That Gallagher Girl (9 page)

Río nodded. Then she finished tying the straps on her sandals, mouthed ‘Back soon!' and left Izzy to it.

Chapter Six

Cat was firing water at the peeling aquamarine walls of the swimming pool through a power hose. Yesterday in Galway, she and Finn had bought shedloads of stuff in B&Q. Paint and rollers and overalls and squeegees and tool belts – plus tools to go in them! Lots and lots of tools! Wrenches and pliers and scrapers and Stanley knives and gorilla bars! An angle grinder and an electric sander and a garden blower and a chain saw! Because Cat loved DIY stores the way other women love shopping malls, she'd felt fizzy with excitement as they'd barrelled up and down the aisles, filling their outsize trolleys and sniggering at the couples arguing over carpet samples and tiles. ‘Look, Finn! Spray-paint in like – a zillion colours! Oh, wow! A laser saw! Look – an electric shredder! A multi-
multi
-bit screwdriver! A nail gun!
A nail gun!
I used to dream about having one of those when I was small!'

This morning they'd got up early and had a big breakfast – fried bacon and mushrooms and tomatoes courtesy of Finn, French toast courtesy of Cat – done in butter the way her mother had taught her. Now Cat, clad in B&Q heavy-duty overalls (she'd had to roll up the arms and legs by miles because they had only mountainy men sizes in stock), was halfway up a ladder at the deep end of the pool, whistling along to Bruce Springsteen who was crooning through her headphones about dancing in the dark. Finn's beautiful iPod Nano (she'd borrowed it from him earlier to see what all the fuss was about) had proved to be a revelation, and now he couldn't wrest it back from her. He'd promised that he'd download music for her later – all her favourite music in the world! – and she'd promised him that in return she would cook whatever he wanted for supper.

It had been a little rash of him to take her up on the offer, Cat thought, since she wasn't much of a chef, but she guessed that even she could manage steak and oven-ready chips. Yesterday, for lunch, they'd had salad made from lettuce and tomatoes and French beans pilfered from Finn's mother's garden, followed by strawberries. They'd eaten on the terrace, and Cat had felt a blissful sense of liberation sitting there, lunching alfresco in full view of anyone who might pass by on the shore, instead of skulking behind shuttered windows or ducking under the parapet on the roof of the Villa Felicity. She hadn't felt this comfortable or safe since the days when she and her mother had taken refuge in the treehouse in the grounds of the Crooked House, when Paloma had told her tales of how the leopard got his spots and how the camel got his hump. Those were the
Just So
Stories
. The other stories, the ones that Cat listened to when she couldn't sleep, had come later.

After lunch Cat and Finn had demolished a rusty old yoga pavilion in the garden, and later in the evening, ravenous after all that hard physical graft, they'd gone to O'Toole's for dinner, and it had been like a date! Cat had never been on a date before! She'd had chowder and Finn had had crab claws and she had to keep reminding herself to stop looking at his mouth as he'd sucked garlic butter from the crab's fleshy pinkies, and to stop looking at his fingers as he'd dipped them in the finger bowl, and to stop glowering at the waitress who had flirted with him.

And now Finn had gone off to Lissamore to buy the ingredients for this evening's meal, and Bruce Springsteen on the iPod was telling Cat that – baby, she was born to run! – and a niggling little voice in her head was nagging at her to do the thing she'd been putting off for days. It was time to phone ‘home'.

Unhooking herself from the iPod, Cat climbed to the top of the ladder, swung herself over the edge of the swimming pool, and onto the terrace. Her hateful phone – that link to the so-called ‘real' world – was smirking at her from a sun lounger. She gave it a baleful look, picked it up, and dialled.

‘Hello,' purred the voice on the other end of the line. ‘You are through to the Crooked House. Please leave your message for Hugo or Ophelia Gallagher after—'

‘Hello!' Ugh! Oaf's real voice had picked up. ‘Hel-lo?' came the voice again. Resisting the impulse to chuck the phone back on the sun lounger, Cat took a deep breath and said ‘Hi, Ophelia.'

‘Oh. It's you. I was expecting someone else.'

‘Yes, well. It's only me. Is Dad there?'

‘Why do you want him?'

It's none of your business, thought Cat. ‘He's my dad, isn't he?' she said. ‘I guess that's reason enough to want to talk to him.'

