Chapter Two

The sisters arranged to have their father buried in the graveyard near the beach, where all the headstones faced the sea, on Friday the fourth of January. The notice Dervla had composed for the paper read: ‘Kinsella, Frank. Husband of the late Rosaleen, beloved father to Dervla and Ríonach, and grandfather to Finn. At home, peacefully’ Both observations were lies. Their father had not been beloved by either of his daughters, and, although he had died in the comfort of his own bed, there was no way it could have been a peaceful leave-taking.

‘I’m hardly going to put the real cause of death in the paper,’ Dervla had said waspishly, when Río questioned the wording. ‘Everybody in the village knows he was a complete lush—’

‘And everybody in the village will know exactly how he died, Dervla.’

‘I realise that. Of course word will get out about what really happened, but there’s no reason to announce to all and sundry via the obituaries page that our father choked to death on a lamb chop.’

‘I wonder why he was eating a lamb chop in bed,’ mused Río.

Dervla shuddered. ‘Let’s not go there.’

Dervla and Río were sitting on the sea wall opposite their father’s house, trying to pluck up the courage to go in. Since Dervla had phoned Río with the grim news of their father’s undignified demise, the sisters had forged the kind of uneasy entente cordiale that is always necessary when families get hit by flak. Río had spoken to the local GP and the priest, while Dervla had spoken to Frank’s solicitor and the funeral parlour in Galway Together they had started to compile a list of other people who should be contacted personally, but had given up when they realised that there was actually no one outside of the village who would be in any way affected by their father’s death.

Dervla had noticed that Río was wearing red shoes today, which seemed a little inappropriate given the circumstances, but she’d resisted the temptation to be critical of her sister during this difficult time. She’d even managed a morose smile at Río’s latest alcoholic joke which went: ‘A drunk was walking through the woods when he found a skull. The first thing he did was call the police. But then he got curious and picked it up, and started wondering who this person was, and why this person had antlers.’

During their childhood, Dervla and Río had found that the best way to cope with their father’s alcoholism was by developing a sense of humour around it. The incident that had made them crease up most had been the evening they’d spotted Frank careering home along the coast road in his Volkswagen, clearly well over the limit. The car had lost one of its back wheels, which meant that sparks were ricocheting up from where the undercarriage was scraping the asphalt. Frank was hunched over the steering wheel–a manic expression on his face–and a garda patrol car was in hot pursuit. Dervla and Río had adapted ‘Three Wheels on My Wagon’ to fit the occasion, and for days afterwards simply humming the opening bars of the song had made them cry with laughter.

They’d even managed to make their mother laugh sometimes, and when the three of them started, they couldn’t stop. A musician friend had once remarked that the sound of the Kinsella women’s laughter had inspired him to write a ballad.

That had been Before Shane. When Shane Byrne entered their lives, everything changed.

Dervla had spotted him first, when he’d played Macheath in a student production of The Threepenny Opera in Galway, where she was studying Auctioneering and he was studying Photography. She had been blown away by Shane: she attended every production he was in, she volunteered her services backstage as an assistant stage manager, and she spent hours boring all her friends–including Río–about what a god he was. She’d even snogged him one memorable evening, when a friend of a friend had thrown an opening-night party. That had been the defining moment of their relationship: for Dervla it had been such a celestial experience that she couldn’t admit to herself that it might not have been quite so earth-shattering for Shane. But she was determined to make him realise how good they could be together, too infatuated to care that she was in danger of making a laughing stock of herself. When it came to Shane Byrne, Dervla had no pride left. And one night she decided she was going to bite the bullet and seduce him backstage, after the show.

But Río had got there first. Beautiful Río, gregarious Río, Río who had been their mother’s favourite and was beloved by everyone who met her. Río, who danced on the sand like the girl in the song, and who turned heads when she walked down the street, and who could fall out of bed looking like a young Brigitte Bardot. Río, who had landed an apprenticeship with a scenic artist because she painted so beautifully; Río, who looked adorable standing on a step ladder with a smudge of Crimson Lake on her nose; Río, who had invited Shane back to the house in Lissamore to take photographs, so that she could parade in front of him in her bird-of-paradise kimono just days before their mother died…

Dervla had never forgotten how she’d walked into the prop room that evening to find her sister and ‘her’ man in a hot clinch. Río had jumped like the guilty creature she was, then become abject. Dervla remembered the halting sentences, the pleas, the lamenting: ‘Please understand…’ ‘It’s been agony…’ ‘We couldn’t help ourselves…’ ‘I beg you, Dervla…’ Dervla had listened stony-faced, without comment, watching her sister stew while Shane sat on the sofa looking bemused. Then she had turned on her heel and made a dignified exit. The sisters had barely spoken since, and the cold war had continued to the present day.

