The O’Hara Affair (2 page)

‘Wait!’ said Raoul. ‘Take your boots off. You don’t want to leave footprints.’

Cat undid the laces on her boots, pulled them off and dropped them on the muddy ground below the window. Then she twisted around, slid her legs through the empty frame, and eeled herself into the house.

‘How easy was that!’ she crowed, and her words came back to her, bouncing off the smooth plaster walls of the house that would never be sold, never be lived in. ‘Come and have a look, Raoul.’

He followed her through.

Both utility room and kitchen were equipped with state-of-the-art white goods. The kitchen floor was marble, the work surfaces polished granite. The adjacent sitting-room boasted a gas fire and a panelled alcove in which to house a plasma screen. Beyond the sitting room, beyond doors that accessed study, den and conservatory, carpeted stairs led from
the light-filled lobby to bedrooms and bathrooms above. The walk-in wardrobe in the master bedroom was bigger than Cat’s room in Hugo’s house.

She wondered what it must be like to live in a house like this. Would you live a life here, or a lifestyle? Would you curl your feet up on a suede upholstered sofa while aiming a remote at your entertainment suite? Would you microwave a ready meal from a top end outlet while uncorking a chilled bottle of Sauvignon Blanc? Would you cuff an infant lovingly when he or she trotted mud onto your marble tiles before reaching for your eco-friendly floor wipes?

Hugo’s house was so very different. Hugo’s house stood all alone in the middle of a forest, and was like something out of a Grimms’ fairytale. It was dark and tumbledown with a cruck frame and exposed beams and a roof that slumped in the middle. Having settled comfortably into its foundations over the course of three hundred years, Hugo’s house listed to starboard, and had crooked windows and wonky stairs and worn flagstones. Hugo refused to compromise the character of his house by introducing twenty-first century fixtures and fittings: his fridge was clad in elm planks, he cooked on an ancient Rayburn. There was no television, no broadband and no power shower. People described Hugo’s house as ‘quaint’. But they didn’t have to live there. Cat had never been able to call Hugo’s house home.

She had returned there when she was thirteen, after her mother – Hugo’s third wife – had died of uterine cancer. Paloma had left Hugo and the crooked house six years previously, taking Cat with her to Dublin, where they had lived until Paloma’s untimely death. Back on the west coast, the teenage Cat, bereaved and isolated, found it impossible to make friends. Her Dublin accent singled her out as being different – that and the fact that her eccentric father was
living with his fourth (some said fifth) wife.

Cat hated school. Hugo had tried the boarding option, but she just kept absconding, and running away to Raoul’s bedsit in Galway. When she was expelled from boarding school, she mitched from the local school so often that Hugo made a pledge to the authorities to home-school his daughter. But Cat shrugged off his half-hearted attempts. How could you have faith in a teacher who sloshed brandy into his morning coffee and smoked roll-ups while he recited Shakespeare and Seamus Heaney in maudlin tones? The answer was – you didn’t. You gave him the finger, and went off in search of ponies to ride, or cloudscapes to paint, or – which activity she was presently engaged in – houses to break into.

And neither the authorities nor her father seemed to give a shit.

Cat strolled across the pristine oatmeal carpet of the show home’s master bedroom to a big dormer window that looked out over the building site. How many houses might there be all over Ireland languishing unfinished, waiting for someone to occupy them? She reckoned she could have her pick of thousands. To the east – inland – ribbon developments straggled Dublin-ward along the sides of the roads. To the south, the landscape was dotted with unoccupied holiday homes. To the west, an expanse of ocean glittered diamantine.

‘Look, Raoul!’ she said, turning to him as he followed her through the door. ‘You can see the cemetery on Inishcaillín from here.’

Inishcaillín was where Cat’s mother, Paloma, had been buried. It was on the summit of a drowned drumlin, and Cat would occasionally take a boat out to spend a day on the island, talking to her mother, undisturbed by anyone since the island was uninhabited now. Paloma’s grave was
surrounded by dozens of graves of victims of the Irish famine, all with their headstones facing west towards the Atlantic, that they might see in the setting sun the ghosts of all those loved ones who had fled Ireland for America. It was a desolate place, whipped by raging gales that came in from the ocean, but it had been a place that Paloma had loved like no other, and that was why Cat had insisted she be buried there. When she was a little girl, she and her mother had used to take picnics over to the island, and swim in the more sheltered of the easterly coves. They’d explored the abandoned village, too, making up stories about the people who used to live there, and had once even pitched a tent and stayed overnight in one of the roofless cottages.

