The Kinsella Sisters (16 page)

Keeping her torch trained on the runaway mask, Izzy tucked her knees against her chest, exhaled, and swooped down after it, scooping it up before performing a nifty upward jackknife and finning back to where Finn was continuing to ascend with remarkable sang-froid. She touched his hand, then wound his fingers around the strap of his mask and watched as he clamped it back on and cleared it. His lovely green, upward-tilting eyes smiled at her as he took hold of her hand to high-five her. Are you OK? she asked, putting thumb and forefinger together in an ‘O’, smiling back at him when she received a corresponding ‘OK’ to indicate that all was well.

‘Smug cow,’ Lucy said when they were back on deck, and Izzy had reverted to her disguise of ‘I Like 2 Dyke’ cap, shades and sarong. ‘Trust you to be the one who saves the dude. I suppose your log will read, “Saved dive god on ascent”.’ She reached for her logbook. ‘Did you get a load of that pipe fish?’ she added. ‘Ugliest one I ever saw.’

‘That wasn’t a pipe fish,’ said Izzy. ‘That was another of my hair extensions.’

‘Hell, you really are moulting, aren’t you?’

‘Maybe I could start a funky new trend. My real hair’s full of sticky bits where the glue has melted in the sun. They must have used really cheap stuff’

‘Hi.’

Izzy peered up through her wraparound sunglasses from under the peak of her cap. Finn was looking down at them, smiling.

‘Which of you girls was responsible for retrieving my mask? I owe you a drink.’

Izzy didn’t hesitate. ‘It was Lucy,’ she said, giving her friend a dig in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Wasn’t it, Luce?’

Lucy gave Izzy a nonplussed look. ‘Um…’ she began.

‘Yes, it was,’ insisted Izzy.

‘Oh yes, then,’ said Lucy, ‘that would definitely have been me.’

‘You’re Irish?’

‘Yeah. Dublin.’

‘I’m from Lissamore, in Coolnamara.’

‘I know.’

‘Oh?’

‘I can–er–tell by your accent.’

Finn smiled down at her. ‘That manoeuvre took some pluck, as well as skill,’ he told her. ‘You’re definitely dive master material, Lucy. How many dives have you notched up?’

‘A hundred and fifty-seven,’ Izzy told him, for Lucy’s benefit.

Finn looked impressed. ‘Then go for it. Maybe you should aim for certification while you’re here.’

‘I’d love to,’ said Lucy, batting her eyelids and clearly enjoying her role as heroine. ‘But we’re leaving tomorrow. Or the day after.’

‘Definitely tomorrow,’ Izzy corrected her.

‘Shame,’ said Finn, looking at Lucy with interest. ‘Will you be going to the party in the AC bar later?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ said Lucy, with her best smile. ‘And just in case you’re wondering,
I’m
not gay’

‘Glad to hear it,’ said Finn, flicking an amused glance at Izzy’s cap, and returning the smile.

As he moved away along the deck, Izzy turned an outraged face to her friend. ‘What do you think you’re
doing?’
she said.

‘I’m flirting. You’re right. He is very, very cute.’

‘But I found him first!’

‘Then you shouldn’t have pretended not to know him.’

‘What was I meant to do? Take off my cap and reveal my gummy hair extensions?’

‘Well, at least if you’d done that he wouldn’t have thought you were a dyke.’

‘Bummer.
Bummer?
’ Izzy’s outraged expression turned into one of anguish. ‘I’ve dug myself into a big hole, haven’t I?’

‘Looks like it. You can hardly turn round and say, “Oh, I made a mistake!
I
was the one who came to your rescue, actually, not her.’”

‘Oh!
Why am I such a
loser?’

‘You’re not a loser, honeybun. But you do tend to complicate things unnecessarily sometimes.’

And as Izzy turned to stare morosely at the navy-blue horizon, she realised that, as usual, Lucy was absolutely right.

After they’d dumped their gear, they had to queue for their logbooks to be signed. Izzy’s face was swathed in batik’d cotton, and even in the comparative gloom of the dive shop, she was still sporting shades and baseball cap.

‘Sunburn?’ Finn asked, looking at her with sympathy as she handed over her log.