What had upset Dervla most had been that the betrayal had taken place a bare two months after their mother had died. Until then, she and Río had been a force united against a home life blighted by cancer and soured by alcoholism. When Río betrayed her, Dervla had never felt more alone in her life.

She’d moved out of the family home and landed a job in an estate agency in Galway city, forty kilometres away from Lissamore, determined to become the most successful, most highly regarded estate agent in the entire region of Coolnamara. Because, after all, bricks and mortar were the only things that could be depended upon. Property was the most solid, most tangible, most proven form of investment there was, and Dervla craved constancy in her life. Other women sought constancy in the shape of a husband and children, but Dervla knew that there was no such thing as constancy in families. Her daddy had disregarded her, her mother had abandoned her, and her sister had betrayed her. Her ultimate aim was to own a house so classy that it would announce to the world that, in terms of self-sufficiency, she–Dervla Kinsella–was at the top of her game.

And Dervla had achieved that ultimate aim. She had set up on her own, worked her ass off, and assembled a team of razor-sharp agents. Her name was writ large on ‘For Sale’ boards all over the Galway/Coolnamara region, many of which boasted ‘Sale Agreed’ or ‘Sold’ banners. She hadn’t found her dream house yet, but she had found its urban equivalent in a gleaming penthouse apartment in a newly fashionable area of Galway city.

‘You do realise that we’ll have to clear the place before the funeral?’ she said, resuming scrutiny of her father’s scuffed front door. Behind that door, she knew, lurked unspeakable chaos.

‘Oh God.’ Río started swinging a scarlet-shod foot. ‘Can’t we leave it until afterwards?’

‘Of course not. We’ll be having the wake there. When was the last time you visited Dad, incidentally?’

‘A couple of days ago. I brought him some chicken casserole.’

‘So you know what kind of state it’s in?’

‘Yes. Worse than Francis Bacon’s studio. I volunteered to clean up for him, but he told me to eff off, as usual.’

‘That’s what he told me when I last visited, bearing Tesco’s Finest lasagne.’

‘Did you bring him the lamb chops?’

‘No, thank God. Did you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, at least neither of us is guilty of patricide.’ Dervla gave her sister a grim smile, then swung herself off the sea wall. ‘C’mon, Río. Let’s get cracking.’

Leading the way across the road, she produced a key from her bag, and inserted it in the lock. Next door, she saw a net curtain twitch, revealing the sparkle of Christmas tree lights. She hoped that her neighbour had invited her father in for mince pies and mulled wine at some point over the Christmas period.

‘Mrs Murphy’s on our case,’ she observed. ‘We’d better say hello.’

‘Maybe she brought him the chops,’ Río said in an undertone.

Mrs Murphy emerged onto her front step, wiping her hands on her apron, and wearing a lugubrious expression. Dervla found herself wondering why her father’s neighbour had phoned her in her Galway office with the news that Frank had popped his clogs, rather than phoning Río, who lived just down the road. But when she saw Mrs Murphy glance reprovingly at Río’s red shoes, she concluded that it must be because Río had always been seen as the less responsible of the two sisters. She, Dervla, was the sensible one, while Río was the flibbertigibbet. Dervla was the level-headed career girl, Río the boho vagabond. It made sense to contact Dervla rather than the giddy one on an occasion that required a degree of gravitas.

‘I’m sorry for your trouble, girls,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘Will you come in for a cup of tea?’

Dervla returned her doleful smile. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Murphy, but we’d best be getting stuck in to cleaning.’

‘I managed to tidy the upstairs a little, after your father…you know.’

The sisters nodded solemnly. ‘Thank you so much. And thank you for taking care of the removal and—’

‘I would have done the downstairs too,’ resumed Mrs Murphy hastily, clearly reluctant to dwell on any morbid particulars, ‘but my back started giving me gyp. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been of more help.’

‘No worries, Mrs Murphy. You’ve been a real trouper. Daddy couldn’t have wished for a better neighbour.’