‘Do you miss her still?’ asked Raoul.

Cat turned to him. ‘Of course I do. But I hate her too, in a way, for leaving me alone with that bastard and his whore.’ She saw Raoul raise an eyebrow. ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘You know how I feel about them.’

‘Cat, Cat, you drama queen,’ he chided. ‘Sometimes you talk like something out of Shakespeare.’

‘That bastard and his ho, then,’ she returned, pettishly. ‘Let’s open the other bottle. I feel like getting drunk.’

Cat had never been able to call her stepmother anything other than whore. Although Sophie had been Mrs Gallagher for nearly ten years now, Cat refused to acknowledge her. When she had moved in with Hugo four years ago she had steadfastly resisted all Sophie’s attempts to befriend her. Stepmother and stepdaughter barely bothered with each other now.

Raoul took the second bottle of wine from his duffle bag, and started to strip away the foil from the neck. ‘You’re seventeen now, Cat,’ he pointed out. ‘Legally speaking, you could leave home, with our father’s permission.’

‘Sure, he’d give it in a heartbeat.’ Cat leaned against the wall, and slid down until she was sitting on the carpet.

‘Well, then?’

‘Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. But where would I go – and
don’t
tell me I can move in with you because there’s no way I’m gonna cramp your style with the ladies.’ Raoul inserted the corkscrew and pulled the cork, and Cat smiled up at him. ‘I’ll never forget how pissed-off your girlfriends used to look every time I escaped from the boarding school of doom and landed on your doorstep.’

Raoul laughed. ‘It was a little bizarre. Remember the night you sleepwalked your way into bed with me and – what was her name? It was some hippy-dippy thing.’

‘Windsong. I could never keep my face straight when I talked to her. Windsong
hated
me.’

Raoul poured wine, then handed Cat a cup, and sat down beside her. ‘So let’s have a serious think about this. You can’t move in with me, and you can’t afford to rent anywhere.’

‘You’re right. There’s no way I could afford to live on my allowance. And I can’t live without it. It’s a catch twenty-two. I may hate our dad, but he doles out the dosh.’

‘And he’s not going to cut you off, kid. If you do move out, get him to lodge money to your bank account.’

‘I don’t have a savings account. And I can’t open a current account until I’m eighteen.’

‘Get him to send you postal orders.’

Cat gave him a sceptical look. ‘To where? Cat Gallagher – no fixed abode?’

‘It’s dead simple. I used to do it all the time when I was travelling. You set up a Poste Restante in the local post office, and pick up your mail there.’

Cat made a face. ‘Maybe I should get a job.’

‘Maybe you should.’

‘Ha! Let’s face it, Raoul – I’m unemployable.’

‘Don’t be defeatist, sweetheart. And, hang on – I think…I
think…
’

‘Share. I hate enigmatic pauses.’ Cat took a hit of her wine.

‘I think I might be having a very good idea.’ Raoul gave her a speculative look. ‘How would you feel about living on a houseboat, Kitty Cat?’

‘A houseboat! How cool! Tell me about it.’

‘I have a friend who has one in Coolnamara. He could do with someone to caretake it for him.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes. His wife’s in a wheelchair, and they can’t live on a boat any more. Can’t sell it, either. And he doesn’t want it to rot away on the water.’

‘Where is it?’

‘It’s on a stretch of canal near Lissamore, the one that goes from nowhere to nowhere.’

‘Nowhere to nowhere?’

‘It was one of those pointless famine relief projects, designed to give the starving locals the wherewithal to buy a few grains of Indian corn back in the 1840’s. As far as I know, it was never used for anything. But my mate Aidan had his houseboat transported and plonked down in a safe berth. He hasn’t visited it for over a year now, and he’d love it to be given some TLC. He couldn’t pay you, but I’m pretty sure he’d let you live there rent free.’

‘Oh, Raoul! I’d love to live on a houseboat!’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’ Raoul picked up the wine bottle. ‘Here. Have some more Château Whatever.’

