That Gallagher Girl (3 page)

She let out a low whistle. ‘Well. I didn't know that Madser had talent in the art department.' Taking a step forward, Río narrowed her eyes and gave the painting the once-over. In the bottom left-hand corner, a girl was depicted crouching by a rock pool, gazing intently at a red-spotted flatfish that lay half-buried in the sand. The girl was naked, striped all over like a brindled cat, and her lips were pulled back to show feral, pointed teeth. In the bottom right-hand corner was a tiny, barely recognisable signature. She made out just three letters: ‘C A T'.

‘No,' she murmured. ‘Not Madser. Not a man. A woman was responsible for this.'

‘What are you on about, Río?' asked Adair.

‘Someone's left you a painting.'

‘A painting?'

‘Yeah. It's not bad. In fact, I think I might be jealous.' Río took another squint. ‘It's better than any of the stuff I've done recently.'

‘Nonsense. Your paintings are wonderful,' returned Adair, loyally.

‘I'll take a picture of it, shall I? Send you the evidence.' Río checked the battery level on her phone.

‘Is there a signature?'

‘Yeah. Banksy. Joke.' Río leaned a little closer, wishing the light was better: the texture of the paint told her it was acrylic. ‘Talking of paintings, did I see that your Paul Henry seascape was up for sale?'

‘How did you know that?'

‘There was a description of a Paul Henry in the
Irish Times
auction preview a couple of weeks ago: it sounded a lot like yours.'

‘It is – was – mine.'

‘D'you mind me asking what you got for it?' Río traced the raw edge of the canvas with a forefinger. It came away dust-free.

‘I got many thousand euros less than it was worth, Río
a grá
.'

‘Why did you sell it?'

‘Why do you think? I need a roof over my head more than I need a picture by a famous dead bloke.'

‘Did it cover the cost of your mobile home?' she asked, taking a step backward, and putting her head on one side. How long had this painting been here?

‘No. The le Brocquy portrait did that. The Paul Henry went towards Izzy's wedding fund.'

‘Izzy's getting married?' Río was astonished.

‘No, no. She's no plans to get married. But she will one day, and I'm damned if my girl won't get the most lavish wedding money can buy. The fact that her dad's on his uppers isn't going to get in the way of that. Oh – hang on a sec, Río – I just gotta sign something here . . .'

A deferential murmuring could be heard in the background. Río turned away from the painting and strolled across the room to where the minuscule dormer window afforded a peek of the butt-end of Inishclare island. She imagined Adair in Dubai surrounded by flunkeys, signing documents with a Montblanc pen. Hunkering down, she thought about what he had just said. On his uppers . . . How weird! Just a couple of years ago Río would never have dreamed that Adair Bolger would wind up broke. He'd been a ringmaster at the Celtic Tiger circus, a major beneficiary of the boom. Back in those days his weekend retreat, the Villa Felicity, had been an ostentatious pleasure palace for his gold-plated trophy wife, who had swanned about the joint as if it were her very own Petit Trianon. She remembered the guided tour Adair had given her of the swimming pool and the entertainment suite and the hideous yoga pavilion, and how she had curled her lip at the unseemly extravagance of it all. She remembered how he had hoped to indulge his daughter's dreams of renaming the joint
An Ghorm Mhór
– The Big Blue – and turning it into a five-star PADI scuba-dive resort; how he had held on tight to that dream for Izzy's sake, even when he could no longer afford to. But he hadn't been able to hold on for long. Now this monument to the excesses of the Celtic Tiger era was lying empty a mile down the shoreline, waiting for its new owner to claim it. The new owner – whoever he or she might be – was clearly in no hurry. The shutters of the Villa Felicity had not been raised in over two years.

Río got to her feet and stretched. Then she reached into her backpack and rummaged for her cosmetics purse. Her nose had got sunburned yesterday and was peeling. Peering into the cracked mirror on the flap of the purse, she rubbed a little Vitamin E cream on her nose, and then on her lips. Her freckles were worse than ever this year – although you couldn't really see them in the fractured glass. Maybe she should use this mirror more often? If she couldn't see her freckles, that meant that she wouldn't be able to see the fine lines around her eyes, the strands of silver creeping into her mass of tawny hair, the brows that needed shaping, the occasional blemish that needed concealing, the . . .

‘There, done and dusted,' said Adair, back on the phone to her. ‘I've just signed away my condo in the Burj Khalifa.'

Something told Río that, despite the jocularity of his tone, he wasn't being facetious. ‘Are you really on your uppers, Adair?' she asked.

