Chapter Six

      Oh God oh God oh God, thought Izzy, tearing her eyes away from the vision that was Finn and fixing them on the lipsticked mouth of the woman called Dervla. You stupid, stupid girl. What did you mean by grinning flakily at someone who’s just lost his grandfather?

      Did he remember her? She knew she bore little resemblance to the kid he’d once hefted onto a donkey’s back, the kid who’d ordered him off her land.

      She cringed when she remembered the way she’d spoken to him that day, all puffed up with self-importance because her daddy had told her that the land she stood on–the pretty overgrown garden and the fairy-tale orchard and the stretch of beach beyond–belonged to them now. What a prissy, obnoxious brat she’d been! No wonder the people of Lissamore had ‘taken agin’ the Bolger family, big time. Today was the first time in all those years that anyone had invited them to anything.

      Izzy had been having lunch with her dad in the seafood bar upstairs at O’Toole’s, earlier in the day, when Dervla Kinsella had approached and invited them to attend the wake for her father. Izzy had known it was Dervla, because she’d met her while accompanying Adair to the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in Dublin. Izzy hadn’t wanted to go to the wake. She’d never been to one, and she wasn’t sure how you were meant to behave on such an occasion, but her father had insisted. It would show respect to the Kinsella family, he’d said, and it would be noted with approval by their neighbours.

      Izzy knew that her father was keen to curry favour with the people of Lissamore. Since he’d built the barnacle on the beach, the Bolger family had not been made to feel welcome here. They’d spent just a handful of summers in their ‘country cottage’ before Mummy had left Daddy, and the house had become one of those ghost houses that you see all over Coolnamara, boarded up for the best part of the year until the owners find windows of opportunity to descend for weekends.

      Those summers had been one long stream of house parties, with guests arriving from Dublin in their Mercs and top-of-the-range SUVs. The grown-ups would spend the weekends drinking Pimm’s and swapping gossip on the terrace while the kids played in the garden or in the pool. They weren’t allowed to play on the beach because it was deemed to be too dangerous for the smaller children without their au pairs in tow (Izzy often thought that the real reason was because the yummy mummies didn’t want the kids’ OshKosh gear to get spoiled), although they were allowed to play on what Felicity called ‘the Greensward’–the strip of lawn that she had had planted adjacent to the slipway.

      Isabella had thought this stretch of land to be their own private property until it had been made clear by the Lissamore people that it was no such thing. The locals had taken to bringing picnics down to ‘the Greensward’ and playing ball games on it, and once the Bolger family had arrived down from Dublin to find some baby goats tethered there. Izzy had been delighted, wanting to keep them, but Felicity had nearly fainted when she’d seen the state of her lawn. That was the last time her mother had come near the ‘country cottage’.

      Izzy had come down a couple of times since with her father –just the two of them–but they hadn’t had much fun. Adair had encouraged Izzy to approach some of the local kids any time he’d seen them playing on the beach or on ‘the Greensward’ or swimming in the sea, but she hadn’t had the nerve, and after a few such dismal weekends they had given up on the house in Lissamore altogether, and gone back to taking their holidays in the Caribbean instead. Separate holidays for Mummy and Daddy, of course.

      Felicity’s favourite haunt was the überposh Sandy Lane in Barbados, but Izzy hated going there because her mother treated the staff like shit, and the kids in the teen club nicknamed her ‘Irish Potato Head’. She much preferred going on holiday with her dad because he didn’t spend all his time in the spa, although he did disappear from time to time to do business–a.k.a. playing golf. Adair had told her that more deals got done on the golf course these days than in the boardroom.

      So Izzy spent a lot of time on holiday swimming solitaire in the pool, or in the sea, scuba-diving: scuba was for her the ultimate escape from reality.

      Then, a couple of weeks ago, when Daddy had announced that his best Christmas present ever would be the pleasure of his daughter’s company in Lissamore, Izzy hadn’t been able to say no. Her friend Lucy had spent some time with them, and her aunt and some cousins, but now it was just the two of them again.

      She resumed her stoical expression as she listened to her father talking small talk to Dervla Kinsella. ‘In estate agent’s parlance, this house has a lot of character too,’ he observed, looking round at the shabby entrance hall with the peeling wallpaper, the threadbare carpet and the cracked fanlight over the door.

      ‘Actually, it’s oozing with character,’ Dervla corrected him with a smile. ‘And damp.’

      ‘As a property developer, all I see is potential,’ said Adair. ‘And this place has loads. Prime site too, overlooking the sea.’

      Oh God. Now they were going to start talking property-speak–the most boring language in the world. How could Izzy escape? Through the open front door she could see a dog sitting on the sea wall across the road, smiling at her. Murmuring an excuse to her father, Izzy slipped away.

      The dog on the wall was a bichon frise. Her mother owned two, but Felicity’s bichons frises had been given those awful pompom hairstyles. This little dog looked more like a miniature sheep than a miniature poodle, and as Izzy approached, its smile grew broader and its tail began to wag.

      ‘Hello,’ said Izzy, sitting down beside the dog. ‘What’s your name?’

      Because the dog looked so intelligent, she half expected an answer. So, taking the dog’s paw in her hand, she introduced herself.

      ‘I’m Isabella Bolger,’ she said, ‘Izzy for short. I live in a house just outside the village, by the sea–except I don’t really live there, if you know what I mean. My dad bought the house because my mum wanted a holiday hideaway, except she didn’t really want to hide away. She wanted to be able to show off her house to all her friends, and when people weren’t that interested because they couldn’t hack the drive down from Dublin she went into a sulk and decided she didn’t want it after all, and then Dad told her that he couldn’t afford the diamond she wanted for her birthday, so she decided to divorce him, and when she did that she took all their so-called friends with her.’

      The dog’s ears seemed to droop in sympathy, which encouraged Izzy to continue.

      ‘And now my mum’s living in our D4 house and dating the man who did buy her the diamond, and Dad’s living in a penthouse in the financial district, in the same block as me, and he’s dating no one because he’s a social misfit on account of Mum taking all his friends away. And he’s dead lonely, and I feel so sorry for him sometimes. And I wish he could get a girlfriend –only not the kind of girlfriend that he’s dated from time to time in the past, because I know for a fact that all those women were just after his money, and that they hated me, even though they pretended to like me and called me “darling Izzy”. And, do you know what? I hate it here in Lissamore because it seems to me that everyone resents us because we’re rich and because we took over the Greensward and the house is far too big for just me and Dad, and we feel like losers staying there, with not even any friends to invite for the weekend.’

      ‘Would you look at yer wan! Talking to a feckin’ dog!’

      A voice somewhere to her left made Izzy stiffen.

      ‘That’s because