know what it is to be adored…’ Her mother had been adored. She may have had a tough life with Frank, but at least she’d been
adored
by somebody.

The only person who adored her, Río, was now off on the other side of the world, living his dream on a beach.

And there seemed to be no one she could talk to. Fleur and Dervla, being childless, would not understand. Shane would be sympathetic, but she didn’t want sympathy. She wished she had a mother she could ask for advice, she wished she could pick up a pen and write ‘Dear Mama, what would
you
do?’ In despair, she consulted an internet site.

‘Pull yourself together, you sad bitch,’ had been the advice of some heartless contributor to the online forum she subscribed to. The contributor’s nickname had been ‘Virago’, and Virago clearly had the emotional sensitivity of Anne Robinson or Pol
Pot. Virago had no time for men in her life: no time for sons, husbands or lovers. Men, Virago admonished her, were a waste of space, and Río should ‘get a life, get a grip and get over it’.

Get over it? Get over
Finn?
It was way, way easier said than done. Getting over the kind of heartbreak that mere men divvied out was easy. Río had had her heart broken loads of times before in her misspent youth–and she’d broken her fair share too. After her mother had died and after she and Dervla had declared hostilities, and after she’d turned down Shane’s proposal of marriage, Río had played men for fun, and run a little wild. Home for her and Finn in those days had been a squat, a kind of commune in Galway city. Home had been a big dilapidated Georgian town house where actors and artists and writers cohabited in an ambience that was more Gypsy King than Bohemian Rhapsody. The accessory
du jour
in those days had been a baby, and Finn, with his infectious laugh and dancing eyes, had been the accessory most beloved of the female members of the tribe, leaving Río free to paint and party and inspire poetry for as long as her baby was portable. But when Finn had ended up locked in a wardrobe at two years of age while one of his ‘aunties’ entertained a wandering minstrel-type with a penchant for Lebanese hash, Río had decided that it was time to return to Lissamore and a less liberal lifestyle. Since then, Finn had been the only man for her, despite expressions of interest and declarations of love from locals and holiday-makers alike.