The Kinsella Sisters (18 page)

The stable block next. Here there was no whiff of Jo Malone
grapefruit, but Dervla was convinced that clever Río might have wielded a room spray that suggested the scent of freshly mown hay.

‘Perfect for conversion to a studio apartment or granny flat, don’t you think?’ With a smile, Dervla launched into her spiel, but when she finished, Christian just murmured a polite ‘Thank you. That was very interesting. Shall we move on to number two?’

Shit, thought Dervla. Either Christian Vaughan was totally unimpressed, or he was an excellent poker player.

On they drove to the converted church.

‘As you can see,’ began Dervla, ‘this was once a Gothic church. The extension was built less than ten years ago, and was designed to blend into the style of the existing building. The whole incorporates many gorgeous features, including this very impressive teak staircase with decorative rails and banister.’

Leading Christian upstairs, Dervla continued her eulogy. Actually, she wasn’t mad about this property. She thought the refurbishment not entirely successful, and there were too many folderols, like canopied beds and chandeliers. The place felt as if it was trying too hard. She could tell that Christian was as unmoved by it as she was, because, after a perfunctory look around he said, ‘Thank you. How about property number three?’

‘The Old Rectory,’ said Dervla, almost as an afterthought. ‘Oh, yes.’

As they drove through the gates, Dervla found herself fighting the temptation to say: ‘Bit of a waste of time, viewing this one. I’m sure it isn’t the right property for you.’ But of course, she didn’t.

They got out of the car and stood looking up at the rose-coloured brick facade.

‘It’s a handsome building,’ remarked Christian.

‘Yes.’ Dervla climbed the steps and unlocked the front door. Inside the front hall, light flooded through the fanlight onto the
stone-flagged floor. Dust motes had been sent dancing by the sudden draught, and cobwebs swayed overhead. There was no smell of Jo Malone here, no gleam of polish on woodwork.

‘As you can probably tell, the house has not been viewed for some time,’ said Dervla.

‘Clearly not,’ said Christian, looking around with a smile. ‘She’s like the Sleeping Beauty’

‘I’ll show you—’ began Dervla, leading the way towards the cantilevered staircase.

But Christian cut her off. ‘Thank you, no. I’d prefer to explore on my own, if that’s all right with you?’

‘Of course,’ said Dervla. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

She spent half an hour sitting on a wrought-iron bench by the front door with the sun on her face, admiring the view, and feeling guilty that she wasn’t using the time to send emails on her BlackBerry It was perfectly silent in the overgrown garden of the Old Rectory, the only sound being the lazy buzz of a bee in the shrubbery.

As a child, when she and Río had shared their daydreams, this was the kind of house that Dervla had had in mind when she’d pictured her future. She’d imagined herself dressed in white linen, drifting around a garden with a basket on her arm, plucking flowers that she would arrange later in the kitchen with the help of a rosy-cheeked housekeeper. Together they’d go over the plans for the evening’s menu, and later friends would arrive and they’d have aperitifs on the terrace before going in to dine at the polished mahogany table in the dining room, and she would sit at one end, and her husband would sit at the other, and the repartee would ring round the table until it was time for their guests to drive off into the night, leaving their hosts to enjoy a nightcap by the dying embers of the drawing-room fire before extinguishing the candles and putting the dog out and, finally, climbing the stairs to bed.

Dervla had been a sucker for romance in those days. She’d
read Mills & Boon books by the dozen, and pinned Pre-Raphaelite posters on her walls, and wept at mawkish movies. Now there was no room for romance in her life. Romance was a dream peddled by PR people and media consultants and cynical, jaded advertising executives. And estate agents.

So why was she still harbouring a dream about one day swapping her penthouse for a place like this, where there would be no concierge to help things run smoothly, and no nearby trendy florist to deliver her weekly arrangements, and no smart facilities to turn on her lights and her heat and her entertainment system at the touch of a button on a remote control?

It was stupid of her to entertain notions of McKenzie taking his business elsewhere so that she could put in a bid for this property. It was stupid to think that she could make the switch from city to country living without the kind of major, major stress that would have her importuning her GP for Xanax. And imagine the commute! No matter how much she loved her nifty little Merc, forty kilometres to Galway every day would do her head in.

Hearing the sound of feet crunching on gravel, Dervla got to her feet. Christian was rounding the corner of the house, looking up at the rooftop with a hand shading his eyes. When he reached her, he turned to regard the view, and remained silent for a long moment.

‘Well?’ said Dervla pleasantly. ‘What do you think?’

Christian smiled down at her. ‘I love her,’ he said.