‘Pretty well,' he acknowledged, cheerfully. ‘You don't sound too put out about it.'

‘You know me, Río. As long as my girl's happy, I'm happy. And she's doing OK.'

‘What's Izzy up to?'

‘She's got herself a grand job in marketing. How's Finn?'

‘His father got him work as a stunt double on his latest blockbuster.'

‘Cool.'

‘I guess. But LA doesn't suit him. He's making noises about going travelling again.'

Travelling solo, Río supposed, since – as far as she knew – her son had not had a significant other in his life since he and Adair's daughter had gone their separate ways. When Finn and Izzy had first become an item, their Facebook albums had featured the kind of pictures that had made Río smile every time she browsed through them. Most of them showed the dynamic duo at work and at play as they backpacked around the world: Finn at the helm of a RIB, Izzy hosing down scuba gear; Finn signing logbooks, Izzy poring over dive plans. The pair of them together, swimming with manta rays, dancing on beaches, perched on barstools and swinging off bungee cords. The loveliest one of all (Río had printed it out) showed them lounging in a hammock, wrapped in each other's arms.

And then, once Izzy had made the decision to embark upon a real-life career, her Facebook albums had reflected this U-turn. The backgrounds of sand, sea and sky had been replaced by vistas of gleaming steel and glass edifices in front of which a well-heeled Izzy posed with the élan of Condoleezza Rice, briefcase in one hand, iPhone in the other. Finn's pictures, by contrast, continued to show him coasting in his own groove – surfing the shallows, skimming the reefs and diving the depths off islands from Bali to Bora Bora.

There was a silence, during which, Río knew, Adair did not want to talk about Izzy and Finn any more than she did. It was like a bittersweet romcom, she guessed, or an Alan Ayckbourn play. It was – well . . . complicated.

‘How's my old gaff doing?' Adair asked, finally. ‘Is there anyone living there?'

‘No.'

‘Still no idea who bought it?'

‘Not a clue. If somebody doesn't lay claim to it soon it'll go feral, like this place. It's already overgrown with creeper.'

‘You once told me that if you trained creeper up the walls of a house it gave it a loved look.'

‘There's a difference between cultivating creeper and allowing weed to grow rampant, Adair.'

Adair sighed, then gave an unexpected, robust laugh. ‘What a fucking colossal waste of money that house was! It's funny to think that I'll be living just a mile down the shore from that great white elephant, Río, isn't it? That stupid feckin' albatross of a Taj Mahal that—' A blip came over the line, and, before Río could remark on his mixed metaphors: ‘Shite and onions!' he growled. ‘Incoming call, Río, from a man I have to see about a dog. Thanks for the recce.'

‘I'll send pictures. I hope they put you off.'

‘Nothing's going to put me off, Ms Kinsella. Bring on that wheelbarrow.'

‘Wheelbarrow?'

‘For my cockles and mussels, alive alive-o.'

‘
Slán
, Adair.'

Río looked thoughtful as she ended the call. Adair was making a huge mistake – sure, didn't the dogs in the street know that? But there was no talking to him because he simply wouldn't listen. She had quizzed Seamus Moynihan, a local boatman, about the pros and cons of oyster farming, and asked him to put his thoughts in an email to her so that she could pass them on to Adair. The bulk of the email outlined the cons. As far as Seamus was concerned there were fuck all pros: in his opinion the phrase ‘the world's your oyster' was more of a curse than a compliment. Upon forwarding the email, Río had received a typically sanguine response. Adair was like Tom Hanks in
Forrest Gump
, she decided, fixated on his Bubba Gump Shrimp Company . . . except farming oysters on the wild West coast of Ireland had to be a hell of a lot more challenging than shrimp fishing in the southern United States.

What the hell. Mr Bolger was a grown man – he could do as he pleased and suffer the consequences. Río stuffed her phone back in her pocket, and resumed her inspection of the canvas nailed over the window.

It was a naughty little siren of a painting. It had a naïve, dreamlike quality that reminded her of one of Rousseau's jungle fantasies – especially when the eye wandered to that small, unexpected feral creature in the bottom left-hand corner. A ray of sun filtering through the glass set it aglow suddenly, lending it the jewel-like appearance of a mosaic. Río wanted it. Picking up a shard of slate from the floor, she used it to prise away the nails fixing the painting to the window frame. Then she rolled up the canvas and tucked it inside her jacket. She wasn't stealing, she told herself. She was safeguarding the painting for Adair. If she left it where it was, it would soon be destroyed by the damp sea air that seeped in through the bockety casement.