‘Yes.’

‘What a bitch. Have you tried aloe vera?’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘Well. Take care.’ Finn signed her log, then turned his attention to Lucy. ‘Hi, Lucy! I should really sign this “With thanks”!’

Lucy gave a little tinkling laugh. ‘My pleasure!’ she said.

‘There should be plenty of Irish at the party. You’ll have a blast.’ Finn set Lucy’s log on the counter and scribbled his signature. He was just about to hand it back to her when he hesitated, looking puzzled. ‘Where did your tattoo go?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘Your tattoo,’ he repeated, indicating the inside crook of Lucy’s
right elbow. ‘I was sure I saw a tattoo there, on your arm, when we high-fived. I noticed it because it was unusual’

Lucy and Izzy exchanged glances, and Izzy immediately folded her arms tightly across her chest.

‘It was just a temporary peel-off tattoo,’ said Lucy. ‘It was the–um–the Japanese symbol for–um–’

‘Water,’ provided Izzy. ‘And it’s a kanji, not a symbol’

‘Cool. You should have it tattoo’d on permanently.’ And Finn gave Lucy the benefit of his great smile before handing back her logbook, and moving on to the next doe-eyed dive girl.

He looked just like a film star signing autographs, Izzy thought. Damn and blast! Why, why,
why
hadn’t she just come clean about who she was? But what could she have told him? This isn’t my real hair, and I’m not really a lesbian? And then she remembered the vile things that his mother had said about her family, and she decided that it would be a bit like fraternising with the enemy if she ever became chummy with Finn Kinsella. Finn
Byrne.
Maybe it was just as well that she’d stayed incognito.

Once outside the dive shop, Izzy and Lucy moseyed down to the beach, heading for the hut they’d booked themselves into.

‘Well, there’s no way I’ll be boogying over to the AC bar tonight,’ said Izzy.

‘Don’t be stupid, Iz,’ Lucy told her. ‘Have a shower, and I’ll work on getting rid of the rest of those extensions. Then we’ll go get something to eat. After you’ve had a couple of beers, you’ll feel better. We can’t miss out on a full moon party!’

Twisting a soggy strand of hair around a finger, Izzy reflected. Lucy was right. It really wasn’t fair of her, Izzy, to put a dampener on things just because she had messed up. ‘OK, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll go. And if I run into him I’ll just make a joke of—
Ow!
What the
fuck?’
A stabbing pain shot through Izzy’s foot. It felt as though the sole had been pierced by a white-hot blade. Lunging for Lucy’s arm, she clung on for support, and started hopping up and down on one leg. ‘Ow, ow,
ow!’
she gibbered.

‘Hey!’ said Lucy. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I’ve stood on something,’ whimpered Izzy. ‘Ow, ow,
ow!’

‘Sit down. Let me see.’

Izzy sat down on the sand and Lucy took her foot between her hands and examined it, before turning pale.

‘Ohmigod!
Help!’ she cried, jumping up and waving her arms. ‘Can anyone help?’

Indeed they could. Within seconds, Izzy and Lucy were surrounded by a bevy of beefcake, and within minutes, they were being transported on the back of a couple of motorbikes to the nurses’ station in a nearby resort.

‘Teh, tch,’ said the nurse, shaking her head. ‘That is a nasty wound. I can clean and bind it for you, but you must get to a hospital as soon as possible.’

‘Where is the nearest hospital?’ asked Izzy, blinking back tears of agony.

‘Koh Samui,’ said the nurse.

‘Nooooooo!’
wailed Izzy.

‘Go straight to gaol,’ said Lucy, with a resigned shrug. ‘Do not pass Go…’

And within the hour, Izzy and Lucy were on a speedboat heading for Samui, just as the full moon was making a tantalising entrance from behind a curtain of tangerine-coloured cloud.

Towards the tail end of the summer, Dervla had a response from the letting agency she’d engaged to say they might have a tenant for her, on one proviso. Was she prepared to accommodate pets?

Was she? Hm. She wasn’t sure. She’d have been perfectly happy for Río to hang on to W.B., but because the garden now belonged to Mrs Murphy, the cat had transferred his allegiance to her, and was now living next door.

