That Gallagher Girl (30 page)

Keeley pulled up alongside the steps that led to the front door and killed the engine. It was perfectly silent here in the grounds of the Crooked House. A dead midday heat had descended, and Keeley was glad that she'd exchanged her walking boots for flipflops, and her jeans for a light cotton frock. She slid out of the driver's seat and climbed the steps. No one answered the door on her first ring, nor on her second. She decided to go round the back, to the kitchen door she'd seen Cat enter the house by, on the evening of Ophelia's party.

In the stableyard, no trace remained of that event: the marquee had been dismantled and taken away, no jolly balloons or birthday banners or bunting were fluttering here now that Ophelia had nothing to celebrate: no birthday, no book deal, no new-found fame and fortune as an author. And yet, and yet . . . there was cause for celebration still. Soon Ophelia would be celebrating the birth of her baby, and that was something that she, Keeley, would never be able to celebrate, since Keeley would never be able to conceive a baby. Keeley Considine had become a career girl not through choice, but by design, because she had had no alternative.

The kitchen door was partially open. Through it, Keeley could see Hugo sitting at the table, eating a banana. There was something so incongruous about seeing a major artist eating a banana that Keeley stopped in her tracks.

Then, from beyond the door that opened on to the hallway, came the sound of the phone ringing – the so-called ‘polite' tone of a real old-fashioned telephone. It rang twice, and then the answering machine kicked in. After Ophelia's recorded message had played, and the beep sounded, Keeley heard Cat's voice say: ‘Da. Dada . . . I just called to say I love you. I'll be in touch some time. Good luck with the work.' And then the long beep sounded that told Keeley the incoming message had been saved. Phew! At least the girl was still alive!

Keeley saw Hugo smile. Then he tossed his banana skin into the sink, reached for a bottle, and poured himself a glass of red wine.

Cautiously, she tapped on the door.

‘Come in, whoever you are,' said Hugo.

Keeley stepped into the kitchen.

‘Oh – hello,' said Hugo. ‘It's Keeley something, ain't it?'

‘That's right. Keeley Considine.'

‘Come and join me in a glass of wine, Keeley.'

It was more of a command than an invitation, and Keeley thought it prudent to obey.

‘Thank you,' she said, taking a seat opposite him at the table. ‘How is Ophelia?'

‘Ophelia is dying of mortification, that's how she is. She's taken to her bed, and there she will in all likelihood stay until our baby is born. It's a bloody bore. It means I have to cook for myself, and the only thing I'm any good at is scrambled eggs. My cholesterol levels will go into orbit. But then, if I pop my clogs from heart failure and clogged arteries – no pun intended – I guess that's good news for anyone who owns one of my paintings. They'll double in value. What brings you here, Keeley Considine? Are you hot on the heels of another scoop?'

‘No. I'm actually here to ask about Cat.'

‘My daughter, Caitlín?'

‘Yes. Do you know where she is?'

‘Why do you want to know?'

‘I'm setting up as a literary agent. I'd like to represent her.'

Hugo laughed. ‘That's rich! Why would a literary agent want to represent someone who has problems with reading and writing? You do know my girl's dyslexic, don't you?'

‘Yes, I do know that. But I would like to be able to represent her as custodian of the stories that your late wife wrote for her. And I'd like Cat to illustrate them.'

Hugo set down his glass and leaned forward, eyes aglitter. ‘Now you're talking!' he said. ‘I always maintained that Cat should have illustrated that book, not that Jasper prat. But of course I understand now why Ophelia baulked at the idea. Poor, misguided Ophelia! I don't think she'll ever live down the shame.'

‘So, can you help me, Hugo? Do you know where Cat is?'

‘Haven't a clue. She comes and she goes. She's her own woman, is Cat.'

‘You really have no idea?'

Hugo spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Search me. You could try her brother, Raoul. She's in touch with him more frequently than she is with me.'

‘Do you have a number for Raoul?'

‘Yeah. Somewhere.'