The damp was infiltrating her bones, now – she wanted to get back outside to where the sun was pushing its way through raggedy cloud, dispersing rainbows. She made a last, quick tour of the house upstairs and down, snapping a dozen or so photographs that she could attach to an email and send to Adair as evidence of his idiocy. In the kitchen, she even took a couple of shots of the empty whiskey bottles littering the room – proof of how old Madser had been driven to drink, and a premonition of the fate that might befall the new owner. But as she went to leave by the back door, she looked over her shoulder at the picture window beyond which the light bounced straight off the sea into the living space, and she knew that Adair Bolger – whose glass was always half-full – would somehow find a way to be happy in this house.

Chapter Two

Cat was lying in a sun trap on the flat roof of the house. She'd soaked every single item of clothing she possessed in the oversized bath, she'd soaped herself from head to toe in the blue marble wet room before towelling herself dry with her scrap of microfibre towel, and now – damp hair spread out around her like a nimbus – she was allowing the midday sun to do the rest of the work. Above her, gulls were wheeling in a hypnotic spiral, reminding her of the whirligig seeds that used to drop from the branches of the sycamore tree her mother had planted in the garden of the Crooked House, her childhood home. How different two houses could be! This house was all steel and glass and acute angles: the Crooked House was all ramshackle and bockety and – well – crooked.

Slap-bang in the middle of a forest, overlooking a lake, the Crooked House could have been a magical place for a child to grow up. Cat remembered children coming to visit, the sons and daughters of her parents' friends all bubbling with excitement as they explored the secret rooms and winding passageways within its walls, the bosky tunnels and hidey-holes without. The jewel in the crown – the treat that Cat liked to delay showing off to new friends until the very end of her guided tour – was the treehouse.

Cat's mum Paloma had built the house in an ancient cypress tree, when Cat was seven. It had been a surprise for her birthday that year, and Cat had never had a better birthday present, before or since. The flat-pack playhouses and designer dens of other children seemed mundane in comparison.

The floor of Cat's eyrie was a wooden platform, the walls constructed from something her mother told her was called ‘osier', a type of bendy willow used in wickerwork. With the help of Raoul, Paloma had woven the osier into a beehive shape, then covered it in waterproof camouflage material and tacked on masses of branches and foliage. There was a rope ladder that could be drawn up against intruders, and a basket on a pulley that could be lowered and filled with provisions. There was a window with a raffia blind from which vantage point Cat could spy on the coming and goings of foxes and badgers, and a cupboard for her books and art materials. The house was practically invisible, especially when the tree was in leaf: she and her mum had christened it the Heron's Nest because, if you spotted it from below, you really might think it was one.

The Heron's Nest was Cat's refuge from the real world, her cocoon for dreaming, her very own private property. She had hung ‘Keep Out' signs at the entrance, but of course she hadn't been able to resist showing off the place to all comers because she was so proud of it. She was even more proud of the fact that her beyond-brilliant mum had made it. Sometimes they had slept there, Paloma and Cat, snug and cosied up in duvets. Sometimes Cat's dad would come looking for them, blundering through the under-growth and muttering and cursing when he fell, which was frequently. Paloma would plug them both into headphones then, and Cat would fall asleep to the sound of her mother's recorded voice telling her stories, and wake to boisterous birdsong.

Cat no longer enjoyed the luxury of falling asleep to stories or music. She kept her wits about her now at all times: even while she slept. The last time she'd been stupid enough to let her guard down she'd woken to the shrilling of a smoke alarm, and the greedy sound of flames lapping against canvas. Under cover of night, someone had boarded her houseboat. They'd crapped on the companionway, jemmied the hatch under which she stowed her paintings, slung turpentine over them, and set them alight before scarpering. That had been a month ago. The following day Cat had posted the keys of the houseboat back to the guy who owned it. After two years of living on the canal, after two years of enduring the kind of persecution that mavericks and vagabonds the world over are subject to, she had decided it was time to move on.

She'd hitched a ride on a rig, and ended up here in Lissamore. She knew the village – she'd worked as a scenic artist on a film,
The O'Hara Affair
, that had been made in the vicinity, when she'd been put up in one of the numerous B&Bs requisitioned by the film makers. But Cat couldn't afford a B&B now. Nor would she want to stay in one. Landladies were inquisitive sorts, prone to asking questions and making the kind of observations that Cat would not care to elucidate on.
Is it a Donegal Gallagher you are? It's hard to place you by your accent. Are you travelling on your own? You want to be careful, so. You're paying by cash? That's unusual, these days. Is that all the luggage you have? You're sure? Fill in the register, if you'd be so kind. Signature and ID, please.