‘Oh. You wish to enquire after his health, is that it?' said Ophelia waspishly. ‘Well, I can tell you, Cat, that he's not too good today, so I won't be putting you on to him. I suggest you try calling again some other time.'

‘I need to talk to him, Oaf Elia.'

‘And I'm telling you that you can't talk to him. Now run along and play, Cat. Goodbye.'

Uh-oh. This phone call was proving more problematic than Cat had anticipated.

‘Wait!' said Cat. ‘Don't put the phone down. Tell me when would be a good time to get him.'

‘Um. How about never?'

Cat was feeling edgy now. She
had
to talk to Hugo. She had to get money. ‘Listen, Ophelia. I want to get a poste restante thing set up, so that Dad can send me money. I haven't had any since the houseboat burnt down.'

‘Why should he send you money?'

‘He's always sent me money. You know that.'

‘He sent you money, Cat, when he had some. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any, any more.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘He's broke. We're broke. You're broke. Conjugate the verb, why don't you, then go out and get yourself a job.'

‘But . . . but . . .'

‘
But . . . but
. . .' echoed Ophelia in a parody of Cat's voice. ‘
I don't know
how
to get a job
. Well, let me tell you, Caitlín – don't you think it's about time you did? Who do you think you are – Paris fucking Hilton? Do you think you can spend the rest of your life sponging off your father? You're nineteen fucking years old, and I can tell you that when I was nineteen I'd been gainfully employed for four years. Work it out. Four years is around two thousand days, Cat, and it makes me want to puke every time I hear you whinging on about needing money when you haven't worked a single fucking day in your entire life.'

‘Ophelia.' Cat could feel panic mounting. ‘Listen to me. You know I've no training, you know I—'

‘Your father offered to send you to the Slade, Cat. To the fucking
Slade
. How many wannabe artists would cut their right hand off and learn to paint with their left one if they thought they had a chance of studying there?'

‘I couldn't go there. You know I couldn't have hacked it.'

‘Why? Because Diddums can't read? I have one word for you, Caitlín. Learn.'

And Ophelia cut her off.

Cat stood looking at the blank screen on her phone. In her mind's eye, she saw spidery text running across it, text that she'd looked at again and again and again on the implacable screen of Raoul's AppleMac, with her brother beside her, making noises of encouragement, his voice infinitely patient as he interpreted the hieroglyphics, trying to help her make sense of the words. She could hear him now, in her head intoning the phrases as they scrolled down . . .

No no no, Raoul! I don't want to go there! I don't want to go there! It's not me! Please don't make me.

It's all right. No one can make you do anything you don't want to do, Cat.

And then there was the look on her father's face when she'd replaced the Picasso reproductions on her wall with posters of Westlife. She'd only done it for a joke, but there had been real fury in Hugo's voice when he had said, very quietly, ‘You stupid, stupid girl.'

The sound of footsteps on the shingle below brought Cat back to the here and now. Could it be Finn, back from Lissamore with the T-bones for tonight's dinner? But why would he come the long way round, by the shore? Tossing her phone back on the sun lounger, Cat padded over to the sea wall and looked down.

Oh! What was America's Next Top Model doing, strutting her stuff along a pebbly beach in Lissamore? The blonde creature below looked as if she had just walked off a photoshoot for Calvin Klein casuals. She was wearing a plain blue shift dress and matching ballet-style pumps. The frames of her sunglasses matched her outfit, and she was texting on a silvery-blue iPhone. She was spray-tanned, manicured and L'Oréal-ed to within an inch of her life. She was
so
worth it!

The silvery-blue iPhone sounded.

‘Hi, Río!' The girl's voice came loud and clear to Cat, who was crouching behind a straggly rose bush with her ears on high alert. ‘Yes, thank you, I'm feeling much better – I slept really well, and you were sweet to let me lie in . . . Yes, I've had a look . . . It's a dump . . . The Bentley? Oh, the Bentley will be fine, I suppose, once they've licked it into shape . . . No, they're having problems with the plumbing. Something to do with the septic tank. I had promised to pay cash, but I'm withholding payment until I know the job is finished . . . Will you? . . . Thanks so much, I really appreciate it . . . See you later.'