Shambling to his feet, Hugo left the room. Keeley sat with her hands in her lap, wanting to jiggle her foot with impatience. Instead, she took a swig of wine, and was impressed to find that it was a
very
potable Bordeaux. A glance at the label told her it was from the Dordogne, where – were it not for her – Camilla Featherstonehaugh should currently be holidaying. Keeley gulped. The editor had postponed her vacation on account of her, and now it looked like Keeley wasn't keeping her side of the bargain, which had, after all, been to hunt Cat down and get back to Camilla ‘directly'. She took another swig of wine, and mentally prayed that Hugo would hurry up.

Looking around the kitchen, Keeley saw that it was in a state. If Hugo's studio – or wherever he'd gone to, to locate Raoul's phone number – was in a similar condition, Keeley could be waiting here all day. Dishes were piled unwashed in the sink, laundry was tumbling out of the machine, a battalion of wine bottles was standing sentry by the door. Keeley suddenly felt very, very sorry for Ophelia Gallagher, lying hugely pregnant and humiliated upstairs. She trusted that Hugo would get enough of an advance for his new paintings to fork out for some hired help once the baby arrived.

Finally he was back, a leather-bound address book in his hand. It looked ancient and wore a patina of dust, and Keeley saw as he sat back down at the table and started to leaf through it, that the pages were covered not just in names, addresses and phone numbers, but in doodles and scribbled drawings. What a collectible artifact! Hugo Gallagher's address book was probably worth as much as one of his paintings, and would doubtless fetch thousands at auction after his death. How unsettling it must be to be an artist and to know that anyone who owned one of your works was on tenterhooks waiting for you to kick the bucket, just so they could cash in.

‘Here you are.' Hugo found the number and dictated it to Keeley, who entered it in her phone.

‘Thanks so much,' she said. ‘I really appreciate your help. And should Cat happen to be in touch with you any time soon, will you please ask her to contact me as a matter of urgency?'

Hugo gave her a lazy smile. ‘My daughter doesn't really do “urgency”. A deplorable trait she inherits from me. Will you have another glass of wine, Ms Considine, before you depart?'

‘No, thanks, Hugo. I'm driving.'

‘Well, good luck, then,' he said, watching Keeley rise to her feet. ‘I hope you and my little girl make shedloads of dosh. I'm glad she's got someone looking out for her.'

‘Thanks. Here's to the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship.' Keeley raised her glass, took a last gulp of wine, then set it down. ‘Goodbye, Hugo. And have a lovely baby.'

‘A baby. Sweet Jesus. What untold tribulations have I brought down upon my own head?'

And as Keeley made for the kitchen door, Hugo drained the remains of the wine into his glass, and lunged for the corkscrew.

Halfway down the serpentine driveway, Keeley pulled over and dialled the number Hugo had given her for Raoul. Cat's brother sounded guarded when Keeley told him who she was, and why she was looking for his half-sister. ‘You say you have Cat's number?' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘Well, all I can suggest to you is that you keep on trying it. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful. I'll tell her you called, and I'll pass on your message.'

‘Tell her she can call me any time, day or night,' said Keeley, knowing that she was sounding desperate, and not caring.

‘Will do,' said Raoul, and ended the call.

Fuck
. Keeley slumped over the steering wheel, wanting to bang her head off it. She was feeling very hot and bothered now, and the wine hadn't helped. Opening the passenger door, she emerged on to the driveway, closed her eyes and flung her head back, drawing in greedy gulps of air. And when she opened her eyes, there, above her in the arms of a great tree was something that looked like a heron's nest. And then Keeley realised that she was standing under the broad-branched cypress that housed Cat's childhood treehouse.

She had to see it. Setting her foot on the first rung of the rope ladder, she tested it to make sure it would withstand her weight. Then she climbed cautiously, one rung at a time until she emerged on to a platform constructed of timber planks. The house itself had been woven from willow branches: Keeley was reminded of Yeats' cabin on Inisfree, ‘of clay and wattles made'. A weathered, handpainted sign read ‘Cat Gallagher. Private. Keep Out on Pain of Death.' Stooping, Keeley insinuated herself through the low doorway and – since the roof was too low to permit her to stand – hunkered down on the floor.