It was true. Frank could never have survived without the help of Mrs Murphy and the other denizens of the village who ‘kept an eye’ on him. The care in the community myth actually existed in Lissamore, where twitching curtains were less a sign of nosiness than of a genuine concern. The villagers looked out for each other, and nobody had been ‘looked out for’ more than Frank Kinsella. People dropped food in to him, they saw him safely home at closing time, and every so often somebody would slip into his house while he slept, to wash dishes or clothes or floors.

Río and Dervla did their bit too, of course, but both drew the line at moving in with Frank. There was no way Dervla would consider leaving her penthouse and her business in Galway, and it would be unfair to expect Río–who’d already reared one child single-handedly–to become full-time carer to a father who was more demanding and irresponsible than any adolescent.

‘I’ll bake a fruit cake for the wake,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘And if there’s anything else I can do, just ask.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’ll be hard, living without your da next door.’ To Dervla’s astonishment, the elderly lady’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’ll miss him, so I will. He had the gift of the gab, did Frank. Better than the radio, he was, with those stories of his.’

For the first time, Dervla entertained the possibility that people had actually liked her father. She had dreaded it when he’d launch into one of his stories when she had brought friends home as a child. Frank would go on and on about some mythical Irish hero of the Celtic twilight, or sing rebel songs, or spout Yeats’s poetry endlessly while her mates tried hard not to yawn or snigger.

From inside the house came the musical intro to the lunchtime radio chat show.

‘Oh!’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘I’d better get back in. They’re talking about rip-off funeral parlours. Oh! Saving your presence.’

Bowing her head, she made a tragic little moue before disappearing back behind her front door.

‘Poor Mrs Murphy,’ said Dervla, turning to Río. ‘She’s genuinely gutted about Dad.’

‘Do you think she fancied him?’ Río asked.

Dervla considered the possibility of Mrs Murphy fancying her father. ‘I dunno. I suppose he was a handsome dude once upon a time, in a Rabelaisian kind of way.’

‘He certainly knew how to charm the ladies. Didn’t he sweep our poor mama off her feet? How long did they know each other before they got married? Two months, or something stupid?’

‘Two months and two days, Mam told me. Kinda proves the point about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure.’

‘She certainly did that. I wonder why she never divorced him?’

‘Divorce wasn’t allowed, in those days.’

‘I guess they were just young and foolish. I guess we all were once.’

There was a pause as the sisters regarded each other. Then Dervla turned the key, pushed open the door to their father’s house, and stepped over the threshold. To the right of the hallway, the sitting room was in darkness. She flicked a switch, then strode into the room and yanked open the curtains.

Sunlight made a reluctant entrance through grimy window-panes, and dust motes could be seen spiralling sluggishly around the room. The curtains had evidently not been opened for some time.

‘Jesus,’ said Río. ‘What’s that smell?’

‘There’s a dead mouse somewhere. We may have to lift a floorboard.’

‘Ugh. You’re sure it’s not just rotting food?’

‘Sure. I’ve smelled enough mice corpses in my time. You wouldn’t believe some of the house-of-horror recces I’ve done. Let’s just hope it’s not a rat, and that it isn’t survived by its dearly beloved wife and children.’

The women stood in the middle of the floor and surveyed the room where, on rainy Sunday evenings, they had once played board games in front of the fire. In those days their mother would make sandwiches–chicken or lamb or beef left over from the roast they’d had at lunchtime–and sometimes as a treat they’d have marshmallows to toast, and then they’d watch the Sunday evening soap opera with Rosaleen, while Frank dozed under the newspaper. And then they’d pack their school books into their satchels in readiness for the next day, and kiss their parents good night, and go upstairs to the big attic bedroom, which ran the length of the house, and tell each other stories about what their futures would be.

Dervla was going to live in a Great House, while Río was going to live in a cottage by the sea. Dervla’s garden was going to have manicured lawns and a topiary, while Río’s was going to have apple trees and hollyhocks. Dervla was going to have a Dalmatian, while Río was going to have a marmalade cat. They were both going to marry tall, dark and handsome men who looked like Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele, and they were both going to have two children each, and it didn’t matter whether they were boys or girls as long as the babies were healthy and had all ten fingers and all ten toes.

‘What are you thinking about, Dervla?’ Río asked.

‘Those Sunday evenings. The ones that seemed happy until we realised that Dad wasn’t snoozing contentedly under his paper, but was comatose with the drink.’