‘Not more than one,’ Dervla hazarded back, trusting that the pet in question was not a python or a Komodo dragon or a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig.

Her duplex was booked the very next day.

A week later, Dervla was sitting on the sea wall opposite ‘her’ house. Río had invited her for supper, so that they could celebrate their mother’s birthday together in the home in which they had been brought up. Because Dervla was early and the evening was so lovely, she decided to loiter for a while and shoot the breeze with whoever should happen by.

Lissamore was looking especially pretty today, decked up as it was for a forthcoming arts festival. There was bunting strung all along the main street, and fairy lights festooned from lampposts.
Above her, Río’s balcony was so riotous with pinks, poppies and petunias that it could have been an entry in the Chelsea Flower Show. Dervla was glad she’d managed to wangle planning permission for its construction: permission for the deck at the back of the building had been no problem because it was out of sight, but the balcony had been less of a dead cert because it overlooked the street. Thankfully, her architect had been clever–if it weren’t for the fact that Río’s balcony was a virtual hanging garden, you almost wouldn’t know it was there.

Dervla’s eyes travelled from Río’s balcony down to the first storey of the house. Her tenant had evidently arrived–the blinds on the bedroom window had been raised. It must be seventh heaven, Dervla thought, to wake up in the morning and be faced with that view. Putting the picture windows in had been a smart idea: the prospect was south-east, and watching the sun rise over Lissamore could only be good for the soul. Maybe she’d been wrong to let the house? Maybe she should have swapped her city-girl heels for Río-style espadrilles and downsized to the stress-free zone that was village life? But then the vision that was Dervla’s gleaming penthouse arose before her mind’s eye, and her view over the bright lights of Galway city, and her Zen roof terrace, and the hot tub on the balcony of her bedroom, and she said to herself: ‘No, no, no!’

There was movement going on behind the window on the ground floor, and Dervla tensed, hoping that whoever was in there wouldn’t think she was spying on them. But then, her tenant wouldn’t have a clue that she was the landlord, so it didn’t matter. She didn’t look much like a landlord today anyway, dressed as she was in faded denims and T-shirt. She could be just another tourist taking her ease, soaking up the end of the glorious Coolnamara summer, and watching the world go by. But something made her reach into her bag and slide her shades on anyway, for that added touch of anonymity.

As she did so, the front door opened and a dog came bounding
out. It was lean and sleek, with an alert look and the air of a thoroughbred. Spotting Dervla on the other side of the road, the dog made for her instantly, wagging its tail, clearly keen to make a new friend. It was a female, about two years old, with the kind of coat Cruella de Vil would have killed for. It was a Dalmatian, and the man who followed it through the door onto the footpath was the spitting image of Pierce Brosnan.

On her balcony, Río was watering her little bonsai tree. The aroma of roasting garlic wafted through to her from the kitchen, making her hungry. She had invited Dervla to supper this evening, to celebrate what would have been their mother’s birthday.

Río’s miniature gardens were both looking good. The deck at the rear of her apartment accommodated two recliners and a collection of terracotta troughs, in which she’d planted several varieties of geraniums. Here on the balcony there was room for a table, two folding chairs, some urns and hanging baskets, as well as specially constructed ledges for lots of smaller pots. There were nut feeders and a nesting box for her resident bluetits and robin, a preposterously kitsch miniature fountain, strings of fairy lights, and other bits and pieces of whimsy–a tiny Tibetan monk worshipping at the foot of the bonsai, a small zoo of carved wooden animals prancing the length of a shelf, a rather rude Sile na Gig, and a piece of driftwood in the shape of a mermaid complete with tail, flowing hair and smiling face painted on by Río.

The sound of a familiar laugh from the street below made Río look down. There, sitting on the sea wall, looking rather fetching in a spaghetti-strapped cotton T-shirt and jeans, was her sister. She was smiling up at a man whom Río did not recognise, and a Dalmatian was dancing attendance, leaping up to put her forepaws on the sea wall so that Dervla could better pay her attention. It seemed she was bestowing most of her attention upon its master, because they were eyeing each other in that boy-meets-girl manner, body language quite openly flirtatious. Dervla
held her head at a coquettish angle, and she kept pushing a strand of her (newly coloured) hair behind her ear, while the man’s stance was one that combined easy grace with courtesy–an alpha male with manners!