Cat hated registers, as she hated all manner of form-filling. She couldn't get her head round the bureaucracy, any more than she could understand why she had to divulge all kinds of personal stuff to the faceless penpushers who processed the info. Who wanted to know this stuff about her? Why did they want to know it? What was in it for them, and why did they have to make life so unnecessarily, so infuriatingly complicated?

Raoul had offered to help her complete an application form once, for a mobile phone contract, but when she got a load of the stuff you'd need to get one – ID, utility bills, bank account details – she had despaired, and opted for a pay-as-you-go instead.

That pay-as-you-go sounded now, alerting her to a text. She knew who the sender was without having to consult the display. Raoul was the only person in the world who knew her number.

Where are you, Catkin?
she read.

In a gud place,
she texted back.

Be more specific.

On a roof in lisamor.

I should have guessed. Tin?

No but it is hot.

I like it. Keep your phone turned on. I have news for you.

OK.

News. Good. She hoped it had to do with the house-sitting gig he'd told her about.

A couple of academics, friends of Raoul's in Galway, were taking a year's sabbatical in New Mexico, and they needed someone to dust their books and water their marijuana plants and play with their dog while they were away. The house in question was near the village of Kilrowan, and came complete with river views and a light-filled conservatory that Cat could use as a studio. It was ideal, Raoul had told her and – more importantly – it was timely, for since Cat had become a person of no fixed abode, money had become a problem.

She had phoned her father to tell him to stop sending her allowance to the houseboat and that she'd alert him to her new address as soon as she knew it herself. She was chancing her arm, she knew: she was nineteen now, and past the age when she could expect any kind of parental support. But, hey: she was Hugo's only daughter, she'd been motherless from the age of fourteen, and since the only affection she had ever received from her father had been of that maudlin variety that alcoholics bestow capriciously and indiscriminately, the very least he could do was cough up a few bob to keep her off the streets. It wasn't as if he couldn't afford it.

Her phone rang.

‘Raoul! You punk! It's been ages since you called.'

‘I could say the same thing about you, little sister.'

‘I can't afford to make calls. You know that. How are you? How's your new lady? Tell me everything.'

Her questions went unanswered. ‘I've bad news, Cat.'

‘Shit.' Cat furled herself into a sitting position and reached for her sarong. ‘What's up?'

‘Your house-sitting gig's gone to a more deserving cause.'

‘A more deserving cause! Is that some kind of joke? Whose cause could be more deserving than mine? I'm homeless and broke.'

‘I'm sorry, Cat. Their nephew's volunteered to do it. He's just been made redundant.'

Cat looked up at the sky, narrowing her eyes against the sun, and watched a tern plummet seaward. ‘Bummer,' she said. ‘I kinda liked the idea of living in a house with a conservatory.'

‘Where are you now?'

‘On a roof in Lissamore. I told you in my text.'

‘Whose roof?'

‘I dunno whose roof it is. It belongs to one of those great big holiday villas that were being built all over the place when we Irish thought we were millionaires.'

‘Posh?'

‘Yeah. But it looks like no one's been near it for yonks, so I decided to breathe a little life into the joint.'

‘How long have you been there?'

Cat considered. ‘A week. Maybe longer. What day is it?'

‘Friday. How did you get in?'

‘How do you think? That right-angled screwdriver you gave me has proved mighty handy, Raoul.'

She heard him sigh in her ear. ‘OK, sweetheart. You've had your fun. Don't you think it's time you went home and did some thinking about your future?'

‘Home? Where's that?'

‘The Crooked House.'

‘Don't make me laugh, Raoul. That ain't my home any more than it's yours.'

‘Then come to Galway.'

‘I'm not moving in with you, bro.'

‘Then what the hell are you going to do? You said it yourself – you're homeless and broke.'

Cat got to her feet, yawned and stretched. ‘I guess I'll have to do that poste restante thing,' she said, strolling to the parapet and looking down, ‘and get Dad to send cash to the post office here until I find myself some kind of fixed abode.'

‘Cash? Hugo sends you cash? I thought it was cheques?'

‘No. It's always been cash. Sure, what would I do with a cheque when I've no bank account?'