‘Remember how he’d head off to the pub after lunch, and when he came back he’d be in flying form, and give us piggybacks, and roll down the slope in the garden with us, and we thought he was great craic? And all the time, Mama would be in the study doing the weekly accounts and we always wondered why her eyes were so red, and she told us she’d got allergic to the cat.’

‘God. We were like something in a novel by John McGahern.’

Río laughed. ‘At least it wasn’t out of a novel by that bloke who wrote Angela’s Ashes.’

‘Frank McCourt.’ Dervla looked at the black cast-iron fireplace that was grey now with ash and dust, and that boasted not the art nouveau figurines that their mother had collected, but a battalion of empty bottles and sticky-looking glasses and dirty ashtrays. ‘Maybe we should write a misery memoir,’ she said. ‘We could go on Oprah or Richard and Judy and make a fortune.’

Dervla and Río turned to each other, but this time they didn’t laugh. ‘Poor Dad,’ they said simultaneously, each reaching for the other’s hand.

And then they had their arms wrapped around each other, and they were crying, and Río was saying, ‘I’m so, so sorry about the thing with Shane.’

And Dervla was saying, ‘Don’t be sorry–sure, wasn’t it ages ago and wasn’t he an awful eejit anyway. And weren’t we the awful eejits to let something as petty as a teenage crush mess us up.’

‘And for so long!’ exclaimed Río. ‘Twenty stupid, stupid years we’ve wasted, acting like characters in a Dostoevsky novel.’

‘Except in a Dostoevsky novel the characters would never kiss and make up.’

‘Is that what we’re doing?’

‘I think so. Don’t you? Don’t you think it’s possible to wipe a slate clean after twenty pointless bloody years of resentment and strop?’

‘Yes,’ said Río. ‘I do. I’m so sorry’ And leaning forward, she gave Dervla a kiss on the cheek.

Dervla kissed her back. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry, for overreacting the way I did.’

‘No, no–I’m the one who should be sorry for stealing him.’

‘No, no–you didn’t steal him. He was never mine anyway.’ And then they were laughing again, but it was a kind of snuffly laughter.

‘Do you have a tissue?’ Río asked finally, wiping her cheeks.

Dervla undid the clasp of her shoulder bag, and passed over a packet of Kleenex.

A plaintive mew from the doorway made them turn. There, arching his back and rubbing his muzzle against the door jamb was W.B., their father’s cat. His marmalade fur was bedraggled, and the leather collar dangling loosely round his neck told them he’d lost weight.

‘Oh, W.B.!’ cried Río, bending to scoop him up. ‘Poor you! I’d forgotten all about you–you must be starving. Let’s see if there’s anything to eat in the kitchen, puss cat.’

‘Apart from mouse pie, you mean?’ remarked Dervla.

‘Ew. I’d forgotten about them. You’d better go first, since you’re so used to them.’

Dervla moved down the hall. A lozenge of light on the tiles indicated that the kitchen light was still on. Inside, the big table in the centre of the floor was covered in detritus. More bottles and glasses, half-empty mugs of tea with mould floating on the surface, cereal packets, milk cartons, a box of Complan, empty tins, books, newspapers and magazines.

W.B. pitter-pattered into the room and immediately leaped onto a work surface upon which boxes of dried cat food were stacked alongside a wine rack.

‘Wow,’ said Dervla. ‘There’s an entire bottle of wine in there. He actually left us some drink. Fancy a glass of Dutch courage?’

‘Definitely.’ Río moved to a drawer, rooted among its haphazard contents for a corkscrew, and reached for the bottle. ‘Merlot,’ she said, deftly inserting the corkscrew. ‘Chateau-bottled, interesting vintage.’ There came a plop! as the cork slid out. Río sniffed it. ‘Mm. Plum pudding fruit, spicy vanilla oak, peppery nose, a touch of stewed mulberries.’

Dervla gave Río a curious look, as she poured cat food into W.B.’s bowl. I didn’t know you were a wine buff.

‘I’m not, I’m just spoofing. It’s plonk. Here’s a challenge for you. Find a couple of clean glasses.’

‘There aren’t any.’ Dervla moved to the sink, which was piled high with dirty dishes. There were half a dozen or so dead bluebottles on the inside windowsill, and half a dozen or so dead snails on the outside one. She selected two of the least disgusting wineglasses, and rinsed them under the tap. ‘Well,’ she said, clearing a space on the table and setting the glasses down. ‘That’s interesting. Dad was still able to do the cryptic crossword.’ She picked up a backdated copy of the Irish Times and scrutinised the Crosaire. ‘There’s only one he missed,’ she said. ‘“Sounds like fifty ended like this.” Eight letters, second letter “e”.’

