That Gallagher Girl (4 page)

But things had changed since then. In Paloma's time, Hugo had been on the cusp of success: now he was feted as one of Ireland's greatest living painters. Paloma's successor, the lovely Ophelia, could afford to hire someone to do the cooking and cleaning. She could shop till she dropped online (now that broadband had finally infiltrated the Crooked House), have all her bills paid by direct debit, and not be obliged to dream up outlandish excuses for creditors.

‘How did Dad look, in the pictures?' she asked Raoul.

‘Distinguished as ever, according to the caption. You wouldn't think he was burnt out.'

‘What about her?'

‘She looked great.'

Cat didn't want to hear this. She would have loved it if Raoul had told her instead that Ophelia had looked awful, playing up to the camera like the WAG she was at heart. But her stepmother had modified her look since she and Hugo had first met. In the early days, Oaf had traded on an overt sex appeal that turned heads – and pages in the tabloids. Once she had Hugo in her sights she had toned things down, knowing that her wannabe image was inappropriate for a gal who was auditioning for the role of real-life muse to a national treasure. Now she was more country girl than siren – softer, earthier, even a little curvier. The last magazine spread Cat had chanced upon had featured Oaf in full-on bucolic mode, waxing lyrical about life in the Crooked House and her role as homemaker and devoted wife to Hugo Gallagher. Clad in dungarees and wellies, hair artfully dishevelled, she'd been pictured scattering corn for her hens and feeding her pretty little goats.

‘She's bringing out a book, by the way,' remarked Raoul.

‘What? Oaf is? But she has the imagination of a flea!'

‘You don't need to have an imagination to write a book any more. You just need to be a celebrity. And/or photogenic. Ophelia will milk her celebrity for what it's worth. Like I said, she's a survivor.'

Cat's lip curled. ‘It won't be much longer before she's unmasked.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘She's a liar, and not a very good one. It takes one to know one, Raoul, and I've had her number for ages.'

‘I'm sorry to say that I quite like her.'

‘Ah, but you're not a liar, Raoul. You don't understand the way our minds work. She knows how to push your buttons, just like she knows how to push Hugo's.'

‘But she can't push yours?'

‘No. And that's why she hates me.'

‘Aren't you being just a little OTT, Catkin?'

‘No. My instinct is right on this one. It's that feeling I told you about – the one I get in my bones. Trust me.'

‘But you've just admitted to being a liar. How can I trust you?'

She could hear the smile in his voice, and she smiled back. ‘Blood ties, Raoul. We're family.'

The spider that had been travelling across Cat's palm began to lower itself effortlessly over the parapet on a lanyard of silk.

‘Oh!' she said, gazing downward. ‘Whaddayaknow! I got company.'

‘What?' Raoul's voice on the phone sounded alarmed. ‘No worries. It's just some local ICA types. They've descended on the next-door allotment.'

‘ICA?'

‘Irish Countrywomen's Association. There's a market-garden-type place right next to this house – very convenient, I have to say, for poor starving me. I've been feasting on organic produce all week.'

‘You've been robbing an allotment, Cat? You're going to get yourself into trouble.'

Cat affected an injured tone. ‘What else is a gal to do, bro, when her daddy done gone and left her broke?' From below came the sound of women's laughter. They were unpacking a picnic hamper, Cat saw, and laying out rugs and cushions under the apple trees. They were clearly going to be there for some time. ‘They'd make a great subject for a painting,' she remarked. ‘I could put one of them in the nude, like Manet's
Déjeuner sur l'Herbe
.'

‘Cat?'

‘Yes.'

There was a pause. ‘Nothing.'

‘Nothing will come of nothing. That's Shakespeare, ain't it? Better go, bro.'

Cat pressed ‘end call', and stood staring at the display on her phone for some moments. She knew what Raoul had been going to say. He was going to tell her to get her ass back to school, get some qualifications, and get a job. He was going to tell her that she couldn't carry on living the way she had for the past couple of years, and that it was time for her to wise up. He was going to tell her to get real, to get a life. But Cat had a life. She had a life that suited her. And she didn't want to get real. Not just yet.

Another laugh drifted up from the allotment. It really would make a great subject for a painting.
Fête Champêtre
, Irish style. A bunch of middle-aged country women gossiping over ham sandwiches and flasks of tea, swapping recipes and showing off pictures of their grandchildren. Very
petit genre
, as her art teacher would have said! Cat pulled a scrunchy off her wrist, scraped up her mass of damp hair and wound it into a knot on the top of her head. Then she flexed her fingers. It was time to go cut some wallpaper.

