The Kinsella Sisters (32 page)

‘Did you want a home with a kick, Adair?’

‘No. If I’d known my marriage wasn’t going to last, I’d have been happy with a fishing lodge–as long as it had a window big enough to frame my view.’

‘So you’re a man of simple tastes?’

‘I like to think so.’ Adair regarded her speculatively. ‘If you owned this house, Río, and you wanted to give it a more homely vibe, how would you do it?’

‘I’d give it a sense of humour.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, don’t you think this house takes itself too seriously? That po-faced goddess on the yoga pavilion, for instance. She could do with a touch of rouge, a little polish on her nails, some fire-engine red lipstick.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘What else?’

Río thought hard. ‘I’d grow creeper all over the exterior walls,
to soften the angles. Creeper hugging a house makes it look as if it’s loved. I’d paint the interiors in soft, warm shades of saffron and poppy, and I’d get rid of all that cutting-edge furniture and replace it with floppier stuff. I’d fill the house with plants, and install aquariums in every room and fill them with angel fish and zebra fish and Siamese fighters. And there would have to be a cat. There’s nothing like a cat to stop you getting too big for your boots. Cats rule.’

‘And on a viewing day? How would you stage it to persuade someone that they’d want to live here?’

‘I’d get a long trestle table,’ said Río, rising to her feet. ‘And I’d put it slap-bang here in the middle of the deck, and cover it in a big white linen cloth. And then I’d set it for dinner, with at least a dozen places.’

‘So it would look as if the owner was about to entertain guests?’

‘No. So that it would look as if the owner
had
entertained guests.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d stage it to look as if the guests had enjoyed the grandest dinner imaginable, sitting over great wine and good food in front of one of the most fabulous views in Ireland, laughing and shooting the breeze until the small hours.’

‘How on earth would you manage that?’

‘Well, think of the dinner we had in O’Toole’s the other night. We all had a good time, didn’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘And how did the table look afterwards?’

‘Messy.’

‘Go to the top of the class. That’s what happens when people have a good time.’

‘So you’d set the table as if a load of people had messed it up?’

‘Yes. But it would have to be very
carefully
messed up. There’d be no red wine stains on the tablecloth, or rinds of cheese left on plates, or scraps of wilted salad leaves. I’d leave napkins
casually draped on table mats, and some of the glasses would have a little wine left in them. Guests would have been at the coffee stage, so there’d be a couple of cafetiéres with coffee grinds in, and lots of silver teaspoons.’ Río furrowed her brow, thinking. ‘What else? Wine coolers, of course, and loads of bottles, some half full’

‘Not half empty?’ Adair smiled at her, and she smiled back.

‘Never
half empty,’ she said. ‘There’d be flowers, of course, and I’d scatter the table with petals. A big bowl of oranges, with maybe a little orange peel by some of the side plates. And candles–lots and lots of half-burnt candles all over the deck, and a fiddle propped up by the rail, to show that there’d been music’ Río was really warming to her subject now. ‘And by the pool, there’d be a pile of inflatables, to show that kids had been there, and that they’d had a great time too. Staging a house is like telling a story, you see, Adair.’

‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘You’re good at this, Ms Kinsella.’

‘I know. But there’s more. Let me think…Champagne, of course. A pashmina left hanging on the back of a chair. A discarded bracelet. Maybe a trace of red lipstick on a napkin.’

‘A cigar?’

Río shook her head. ‘No. These people don’t smoke.’

‘What were our people celebrating?’

‘Um. An anniversary? A birthday?’

‘So there’d be presents.’

‘Yes. Let’s make it a lady’s birthday. What does she like?’

‘Jo Malone?’

‘But of course! Jo Malone candles and body lotion.’

‘Lingerie?’

Río considered. ‘Maybe not. Too intimate.’

‘Books?’

‘Yes. Lovely big glossy coffee-table books on gardening and cooking and wildlife.’

‘CDs?’

‘Definitely. She’d be into trad–that’s why the fiddle is there, and maybe a bodhrán too–so you’d have Donal Lunny and Sharon Shannon.’

‘And Zoe Conway.’

‘Of course! And there’d be wrapping paper and ribbon festooned around the place, and birthday cards with “Happy Birthday” written all over them in different handwriting–and maybe there’d have been dancing, maybe someone had left their shoes on the deck–red shoes with heels–and oh! it would all be so much fun!’