‘Deceased,’ said Río. ‘Here’s to him.’ She sloshed red into the wineglasses, then passed one to Dervla.

‘Here’s to our daddy,’ said Dervla, raising her glass.

‘And to our mama.’ Río raised hers likewise. ‘We’re officially orphans now, Dervla.’

‘I’ve felt like an orphan for years,’ Dervla observed, matter-of-factly. She took a sip of her wine and made a face. ‘Ew. Nasty.’

‘Very nasty,’ agreed Río. ‘But don’t let that stop us from finishing the bottle.’

Dervla sat down at the table and looked around the room. The framed photograph of her parents on their wedding day hung, as it had always done, next to the dresser full of their wedding china. Dervla noticed abstractedly how intact the dinner service was; but then, she supposed, throwing plates had never been their mother’s style. ‘Here’s hoping Ma and Pa don’t run into each other in the big blue hereafter,’ she remarked.

‘Oh, I dunno,’ said Río, taking the seat opposite her sister. ‘I reckon Dad yearned always to be reunited with her, like Heathcliff and Cathy. I don’t think he ever stopped loving her. I wonder what made her put up with him?’

‘She stayed put because of us, of course,’ said Dervla.

‘I suppose this is where we give each other thoughtful looks and start reminiscing about the past.’

‘Somebody once said that the past’s another country. Let’s not go there.’

‘Unless we can travel first class. And this ain’t no luxury stateroom.’ Río looked round the kitchen with distaste. ‘How could he have lived like this?’

‘You’d be surprised at how many men who live on their own, live in squalor. I could tell you stories that would make you puke.’

‘Houses you’ve seen?’

‘Yes. Sometimes I’m scared that I might actually puke, then and there, all over the kitchen floor. One woman used to cook pigs’ feet for her husband every evening—’

‘Gross!’

‘And because he was incontinent, he smelled perpetually of wee. I used to have to spray the house with Jo Malone before every viewing.’

‘Business must be good if you can afford Jo Malone.’

‘It is. Very good. I’m going to have to recruit another girl.’

‘Is someone leaving?’

‘No. I’m expanding. I’m going to offer my clients a home-staging service.’

‘A home-staging service? What’s that?’

‘For an extra charge, I turn the house into a really desirable property–the kind of place where a prospective buyer will walk in the door and say, “Wow! I simply must have it!’”

‘How could you possibly do that in a house that smelled of pigs’ trotters and wee?’

‘That one was a challenge, all right. But some places can be really dramatically transformed. Statistics prove that a house that has been home-staged is far more likely to sell than a house that hasn’t.’

‘Isn’t it a waste of money for the owners, since they’re going to be moving out anyway?’

‘Not if it guarantees a sale. And makeovers don’t need to cost a fortune.’

Río gave Dervla an interested look, then leaned her elbows on the tabletop. ‘Really? What would you do with this place?’

‘Clean it. Paint it. Highlight the original features–the fireplaces, cornices, coving. Perhaps hire a few good pieces of furniture, plants, some paintings. Tidy up the garden.’

Both women looked towards the window that framed the view of overgrown ferns and rampantly rambling roses and leggy geraniums.

‘It’s like a Rousseauesque jungle, except not as pretty,’ observed Río. ‘I looked after it as best I could, but gave up on it a couple of years ago. He just wasn’t interested. The garden was Mama’s domain.’

Dervla took a thoughtful sip of wine, not noticing this time how disgusting it was. ‘Shane took a picture of us on the lawn, once, by the pond. Do you remember? We were trailing around in our dressing gowns. It was shortly before Mama died.’

‘I still have that photograph. I found it just this morning.’ Río turned remorseful eyes on Dervla. ‘I meant what I said earlier, Dervla. I am beyond sorry about what happened with Shane.’

‘I know you are. And I’m sorry too that I didn’t accept your apology. I should have been bigger than that. We were going through such a horrible time then. I guess neither of us was thinking straight.’

‘Were you in love with him?’

Dervla considered. ‘No. I barely even knew him. I was just insanely infatuated–like a woman possessed, or a demented fan of some rock god. Were you?’

‘In love with him? No. I just thought I was. He was so good to me when Mama died.’