Well, this was interesting! For a woman who had said only a few months previously that she had no room for a man in her life, Dervla was putting out all the wrong signals. Río watched as her sister got to her feet, checked her watch, then extracted a card from her bag and handed it to her swain, who in return handed over a card of his own. The pair said their farewells, and Dervla bent to scratch the Dalmatian’s ears before crossing the road without a backward glance. If she had looked back, Río was amused to notice, it would have been to see alpha-male-with-manners regarding her retreating rear with considerable interest.

The doorbell rang. With a smile, Río set down her watering can and went to let her sister in.

‘Yo! Welcome to my crib!’ she sang in mock hip-hop as she threw open the door. Dervla had taken her sunglasses off, and her eyes, as she climbed the final flight of stairs to Río’s loft, held a look of private amusement. ‘Who was the
dude?’

‘You’ve been spying on me!’ Dervla passed through the door and dropped her bag on a sofa. ‘Wow! Fantastic smell. What are we having?’

‘We are having,’ said Río, in the manner of a maitre d’ announcing the evening’s specials, ‘chicken baked in a lemon and garlic vinaigrette, with saffron roast potatoes and French beans, a side salad of rocket, red onion and roasted peppers followed by choc—’

‘No, no! Don’t tell me what’s for dessert. I’ll only want it, and I’m trying to lose weight.’ Dervla handed Río a hand-tied bouquet of country-garden-style blooms. ‘These are for you. A bit coals to Newcastle, to judge by all the green-fingered activity that’s been going on since I was last here. Your balcony looks like a display in a florist’s window.’

‘Thanks,’ said Río, accepting the flowers and admiring them. ‘They’re beautiful. Hey, they’d look good in the bedroom of four Lauderdale. They’re the exact same colour as the painting I hung on the wall there.’

‘Don’t you dare! I bought them as a present for you, not as set dressing.’

‘So,’ said Río, selecting a fluted white vase in which to display her bouquet, ‘who
is
the dude?’

‘Is that vase Parian china?’

‘Yeah. I got it in a car boot sale, and stop trying to change the subject.’

‘The dude,’ said Dervla, settling herself on a sofa, ‘happens to be the tenant from downstairs. Didn’t you meet him when he came to pick up the key?’

‘No. I was out doing the Bradshaws’ garden. I left the key with Mrs Murphy, and stuck a note on the window telling him he could get it from next door.’

‘Isn’t that a little rash, Río? Any chancer could have applied to Mrs Murphy for the key and carted off the entertainment system that cost me an arm and a leg.’

‘Phooey Sure didn’t I leave my car door unlocked the other night, and my wallet on the passenger seat, and nobody went near it. That’s the beauty of living in a village like Lissamore, Dervla. You can leave your front door on the latch all day. And you’re still trying to change the subject.’

‘His name is Christian Vaughan.’

‘Cool moniker!’

‘And he’s taken the place for a week because he’s thinking about coming to live here. I told him I’d be only too delighted to help him, and gave him my card.’

‘Serendipity!’

‘Serendipity?’

‘Serendipity’s when fate intervenes and good things start to happen.’

‘I know what serendipity means. I’m just trying to work out what’s so serendipitous about meeting a potential client and passing on my card.’

‘Well, he’s your man, isn’t he? The one with the Dalmatian who looks like Pierce Brosnan. I mean
he
looks like Pierce Brosnan, not the Dalmatian.’

‘I suppose he does rather,’ said Dervla. But Río noticed that there was something a little too studied about the casualness with which she made the observation.

‘What kind of house is he looking for?’ asked Río. ‘A big one with manicured lawns and topiary?’

‘Well, I don’t know about the manicured lawns and the topiary, but he is looking for something spacious–preferably with a granny flat or studio attached that could accommodate his mother.’

‘Uh-oh. A mummy’s boy? Is he gay?’