The iPhone was clicked off and dropped into the capacious depths of a blue suede shoulder bag, then the girl moved towards the five-bar gate that led into Finn's mother's orchard and climbed it surprisingly nimbly, given the constraints of her tight-arsed skirt. Cat monitored America's Next Top Model's progress, feeling a tad apprehensive as she glided between the furrows of runner beans, heading straight for the Villa Felicity, as if on castors.

Fight or flight? Or meet and greet? Cat opted for the latter. ‘Hi.' Unfurling herself from under the rose bush, she moved towards the overgrown path that ran between garden and orchard. ‘Can I help you?'

‘Oh!' The girl jumped – literally jumped – back. Wayne Sleep would have been impressed. ‘
Oh!
Who are you, and what are you doing here?'

‘I might ask you the same thing.' Cat folded her arms and gave the intruder an appraising look. ‘This is private property, and you're trespassing.' The very useful Marxist principles that Cat had flaunted two days earlier suddenly didn't seem appropriate any more.

‘My name is Isabella Bolger,' said the girl, with hauteur. ‘And I used to live here. I think I have every right to visit my former family home, don't you?'

Her family home! You'd have thought that the Bolgers had lived in the Villa Felicity since the time of the High Kings, the way she was talking.

‘I don't know what rights you have,' said Cat. ‘But I'm willing to bet that you could be prosecuted if you take one step further in those pretty blue pumps.'

‘Yeah? I'll take them off, so.'

Isabella glared back at Cat, kicked off her shoes, and walked straight onto the terrace of the Villa Felicity in her bare feet.

Touché! Cat felt a grudging admiration for her rival. For rival she was. This was gorgeous Izzy, Izzy of the complicated yoga pose, Izzy who made the Nitrox dive manual sound like poetry, Izzy who had once held Finn's heart in her French-manicured paws.

‘Fancy a beer?' said Cat.

‘A beer? It's only eleven o'clock in the morning.'

‘There's a law against drinking beer at eleven o'clock in the morning?'

Cat strolled round the side of the house and into the kitchen. Taking two cans from the fridge she turned to find Izzy standing in the doorway, gazing round at the room as if she'd never seen it before.

‘Do you live here now?' she asked.

‘Yes,' said Cat, lobbing a can in Izzy's direction. To her surprise, the girl caught it adroitly. ‘I live here with Finn Byrne.'

‘Finn Byrne?' said Izzy, her mouth an ‘O' of surprise. ‘You mean . . . Río and Shane's Finn?'

‘Yes. You know him?'

‘Yes.' Izzy looked confused. ‘I do. But Río didn't mention anything to me about Finn being back! How . . . how long has he been . . . living here?'

‘Not long. I've been caretaking the place for him.' Cat pulled the tab on her can. ‘We're getting it into shape for his old man.'

‘For Shane?'

‘Yeah. He's coming over in a couple of weeks, once he's finished with
The Corsican Brothers
.'

‘
The Corsican Brothers
?'

‘The movie he's working on, with Meryl Streep and Tilda Swinton,' fibbed Cat, just for fun. ‘And The Rock,' she added, for extra embellishment. ‘They were meant to have finished last month, but poor Meryl broke her toe. Shane's a bit pissed off, actually. He really wanted to get back here ASAP to do some hands-on work on the house.'

Izzy looked around again, and Cat saw her take in the breakfast detritus on the polished granite kitchen island, the half-empty cafetière, the two coffee mugs, the rose petals that had fallen onto the fruit bowl.

‘Don't mind the mess,' said Cat. ‘I haven't got round to clearing away breakfast yet.'

‘That's all right.'

‘Come on through to the sitting room.' Cat moved across the kitchen floor, helping herself to an apple on her way past the granite island. Yesterday's shopping list was propped up against the vase of wilting roses, and Cat wished she'd added ‘condoms', and maybe ‘champagne' – if she'd only known how to spell it.

In the sitting room she was pleased to see that Finn hadn't cleared away the wineglasses from last night. Here, too, rose petals lay scattered where they'd fallen. ‘Yikes,' she said cheerfully. ‘Those roses really have hit their best-before date. It was awful sweet of Finn to fill the house with flowers for me, but I'm the one who'll end up doing the Hoovering, dontcha know. Housework ain't his strongest suit. Not that I'm complaining.' Cat slanted Izzy a meaningful smile, then plonked herself down on a cushion on the floor. ‘So. You lived here once?'