That Gallagher Girl. Kate Thompson
memory of perfect Paloma by marrying that gold-digging has-been?
She suddenly felt very tired. But she didn’t want to go to bed just yet.
‘Let’s finish the wine,’ she said to Finn, ‘and watch the sun come up.’
‘Nice idea,’ said Finn with a smile. ‘I’ll get my camera. I’ve some great shots of the sunrise over Inishclare that I took a couple of years back.’
‘I’d love to see them.’
‘Coming up.’
Finn disappeared into the kitchen, and Cat settled down on one of the Terence Conran chaise longues and tried to make herself comfortable. Bruce Springsteen was bouncing off the walls, warbling about Candy’s room, and Cat wished he wouldn’t, because it was such a sexy song. That iPod was a miniature miracle, she thought, especially when compared to her great clumsy brick of a Sony Walkman. It had belonged to her mother, and before the fire Cat had used to plug herself into it every night before she slept, even though it devoured batteries. Cat could ill afford batteries – but, like art materials, they were her essentials, the way make-up or hair straighteners or gossip magazines were for some women.
‘More grub.’ Finn was back, bearing a tray on which he’d laid out a kind of antipasto. He set it down, and refilled Cat’s wineglass. ‘Izzy and me used to do this, way back,’ he said.
‘Do what?’
‘Crack open a bottle of wine and watch the sun rise. Here, have a look.’ He handed her his camera. ‘See? That was taken at around this time of year. With a bit of luck, we might get something similar today – the weather conditions are about the same.’
Cat looked at the picture displayed on the screen of Finn’s camera. It showed a breathtaking tangerine sun rising over a roseate sea. Silhouetted against the horizon, a figure was holding a fiendishly difficult yoga pose with seeming effortlessness.
‘Who’s the yoga master?’ she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be.
She wasn’t wrong, and there was a smile in his voice when he replied. ‘That’s Izzy,’ said Finn. ‘I’ll never forget that night. I had exams to take, to do with Nitrox diving. She sat and read and read and re-read the dive manual out loud, so that it would stick in my head. It was the most boring stuff in the world, but she made it sound like poetry. Isn’t she gorgeous?’
Chapter Five
Río was looking at pictures of a mobile home on the internet. It was due to be delivered today in two separate sections to Adair’s oyster farm, and Río was to be there to meet it.
The ‘Bentley’ was like no mobile home she had ever seen. Her experience of caravanning had been limited to the Roadmasters of her childhood, when she and Dervla had gone with their parents to spend a fortnight of the summer in a trailer park in Sligo. Those mobile homes had been all Beauty Board and Crimplene curtains and swirly Acrilan carpets, with unreliable water pressure (the shower would peter out just as you were shampooing your hair), and intermittent electricity during storms. She and Dervla had fought over who would get the top bunk in the confined space of the ‘spare’ bedroom, and entertainment had consisted of 479-piece jigsaws (masquerading as 500-piece jigsaws), back copies of the Reader’s Digest, and Cluedo with Mrs White and the lead piping missing.
This Bentley yoke was a revelation. Its galley-style kitchen was bigger than the one in Río’s apartment, it boasted an en-suite shower room as well as a state-of-the-art tiled bathroom, and a ‘bespoke’ flame-effect hole-in-the-wall fire. Not only did the Bentley have an integrated washer/drier and a dishwasher, it also featured a Smeg American fridge-freezer, a kitchen island unit complete with built-in wine cooler, and a home cinema and surround-sound system. There was a study kitted out in tan leather office furniture, ‘beautiful’ bed throws and scatter cushions (Río thought them the most hideous things she’d ever seen), and – ta-ran-ta-ra! to cap it all – there were ‘soft-close’ toilet seats. Río could not help but notice the plural. The single loo in her bathroom had a seat that slid out of place every time you sat on it, due to the fact that she hadn’t got around to replacing a missing bolt.
When he’d asked her to oversee the advent of the Bentley, Adair had made some joke about the fact that he’d gone from being a property baron to being trailer park trash almost overnight. Trailer park trash! This mobile home was fit for a queen: or, at the very least, a princess. And there was, of course, a scratch-resistant quartz vanity unit in the bathroom for HRH Izzy, and a custom-built closet in her boudoir.
Río wondered how much this Bentley yoke had cost Adair. A fraction, she conceded, of what it had cost Shane to buy Coral Mansion; but then, Shane could afford to splash money around now. Back when they’d conceived Finn and lived in a squat, neither of them would ever have dreamed that Shane might one day be in a position to afford as much as a time-share in a crumby bedsit, let alone an apartment in a brownstone overlooking Central Park and a house on Mulholland Drive. She’d had a phone call from Finn first thing that morning to say that, since his flight had landed at one o’clock am (having been held up by mutinous cabin crew on another go-slow), he had decided not to disturb his auld mammy.
‘You should know that I can’t imagine anything lovelier than being disturbed by you!’ she’d told him crossly. ‘You’re a pig, Finn. I need a hug from you more than I need anything right now.’
‘Look on it as delayed gratification, Ma,’ he’d told her. And when she’d asked him about the ‘surprise’ he’d mentioned yesterday, he’d said, ‘Hold on tight. You’re going to fall off your chair.’ He was right. Because she’d been leaning backwards rather precariously when Finn revealed that the Mystery Buyer of Coral Mansion was none other than his dad – Río had done just that.
‘Well, I’ll be doggone,’ she said. ‘Shane must be on Monopoly money.’
‘I think he got it at a knockdown price.’
‘Ha! That’s exactly what should be done with that hideous carbuncle. Just knock the joint down and start again.’
‘Not a chance, Ma. I’m here to oversee the refurbishment. But you’ll be glad to know that the first casualty will be the yoga pavilion. I’m going to demolish it today.’
‘That eyesore? Yes!’
‘I’ll be kipping here, by the way, while I’m working on the joint.’
‘That’s cool.’
The sleeping arrangements suited Río because, while she adored her drop-dead-gorgeous son, he was six foot two, and her apartment overlooking the harbour was tiny. She’d have him round for dinner tonight: he’d be jetlagged, she guessed, and in need of red meat and red wine after knocking down the pavilion that had been built for Felicity all those years ago, when Adair had been rich, and Shane had been poor. How the tables had turned!
She supposed Shane buying Coral Mansion was a bit like that intrepid mountaineer Mallory trying to conquer Everest ‘because it was there’, or Richard Burton buying the Krupp Diamond because it was up for grabs, or Imelda Marcos spending a fortune on shoes she’d never wear. She also supposed that he’d finally given in to Finn’s badgering about converting the joint into a scuba-dive centre. The badgering had been going on for so long now that it had become a family joke.
Río knew as well that it would give Shane no little pleasure to own the biggest, brashest, most ‘fuck-off’ residence in Lissamore, particularly since it had once belonged to the man who had been his rival in love. How would poor Adair Bolger, slogging over his oyster beds and slumming it in a mobile home (even one as deluxe as the Bentley), feel when he found out that Shane Byrne was now the owner of the erstwhile Villa Felicity?
Ping! Outlook Express announced the arrival of an email in her inbox. Oh! As if life wasn’t complicated enough, the email was from Isabella Bolger, ‘Sent from My iPhone’, and the subject matter was the Bentley.
Hi, Río, she read, when she clicked on the envelope icon. I understand