That Gallagher Girl. Kate Thompson
legacy lived on in the form of the denuded meat bones that strewed the backyard of the house. Sweet Jesus, this was a cheerless place! Surely Adair had seen photographs of it online and read the implausible sales blurb? No amount of Photoshopping could disguise its intrinsic ugliness, no estate agent’s spiel convince that this property didn’t come with a big ‘BUYER BEWARE!’ sticker on it. Río wondered for the umpteenth time what had possessed him to buy it.
Skirting a pile of rusty bicycle parts, she negotiated the mud track that led to the back door, glad that she was wearing her wellies. She didn’t need the key, she realised, as she went to insert it in the lock: the door was ajar. Oh, God. This was the bit in the horror film, the bit where you peek through your fingers and tell the stupid girl not to go in there, the bit where you get ready to jump.
Río nudged the door with her foot. It swung open with a spooky sound-effect creak.
But once she stepped through the porch into the living space, she breathed easy. There were no Silence of the Lambs sewing machines lined up to greet her, no Texas chainsaws caked in gore. Instead, she found herself in a room with a view.
Adair had told her once that, in his fantasy life as a fisherman, he didn’t care where he lived as long as the house in question had a view. Beyond the grimy picture window that stretched the length of the ground floor, this place had a vista to die for. The sea was just yards away from the front doorstep: all that separated the house from the wavelets lapping against the shingle was a swatch of overgrown lawn. Beyond the grassy incline, a jetty projected into the estuary, a red and blue rowing boat hitched to one of its stone bollards. As Río watched, a gull perched on the furthermost bollard lifted itself into the air and wheeled away towards Inishclare island, over which the vestiges of a double rainbow glimmered. Squalling seagulls and turbulence in the water to the west spoke of mackerel activity; a trail of bubbles told her an otter was on its way. Presiding over all, like a beneficent deity enthroned upon the horizon, a purple mountain slumbered, swathed in a shawl of cobwebby cloud.
Río drew her phone from the pocket of her jacket and accessed her list of contacts. Looks like you got yourself a crib with a view – but not a lot else, mr bolger, she texted, then paused as, from somewhere further along the estuary, came the aggrieved squawk of a heron. She turned and saw it flap past the east-facing window on the far side of the room – a bog-standard timber-framed casement. The glass was broken, Río noticed as she moved towards it, and the sill littered with dead bluebottles. Brushing them to the floor with the corner of a filthy net half-curtain, she leaned her elbows on the ledge. No wonder this window had been obscured with net, she thought, as she surveyed the dismal aspect. If the view were a drawing and she had an eraser handy, she’d have rubbed it out, for Madser’s junkyard was emphatically not the stuff of picture postcards – unless you were a Britart aficionado.
Turning back towards the main room, Rio decided that the junkyard inside the house was nearly as bad. The floor was littered with detritus: bottles, cans, cigarette butts, plastic bags, cardboard cartons, old newspapers. The headline of a yellowed National Enquirer screamed up at her, and she remembered with a smile how she had once made it into the pages of the Enquirer, whose gushing prose had described her as a ‘flame-haired Irish colleen and erstwhile lover of Hollywood heart-throb Shane Byrne’. Her relationship with Shane had been bigged up as a ‘tempestuous affair’; their son, Finn, had become a ‘love child’, and it was hinted that the only reason Shane had never married was because he was still ‘smitten’ with the ‘first and only true love of his life.’
How funny to think that people reading it may have imagined some uber-romantic Wuthering Heights scenario with the pair of them pining in perpetuity for each other, when in reality Shane and Río Skyped at least once a week, swapped photographs of Finn on a regular basis, and were forever sending each other links to daft stuff on YouTube.
She was on her way across the room towards the staircase when her phone sounded. Adair.
‘Hey, Río!’ came his cheerful voice through her earpiece. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you’re mad,’ said Río. ‘It’s like something out of Slumdog Millionaire, except you’re not even a millionaire any more. Are you seriously thinking of living here?’
‘I’m not thinking, Río. It’s a done deal.’
‘Jesus, Adair. The place is a mess.’
‘What do I care? I’ve got my view, I’ve got my oyster beds.’
‘You’ve got rats.’ In her peripheral vision, Río registered a furry something scurrying along the skirting board.
‘I’ll get a cat.’
‘You’ve got birds, too,’ she said, looking up. ‘There’s a swallows’ nest in the stairwell. That’s meant to be lucky.’
‘Then I won’t get a cat.’
‘You’ll have to get used to living with bird shit, so.’
‘Beats living with bullshit. There’s been too much of that in my life lately.’
As Río laid a hand on the white-spattered banister, a feather spiralled from the ceiling. She guessed the birds had found a way in under the eaves. Gaping eaves, broken windows, unlocked doors – the place might as well have been flying a welcome banner for a come-all-ye. ‘Shall I give you a guided tour, Mr Bolger?’ she asked.
‘You’re there now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks, Río. It’s good of you to check the joint out for me.’
‘I’m curious. This was the bogeyman’s house when I was a kid. I’ve never been down this way before.’
‘You might send me some pictures. I’m not sure the ones on the internet do it justice. What’s that noise?’
‘A cider can. I just kicked it out of the way.’
Río felt another flash of unease as the can clattered down the staircase. Who might have been here before her? Might she have company, apart from Ratty and his feathered friends? She was glad that Adair had phoned, glad his voice was in her ear. She tightened her grip on her Nokia as she climbed up to the first floor, avoiding any dodgy-looking steps. She didn’t want to end up stuck here on her own with a broken ankle.
‘I’m upstairs, now,’ she told him, looking around. Above her, a mouldering raffia lampshade dangled from an empty Bakelite socket, to her right a beaded curtain obscured the entrance to what she guessed was the bathroom. Across the landing, a door hung off its hinges. She passed through into a long, low-ceilinged room that smelled of damp. ‘I suppose this is the master bedroom.’
‘It’s the only bedroom.’
‘The only one, Adair? What’ll you do when Izzy comes to stay?’
‘I’ll put her in the mobile home.’
‘What mobile home?’
‘I’m not hanging around waiting for the boys in the planning department to sneer at any ideas I might come up with for a refurbishment project, Río. I’m not going to give them the satisfaction of binning my applications, or giving me the runaround. I don’t need planning permission for a mobile, so I’m going to put one out back, and live there while I work on the place.’
‘You’re going to do the graft yourself?’
‘I am. Didn’t I start my career as a builder? A bloody crack one, too. I’m the only person I could trust to get the job done properly.’
Río guessed he was right. She had no problem picturing Adair getting his hands dirty, navvying by day and dossing down in a mobile home by night. But the notion of Princess Isabella – his beloved only child – slumming it in a caravan made her want to laugh out loud.
‘Won’t you feel claustrophobic, Adair, cooped up in a mobile home after all those years living in villas and penthouses and hotel suites and what-have-yous?’