So this had been Cat's bolthole, her lair, her little den! Looking around, Keeley pictured the girl lying here, listening to her mother's stories of Catgirl's magical escapades, or drawing in sketchbooks. The treehouse was furnished with a low table and three chairs. There were two moth-eaten beanbags and a cupboard on the other side of the small space, and on the wall were childish drawings in clip-art frames.

Keeley took a closer look. Catgirl, riding on the back of a pig. Catgirl, swinging from the tail of a kite. Catgirl, swimming with turtles. Catgirl, clinging on to the neck of a giraffe. There was a framed photograph, too, of Cat Gallagher cocooned in a duvet, gazing up at the face of a woman whom Keeley recognised as Paloma. There was something so poignant about the photograph that Keeley felt a lump come to her throat. She should not be here. She was an intruder. She should have heeded the sign that had warned her to keep out on pain of death. This was Cat's private space, and Keeley had no right to come snooping. But the journalist in her, the investigative instinct, won over, and she found herself moving over to the cupboard and opening the door.

Inside were books.
Dr Seuss' ABC. Annie Apple's Adventure
.
Bouncy Ben's Birthday
.
Clever
Cat and the Clown
.
My ABC Board Book
. There was an old exercise book too, and Keeley felt a bubble of excitement rise. Could this be one of Paloma's Catgirl stories? Cat had told her that her mother had written them down in old school exercise books. But when Keeley opened the book, she saw that the pages were covered in letters penned in alphabetical order by a childish hand.

Oh, God! The lump in Keeley's throat grew larger. She saw in her mind's eye Cat laboriously tracing the letters, her hand guided perhaps by Paloma, and wondered what age the child had been when she realised that she was never going to be able to write without difficulty, or read any of the books that were piled on the shelves of the cupboard, books that Paloma must have read aloud to her daughter. Keeley did some mental arithmetic. You wouldn't construct such a treehouse for a child who was much younger than seven or eight years old. Cat had clearly still been struggling to master the alphabet then. She, Keeley, had been reading on her own from the age of six. All the classics.
The Secret Garden
.
One
Thousand and One Nights
.
Swallows and Amazons
. The
Just So Stories
.

All these books were present and correct here in Cat's library, and all of them were warped and damp, some of them with rotting covers, most of them with well-cracked spines. Keeley reached for the volume of Kipling stories, the ones that she too had loved as a child, and the book fell open at the story of the ‘Cat that Walked by Himself'.

‘But the wildest of all the animals was the Cat,' read Keeley, sitting back on her heels. ‘He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.'

Except someone had taken a pen and crossed out the words ‘He' and ‘himself', and substituted ‘She' and ‘herself'. Keeley ran her eyes over the text. All the pronouns ‘he' or ‘his' or ‘himself' had been changed, so that the animal in the story became a she-cat, not a tom. ‘I am not a friend and I am not a servant,' she read. ‘I am the Cat who walks by herself, and I wish to come into your Cave.'

The Cat who walks by herself. Cat was that, all right.

It looked as though hunting her down might prove to be as challenging as the great white tiger hunts of legend. And some small interior voice was warning Keeley that Cat Gallagher might not like the idea of anyone hunting her down. Why, oh, why was life never simple?

Laying the volume of
Just So Stories
back on the shelf next to a Taschen volume of Rousseau reproductions, Keeley shut the cupboard door, feeling like the stable boy whose horse had already bolted. Then she climbed back down the rope ladder to where her car was waiting for her, and headed wearily for Lissamore and home, and a very large gin and tonic.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Río and Fleur were watching a vintage movie on DVD. It was
Gone With the Wind
, and it was about the fifth time they had watched it together. They took it in turns to watch their favourite movies, either in Río's eyrie, or in Fleur's bijou apartment over the shop. Fleur's favourite film was
Stella Dallas
because she so identified with the heroine as played by Barbara Stanwyck, and Río's favourite was
Gone With the Wind
because she so identified with Scarlett O'Hara, who had worked her fingers to the bone cultivating the land at Tara. Right now on Fleur's plasma screen there was footage of a calendar with the pages being plucked off one by one, and scattered to the four winds to denote the passage of time.