‘He is most emphatically
not
gay,’ said Dervla, and Río almost laughed at the affront in her sister’s tone, as if the virility of her putative dream man was somehow in question. ‘He’s divorced, with a daughter at boarding school in England.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He’s a wine importer, in Dublin. He and his business partner have decided to branch out, and he’s made an offer on a shop in Ardmore.’

‘So why’s he looking for a house here if his business is going to be in Ardmore?’

‘His preference is for Lissamore. It’s prettier, and the commute’s only fifteen minutes. And his mother was brought up here. He says he’d love her to spend her final years in the place where she enjoyed a happy childhood. She’s been living in London for years.’

Río gave her sister a look of admiration. ‘You got a lot of gen on him in a short space of time, Dervla. You could be a chat-show host.’

‘People skills are part of my job, Río. You don’t sell houses if you don’t show a bit of interest in your clients.’

‘He’s not your client,’ Río pointed out.

‘Not yet, he’s not,’ agreed Dervla, with the narrow-eyed smile of a seasoned speculator. ‘But I can guarantee you that he’ll be checking out my website later on this evening. Can I have a glass of wine, please?’

‘Sure.’

Río poured two glasses, handed one to her sister and said: ‘Here’s to Mama.’

‘To Mama,’ echoed Dervla. She took a thoughtful sip, then wandered towards the window to look out at the view. ‘I wonder what she’d make of us now. I wonder if she’d approve of how we’ve turned out.’

‘She’d approve of
you,’
said Río. ‘Who wouldn’t approve of a daughter who turned out to be such a high-flying achiever?’

‘Maybe. But you produced the grandson, and reared him all by yourself. That’s no mean achievement. We’ve both worked hard, in our own ways.’

‘I wonder who we inherited the work ethic from?’

‘Well, I certainly didn’t inherit it from Frank. Do you ever wonder about your–about the Patrick person?’

Río shook her head. She hadn’t told Dervla about the letter she had found in Mrs Murphy’s rosewood bureau. She had told no one about it. She felt that she owed it to her neighbour not to compromise her, and she felt that, in a way, she owed it to her father too. Abandoning Rosaleen and his baby daughter had clearly not been easy for Patrick, but it had been the right thing to do at the time. Back then, life in a rural village would have been hell for a married woman with children fathered by two different men.

Río had wondered–of course she had–about the final letter her father had written to Rosaleen, the one he’d enclosed in the envelope addressed to ‘Anne-Marie’. It was impossible to know
if Mrs Murphy had delivered it, because there had been no evidence of any farewell letter amongst the others her mother had stowed away in the battered vanity case. Río had resigned herself to the fact that it was something she would never find out. Maybe that was just as well. The past was another country, after all, and she had no wish to disturb the people who lived there still, who might finally have found some kind of peace.

She had also wondered–if Frank had found out that his neighbour had connived at her parents’ affair–would he have included Mrs Murphy in his will? It was doubtful, Río decided. He would probably have left the garden to the cat.

‘Do you think he might be here still, somewhere in Coolnamara?’ asked Dervla.

‘No. I shuffled his letters about and tried to put them in chronological order. They come to a kind of abrupt end. I think he probably hotfooted it out of town shortly after I was born.’

‘And you still haven’t made any effort to trace him?’

‘No. I’d be too scared he might be a waster, Dervla. From the way he writes, you can tell he’s a hopeless romantic. I met lots of men like him in the days when I was living with Finn in that commune in Galway–the kind of men who’d pass through and fall in love and then scarper if things got too heavy. Loads of girls ended up having babies by men they knew they were never going to see again. I was one of the luckier ones. At least Shane cared enough to send money when he could, and made an effort to see Finn from time to time. Still does. At least Finn knows his father’s on his side.’

‘And his aunt. If he ever has any worries that he can’t talk to you about, tell him he can come to me.’

‘Thanks. It’ll be good for him to know he has family apart from me and his dad. Shane’s folks never wanted to know. They couldn’t handle the idea of a bastard in the family’

Dervla made a sympathetic face. ‘It must have been lonely sometimes.’

‘It was. It’s funny–because I’m so outgoing and sociable people always think I’m doing grand. You’re the only person who knew how bad things had got that time after Finn left.’