Río emerged from the water and shook salt droplets from her hair. A swim was the only surefire way to clear a gal's head after knocking back quantities of iced Cointreau and gin in the afternoon. Above her on the terraced slopes her sister Dervla was strolling between raspberry canes and strawberry beds, sampling produce; while under the shade of a parasol, recumbent on cushions, Fleur was leafing through a magazine and murmuring love songs to her baby. The words of some French nursery rhyme came floating down to the shore –
Alouette, gentille alouette, alouette, je te plumerai .
. .

This was the third picnic they'd enjoyed this summer. The first had been organised by Río, whose orchard it was. She had provided cold Spanish omelette, red wine and Rice Krispie buns. Picnic number two had featured champagne, finger sandwiches and exquisite miniature pastries, courtesy of Fleur. Today, Dervla had brought along a cocktail shaker (she mixed a mean White Lady) and canapés requisitioned from the eightieth birthday celebration she'd hosted the night before.

So far, the picnics had been a great success. They'd been lucky with the weather, they'd been able to synchronise time off work; they'd even solved the drink/drive problem by organising transport. Today, because all his regular drivers were otherwise employed, the owner of the local hackney company had dropped them off at Río's orchard himself – in a Merc, no less. In an hour's time he would pick them up and deliver them back to their respective addresses. Dervla would be dropped off at the mews behind the Old Rectory, the state-of-the-art retirement home she ran with her husband Christian; Fleur would return to her duplex above Fleurissima, the bijou boutique that had been her pride and joy until the arrival of baby Marguerite; and Río would climb the stairs to the apartment that boasted a grand view of Lissamore harbour and its fishing boats, where she lived on her own.

The view was what she loved most about her apartment. She had never read E.M. Forster's
A Room With a View
, but she didn't need to. The title said it all. How could anyone live in a room that
didn't
have a view? For Río, that was unthinkable.

Río's balcony presented her with a different picture of the village every day, according to the vagaries of the weather. On a fine day, the village was carnival-coloured: a riot of hanging baskets and brightly painted hulls bobbing on the water and all manner of summer accessories outside the corner shop – beach balls and shrimping nets and sun hats and display stands of pretty postcards. This was the view inhabited by tourists, who wandered the main street of the village, licking ice-cream cones and taking pictures with their camera phones. Río preferred the view in the winter months, when the street was deserted and the mountains on the horizon wore an icing-sugar dusting of snow and the skies were so big and breathtakingly blue that you felt no picture could do them justice.

However, Lissamore and its environs simply begged to be photographed. On occasion, Río had come across tourists who had wandered off the beaten track, and strayed into her orchard with their BlackBerries and iPhones. They would apologise, say that they hoped they were not trespassing, and Río would say ‘
Arra
, divil a bit' in her best brogue, and offer them samples of whatever was in season – blueberries or goosegogs or apples. And then she was delighted when these visitors contacted her via Facebook and posted photographs of her orchard on their walls and exhorted all their friends to visit Lissamore and buy Río's produce from her stall at the weekly Sunday market.

The three women had hit upon the orchard as the rendezv ous for their summer junkets because no one could bother them there. None of them ever had windows for so-called ‘me' time, so they'd opted for ‘us' time instead, and the picnics were designated stress-free events. In the orchard, Fleur couldn't ‘just run downstairs' to deal with a delivery or a fussy customer, and Dervla couldn't ‘just nip next door' to check on how a new resident was settling in. And while they were there, Río wasn't allowed to fret over greenfly or weevils or mealy bugs. Río's orchard was their very own Garden of Eden, their private piece of paradise.

Reaching for her towel, Río glanced up at the Villa Felicity, the house that had once belonged to Adair. Since he had sold it, it was rumoured to have changed hands a couple of times, and it now wore the look of an unwanted frock in a second-hand shop. Or that's how Fleur – with her penchant for sartorial imagery – had put it. Río liked that the place was empty. She liked to be able to skinny-dip here unseen, she liked to be able to work in her garden unobserved, she liked to be able to lounge in the hammock she had strung up between two apple trees, knowing that she had this corner of Coolnamara all to herself. No one in the world could reach her here, except . . .

