Chapter Eleven

In Galway airport, just two weeks after she’d buried her father, Río watched her son move towards the departure gate. She watched him pass through security. She watched him make way for an elderly lady with a walking cane. She watched him reclaim his bag from the conveyor belt and sling it over his shoulder. And then he looked back at her, and Río didn’t see a tall, fit dude at whom girls always looked twice; she saw a small boy heading off on an adventure, looking the way he had sixteen years ago when he’d walked away from her into school for the very first time. And then he smiled that fantastic Finn smile, raised a hand in farewell, and was gone, taking her heart with him.

A passing security guard laid a hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, and Río realised that there were tears coursing down her cheeks.

‘Yes. No.’ She shook her head, unable to continue.

‘Saying goodbye to somebody?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see it every day. It’s hard. You should get yourself a coffee.’

The man gave her arm a reassuring squeeze, and moved on.

Tears were streaming down her face in rivulets now, and people were staring, but she didn’t care. She wanted to get to the safe haven of her car where she could howl out loud in anguish.

She was barely able to put one foot in front of the other as she negotiated the car park, doubled over in agony, walking like an old lady. When she reached her car, she slid into the driver’s seat, slumped forward and laid her forehead on the steering wheel.

She’d always known–of course she had–that Finn wasn’t hers for keeps. But she had never thought that the pain of letting him go was going to be such a sickening, visceral pain, and now there was a hole where her heart had been, and no joy in her soul.

In her bag, the strains of a melody began to play. Finn must have changed the ringtone on her phone: it was playing Duran Duran’s ‘Río’. Río’s sobs became even more ragged–she was hyperventilating as she fumbled in her bag. Get a grip! she told herself. You don’t want him to hear you like this!

But the caller ID wasn’t Finn’s. Letting the phone drop, she allowed it to ring out.

When a love affair ends, you could talk about it. You could talk to a girlfriend or a sister or a mother and know that they would understand what it means to lose a lover. Losing lovers happens to every woman. Losing lovers is commonplace. But how could Río tell anyone that the only man she wanted to hold in her arms was her own grown-up son? If she let that slip, people would be aghast, or embarrassed, or repelled. They’d tell her to wise up and go get a life, or counselling, or both. How could she expect anyone to understand that Finn was her life, he was her soul?.

Why, why did the smutty Oedipal thing have to rear its head when mothers spoke of the love they felt for their sons? She’d heard an actress on the radio recently talk about how she had spent the final day before her daughter went off on her gap year, lying in bed with her arms around her, swapping secrets and singing the nursery rhymes that she’d once sung to her at bedtime, and everybody had said: ‘Ahhh…’ and thought it so lovely that mother and daughter had such a good relationship. She could just picture Finn’s face if she, Río, had gone up to his bedroom and suggested that they lie down and hug and sing nursery rhymes together.

But, oh! how jealous Río had been of that actress’s relationship with her daughter! How she would love to have Finn confide stuff in her, and know that any opinions she proffered would be listened to rather than falling on deaf ears as they generally did. But you can’t do that with boy children, once they start becoming men. When boys turn into men, they stop sharing secrets with their mothers.

Her ringtone sounded again. The number displayed meant nothing to Río. She dropped the phone back in her bag, then raised her head and saw a world that had no Finn in it, and what she saw was a bleak and ugly and wholly meaningless place.

It was official. She hated her life.

Dervla was kept busy issuing orders. She was issuing orders to her architect and to bloody bureaucrats and to construction companies, and because Dervla was so very good at issuing orders (and because she had contacts in the Planning Department), she was getting results. Her architect had come up with some excellent ideas for the conversion of the attic that was to be Río’s eyrie–including a balcony to the front and a small cantilevered deck to the rear where her sister could grow a garden in miniature. Dervla was determined that Río should occupy as cosy a nest as possible, because she had an idea that she might be going through the doldrums a bit now that Finn was gone.

She’d done some research on empty-nest syndrome, and found out that it had an effect on some women akin to bereavement. For those in middle age, the knowledge that their function as child-bearers was over apparently made the grief even more intense, and while Río was hardly hitting the menopause yet, the fact remained that she’d had her tubes tied and would never be able to conceive another baby. Or maybe she was menopausal? It was hard to tell. Dervla’s online surfing had revealed all kinds of stuff that was news to her, including the fact that early-onset menopause was hereditary. However, because their mother had died so young she had no way of knowing if it ran in the family.