His expression said it all. She’d seen that look before on the faces of those prospective buyers who had found ‘The One’, and Dervla knew at once that she might as well forget her dreams of ever being chatelaine of the Old Rectory. Once a man started referring to a house as ‘her’, there was no going back. It looked like Sleeping Beauty had landed Christian Vaughan hook, line and sinker.

‘I can just picture Kitty racing through that landscape,’ he
continued, his gaze taking in the meadows that ran down to a river below, and the rolling blue hills on the horizon, and the glint of the sea beyond. ‘She would be so happy here.’

‘Who’s Kitty?’

‘The dog.’

‘So,’ said Dervla, taking a deep breath, ‘you think this might be the house for you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ replied Christian, turning to look up at the stone pediment over the front door. ‘I know so. Isn’t it a bitch when you fall in love with a house?’

Dervla slid her shades on, and extracted her bleating BlackBerry from her bag. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is.’

Río was busy sewing on nametapes. ‘You can’t go travelling without nametapes on your clothes,’ she told Finn. ‘And because I know you’ll be subsisting on junk food, I’ve packed a lunchbox for you with fresh fruit and cottage pie and a can of Guinness as a treat. Now, just let me answer the phone. It’ll be your father–he promised to send you some money.’ As she reached for the phone by her bed, she half expected it to turn to putty in her hand, the way it always did in her dreams. But the handset was solid, and the voice in her ear real: real and familiar.

‘Ma! Hey, it’s me!’

She was awake instantly, sitting up in bed, clutching the phone to her ear.

‘Finn! What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Nothing, nothing, Ma–no worries. Listen, are you hooked up to satellite in your new gaff?’

‘What? Yes. Why?’

‘Quickly, go and turn the television on.’

‘Oh, oh, hang on.’ Río slid out of bed and grabbed her robe before negotiating the captain’s staircase that would take her down to the main body of her living space. Oh Christ, she thought, struggling with the sleeves. What could be going on?
Some disaster–an earthquake, a tsunami, a coup? Where was Finn now? Koh Tao? Or had he left for Bangkok? Casting wildly around for the remote, she finally found it under a cushion. ‘Which channel, Finn? What am I looking for? Sky News? NBC?’ she said in a rush, aiming the device randomly at the screen.

‘No. Go to iSpy’

‘iSpy? Never heard of it.’ After several botched attempts, Río located the channel. ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘It’s just an ad break.’

‘Hang on. You’ll be interested in what happened next.’

The jingly music announcing an ad for shower gel came to an end, followed by more jingly music announcing the resumption of a chat show. The bling legend on the screen told Río that she was watching a programme called
Celebrity Chat with Charlene.

‘Finn,’ she said tiredly, ‘it’s half-past three in the morning here. Why have you woken me to watch some piece of crap on the telly? Are you buzzing on Thai grass or something?’

‘No. I’ve just come in from an early morning dive and Carl happened to have the telly on. Wait.’

On the screen, the blonde woman called Charlene was smiling to camera with improbably white teeth. ‘And now,’ she was saying, ‘will you please welcome my next guest–star of the surprise sleeper of the season–
Faraway’s
Mr Shane Byrne!!!’

‘Look, look, Ma! There he is! There’s Dad!’

‘Holy shit.’ Río let the handset drop to the floor. She stood there motionless for a moment or two, watching as Shane emerged from behind a glittering Perspex screen and strolled towards the over-stuffed couch upon which Charlene–all cleavage and legs–sat waiting for him. Then she picked up the phone again. ‘I’ll call you back,’ she told Finn.

Transfixed, Río sank down on the sofa. The camera had panned to the inanely grinning studio audience, most of whom were women, all of whom were cheering and clapping wildly–cheering
for Shane Byrne.
Shane!
Former love of her life and father of her child! How had this happened?

Charlene asked the question for her. ‘What we all want to know,’ she mock-chided him, ‘is how did this happen so suddenly? Where have you been hiding until now, Mr Shane Byrne?’

‘Hiding?’ said Shane, with a quizzical smile.

‘Yeah. You’ve gotta be Hollywood’s best-kept secret. You say you’ve been living and working here for almost two decades. But how come we didn’t hear of you until
Faraway
burst onto our screens?’

Shane gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I’ve always been a very private individual,’ he said. ‘I didn’t go into the business with a view to becoming rich and famous.’ Oh, no? thought Río. ‘I look upon acting as a craft–a vocation–and I’ve been happy right up till now to ply my craft in relative anonymity.’

‘So this overnight success has taken you by surprise?’ beamed Charlene.