‘He was in love with you?’

‘I guess so. He was so supportive. I couldn’t have got through that time without him.’

‘I did pick up the phone to you a couple of times, you know, to say let’s make amends,’ said Dervla. ‘But you didn’t answer.’

‘I tried phoning you too. And then I got pregnant, and I couldn’t bear to tell you that Finn was Shane’s baby’

‘I knew he was. He takes after his dad, does Finn. He’s a good-looking boy–and charming, to boot. Any time I meet him on the street he’s full of chat. I’m glad you never put an embargo on him fraternising with his auntie. I’d have hated him to cold-shoulder me.’

‘He’s my best friend,’ said Río. ‘I adore him. I’ve been very lucky, to have produced something so fine when there are thousands of delinquents roaming the country.’

‘Does Shane have much input?’

Río shook her head. ‘No. Finn’s practically all my own work. Shane sends money from time to time, though he’s always broke. We keep in touch by Skype and e-mail’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘About five years ago. He had a small part in a movie being made in Killary.’

‘Was he as winsome as ever?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you weren’t tempted?’

‘No. I had a man in my life at that stage. But he was a waster too. That’s why I had my tubes tied. I couldn’t bear the idea of having another child with an irresponsible father.’

‘We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,’ said Dervla. As she reached for the wine bottle, she wondered who Río might have talked to when she made the decision to undergo surgery; who might have picked her up from the day ward; who might have made her a cup of tea afterwards. She guessed that it would have been Fleur, and wished now that it might have been her. ‘I know hardly anything about you, little sister. Tell me more.’

‘There’s not much to tell,’ said Río. ‘I work hard, but at nothing in particular. I guess I’m a jack of all trades.’

‘What do you mean, jack of all trades?’

Río shrugged. ‘Sometimes I work in O’Toole’s—’

‘In the restaurant?’

‘No, downstairs in the bar. Sometimes I drive a taxi, sometimes I work in other people’s gardens. I do Fleur’s window display for her. Sometimes–if I’m lucky–one of my paintings might sell—’

‘You’re still painting?’

Río nodded. ‘Mostly landscapes. Some portraits. I’d prefer to do more portraits, but tourists tend to go for the landscapes.’

‘Where do you sell them?’

‘Fleur’s opened a little wine bar at the back of the shop. Some of my stuff’s on display there.’

‘Does she take commission?’

‘No. She does it for me as a friend.’

‘I knew you were driving,’ said Dervla. ‘And Fleur told me you were doing her window. But I never knew about the gardening. Where did the green fingers come from?’

‘I guess I inherited them from Mama.’

Dervla gave Río a speculative look. ‘You were wrong, you know, when you said there wasn’t much to know about you. There’s lots to know.’

‘Not as much as there is to know about you. I’ve been keeping tabs on you.’

‘You have?’

‘Yep. I know, for instance, that you have no man in your life right now because you’re “married to your career”.’

‘What? How do you know that?’

‘I hired a private investigator. Joke. I read a profile in The Gloss magazine when you were up for Female Entrepreneur of the Year, and I saw you on breakfast television, and I heard you being interviewed on Galway Bay FM last week. And your picture’s always cropping up in the society pages.’

‘You don’t strike me as the type of gal who bothers with the society pages.’

‘I have to sit in the dentist’s waiting room same as everybody else. Sometimes I even have my hair done, and get to read VIP magazine.’ Río took hold of a strand of her reddy-gold hair and examined the ends ruefully. ‘I’m way overdue a cut.’

‘W.B. looks as if he should have a wash and blow-dry too. What’ll we do with him?’

‘Maybe Mrs Murphy would like him as a memento of Dad.’

‘I’m sure there are other mementoes she’d rather have. Maybe we should go take a look at our inheritance.’

‘Our inheritance. A cat and a house. How much do you think this property’s worth?’

‘We should get a million for it.’

‘A million! You’ve got to be kidding!’

‘Think about it. It’s right on the harbour. If you stuck a picture window in upstairs you’d have a stunning view of the sea and the mountains, and ditto if you stuck a dormer in the attic. Plus there’s loads of room to extend.’

‘Would you get planning permission?’

‘Sure to. The precedent’s been set. People have been extending their properties upward and outward all over Lissamore. Floor space here is as valuable as it is in Dublin 4.’ Dervla knocked back her wine and got to her feet. ‘Let’s go take a look,’ she said.