‘That's what it feels like, sometimes, time passing, doesn't it?' remarked Río. ‘Days flying by, with nothing to distinguish one from the other.'

‘Dooley Wilson got it in one,' said Fleur.

‘Dooley Wilson?'

‘The song in
Casablanca
. “As Time Goes By”. Moonlight and love songs . . .'

‘Never out of date . . .'

Fleur and Río looked at each other and smiled.

‘I'm well past my best before date, that's for sure,' observed Río.

‘Nonsense, darling!' protested Fleur. ‘There's lots of life in us old dogs yet!' She puckered her forehead thoughtfully (no botox for our Fleur! thought Río) ‘But it really must be awful, mustn't it, to be an artist's muse, like that Ophelia Gallagher. Then, at our age, you really would be past your sell by date.'

Their attention was diverted from the screen by the small snorts of vexation being made by Marguerite, who was sitting beside her mother on the chaise longue perusing
Hello!
magazine, and trying to pick up pictures of shoes from the pages.

‘Look at Marguerite!' said Río. ‘She's fairly come on in leaps and bounds in the past few months.'

‘Yes,' concurred Fleur, allowing herself a smug smile. ‘Isn't her hand–eye coordination extraordinary?'

‘I remember Finn at that age,' said Río. ‘Except it was pictures of guns or fish he'd be trying to pick up from pages, not pictures of shoes.'

‘How's his dive venture going?'

‘It's looking good. They've negotiated another ten grand downwards. And he tells me that Shane has officially signed up now, as a shareholder.'

‘Will Finn and Izzy live over there, on the island?'

‘Yes. The accommodation's pretty basic, but you know Izzy. She'll make it work.'

‘Oh! Aren't you blessed, Río? To think that you believed once upon a time that he'd end up on the other side of the world. And now he's just a hop, skip and a jump across a causeway.'

‘Yes. I am blessed.' Río laughed as she watched Marguerite try and help herself to a pair of Jimmy Choos. ‘And so are you. Look at your clever daughter! She's clearly inherited her mother's expensive tastes. She's dead set on those Jimmy Choos – won't even touch the sensible Clarks ones. It's very distracting, you know, having a baby in the room. You should put her away. I'd much rather watch her than Scarlett.'

‘She's an upstager, all right.' Fleur dropped a kiss on her baby's downy head. ‘Best thing I ever made.'

‘I broke the mould when I made Finn. Literally – since he's one of a kind. Remember the day you picked me up from hospital, after I'd had my tubes tied? You came with an antique silver-handled walking cane so that I could waddle my way through the car park. You always were a class act, Fleur.'

‘Thank you,
chérie
!'

‘And I'm so glad you had a baby girl! It's lovely to have a baby in our lives again, at our advanced age.'

‘Maybe Finn will present you with a granddaughter. Are he and Izzy an item again, Río?'

‘Well, he seems to spend more time in the Bentley than in Coral Mansion, so yeah – it seems they are. He never tells me anything.'

But Río had done a little espionage. Just last night she had checked out Finn's Facebook profile. It had told her that he was ‘in a relationship', and a browse through his latest pictures was testimony to this. An album entitled ‘New Beginnings' displayed photographs of Finn and Izzy hand in hand, gazing at a sunset over Inishclare island; Finn and Izzy wielding lump hammers, laughing as they demolished a wall; Finn and Izzy sporting scuba-dive T-shirts – hers featuring a silkscreen print of kissing angelfish, his em blazoned with the legend ‘Eat More Plankton'.

‘Whatever happened to that Gallagher girl, I wonder?' asked Fleur.

‘I don't know,' admitted Río. ‘I never even got to meet her. It seems strange, since we lived so close, and had so much in common, and loved the same boy. Maybe we'll meet up some time, somewhere. I'd like to think we will. She's a real visionary – her paintings remind me of Rousseau.'

‘She stopped me in the street once, and asked if she could exhibit in my shop.'