Her own menstrual cycle had been erratic recently, but, because it had been so long since she’d had sex, Dervla had put that down to stress. Times were bad in the property market, and she was working her ass off to sell houses that would once have sold themselves. She was using all the tricks of the trade to try to shift properties, but she couldn’t be in two places at once and oversee every little detail, much as she’d like to. It made her heart sink sometimes when she’d open up a house for a viewing to see just how little care the owners had taken to make their interiors inviting. Some people didn’t even bother to flush their loo, and Dervla now made a point of visiting every bathroom in every joint on her books, and flushing the pan before potential buyers showed up. She’d drawn the line at buying a pooper-scooper for the resident canines.

The only house that had sold in the past month had been an unprepossessing-looking two-up, two-down in Galway city. The front door gave no indication of what lay beyond, but once inside, the house was an Aladdin’s Cave of unusual furniture and paintings and curios–a real home. The sellers had been clever, setting the table for dinner with gleaming silverware and crystal and a good bottle of wine, and baking bread before each viewing so that the house smelled glorious. Nothing ostentatious–just little touches that lent the interior an atmosphere that made viewers think, Ooh! I’d like to live like this!

In Waterstone’s recently, Dervla had helped herself to a big, glossy coffee-table book called The Way We Live–Making Homes I Creating Lifestyles. It was crammed with images of dwelling places in different countries and cultures from all over the world: photographs of French villas and Irish cottages and Swiss chalets and English stately homes and Renaissance palaces and New York lofts. It was a treasure-trove of a book for anyone interested in property or interior design, and Dervla was pleased to observe that her own home compared favourably with any of those smart New York interiors.

And then one day she looked again at the title, The Way We Live…Creating Lifestyles, and she thought how weird it was that people these days really did aspire to live life styles–but not necessarily satisfying lives. Everything was for show. The dozens upon dozens of expensive, shiny magazines that lined the shelves in newsagents were testimony to that–magazines carrying ads for the latest must-have kitchen appliances or bed linen or garden furniture. What happened to readers of those magazines when they rushed lemming-like to max out their credit cards on handcrafted solid wood floors or three-door refrigerators or bespoke English bookcases? Did their extravagant purchases make them happier? What if a dog got sick on your fabulous Roberto Tapinassi sofa, or a toddler scribbled on it? What then?

Dervla loved her sofa, but then Dervla had neither dog nor toddler to trash it. As long as she remained living solo, her Corinthian leather upholstery was safe–as was the upholstery belonging to countless other singletons living in countless other exclusive gated communities all over Ireland.

Since Frank’s funeral, Dervla had been spending more time in Lissamore village, prepping her father’s house for its metamorphosis. She’d witnessed at first hand the community spirit at work there, and the laidback ambience that Río had told her she set such store by. Dervla had witnessed, too, the starring role her sister played in village life. People greeted Río on the street with beaming smiles; tourists gravitated towards her to ask for directions; even the local cats got off their arses and stretched when Río went by, as if inviting her to pet them. She’d seen Río in O’Toole’s, pulling pints, flirting effortlessly with male punters and sharing secrets with the women. She’d seen her smile, laugh, blag and charm, and she knew that what Río had was more precious than handcrafted floors or three-door fridges or bespoke bookcases. Río had a life, not a life style.

How fine it must feel to be Río!

Río was lying in bed, trying to decide whether or not it was worth making the effort to roll over from her left side to her right. She decided against it. She didn’t have the energy. The sheets felt horrible against her naked skin. She hadn’t changed them in a week, and that was most unlike Río. She hadn’t washed her hair for a week, either, and she hadn’t had a shower for two days. One of life’s greatest pleasures, in Río’s mind, was to take a leisurely bath with a book and a glass of wine, and then slide into bed between freshly laundered sheets. Ironically, a website on empty-nest syndrome that she’d looked at shortly after Finn had gone travelling had recommended that she ‘treat’ herself by having a long lie in a scented bath. As if! Río didn’t even have the energy to turn on the taps.

She’d tried cuddling her old velour elephant for comfort but that hadn’t worked, so instead she’d wrapped one of Finn’s T-shirts around her pillow, and cuddled that instead, saturating it with tears of self-pity. She was ugly, ageing, stupid, and she was sure she stank. Her eyes were red from constant crying, and from all the booze she was putting away. She was drinking far, far too much. She’d taken to buying wine boxes from the supermarket in Galway when she drove fares there, because empty wine boxes were easier to dispose of in a village where the bottle bank was situated directly opposite the church.