Adair gave her a look of admiration. ‘You have some imagination, Río Kinsella. I just wish I had a birthday coming up so that we could do it for real. But then, I have no friends here to invite.’

‘My birthday’s coming up, weekend after next. Maybe you should throw a party for me.’

‘Now, there’s a thought. Maybe we should.
I
may have no friends in Lissamore, but you must have loads.’

‘Adair. That was a joke.’

‘About your birthday?’

‘No. About throwing a party for me,’ she said, sitting back down beside him. ‘Now. Back to business. You see now how important it is, when you’re staging a property, to get the ambience just right. Your main aim is to get your viewer to think–Wow! This is a house where fun can be had, where music and laughter and love are on the agenda. You want them to think that when they buy your house, they’re buying all these things too.’

‘They say that money can’t buy you love.’

‘But–as Marilyn Monroe claims in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
–it certainly can help.’

‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes!’

A girl’s voice came from the other side of the deck. ‘Isn’t that the movie where she played the ultimate gold-digger?’

Río turned to see Izzy leaning against the railing, watching them, her gaze bluer and more inscrutable than a Siamese cat’s.

‘Izzy-Bizz!’ said Adair. ‘Where did you come from?’

She was clever. Oh, this woman was clever! Clever, devious and dangerous.

From the road above, Izzy had watched Río swimming ostentatiously to and fro between mooring and slipway, before emerging like Halle Berry (she
wished?)
in
Die Another Day
, or Aphrodite in the Botticelli painting, then looking up at the Villa Felicity to see if the lord of the manor had been gazing upon her wondrousness.

He evidently had, because as Izzy rounded the corner of the house several minutes later, the pair of them were having a cosy tête-à-tête on the deck, Río all snuggled up in a towelling robe–
her
towelling robe from the Merrion Hotel, Izzy noticed with some indignation.

She decided that it might be a good idea to stay shtoom for a while before making her presence felt. She listened as Río mouthed on about some fake birthday party she was planning to throw–some kind of a staging ploy to help sell the Villa Felicity, with prop candles and champagne and flowers and a feckin’ violin. ‘Oh!’ she heard the woman say in a breathy, little-girl voice. ‘It would all be so much fun!’

The
piece de resistance
had been when she’d mentioned–oh so casually–that it happened to be
her
birthday, weekend after next. Well, just think! What an astonishing coincidence! Izzy almost had to admire her. The dame had masterminded the scenario so adroitly that she’d even managed to drop in her wish-list of presents. Jo Malone and pashminas didn’t come cheap–and as for the ‘discarded bracelet’! Izzy was surprised that she hadn’t specified the number of diamonds she wanted on said bracelet, or the carat size, or whether it should come from Tiffany or Cartier.

How subtle she’d been! How Machiavellian! But Izzy could be Machiavellian, too, and was not to be underestimated. Sauntering across the deck, she hummed a couple of bars of ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ before depositing a kiss on her father’s forehead and dropping into the chair beside him.

‘Hello, Daddy dearest,’ she said. I came by to pick up my togs. ‘I’m going snorkelling.’

Río felt uncomfortable beyond belief. With her clothes in a pile on the deck and herself wrapped in a bathrobe, she knew it must look as if she and Adair had had sex. She’d have to disillusion the girl.

‘Your father very kindly lent me this,’ she stammered, sitting up straighter and pulling the lapels of the robe up to her chin. ‘I–I’m wearing it because I was swimming.’

‘But of course! Why else would you be wearing it?’ asked Izzy ingenuously, widening her eyes. Río felt more uncomfortable than ever now. Oh why did she allow this girl to have such a debilitating effect on her? She felt as if she were back at school, guilty of some misdemeanour.

‘I don’t know,’ she said stupidly.

Izzy gave her a pleasant smile. ‘That Marilyn Monroe quote was from the end of the film, wasn’t it? When she admits she’s marrying for money?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s what I love about that movie,’ said Izzy. ‘She’s so upfront about the fact that she’s venal. It’s her candour that makes us root for her.’

Adair looked at his daughter proudly. ‘Izzy was originally going to take Film Studies as her degree course,’ he told Río, ‘until she decided that Business Studies would be more useful.’