‘Oh? What did you tell her?'

‘I said that yours were the only paintings I ever put on display.'

‘How loyal of you! You're a real pal, Fleur.'

‘I sold another watercolour for you today, by the way. That's two so far this week.'

‘Excellent! Well done, Clever Clogs – and it's not even high season.'

The summer was well over, and the tourist head count was down. Lissamore was seguing into autumn, and starting to look out its winter woollies. The green patchwork quilt that was draped over the environs of the village in the summer months had morphed, chameleon-like, into shades of auburn and russet and gold. And this morning there had even been a tracing of frost on the dunes, when Río had gone for her swim.

‘I'll go get the cash for you while I think of it,' said Fleur. ‘And another bottle of wine. We've at least another hour before Scarlett wakes up to her big mistake.'

Fleur pressed the pause button, and rose to her feet. When she opened the door of the den, the sweet aroma of baking came wafting in from the kitchen.

‘What have you got in the oven?' called Río.

‘Madeleines,' said Fleur, throwing a smile over her shoulder.

Of course! Fleur's madeleines were baked to her mother's recipe, and were the most heavenly little cakes Río had ever tasted. Some famous author – Proust, wasn't it? – had said that the smell of madeleines took him straight back to the past. Yes, it must have been Proust, because that's what his novel was called.
Remembrance of Things Past
.

Río didn't care much for remembering things – of the recent past, at any rate. Nothing much of note had happened, anyway, since Adair's death. She'd got on with life, and she guessed that that was as much as a recently widowed body was able for. She'd got out of bed in the mornings and showered and watered her plants, and she'd done a fair bit of painting, and tended her orchard, and swum in the bay below Coral Mansion on all but the most bloody-minded of days.

She had been right about Shane. Now that he was a married man, Río no longer had access all areas. She emailed from time to time, but because she could not be sure that Elena didn't have access to his email account, she could no longer be as open and spontaneous as she had been heretofore. She called him on Skype occasionally, but she never knew if Elena was somewhere in the background, listening. And once, when she called his mobile number, Elena had picked up and said: ‘Shane Byrne's phone. Elena speaking,' and Río had garbled ‘Wrong number', and dropped the phone. She felt as if she had lost a soul mate. Her lover, her friend, her very own Rhett Butler.

Beside her, Marguerite was growing fretful, clearly pissed off that she couldn't have the Louboutins she was trying to pluck from the pages of
Hello!

‘
Tais toi
, Marguerite,' said Río, echoing what Fleur sometimes said to her daughter. ‘Let's see what's on the next page.'

The next page featured Catherine Zeta-Jones at home with Michael Douglas. Catherine Zeta-Jones was a good friend of Elena's, Río knew. She pictured them all cosying up together in their mansions, that Hollywood elite, having barbecues by the pool or informal suppers in their de luxe theatre rooms. Talking shop, talking Rodeo Drive, talking carats, talking surgery. What on earth had made Shane think that she, Río, would
ever
be able for that lifestyle? But of course, he'd known Río wasn't able for it, which was why he had bought Coral Mansion for her. He had bought the equivalent of a Hollywood mansion, right here in Lissamore, because Lissamore was home, and home was where Río's heart was. And she'd turned her back on him, just as stupid Scarlett had turned her back on Rhett.

Fleur came back into the room, bearing a bottle of wine and a plate of madeleines on a tray.

‘Are you reading about Catherine Zeta-Jones?' she asked, setting the tray down on the coffee table.

‘Yes. It's splendidly mindless stuff, isn't it? No wonder you're so addicted to glossy mags.'

‘Take it home with you,' said Fleur. ‘Someone else might as well get a go of it before it ends up in the recycling bin.'

‘What a chum you are, Fleur,' said Río, smiling up at her. ‘I'd be lost without you, you know.'

‘And I'd be lost without you,' returned Fleur, refilling Río's glass. ‘That's what friends are all about, after all. Helping each other find a way through thick and through thin.
Santé
, darling! Chin up, and down the hatch.'