From above, came the sound of her phone – the ringtone that announced that Finn was calling.

. . . except Finn.

Río was off the starter's blocks, wrapping her towel around her, and sprinting up the beach towards the orchard gate.

‘Your phone, Río!' called Fleur. ‘Shall I answer it for you?'

‘Please!' The ringtone stopped, and Río heard Fleur's low laugh. ‘No, Finn! It's your godmother here! Hang on two seconds, she's on her way. Here she comes, tearing up the path like Roadrunner.'

Breathless, Río joined Fleur on the rug, and held out a hand for the phone. ‘Finn!' she said into the mouthpiece. ‘What's up?'

‘Hey, Ma,' came her son's laconic greeting.

‘Why are you phoning the mobile? What has you so
flathulach
? Why not wait to Skype later?'

‘I'm a bit all over the place, today.'

Río did some quick mental arithmetic. ‘It must be eight o'clock in the morning in LA. What has you up so early?'

‘The clock says four p.m. where I am.'

‘So you're not in LA? What's going on?'

‘Are you heading home soon, Ma?'

‘In about an hour. Why?'

‘Then I can tell you the good news in person.'

‘What do you mean, in person?'

‘I'll be in Lissamore in a couple of hours, unless Galway airport's closed again. I'm in Heathrow now.'

‘You brat! You never told me you were coming home! Holy moly, Finn – that's fantastic news!'

‘Glad you think so, Ma. But there's more.'

‘More good news? What?'

There was a smile in Finn's voice when he replied.

‘It's a surprise,' he said.

Chapter Three

Keeley allowed herself a reflective moment, then refilled her coffee mug and clicked on the next email in her inbox. It was from her grandmother's solicitor, to tell her that the keys to the cottage were ready to be picked up from his office, and reminding her that – as well as inheritance tax – she would now be eligible for the new tax on second homes. On the radio, some pundit was talking about property prices. ‘The reality is that prices have plummeted by fifty per cent in the Galway region. This includes holiday residences, which have been flying on to the market since the introduction of the tax on second homes . . .' Keeley pressed the ‘off' switch. She didn't want to be reminded for the third time that morning about the new tax on second homes. The third email she clicked on was from her accountant, alerting her to the fact that she would now be eligible to pay . . .

Click! The email went shooting off back into her mailbox.

There would be more unpalatable stuff, she knew, waiting for her at her work address. She steeled herself before setting sail for mail2web. In [email protected] there was the usual assortment of mail to do with the previous Sunday's interviewee. The subject had been an up-and-coming young model who also happened to be the daughter of a major theatrical agent, and among the acidic responses provoked were: ‘She only got where she is because of who she is.' ‘My daughter could do a million times better! See attached pic.' ‘Who did she blow to get her face on the cover?' Delete, delete, delete. Keeley found the rancour of some of the email feedback she was subjected to truly dispiriting. Since she'd returned to Ireland from the States, she had come to realise that there might be some truth in the old adage about the Irish being a nation of begrudgers.

Keeley Considine's brief each week was to conduct an in-depth interview with an Irish celebrity-du-jour. So far, she'd included among her interviewees a singer/songwriter suffering from early onset Alzheimer's; a fashion designer who had been abused as a child; an ex-priest who was now living as a woman; and a gay government minister who had walked out on her husband and children (she was now an
ex
-government minister). What connected all Keeley's subjects was a moment of life-changing insight – an epiphany – which was why her Sunday column was called (ta-ra!) ‘Epiphanies'. Since being approached by the
Insignia
the previous year, she'd conducted fifty-one interviews. Fifty-one weeks as confidante to strangers, and forty-one weeks as mistress to the newspaper's editor had left Keeley feeling burned out.

She could, she thought ruefully, have been a candidate for one of her own interviews. Attractive Ex-pat Journalist (AEJ) returns to Ireland seeking employment after a decade in New York, during which period she'd served time on a major Sunday newspaper, both as rising star features writer, and as mistress to the editor. Until his wife found out. And whaddayouknow – within three months of arriving back on her home turf, AEJ makes the very same mistake. Except this time, AEJ was in grave danger of falling in love.