Hackney fares had been sporadic, which was good news for Río because she was pretty certain that much of the time she was over the limit from the amount of alcohol consumed the night before. Because the season didn’t get underway until after St Patrick’s Day, Fleur’s shop was only open at weekends, so she had no window-dressing job, and only two evenings a week behind the bar in O’Toole’s. She wasn’t painting because her creative drive was non-existent–and anyway, hadn’t Isabella Bolger been right? Her paintings were crap; they weren’t even selling. And to top everything, her landlord had put the rent up, as he had threatened. So as well as being useless, ugly, ageing, stupid, smelly and a crap artist, Río was broke. Life really couldn’t get very much worse. Not even the prospect of moving into the loft space in her former family home could energise her. She kept seeing herself through Dervla’s eyes–the poor relation who was such a loser that she even needed someone to provide a roof over her head. She was fearful of moving, suddenly, she felt safer here in the familiar surroundings of her rented doll’s house, even though she had done no housework for weeks and the place was looking neglected and uncared for.

Shortly after Finn had gone she had read all of the letters that the man called Patrick had written to her mother. They were so redolent with love that Rosaleen had written eight words in the margin of the very last letter she’d received from him. The words were in violet ink, in her mother’s distinctive, swirly script, and they read: ‘I know what it is to be adored…’ Her mother had been adored. She may have had a tough life with Frank, but at least she’d been adored by somebody.

The only person who adored her, Río, was now off on the other side of the world, living his dream on a beach.

And there seemed to be no one she could talk to. Fleur and Dervla, being childless, would not understand. Shane would be sympathetic, but she didn’t want sympathy. She wished she had a mother she could ask for advice, she wished she could pick up a pen and write ‘Dear Mama, what would you do?’ In despair, she consulted an internet site.

‘Pull yourself together, you sad bitch,’ had been the advice of some heartless contributor to the online forum she subscribed to. The contributor’s nickname had been ‘Virago’, and Virago clearly had the emotional sensitivity of Anne Robinson or Pol Pot. Virago had no time for men in her life: no time for sons, husbands or lovers. Men, Virago admonished her, were a waste of space, and Río should ‘get a life, get a grip and get over it’.

Get over it? Get over Finn? It was way, way easier said than done. Getting over the kind of heartbreak that mere men divvied out was easy. Río had had her heart broken loads of times before in her misspent youth–and she’d broken her fair share too. After her mother had died and after she and Dervla had declared hostilities, and after she’d turned down Shane’s proposal of marriage, Río had played men for fun, and run a little wild. Home for her and Finn in those days had been a squat, a kind of commune in Galway city. Home had been a big dilapidated Georgian town house where actors and artists and writers cohabited in an ambience that was more Gypsy King than Bohemian Rhapsody. The accessory du jour in those days had been a baby, and Finn, with his infectious laugh and dancing eyes, had been the accessory most beloved of the female members of the tribe, leaving Río free to paint and party and inspire poetry for as long as her baby was portable. But when Finn had ended up locked in a wardrobe at two years of age while one of his ‘aunties’ entertained a wandering minstrel-type with a penchant for Lebanese hash, Río had decided that it was time to return to Lissamore and a less liberal lifestyle. Since then, Finn had been the only man for her, despite expressions of interest and declarations of love from locals and holiday-makers alike.

Declarations of love! She, like her mother, had been adored once! Maybe…maybe now was the time for her to cast her net again, to think about finding a man who might fill the void that was her life without Finn? Maybe now she should aim to meet someone with whom she could share quality time: wandering hand in hand along beaches, and snuggling up to watch classic DVDs in front of the fire? But who would be interested in a useless, ugly, ageing, stupid artist? One who was not only penniless and smelly, but crap at painting to boot? A useless, ugly, ageing, stupid artist who didn’t even know who her own father was…

Oh, what was the point?.

The phone rang just as Río was debating again whether or not to roll over onto her other side. She reached out a slack hand for the handset, and saw that Dervla’s name was on the display. Río didn’t want to talk to her sister–she couldn’t talk to her sister. Her half-sister, rather, who was so very savvy and erudite and stylish, her half-sister who worked out in an exclusive gym and attended theatrical first nights and book launches, her half-sister whose single bad habit was worrying her cuticles. Her all-singing, all-dancing, all-networking half-sister—

Oh! What was happening to her? People said that you get the face you deserve by the time you’re forty, and if that was indeed the case, Río was going to have the face of a bitter and twisted old hag. Making a huge effort, she pressed the green button, held the phone to her ear, and heard her sister’s voice greet her with a breezy ‘Good morning!’

‘Hello, Dervla,’ replied Río, trying to match the brightness in her tone. But as she made to raise her head from the pillow, she got another trace of Finn’s scent from his T-shirt, and immediately burst into tears.