‘Nobody deals in cash nowadays, Cat! How does he send it?'

‘Like the way you would to a kid on their birthday. In a card. He even managed to find a Hallmark one once that had “To a Special Daughter” on it. That made me fall about.'

On the other end of the phone, she heard Raoul sigh again. He must be thinking – he always sighed when he was thinking hard.

‘Has he upped it?'

‘Upped what?'

‘The money he sends you?'

‘No. It's still a hundred a week.'

‘And that's all you've been living off?'

Cat shrugged. ‘It's plenty. Sure, I had no rent to pay on the houseboat, and what would I spend money on apart from food and art materials?'

‘Most nineteen-year-olds would have an answer to that.'

‘Maybe. I don't know any nineteen-year-olds, so I don't know how they spend their money.'

‘They spend it on clothes. Music. Games.'

‘Clothes.' Cat looked down at the sarong wrapped around her nakedness. ‘Hm. Maybe I
could
use a few new clothes. My boots are in bits, and some fucker stole my jacket.'

‘What fucker?'

‘The fucker who set fire to my paintings. He probably thought there was stuff in the pockets.'

‘Did he get anything?'

‘A little cash. Twenty euro, maybe.'

‘No cards? No ID?'

‘I don't have any cards. Or ID. Apart from that fake student one.'

‘You've still no passport?'

‘I've never needed one, Raoul.'

‘We'll have to remedy that, Catkin. You gotta see some of the world.'

‘Right now, this corner of the world suits me fine.'

Beyond the parapet, the dark blue line of the horizon stretched from east to west, dividing sea from sky and trailing a cluster of cabochon emerald islands in its wake. Cat had been painting variations on this view for the past six days, including, as she always did, a little self-portrait. Her minxy self – Catgirl – diving off a pier, or dancing down a sand dune, or shimmying up a drumlin. Having run out of canvas, and with no money to buy more, she'd taken to cutting old rolls of wallpaper into twelve-by-eighteen-inch rectangles.

‘Anyway, seeing the world costs money, bro,' she resumed. ‘And that brings us nicely to where we came in. I'm going to have to phone Hugo and beg.'

‘Have you spoken to him recently?' Raoul asked.

‘Dad? Are you mad? No.'

‘He's not well, Cat.'

‘Of course he's not well. He's a raving alcoholic.'

‘It's worse than that. He's not painting.'

‘He's blocked?'

‘Either that, or he's burnt out.'

‘Oo-er. That
is
bad news.'

Cat leaned on the parapet and watched the progress of a tiny spider crawling along a fissure in the concrete. A money spider! Maybe if she turned her hand over, it would cross her palm and bring her luck? She crooked a forefinger, to coax it in the right direction.

‘How's Ophelia coping?' she asked.

‘She's covering up quite well. I have to say I've a grudging admiration for her. She even managed to drag Hugo out to some dinner that was being given in his honour last week. The pics were all over the papers.'

‘Well, it's in her interest to cover things up, isn't it? What'll become of her status as muse and keeper of the votive flame when Dad finally burns out? Our Oaf loves the limelight. She won't like being a nobody.' The spider emerged from the crack and started to scale Cat's hand. Yes!

‘She'll find some way around it. She's a survivor. And she's no eejit.'

That was true. When it came to finding her spotlight, Raoul and Cat's stepmother was exceptionally clever. She'd been an actress in a former life, and – conscious that she was approaching her best before date – she'd been glad to fill the vacancy left when Paloma wearied of her role as Hugo Gallagher's muse and ran away from the Crooked House, taking their only daughter with her. There was a lot of artyfarty crap talked about being a muse, Cat had learned. It was a thankless job really – a bit like being an unpaid minder to a grown-up baby. It wasn't about lolling around on divans eating grapes and quaffing champagne: it was about cooking and cleaning and nagging and making sure that money was coming in to pay the bills. Cat remembered her mother locking Hugo into his studio for hours on end, not letting him out until he had something concrete to send to his gallery. Then, when payment finally came through, Paloma would spend a day feverishly scribbling cheques to all their creditors and writing thank-you letters to those local tradesmen who had been patient with her – the butcher and the plumber and the market gardener (all of whom were, Cat suspected, a little in love with her mother). She remembered how, on the day electricity was reconnected after three weeks of suppers cooked on a Primus stove and homework done by candlelight, she and her mother had celebrated by making buckets of popcorn, turning on lights all over the house and playing Madonna at full blast. Hugo had celebrated by going off on a pub crawl that had lasted three days.