Keeley's epiphany had occurred when she got the news that her grandmother had left her a cottage in the village of Lissamore in the west of Ireland. Her initial reaction had been one of bemusement. What to do with the joint? Her grandmother had moved out years ago (Keeley had childhood memories of pootling around waterlogged beaches in the so-called summer months), and since then the cottage had languished as a holiday rental on the books of a letting agency called Coolnamara Hideaways. Keeley's dad was always moaning about the fact that it cost more to maintain than it ever brought in, but he had never managed to persuade his mother to sell. She was, for some reason, adamant that the cottage should go to her only granddaughter on her death. And now Gran had died, and Keeley had come into her inheritance, and was liable for the property tax on second homes.

Thanks, Gran, she had thought the day after the funeral, staring morosely at the images of her bequest on the Coolnamara Hideaways website. Curlew Cottage was all whitewashed charm outside, all bog-standard pine inside, and – altogether – most un-Keeley Considine. But then she had looked around at her Ikea-furnished apartment with its Bang & Olufsen HD TV and its Bose sound system and the Nespresso machine she rarely used because she usually bought her coffee from Starbucks, and she'd had the most surprisingly unoriginal thought she'd had in a very long time. She, Keeley Considine, with her BA in creative writing and her diploma in journalism and her award for excellence in celebrity profiles – had thought ‘A change is as good as a rest'. And then she had taken Curlew Cottage off Coolnamara Hideaways' books and composed the email to Leo, telling him that she wanted a break.

It would come as no surprise to him. Their relationship had taken a hiding since his wife had happened upon them having dinner
à deux
in the Trocadero. Keeley was convinced she'd been set up. The memory of that evening had the power to make her break into a cold sweat every time she thought about it . . .

‘What are you wearing under that plain – but clearly very chic – little black dress?' Leo had asked conversationally, as he refilled her wineglass. ‘Anything interesting?'

‘Yes, actually,' replied Keeley, taking a sip of wine. ‘I'm wearing that very pretty Stella McCartney bra and panties set you bought for me in Agent Provocateur.'

‘The black lace ones?'

‘Yes.'

‘Suspenders or hold-ups?'

‘Hold-ups.'

‘Lace topped?'

‘But of course.'

Leo gave her a debonair smile. ‘I have another present for you, Ms Considine.'

‘How kind! It's not even my birthday!'

‘It's your un-birthday, as per Lewis Carroll's neologism. Many happy returns.'

Leaning down, Leo had produced a small giftwrapped box from his attaché case. Keeley recognised the wrapping paper immediately. The gift was from Coco de Mer in Covent Garden, the sexiest shop in the world.

She looked down at it as he placed it on the table, then looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. ‘Dare I open it in a public place?' she asked.

‘You may. The box is very discreet.'

Unloosening the ribbon, Keeley peeled away the giftwrap and folded it carefully: Coco de Mer giftwrap was far too pretty to waste. Beneath was an elegant black box, that was – as Keeley saw when she raised the lid – lined with silk. Nestling in the silk were two perfectly smooth egg-shaped stones, one of jade, one of obsidian.

‘Love eggs?' she said.

‘Well deduced. Concubines used them in ancient China.'

‘What a very,
very
thoughtful present,' said Keeley, slanting Leo a smile. ‘My pelvic floor muscles could do with a thorough workout.'

‘Why not give them a go?'

‘Now?'

‘Yes. Isn't it time you powdered your nose?'

‘You're absolutely right. I'm all aglow.'

Sending Leo another oblique smile, Keeley unfurled herself from the banquette and slid the box into her handbag.

‘One moment, sweetheart.' The skin on her forearm where he touched her sang.

‘Yes?'

His voice was so low, she had to stoop a little to hear him.

‘Leave your panties off.'

‘That goes without saying,
chéri
.'

And Keeley turned and sashayed in the direction of the loo, knowing that Leo's eyes were following her every step of the way. In the cubicle, she stripped off her panties, slipped them into her handbag, took the love eggs from their satin-lined box, and inserted them. One. Oh! Two.
Oh!
The jade and obsidian felt delicious, cool and smooth against her warm flesh, and Keeley felt anticipation surge through her when she thought of the treat in store for her later. And for Leo, too. She'd bought him a silver cock ring last time she was in London.