‘Río? What’s wrong?’ asked Dervla, and the note of concern in her voice only made Río cry harder.

‘I can’t bear it,’ she wept. ‘I just can’t bear life without Finn. Without him, I’m nothing. I’m useless, Dervla. I just wish that something awful would happen to me so that I wouldn’t have to go on living.’

For a moment there was silence on the other end of the line. And then Dervla said, ‘Don’t break open the safety catch on the Nembutal bottle just yet, Río. I know somebody who needs your help.’

‘How could I help anyone with anything?’ wailed Río. ‘I’ve just told you, I’m useless.’

‘You might be kind enough,’ said Dervla, ‘to help me.’

‘You? But you’re so self-bloody-sufficient, Dervla! You’re the last person in the world who needs help with anything!’

‘I’m going to prove you wrong. Are you at home? I’m coming over.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. I’m just down the road, in our–in Frank’s place.’

‘But–but I’m still in bed,’ said Río, feeling shame-faced.

‘Good God! It’s nearly midday, Río!’

‘I know. But I don’t care. I don’t care about anything any more.’

Río heard an intake of breath, and then Dervla said, ‘Stay there. I’ll come over right away, and I’ll bring some food. When did you last eat?’

‘Um. I had something last night.’

‘What?’

‘A tin of tuna.’

‘Uh-oh. It’s got to that stage, has it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Staying in bed and not looking after yourself are classic symptoms of depression. May I ask you something personal?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘When did you last wash, Río?’

Oh God! ‘I’m too embarrassed to tell you.’

‘In that case, I’m on my way. I’ll run you a bath and I’ll pour you a glass of wine, and find something clean for you to wear. And then we’ll sit down and have some decent food, and when you’re feeling a bit better, I’ll run something by you.’

‘What does it involve?’

‘It involves getting creative,’ said Dervla.

A couple of hours later Río had had a bath, and rubbed herself all over with the Jo Malone body lotion that Dervla had brought her as a present. When Río had protested that this was too generous, Dervla had said that it was to make up for all the birthdays that they’d missed in the past. So, in return, Río had invited Dervla to choose a painting, and Dervla had chosen a view of Lissamore strand, worked in shades of ultramarine, Hooker’s green, Indian yellow and Prussian blue. It was Río’s favourite painting, and she was glad her sister had chosen it.

Dervla had also washed the dishes and vacuumed the floor while Río was in the bath, and then she had mixed a salad and set a dish of moussaka on the table and refilled Río’s wineglass, making Río wish that she and Dervla had made amends years ago.

‘Aren’t you having wine?’ Río asked. She was feeling better now that she had bathed and washed her hair, and the Jo Malone grapefruit body lotion was the most glorious thing she’d ever smelled in her life–apart from Finn’s T-shirt.

‘No,’ replied Dervla. ‘I’m driving.’

‘But I’ll feel like a pig sitting here and swigging back a whole bottle.’

‘You don’t have to drink the whole bottle, Río. You can always stick the cork back in.’

‘I’m not very good at that,’ confessed Río. ‘When Finn was here, we always finished a bottle together. Now I tend to finish it by myself’.

‘It’s not a good idea. Alcohol’s a depressant.’

‘I know. But it numbs the bloody awfulness of life.’

Dervla gave Río a speculative look. ‘I’ve been checking out empty-nest syndrome on the net,’ she said.

‘So have I,’ said Río.

‘What do you think?’

Río shrugged. ‘Most of those websites offer advice like “establish date nights with your spouse”, or “travel”, or “get involved in church activities”. Not much use to me since I don’t have a spouse, I can’t afford to travel, and I haven’t believed in God since Mama died.’ Río took a sip of wine, then managed a wry smile. ‘One even told me to repent my sins.’

‘What sins?’

‘Well, I bad-mouthed my father and barely spoke to my own sister for years.’

‘I wouldn’t have spoken to me either, if I’d been you,’ replied Dervla, matter-of-factly. ‘Have you thought about seeing your GP?’

‘No. I’d be scared he’d prescribe antidepressants, and I hate the idea of filling my body with chemicals.’

‘What about counselling?’

‘Lying on a couch and having some shrink nod sagely while I twitter on about myself? No thanks. Anyway, shrinks are expensive. I can’t afford weekly one-on-ones. My dreams tell me all I need to know about my psyche.’

‘What do you dream about?’

‘Being homeless. I have recurrent dreams where I’m always packing to go off on some journey, and the packing always goes wrong. Cases fall open and boxes split and all my bags have big holes in them. And I keep losing stuff–keys, wallet, passport, phone; my sketchbook. I dream that Finn has left me and then I wake up and realise that that’s not a dream. It’s a nightmare, and it’s real. I’m actually living the dream–ha-ha.’