And Fleur pressed ‘Resume', and Scarlett O'Hara was back on the screen, shaking her fist at her fate writ high in the heavens.

Two hours later, Río was wending her way homeward down the village main street. She waved at Mrs Murphy, who was doing neighbourhood watch from her upstairs window, she threw a stick for the postmistress's Airedale, she thanked Padraig Whelan for the
Kitchen Garden
magazine he'd put through her letterbox, and she stopped for a brief chat with Seamus Moynihan, who had recently sold Finn a RIB.

‘Second boat I've sold in as many months,' he told her.

‘I saw
The Minx
was up for sale. She's gone now, is she?'

‘Gone a while back. I'll miss her. She was a nifty boat, that
Minx
. A lovely little blue-water cruiser.'

In Ryan's, Río helped herself to a pint of milk and a tin of cocoa. She fancied hot chocolate before she went to bed this evening. Oh – and a copy of
Hello!
She'd forgotten the back issue Fleur had offered her, and she badly wanted brain candy to help her set sail to the land of Nod tonight. She'd had awful trouble sleeping since Adair's funeral. Correction. She'd had awful trouble sleeping since her wedding day, and now she thought of it, Scarlett O'Hara had been plagued by nightmares as well.

As she waited for Mrs Ryan to finish serving old Mr Moriarty, who always paid for his groceries by cheque, Río started to leaf through the glossy pages of
Hello!
Featured in this week's issue were celebrity uni-name couples. Brangelina, TomKat, Garfleck. Río found herself thinking that if Finn and Izzy got hitched they'd be known as ‘Fizzy'. Very appropriate for a couple setting up a dive centre. Absently wondering if Katie Holmes had had surgery, she turned the page to find Elena Sweetman smiling up at her.

‘Our Baby Joy!' trumpeted the headline. ‘Hollywood A-listers Elena Sweetman and Shane Byrne are looking forward to the arrival of their first baby next spring . . .' read Río.

And then she put her wallet back in her bag, returned the magazine to the shelf, bade farewell to Mrs Ryan, and left the shop.

Down on the shore by Coral Mansion, the beach was littered with razor shells. She must ask Finn what had happened, to wash so many of them up from the depths of the Atlantic. A stiff breeze had got up, making Río wish that she'd wrapped herself up warmer. In her orchard, some apples and pears were still waiting to be picked. There was still time to prune the roses and cut back the raspberry canes, and next month she'd plant bulbs that would flower in the spring, and blueberries that would ripen in the summer.

In her mind's eye, she pictured herself and Fleur and Dervla picnicking there again during the lengthening evenings. By then the grass would have grown over the track that she'd had laid down for Adair's tractor – already weeds were pushing their way through the hardcore, reclaiming it. And she would plant new apple trees next week, to replace the ones that had had to be cut down. It was all good. The dead wood would soon be all gone, and come April, spring would be strutting her stuff, flaunting her blossoms on the trees, and Marguerite would be toddling around, grabbing fistfuls of the daisies that were her namesake, and Río would be feeling whole again, and Finn would have a half-brother, or a half-sister.

As Río made her way up to the highest terrace, she became aware of a regular thumping noise, the sound of a branch hitting something, a sound she was familiar with. By the entrance gates to Coral Mansion, the ‘For Sale' sign was up again.

Parked outside was a Land Rover, and a rangy, dark-haired man was leaning against the bonnet, taking a picture of the gate, which was covered in undercoat. Finn had never got around to finishing the paintwork.

‘Are you thinking of buying?'

The man lowered his Nikon, and smiled down at her. ‘No. I wouldn't want a house like this, even if I could afford it. I'm more the half-doored cottage type, myself.'

‘With hens, and a pile of turf against the gable wall?'

‘Yes. And a marmalade cat.'

Río smiled back at him. ‘Why are you taking a picture of the gate, then?'

‘I'm a photographer. It's interesting – the shape of the scrollwork and the tree branch against the late evening sun.'

Río squinted up at the gate, shielding her eyes with a hand. ‘You're right,' she said. ‘There's a kind of fretworky vibe going on, isn't there?'