Secrets Between Sisters: The perfect heart-warming holiday read of 2018. Kate Thompson
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The place was catastrophic. It was clearly a repository for everything Frank had decided he no longer needed. Trunks, boxes, old shoes, books, clothes, broken furniture–all lay as if they had been slung there by some giant hands. The beds had been dismantled, and dumped in a corner. Cobwebs big as mantillas hung from the ceiling, and a rather pretty fungus filigreed a section of wall. The glass in the skylight was broken, and the surface of a table that stood beneath was so blistering with damp it resembled a bad case of adolescent acne. The place smelled dank.
‘OK,’ said Dervla. ‘I’ve just knocked a couple of hundred grand off the asking price.’
‘We’ll never get this sorted before the funeral!’ wailed Río, looking around in dismay.
‘You’re right. But it’s not as if we’ll be inviting people into the attic. We’ll just have to concentrate on the downstairs.’
‘What are we going to do with all this crap?’
‘We’re going to hire a skip.’ Dervla moved into the centre of the attic, stepping over a rusty fire guard and kicking a cushion out of the way. ‘Look,’ she said, stooping to pick up a velour elephant. ‘It’s Ella. Remember how you couldn’t sleep without her, and Mama had to send a taxi to pick her up from some place once?’
‘I’d left her behind at a birthday party, and Dad was too “tired” to drive.’ Río took the elephant from Dervla and brushed dust from her ears. ‘I wondered where she’d got to. I’ll hang on to her now I’ve found her. She’ll be useful for hugging when I’m feeling blue.’
‘She’s probably the only thing here worth salvaging.’
‘She smells a bit musty. She’ll have to go through the washing machine.’ Río set Ella on top of a magazine rack. ‘Poor darling. She’ll hate that.’
Dervla raised an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you think you’ve reached the age where it’s time to put childish things behind you?’
‘It’s never time to do that. Oh, look! There’s my copy of The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey.’ She picked up a book that had a picture of two children on the front, perched on a cart drawn by a little grey donkey.
‘It’s mine, actually,’ said Dervla. ‘Grandma gave it to Mama, and Mama gave it to me.’
‘She did, did she? Lucky old you. It’s a first edition–with illustrations by Jack B. Yeats. It could be worth a lot of money.’
‘It’s mine,’ repeated Dervla. ‘You got the Arthur Rackham Midsummer Night’s Dream—’
‘That Dad ruined by spilling Guinness all over it.’
‘And I got The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey. Look at the flyleaf. It’s got my name on it.’
Río looked. The words ‘Dervla Kinsella’ were there, all right, printed in Dervla’s neat hand. She shrugged, and handed it over. ‘I hope you get a good price for it.’
‘What makes you think I want to sell it?’
‘I dunno. I guess, when I visualise your penthouse, I picture a place that’s not cluttered with books and keepsakes and stuff. Like a showroom kind of joint.’
Río saw Dervla stiffen. ‘You don’t have the monopoly on art and literature, Río, just because of your boho credentials.’
Ow. Río had clearly hit a nerve here, by labelling Dervla as some kind of philistine. She’d have to backtrack. She realised with sudden alarm that she didn’t want to have Dervla revert to spiky mode. In the past hour they’d started to unravel a lot of tangled history–a cat’s cradle of loose ends and missing threads and dropped stitches. Río had her sister back in her life, and she wanted to keep her there: she needed an ally to help her through this horrible time. Frank may have been an irresponsible and neglectful father, but he’d still been family. Now that Finn was on the verge of disappearing from her life, Dervla was the only family Río had left.
‘I just–I’d just have thought you were the kind of gal who prefers minimalism.’
‘But I also like to surround myself with beautiful artefacts. I embrace the aesthetic that decrees that one should have nothing in one’s life that is neither beautiful nor useful. And I happen to consider this book rather beautiful.’ Dervla hugged The Turf-Cutter’s Donkey to her bosom. ‘Mama used to read it to me.’
Río wanted to remind Dervla that Mama had used to read it to her too, but decided against it. She didn’t want hostilities to resume at any second. Instead she started to root through a cardboard box full of old books and papers, and said: ‘Whereabouts exactly in Galway is your apartment?’
‘It’s in the Sugar Stack development, by the docks. Do you know it?’
Río did. Privately, she thought the development was hideous. ‘Oh–the Sugar Stack! Of course I know it. It’s…astonishing.’
‘Yes. It’s been nominated for an award for best city-centre residential development.’
‘How do you find city life?’ Río was genuinely curious. The only time she had lived in the city had been in a kind of commune, with baby Finn and a load of arty vagabonds. She hadn’t a clue how it might feel to be a high-flying achiever type like Dervla. ‘I mean, I know you’ve lived there most of your life, but it’s so different from this sleepy ville.’
‘I love it. I love the buzz.’
‘Isn’t it stressful?’
‘Luckily, I thrive on stress. Did you never feel the urge to leave Lissamore?’
‘Never. I wanted to be somewhere I could put down roots for Finn, somewhere I knew people. I’d have hated him growing up as a latch-key kid in some inner city flat or commuter town semi.’
‘What makes you think you’d end up living in a place like that?’
‘Anything else would be out of my league, Dervla. Because I’ve no qualifications I’d have had to take some low-paid work and slog all hours of the day. Anyway, village life suits me–I love being part of a community. When Finn was growing up here there was always someone to mind him. And I couldn’t ever live more than a mile from a beach. Can you blame me?’ Reaching into the box, Río produced an out-of-date calendar that featured images of Coolnamara’s beaches and the islands on the bay. ‘I love to be reminded that we live on the most westerly stretch of Europe.’
‘Hey!’ said Dervla, peering at the calendar. ‘I sold that cottage last year–the little pink-washed one on Inishclare. Got a good price for it too.’
Beneath the calendar was a once-glossy brochure with red wine rings on the cover. ‘Look,’ said Río. ‘It’s a PR puff for the Sugar Stack. I wonder what Dad was doing with this?’
There was a moment of silence, then: ‘I gave it to him,’ Dervla told her in a rush. ‘I guess I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted him to be able to show it to neighbours and say: “Look how my girl’s made good. Look where she’s living now.” Pathetic, isn’t it?’
Río shook her head. ‘No. It’s not pathetic. I always had a dream that he might look in through Fleur’s window and see my paintings on the wall and be proud of me too. It’s the same thing, really. You wanted him to be proud of your success, and I wanted him to be proud of my creativity. It’s ironic, isn’t? We’ve no one to be proud of us now.’
‘You have Finn,’ Dervla pointed out.
‘And you have me!’ Río said with a smile.
Dervla gave her an uncertain look. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes. I’m really, really proud of you. Every time I drive past a property that has your name up outside it, I always get a kind of buzz. Have done, ever since I saw the first one–when was it? About fifteen years ago? You’ve come a long way,