‘So what do your dreams tell you?’

‘That I’m lost, alone, abandoned.’

‘OK. Let’s have a serious think about this. You’re a creative person, Río, and right now you’re being creatively stymied. The fact that you’re not painting is symptomatic of that.’

‘I can’t paint. My painting’s crap.’

Dervla indicated the canvas that Río had given her and said, ‘I beg to differ.’

Río slumped. ‘I can’t paint now, Dervla. I just can’t. I’d want to take a knife to the canvas.’

‘Then listen up. I have a job proposition for you.’

‘You want to employ me? As an estate agent? Dervla, I’d be beyond crap at that!’

‘Not as an agent, no. Remember how I told you that I needed someone to “stage” homes for me? I want you to be my stylist.’

‘A stylist? Me! Is this some kind of a joke?’

‘No. Listen up. I don’t mean the kind of stylist who works on glossy photo-shoots or with celebrities. I need someone with a lot of imagination, who knows how to make a house look like a home.’

‘That’s easy. You live in it.’

‘Or you aspire to live in it. Look at what you’ve done with this place.’ Dervla’s gesture took in a mosaic splashback, an elaborately branched chandelier, a trompe-l’oeil mural and a ceramic Dutch stove. ‘Who do you think would aspire to live here?’

‘Nobody I know. Except for me and Finn.’

‘I have plenty of clients who would aspire to live in a place like this.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. I know a writer who would give anything to be able to downshift and spend the rest of her life here. I know a retired guard who would kill–that’s a joke, by the way–to become part of a village community and live in a house full of such charm and character. And you’re the gal who has invested this house with said charm and character. I’m assuming that this is all your own work?’

‘Well, yeah. The place was a bit soulless when Finn and me first moved in.’

‘You’ve made it your own, Río. And presumably you did it on a pretty tight budget.’

‘I do everything on a tight budget. The chandelier came from a junk shop. And I found the stove on a skip.’

‘You see? You have a great eye. And you have experience.’

‘Experience?’

‘You trained as a theatre designer. And you know about gardens. The exterior of a house is as important as the interior.’

Río looked thoughtful. ‘Hm. Gardens I could do.’

‘And you could bring your window-dressing skills to bear. You’re fantastic at telling stories with images. Remember that window you did for Fleurissima last summer? The one that featured in Galway Now?’

‘Oh, yes! I had fun with that.’

Fleur had asked Río for something provocative, that would make people want to stop and look. It had worked so well that Galway Now magazine had run an article on it. The display Río had come up with had featured a trail of clothing that appeared to have been discarded by a showgirl: a flirty hat followed by a pair of elbow-length satin gloves; just-kicked-off cherry-red heels; a dress left lying in a pool of silk; two half-full champagne saucers abandoned on a rococo column next to a casket spilling diamante jewellery; a single red rose; silk stockings draped over the back of a boudoir chair, a bra in humming-bird hues and matching directoire knickers. The narrative had been self-evident, the inference clear.

‘You could have fun with this too,’ Dervla told her. ‘What I have in mind is…’

And Río listened carefully as Dervla outlined her ideas, and as she listened, her imagination began to go into overdrive. She was impressed by the story of the Galway couple who had staged their home, and she began to think of other things that might help to sell a property. All five senses would have to be engaged–the look of the place, obviously, was the first thing to be taken into consideration when fabricating an aspirational lifestyle. The look would depend upon the individual house: no Arts-and-Crafts ambience in a modern apartment, for instance, and nothing neo-Gothic in a suburban semi. Smell? The aroma of baking bread or roasting coffee was commonplace–a trick that everybody knew by now. Jo Malone was a savvier option. Then there was touch–a sofa swathed in a soft chenille throw and piled with cushions could look fantastic; crisp linen on a bed, fluffy towels in a bathroom. And sound: something gentle on the CD player, or maybe a fountain in the garden, or even a recording of birdsong? The sound of ocean waves in a house by the sea…Taste? Why not? A glossy cookery book left open at a photograph of an exotic stir fry, chopsticks and rice bowls laid out on Japanese mats, a bottle of sake–oh, this could be fun!

And when Dervla had finished outlining her ideas, Río realised that she had not thought of Finn for a whole ten minutes. Dervla’s peculiar brand of diversion therapy seemed to be working already. She looked at her sister and smiled, and then she raised her glass in a toast. ‘I’d be so good at this!’ she said.