In the boudoir of the ladies room, she reapplied her lipstick and spritzed herself with a little scent. Her reflection regarded her from the mirror, a half smile playing around her lips, the pupils of her eyes dilated, a flush high on her cheeks that was not courtesy of Clinique. Dear
God
, she was horny! There would be no dessert this evening, that was for sure. Not in the restaurant, anyway. She had Häagen Dazs Dulce de Leche at home, and fresh Egyptian cotton sheets just begging to be laundered again tomorrow. Keeley squirted Neal's Yard Lime and Lemongrass onto her tongue, tousled her hair a little, and left the ladies room, Chanel No. 5 wafting in her wake, walking tall and working her hips; the way the promise of excellent sex makes a real lady walk.

‘Everything in place?' asked Leo, as she resumed her seat at the table.

‘You betcha,' said Keeley, cool as you like. ‘Perhaps you should think about settling up.'

Leo raised a hand to summon the waiter, and Keeley broke a crust of the remains of the baguette on her side plate, just for something to toy with while waiting for the bill to be sorted. And as she did so, a woman whom she recognised as Leo's wife came into the restaurant, and made straight for the maître d'.

‘I thought you said Rachel was in Cork?' she said.

‘She is.'

‘No she's not. She's behind you, Leo, and she's headed our way. Oh, fuck, oh,
fuck
– this is just . . . Oh fuck.'

It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. The maître d' had indicated their whereabouts, and Rachel was moving towards them now, dazzling Colgate smile fixed in place.

‘Good evening!' she fluted, as she slid next to Leo on the banquette opposite Keeley. ‘Don't worry about another place setting. I've already asked the maître d' to sort that out. I know I'm a little late, but I'm sure you won't mind if I have something? An
hors d'oeuvre
is all I require, since I had a late lunch. Oh, good. I see they're still doing Baba Ganoush – I haven't eaten here in ages, and I thought the menu might have changed. And I'm so sorry, I haven't introduced myself. We met at an
Insignia
event some time ago, but you may not remember me, Keeley. I'm Rachel, Leo's wife. How nice to see you again. You haven't changed a bit. That's the same dress you were wearing last time I met you. Zara, yes?'

‘Yes.'

‘How brave!'

It went on, and it went on. Rachel was relentless. She ordered her Baba Ganoush and another bottle of wine, and she sat and chatted about the
Insignia
and her husband and her children and the fact that she had been obliged to give up her very successful career as a pharmacist in order to rear Leo's family but she didn't resent a single minute of the time spent with the children since they were all prodigies just like her mother-in-law told her Leo had been, and wasn't the weather stunning, and wasn't it simply wonderful that Keeley had inherited a little cottage in the west of Ireland that she could visit when the stresses and strains of urban living became too hard for her to handle. And good heavens! Was that the time? They really ought to be making tracks – Leo had the school run to contend with in the morning, and Rachel had a parent-teacher meeting and thanks so much, Keeley, for taking care of the bill.

And all the time Keeley had sat there with the jade and obsidian eggs inside her, not feeling loved up at all, but rather like a constipated hen. And after Leo and Rachel had left the restaurant, she had ordered a large brandy and sat nursing it on her own, pretending to do important stuff on her iPhone and all the time flexing her pelvic muscles – two, three, four! – because she was fearful that when she stood up the jade and obsidian eggs might fall to the floor and be pounced upon by the punctilious maître d' . . .

Yours (I mean it)
. . .

Keeley returned to Leo's email, re-read it, then clicked on the link he had sent. It took her to the website of a publishing trade magazine, and a headline that read ‘Gallagher Muse to Pen Children's Book'.

Hugo Gallagher. She didn't know he'd married again. Keeley had conducted one of her very first interviews with Gallagher about ten years earlier, when she was fresh out of college. It had been at the opening of an exhibition of his paintings in the Demeter Gallery in Dublin – his breakthrough exhibition, as it had turned out. At that time Hugo Gallagher's star had been in the ascendant. After years as a struggling artist, he had emerged from obscurity to take his place centre stage in the Irish art world with a series of astonishing abstracts. She remembered being introduced to a saturnine man, loose-limbed and sexy – a man who exuded a lethal charm. She remembered his then-wife, a woman called . . . Paloma, and a child: a tousle-haired gypsy with angular limbs and intense dark eyes. She remembered how the mother had exuded an anxious air, and how her anxiety had escalated in proportion to the copious amounts of wine consumed by her husband. The child, she recalled, had hunkered on the floor in a corner of the gallery, oblivious to the brouhaha around her, drawing with a leaky biro on the back of a price list.