The Kinsella Sisters (26 page)

And then she heard a voice behind her calling her name and saying something about her jacket, and thank God, thank
God
, it was Finn! And thank God she
had
left her jacket behind because otherwise he might not have come after her.

Izzy turned, and pushed a strand of hair away from her face. But as the dark figure striding up the road towards her became more distinct, she realised that it wasn’t Finn. It was Shane.

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You forgot your jacket, gorgeous.’

Dervla was enjoying her evening. Shane was looking good, she thought. Success clearly agreed with him. And why wouldn’t it? After years spent at the rockface, suffering setbacks and rejections, he deserved to reap some reward for all his hard work. Few people in the restaurant were crass enough actually to approach him, but Dervla noticed how the eyes of most of the women diners kept sliding in his direction, and little Isabella Bolger was clearly smitten. She’d laughed immoderately at his jokes all evening, and her body language had been pretty flagrant too. Maybe it was the champagne, or maybe, thought Dervla, it was a ploy to keep Finn on his toes, because there was something–some kind of a connection between the two young people–that positively
shimmered.

There seemed to be something shimmering between Adair and Río too, and as Dervla sat back in her chair sipping coffee, she realised that what was going on was a none-too-subtle gavotte. Río was flirting with Adair to make Shane jealous, and Shane was flirting with Izzy to make Río jealous, and Izzy was flirting with Shane to make Finn jealous, and Finn was flirting with Miriam to make Izzy jealous, and oh! how glad Dervla felt not to have to be involved in any of this silly-bugger game-playing!

Then suddenly the evening was winding up, and there seemed to be some confusion as to Shane’s whereabouts because the manager was keen to give him back his platinum card, and Finn–wearing a pair of blue-and-white-checked kitchen porter trousers–was standing laughing with Miriam, and Adair was distributing the last of the champagne.

Dervla stood up from the table, twinkled her fingers unobtrusively at Río and mouthed, ‘Talk to you soon.’ Then she slipped out of the restaurant and walked to her car.

On the street, all was silent but for the wet silk sound of the wavelets in the harbour as they slapped against the keels of the fishing boats, and the drip drip drip of rain from gables. Once Dervla reached her car, she lowered the driver’s side window and sat motionless behind the wheel, listening for a minute or two before switching on the ignition and the windscreen wipers, and turning the car in the direction of Galway city, and home.

There were two new additions to the flotilla of ‘For Sale’ signs up on the main street of the village. A lot of the houses that had come onto the market in recent times were second homes being sold by wealthy Dublin 4 types, desperate to get rid of their holiday cottages. Dervla’s vocabulary had expanded as she’d searched for ever more flowery language to describe the properties in an effort to attract buyers. Views had become ‘staggeringly beautiful’, ‘bijou’ ousted ‘cosy’, gardens were ‘luxuriant’ and ‘verdurous’.

Agencies were letting staff go, or asking them to take salary cuts. Breaking even was an achievement. It was not a good time to be in the property business.

Dervla suddenly felt weary. The game didn’t excite her any more. The cut and thrust had become tedious, the competition too intense. Instead of going home to navigate myhome and daft.ie, how she would have loved to curl up with hot chocolate and a good book. The last time she had escaped from real life
with a novel had been on holiday three years ago in Mauritius. She couldn’t afford a holiday now.

And the rain was coming down in torrents.

Izzy and Shane had been clinging to each other, using Shane’s leather jacket as a makeshift umbrella, but a passing motorist skimming through a puddle had sent water sluicing over them, and there was no point in trying to stay dry any longer. Shane dropped his jacket, and the pair of them stood there in fits of laughter, rivulets of rain cascading down their faces, hair plastered to their skulls.

Once they’d managed to stop laughing, Izzy gave him a rueful look. ‘Your jacket is ruined!’

‘No worries. It was a gift from the designer.’

‘One of many perks?’ said Izzy, teasingly.

‘Not really. You’d be surprised how sniffy their PR people get when you tell them that you don’t like their gear.’ Shane adopted a bogus accent. ‘“You mean you are telling us zat you vill not vear ze T-shirt with ze nipple holes? Zen Sven will have to scratch you from his list.’”

They’d reached the boreen that led to the gates of the Villa Felicity.

‘This is your turn-off?’ asked Shane.

‘Yes. Yikes. It’s a quagmire. Don’t you even think about walking me to the gate in those shoes, Shane. I bet they were a present from a designer too.’

Shane looked dubious. ‘I can’t not walk you to the gate.’