‘Er, what kind of business are you thinking of going into?’ asked Río.

‘Funny you should ask that. Finn–your son–and I had lunch
earlier, and we were talking about how brilliant it would be to set up a dive centre in Lissamore, now that the one on Inishclare’s gone.’

‘He was?’ Río was taken aback. This was all happening much faster than she planned, nor was it necessarily going in the direction she’d intended. Izzy Bolger and Finn as business partners was a scenario from hell, as far as she was concerned.

‘Shane–his dad–has offered to back him,’ said Izzy.

‘I
know
Shane is his dad!’ Río wanted to snap at her. What was all this ‘Finn–your son’ and ‘Shane–his dad’ shit? Did the girl think she was such a total imbecile that she had to detail Río’s own family tree?

But instead she said, ‘Yes. Shane mentioned something about helping him out.’

‘It would be an expensive business, setting up a dive outfit,’ observed Adair.

‘I’ll do the maths when I get back to Dublin. The captain of the subaqua club in college is clued in about that stuff. He has contacts in the trade.’ Izzy’s phone alerted her to a text message. She smiled when she accessed it, and jumped up from her seat. ‘I’d better get cracking. Finn’s waiting for me up on the road. Apparently the viz off the island is cracking today.’

‘You’re snorkelling off Inishclare?’ asked Adair.

‘Yeah. Finn’s mate Carl’s lent him his boat. I’ll see you later, Daddy. Bye!’

Izzy danced away, looking pleased with herself. An awkward silence descended for the second time that afternoon, but Izzy was back before either Río or Adair had a chance to remark upon the burgeoning relationship between their offspring. ‘Dad! Could you let me have some money? I’d like to buy a round later, and I’m out of cash.’

‘Sure.’ Adair got to his feet. ‘Just let me find my wallet. Where did I put it?’

‘It’s on the table in the atrium.’

‘Excuse me for a moment, Río,’ Adair said. And as he followed his princess inside, Río heard a phone tone and the tinkling sound of Izzy’s laughter from the ‘atrium’.

Well! It looked as though minxy little Isabella Bolger had well and truly annexed her son. How and why had she done that? Río would have thought that the girl’s preference would be for a metrosexual, or a man with ‘prospects’ in law or accountancy, but she supposed Finn was pretty damn irresistible. He had said something on the phone today about Izzy having visited Koh Tao while he was there. Had they planned to meet? Had they spent much time together? Had they maybe slept together then?

Río remembered how well matched they’d looked all those months ago on the day of Frank’s funeral, sitting together on the sea wall across from Harbour View. Perhaps they’d shared contact details that day. That was how young people got to know each other now, carrying on and flirting on Facebook and Bebo and My Space. For all she knew, Finn and Izzy could have been an item for some time. For all she knew, they could be making plans for a future together. She wondered how much information Finn would volunteer about the affair. Very little, knowing him. Not even Dr Phil could have got her son to open up about that kind of stuff.

‘Well!’ said Adair, with mock heartiness, as he returned to the deck. ‘It’s nice to see our two young people having fun!’

‘Yes.’ Río managed an unconvincing smile. ‘All that fresh air and messing about in boats is far better for them than playing mindless computer games.’ Oh God. She sounded like a bad infomercial for the Scouting movement.

‘Would you like something else to drink?’ asked Adair. ‘A glass of wine?’

‘No, thanks. I’d better go.’

Río rose, feeling awkward again. She didn’t much fancy the idea of changing back into her clothes on Adair Bolger’s deck.

But he must have sensed her discomfort, because: ‘Feel free to use the downstairs shower room to change,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

She made her way through the massive sitting room and into the ‘atrium’, where the shower room was located. It could have accommodated three of her puny bathroom, Río thought, as she disrobed and got back into the suit she so hated.

As she went to hang her borrowed bathrobe on the back of the door, she dislodged another from its peg. Stooping to retrieve it from the floor, a citrusy scent hit her. It was a scent that she recognised at once as Acqua di Parma, the aftershave Adair used.

Deep inside her, Río felt something like a flower unfurling.

‘You’re some waterbaby,’ Finn told Izzy.

Having just completed a series of tumbles, Izzy was floating on her back, watching a vapour trail trace its way across the sky.

‘You remind me of my mum,’ he added.