‘Absolutely When I was cast in
Faraway
I never dreamed that it would go beyond the pilot stage–and I don’t mean that as any criticism of the creative team. It just seemed to me that the series was too…I guess the right word is “maverick”, to become mainstream.’

Shane crossed one long leg over another, and draped his arm over the back of the velvet-upholstered couch. Río had to admit that he looked good. He was wearing faded denims and a shirt of soft chamois leather. His hair was a lot longer than when she’d last seen him, and he’d clearly been working out. He was tanned–but not too tanned; and his teeth were white–but not too white. Río wondered if he’d employed a stylist to help him achieve this cool, understated look.

‘You’re already on your way to becoming a major sex symbol,’ Charlene told him, raising a provocative eyebrow. The ladies in the audience yelled their approval, and Shane shook his head and gave them a look from under his eyebrows that translated
as
Sheesh!
‘ I understand that no fewer than seven fan sites have been set up since the first episode of
Faraway
was aired. What’s the secret of your appeal?’

‘I have no idea,’ replied Shane.

‘Well,
we
do, don’t we, ladies?’

‘Yesss!!!’ came the enthusiastic response from the audience.

‘Would you like to see a clip of Shane in action?’

‘Yesssss!!!’
This time the reaction verged on frenzy.

With a catlike smile, Charlene gestured to the giant screen behind her. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, ‘I give you…
Shane Byrne!’

And now Shane was on Río’s television screen in larger-than-life close-up, glowering moodily into the middle distance, green eyes narrowed against an apocalyptic sunset. The camera drew back to reveal him in all his glory, bare of torso with a gleaming six-pack. Some class of a leather kilt was slung round his hips, and his hair fell in dreadlocks to beyond his shoulder blades. His exaggeratedly accented Irish brogue provided the voiceover.

‘In a faraway place, in a faraway time,’ Shane intoned, ‘a great calamity befell the earth. Few humans survived, and those who did were the unlucky ones…’

Río couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. Picking up the phone, she speed-dialled Finn. ‘Is this for real?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Finn. ‘I’m checking out one of his fan sites as we speak. Well, they’ve got his date of birth wrong, for starters. Dad’s managed to shave four years off his age. Listen to this: “Shane Byrne is a dangerous Scorpio, so to all you besotted ladies out there–watch out for the sting in his tail!” Holy moly It’s weird to think that that’s Dad they’re talking about, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’ said Río, smiling at the image of Shane striding across the apocalyptic landscape in his kilt. ‘It really, really is. Send me links to the websites, will you?’

‘Sure,’ said Finn. ‘Hey, whaddayouknow–
I’m
on here! “It is said that Shane–who is currently single–was involved in a
tempestuous relationship early on in his career, which resulted in a love child born in Ireland.” Get that! I’m famous, Ma!’

‘You’d better get on to
Hello!
mag, and sell your story right away. Oh, look, he’s back shooting the breeze with smarmy Charlene. Talk to you later, Finn, and thanks for the call. It was
so
worth getting up for.’

Río depressed ‘end call’, booted up her computer, then returned her attention to the television. Who would ever have dreamed that her ex would wind up as a Hollywood player? Admittedly, he had both looks and talent, but he had never had the drive. Like her, he had drifted through life, accepting the good times and the bad as they came in equal measure. She remembered his reaction when she had told him she was pregnant–how solicitous he’d been. He’d even volunteered to marry her! But Río had known that Shane was not the marrying kind any more than she was, and she sensed that he was relieved when she’d declined his very sweet, very generous offer. They had been far too young to marry, anyway. Their union would have ended up on the rocks in jig time.

‘Tell me about your relationship with your co-star, Holly Matthews,’ Charlene was saying. ‘Can you put your hand on your heart and tell me that things are strictly platonic between you?’

Shane didn’t supply an answer to the question. He simply put his hand on his heart and smiled, causing the audience to go, ‘Oooooooh!!!’

‘She’s a very beautiful woman,’ said Charlene, slanting him a meaningful look.

‘Yes, ma’am, she is.’

‘I understand that you and Holly have been approached by
Vanity Fair
to do a photo-shoot?’

‘Well, yes, that’s correct. But the shoot involves the entire cast of the series, not just Holly and me. There’s no star hierarchy involved in
Faraway
–we’re just a bunch of jobbing actors who got lucky’

‘So stardom really isn’t important to you?’

‘No. Not at all. I mean, at the end of the day the work is about survival, it’s not about getting up to the top rung. It’s about the adventure of doing different gigs and working with different people. And suddenly I’ve been elevated for something that was none of my doing. It just had to do with circumstance, timing, and somebody’s choice, you know. Suddenly I’m in a hit show, working with a company of twenty-three, twenty-four people–working with an ensemble who are all as astonished by the success of the series as me, and that’s a mind-blower. And then when you finally come to terms with it, you just sit back and think, What a jammy job.’