‘Well,
I
am going to put my foot down.’ Izzy did just that, stomping a foot into the mud. ‘Look! This is no place for Italian leather footwear.’

‘Well, OK…If you’re sure, sweetheart?’

‘Sure I’m sure. I’m nearly home–look, you can see the lights of the house from here. And you’ve really got to get yourself back to your flat so you can get out of those wet clothes. Why
don’t you make yourself some hot chocolate? That’s what I’m going to do.’

‘Good idea.’ Shane took a step backward.

Bummer. He wasn’t going to kiss her. For the past ten minutes, Izzy had been speculating how she might react if he
did
try to kiss her. After the way Finn had behaved this evening, virtually ignoring her at the dinner table and then skulking off with that waitress, she had felt that it might just have served him right if she’d stolen a kiss from his father instead. An additional plus, it would be something to wind Lucy up with. She’d even composed a text in her head: ‘Scored Seth from Faraway ©’ But now it didn’t look like it was going to happen.

‘Thanks a lot for walking me home, Shane,’ she said, stalling for time. ‘But I feel guilty that you got so pissed upon. Might I see you around the village tomorrow?’

‘I’ll make it my business to run into you. You owe me a pint.’

‘Done deal. Well, thanks for a lovely evening.’

‘You’re welcome, ma’am.’

‘Good night, then.’

‘Good night.’ Shane took a step towards her and gave her a brief hug. Then he leaned down and placed a chaste kiss on her cheek before turning and heading back in the direction of Lissamore. The sodden hems of his jeans made a swishing noise as he trod through puddles, and she could hear him whistling.

Yay! He
had
kissed her! She could send that text after all! Izzy blew an extravagant kiss of her own at his retreating back before returning her attention to the boreen. She frowned as she wondered how best to negotiate it; then decided that–hell–if she didn’t want to ruin her own shoes, she’d just have to go barefoot. She took off her trainers, rolled up her jeans and ploughed on, relishing the squelch of the mud between her toes, before realising that,
shit
, she had no keycard to the gate because her father had let Río Kinsella have it. Still, she had her house keys
and she could access the garden via the beach. She wouldn’t go via the short cut, though. She’d disturbed a badger once, in the orchard, and it had given her the fright of her life. She’d go the long way round.

The path that led down to the shore was like an obstacle course–steep and slippery–and once there, she had a stretch of shingle to cross. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ mewed Izzy, as she crossed on tiptoes like a cartoon cat on hot coals, sharp pebbles and flints digging into the soles of her feet. She remembered the agony she’d gone through in Tao when she’d trodden on glass, and she prayed that she’d make the journey between here and the gate without inflicting further damage upon herself.

As she drew near the tangle of brambles that had grown up and over the sea wall of the Villa Felicity, she thought she saw a shadow move. Was it her imagination, or a trick of the light? She paused momentarily, aware of her heart fluttering like a bird behind the cage of her ribs, and then she took a step sideways, inching closer to the wall, hoping that whoever–or whatever–was down there hadn’t spotted her. It could be a sheep, she knew, or a goat. But she’d seen too many horror films in her life to think that a girl on her own approaching a nondescript shadowy thing on a dark, rainy night was a good idea.

She was off the shingle now, treading over a bed of seaweed that had been washed up by the tide as far as the base of the wall. Suddenly she was up to her ankles in it, slipping, losing her balance. She dropped her shoes, reaching out blindly for something to steady herself, and whatever it was she grabbed made her squeal as pain knifed through her. Son of a
bitch!
She had plunged a hand through brambles and was clinging on to barbed wire. With a yelp, Izzy let go, sliding on the seaweed and landing on her back, and as the shadowy thing by the gate moved again she ordered herself not to faint…And then she realised that she might actually have fainted because a kind of gap happened,
like a DVD jumping forward, and the next thing she knew someone was crouching over her and a voice was saying: ‘Izzy! What’s happened? Are you all right?’

It was Finn.

‘No!’ she wailed. ‘I’m not all right!’

‘It’s OK, it’s OK. Stay calm. I can help you. I’m an emergency first responder.’

Izzy started to laugh and cry simultaneously. ‘So am I.’

‘Well, you obviously can’t help yourself. Is it your foot?’

‘No. My hand. But now you mention it, I think I might have banjaxed my foot too.’

‘Let me help you sit up.’ Finn levered her into a sitting position, and she felt seaweed tumble from her hair onto her shoulders. ‘Can you move it?’ he asked.

Izzy tentatively wiggled her toes. ‘Yeah.’