Raoul was as good as his word. He put in a call to his mate Aidan, and sorted Cat out with her brand new home from the place she couldn’t call home. And by the time they’d finished the bottle and left the house the way they’d come in and hit the main road, Cat was feeling buoyant and full of hope.

‘Bye bye, Raoul,’ she said, as the twice-weekly bus to Galway appeared over the brow of the hill, and drew up by the turnoff to Hugo’s house. ‘You are my fairy half-brother.’

‘Less of the fairy, thanks. I’ll be in touch.’

Cat hugged Raoul the way she never hugged anybody else, and watched him board the bus.

‘Here,’ he said, taking something out of his duffle bag, and tossing it to her. ‘You may need this.’ He gave her a final salute, and then the bus door slid shut and he was gone.

In her hand, Cat was clutching the screwdriver she’d used to gain access to the show house. She smiled, and turned toward the path that would take her to the house in the forest, the house that she hoped to leave soon. As she passed through the gate and rounded the first bend, a voice from behind her hissed: ‘Cat! Cat! Here, Kitty Cat!’

She swung round as they emerged from the trees. There were three of them. They were wearing stocking masks and stupid grins. Someone said, ‘A little bird told me it was your birthday, Kitty Cat. Come here to us now, like a good girl, and let us give you your birthday present.’

Without pausing for thought, Cat aimed the first kick.

Fleur O’Farrell felt foolish. She was standing in front of the wardrobe in her bedroom, regarding her reflection in the mirror. Fleur normally took real pride in her appearance – but this afternoon she was wearing a floral print skirt over flouncy petticoats, a cherry-red cummerbund, and a low-cut blouse. Her feet were bare, a silk shawl was slung around her shoulders, and great gilt hoops dangled from her earlobes. The crowning glory was the wig – an Esmeralda-style confection of synthetic black curls. She looked like a chorus member from a second-rate production of
Carmen
.

Her friend, Río Kinsella, had talked her in to playing the fortune-teller at the annual Lissamore village festival. Río usually took on the role herself, but this summer she was up to her tonsils in work, and had not a moment to spare. So Río had furnished Fleur with the gypsy costume, as well as a crystal ball, a chenille tablecloth and a manual called
Six Lessons in Crystal Gazing
. The flyleaf told Fleur that these words of wisdom had been published in 1928.

Turning away from the mirror, Fleur reached for the dog-eared booklet. The cover featured a bug-eyed gal transfixed by a crystal ball, and the blurb went: ‘Are you lacking in selfconfidence, unemployed or discouraged? Are you prepared
for the future, or blindly groping in the darkness? Do you wish for health, happiness and success?’

Evidently not a lot had changed in the world since 1928. People were still asking the same questions, and still entertaining the same hopes and ambitions. Nowadays, however, instead of using crystal gazing as a means of self-help, people were unrolling yoga mats and sticking Hopi candles in their ears to assist them in their navel gazing. Much the same thing, Fleur supposed.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…

A blast of hip hop drew her to the open window. A youth was lazily patrolling the main street of the village, posing behind the steering wheel of his soft-top and checking out the talent. Being high season, there was a lot on display. Girls decked out in Roxy, Miss Sixty, and Diesel promenaded the pavements and lounged against the sea wall, hooked up to their iPods, gossiping on their phones or browsing on their BlackBerries. Beautiful girls with gym-toned figures and sprayed-on tans and GHD hair, sporting must-have designer eyewear and designer bags to match. High-maintenance girls, whose daddies footed the department-store bills and whose mummies stole their style. Girls who did not know what the word ‘recession’ meant.

Lissamore was not usually host to such quantities of de luxe
jeunesse dorée
. The village was, rather, a playground for their parents, a place where those jaded denizens of Dublin 4 came to unwind for a month in the summer and a week at Christmas. Once the yearned-for eighteenth birthdays arrived, the princelings and princesses tended to migrate to hipper locations in Europe or America.

But this summer, because a major motion picture was being made in the countryside surrounding Lissamore, the village had become a must-visit zone. Wannabe film stars had descended in their droves after an article in a national
newspaper had mentioned that extras were being recruited for
The O’Hara Affair
– a movie based on the back story of Gerard O’Hara, father to Scarlett of
Gone with the Wind
. An additional allure was the fact that the movie starred Shane Byrne, a local hero and Ireland’s answer to Johnny Depp.