My God, thought Río. How on earth did Shane get to be so confident, so articulate–so grown up? Did this mean that she was going to have to start taking him seriously?

Charlene turned to the studio audience. ‘I’m sure a lot of you gals have questions that you’d like to ask our guest. Those who do, just put up your hand.’

There was a lot of giggling and squirming as hands were raised, and fingers twinkled to attract attention. ‘Yes!’ said Charlene. ‘The lady in pink angora! What do you have to say to Shane?’

‘Hi, Shane! I’m Candy’

‘Pleased to meet you, Candy’

‘Can you tell us how you like to relax?’

‘Well, I like to ride. It’s always been a dream of mine to own my own horse. And that just may be about to happen. I’m in the process of buying a house with a stable yard and paddocks.’

‘Um. What about indoor pursuits?’

The ‘gals’ in the audience squirmed and giggled some more.

‘I like to play chess,’ said Shane. ‘And I also like to relax with a glass of wine and a good book. I’m currently rereading
Ulysses
by James Joyce, who was, of course, the most famous writer Ireland ever produced.’

What? thought Río. Riding? Chess? Rereading
Ulysses?
Had Shane been taken over by an alien?

The questions started coming thick and fast.
What’s your favourite kind of music, Shane? Where do you like to go on holiday? What’s your favourite food? Do you enjoy cooking? What, in your opinion, is the best film ever made?

Finally, Charlene took the floor again. ‘Shane Byrne,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry to have to say that our time’s up. It’s been a real pleasure meeting you.’

‘The pleasure was all mine, ma’am,’ replied Shane, returning her meaningful look.

Turning to the camera, Charlene smiled her white, white smile. ‘I’d like to end our chat this evening by playing another scene from
Faraway’
, she said. ‘And I may mention that this particular scene was specially requested by our audience. Don’t forget, folks,
Celebrity Chat with Charlene
is where
you
call the shots and
you
ask the questions!’

Río reached for her water bottle. The
Faraway
theme music came thundering through the speakers, and an equally thunderous cheer rose from the studio floor as Shane appeared again, shimmering onto the screen. A woman’s hand came into shot. Shane allowed her briefly to trace the line of his jaw with an index finger, before abruptly grabbing her wrist. ‘No!’ he said in an authoritative voice. ‘You know it is forbidden for us to engage in the act of love, Pandora.’

The next shot was a close-up of Pandora, who Río guessed to be Holly Matthews. Golden of skin and lissom of limb, Holly resembled a young,
pre-Baywatch
Pamela Anderson.

‘Rules are made to be broken, Seth.’
Seth!
Río spluttered on her water. ‘And I, for one, hold in contempt any rule made by the warlord Xerxes.’

‘I could not countenance it if any harm came to you,’ said Shane/Seth.

‘No harm can come to me if I am safe in your arms. Hold
me, Seth.’ Holly/Pandora wound her beautiful arms around her co-star’s neck, and there was a moment when you could see Shane/Seth engaged in an internal struggle. Then he was returning the embrace, pulling Pandora against his bare chest, crushing her lips with his, tangling his fingers in her hair. The clinch went on for ages before the camera tracked back to include the obligatory blasted landscape, and there–on a cliff top–a solitary caped figure was gazing down upon the star-crossed lovers. That had to be the warlord Xerxes, Río speculated. Well, hell! This was epic stuff!

The sound of an email landing in her inbox distracted her from the Technicolor vision that was Shane. It was from Finn, with a list of links to his father’s fan sites. Río clicked on one at random. Oh! There was a photograph of Shane, gazing straight at her with a mean and moody expression. ‘Welcome,’ she read, ‘to Shane Byrne dot com.’

Río clicked on ‘Welcome’ then scrolled down to find the following: ‘About Shane…Photos & Videos…Fan Fun…The
Faraway
Quiz…Fans’ Forum…Fans’ Fantasies…’

Fans’ Fantasies? Río
had
to go there! She clicked on something called
An Irish Interlude.

‘“Begorrah, Colleen–and ’tis beautiful you are looking this fine spring day with the shamrock blazing green as your eyes on the heath.” Shane cut a fine figure of a man as he stood on the hummock, looking down upon me as I made my way along the boreen with the milk pails. “Thank you, Master Shane,” I breathe, lowering my eyes. “Let me help you with those pails, lass,” he says, taking them from me without a bother on him. I see the muscles bulging under the fine linen fabric of his rolled-up billowing shirtsleeves—’