‘Let me have a look at your hand.’ Finn reached for it, and angled it one way, then another. ‘OK. I can’t see too much in this light, but we’ll have to clean you up. Let’s get you into the house.’

‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk very far. Hang on–I’d better grab my shoes.’

‘Got them?’

‘Yeah.’

Finn hunkered down lower. ‘I’ll give you a fireman’s lift as far as the gate. Just grab on to me and lean forward, over my shoulder. Can you manage? Good–that’s it.’

Finn stood up, shouldering Izzy, his left hand grasping her right forearm, his right arm hooked around her thigh. She heard the shingle crunch under his feet as he made his way along the foreshore, and then he was carefully lowering her over the five-bar gate. Once her good foot made purchase on the lowest bar, she waited for Finn to climb over.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

‘We’re not there yet. Now, sling your left arm around my neck.

Don’t worry, I’ll bear most of your weight if you think you can hobble the rest of the way.’

‘I’ll manage.’

Between them, they crossed the leafy floor of the orchard, then emerged from under the trees onto the lawn. Except the lawn was so overgrown that their progress wasn’t as easy as it might have been, and as Izzy limped towards the house, she was fearful that they’d both end up sprawled in the long grass.

‘Which way?’ asked Finn.

‘Left onto the path–we’ll go in by the utility room,’ said Izzy.

Once there, she leaned against the doorjamb, unhooked her keyring, and handed it to Finn. The alarm started to bleat as he turned the key in the lock and the door swung open.

‘Three five nine zero hash,’ said Izzy, watching Finn key the number into the pad by the door. ‘I’d do it, but I don’t want to get blood everywhere. Light switch is on the left, first-aid kit’s on the wall over there.’

‘OK. But first let’s get you sitting down. Is the kitchen that way?’

‘Yes.’

Finn steered Izzy across the floor and pulled open a door. Beyond the utility room glimmered the hi-tech sanctuary of the kitchen, all burnished pewter and polished concrete. Staggering across to the stainless-steel table, still leaning heavily on Finn, she collapsed onto one of the dining chairs.

Finn hunkered down next to her. ‘Show me your hand.’

She obliged. Taking her hand between both his own, he examined her palm from a couple of different angles. ‘Hm. It’s not as bad as all that. I thought by the shriek you let out that you might have severed an artery, but there are just a couple of small puncture wounds. Was it barbed wire?’

She nodded.

‘I take it you’ve had a tetanus shot?’

‘Yes.’

‘One less thing to worry about. You’ll be glad to know I won’t have to call an ambulance.’

‘Bummer. I rather like the idea of whizzing along roads with a siren blaring and
ER
-type interns saying stuff like, “Bring on the CPR.’”

‘You’re hardly a candidate for CPR,’ Finn said. ‘And you wouldn’t like it once you were dumped in A&E. You can see the local doctor tomorrow if necessary, but in the meantime, let’s try and take care of this in the comfort of your own home. Where can I find paper towels?’

‘Over there.’

He crossed to the kitchen counter and tore off a length of kitchen towel. Then he swung a stool out from under the counter, carried it over to Izzy and laid her leg across the seat.

‘You’ll need to keep your foot raised,’ he told her, as he swathed her hands in paper. ‘Where’ll I find proper towels?’

‘There’s an airing cupboard next to the washing machine in the utility room.’

‘Don’t move. I’ll be back in a minute.’

Izzy sat there obediently, watching raindrops chasing each other down the window until Finn returned, pushing a housekeeping trolley. On board the trolley was a basin of water, a roll of bandages, a box of dressings and another of antiseptic wipes, a pack of disposable surgical gloves, a pile of towels and a picture of a kitten.

‘Why the kitten?’ asked Izzy.

‘It’s to distract you while I poke around. You can gaze upon it.’

‘Thanks. Where did you find it?’

‘It’s the Kitten Soft one, off a calendar.’

‘Shouldn’t I be having a cup of hot, sweet tea while I gaze upon the kitten?’

‘Patience. You can have a cup in a minute. Let’s see to your wounds first.’

Finn snapped on a pair of rubber gloves, and Izzy looked at him admiringly. ‘You’ve done this before,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am, I have.’

Dipping a hand towel in water, he set about cleaning Izzy’s hands and forearm. ‘The cuts aren’t deep, so that’s good. Hang on, there’s a nasty thorn…’ Reaching for a tweezers, he nipped, pulled, and dropped the offending thorn onto a cotton wool pad. Then he helped himself to an antiseptic wipe. ‘This’ll sting a little. Be brave.’