Secrets Between Sisters: The perfect heart-warming holiday read of 2018. Kate Thompson

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       Chapter Four

      In the kitchen, Dervla handed Río her cuddly toy elephant. ‘Here’s something for comfort,’ she said, ‘until the anaesthetising effect of the alcohol kicks in.’ She refilled their glasses and set them on the table, where Río had upended the vanity case. Letters littered the pockmarked tabletop. There were about thirty of them. ‘We should maybe try to sort them into chronological order,’ Dervla added, really just for something to say to fill the dreadful silence that had reigned in the house since Río had made the discovery that Frank was not her natural father.

      Río shrugged, then selected a letter at random. ‘Let’s get our priorities right,’ she said, unfolding the pages and turning to the last one. ‘We should first try to find out who wrote them.’

      Another silence fell. Then: ‘Well?’ said Dervla.

      ‘Patrick. His name is Patrick.’ Río leaned back in her chair. ‘Wow. That’s helpful. My father happens to have one of the commonest names in all of Ireland.’ Picking up her wineglass, she drained it in one sustained gulp. ‘Yeuch,’ she said, and belched.

      ‘We don’t know he’s your father,’ Dervla pointed out, without much conviction.

      ‘Dervla–think about it. This Patrick geezer clearly swept Mama off her feet. It’s like we said earlier: maybe putting up with Dad was just too much for her. If you were married to a man like him, could you have kept faithful?’ Río picked up another letter. ‘Look, here’s a love poem.

      ‘Give me a thousand kisses, then another hundred, Then another thousand, then a second hundred, Then yet another thousand more, then another hundred.

      ‘Sheesh. I wonder, did he write that?’

      ‘It’s Catullus,’ said Dervla.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Catullus. He was one of the greatest Roman love poets.’

      ‘You’re kidding! Finn could write better poetry than that.’ Río looked glumly at her empty glass. ‘Dervla. Could you be a sweetheart and nip out to the shop for another bottle? I feel like getting very, very drunk.’

      ‘Who could blame you?’ Dervla reached for her bag. ‘I’ll be back in five.’

      As she made for the front door, WB. stuck his furry face out between the top banisters, looking like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Dervla, shutting the door behind her.

      Could it be true? she wondered, as she made her way along the main street of the village, which was still decked out in festive Christmas lights. Could it really be true that she and Río were half-sisters? She’d always been aware that they were quite different types–not just temperamentally, but physically too. Río had an unruly mass of red-gold hair, while Dervla wore hers in a sleek dark bob. Río had an unashamedly voluptuous figure, while Dervla’s was lean and androgynous. Río’s eyes were green, Dervla’s conker brown. Río took after their mother, while Dervla favoured their father. Her father…

      Who would know? Who in the village might possibly know the identity of Rosaleen’s secret lover? For lovers they certainly had been–a cursory glance at a single sentence in one of the letters had told her that: ‘My darling, my darling–I worship the place between your legs, and your buttocks, and your beautiful, beautiful breasts…’ Dervla hadn’t wanted to read on.

      She thought of their poor mother, trapped in a wretched marriage, tied to a man who–while never physically abusive to her, as far as Dervla knew–had certainly inflicted massive emotional damage on Rosaleen. Dervla had sometimes wondered if the stress of being married to Frank had contributed to the cancer that had killed her. Perhaps the only joy she’d had in her life had been those snatched meetings with a man called Patrick. Where had they consummated their passion? In his house? Or in theirs, while Frank was comatose or ensconced in the pub? She pictured the couple exchanging covert glances, touching hands surreptitiously, stealing kisses. She imagined their mother making excuses to go to the beach, where the secret place was that Patrick left the letters that meant so much to her. You tell me my letters help ease the pain of your joyless marriage…

      Why–why– if the marriage had been so joyless, had Rosaleen stuck it out? But even as she asked herself the question, Dervla knew the answer. She’d said it herself, earlier, when they’d cracked open the wine in Frank’s kitchen. Rosaleen had done it for her daughters. Had she kept the letters for her daughters too? Had she held on to them so that some day in the future Río might know the truth of her paternity? It wasn’t the kind of thing a mother could easily admit to; had this been Rosaleen’s way of communicating with her daughter from ‘beyond the grave’, as Río had put it? Or had she held on to the letters simply because they were the most precious things she owned? Proof that she had been adored?

      It did not cross Dervla’s mind to be censorious. On the contrary, she was glad, so glad for her mother! Rosaleen deserved to have had some romance in her life, even if it had been clandestine. Dervla remembered the rare occasions on which her mother had laughed, and wondered had she laughed that way with Patrick, too. She hoped so.

      Questions came crowding into her mind now. Had Frank guessed that Rosaleen had been having an affair? Or had he only learned about it after her death, through her written testimony? Where had Rosaleen kept the letters hidden? When had he found them? Dervla pictured her father hunched on the bockety sofa in the attic, reading the fulsome expressions of love for his wife that were written in another man’s hand. How had he felt when he discovered that Río was not his daughter? Or had he always suspected it? How was Río feeling now? To find out on the day of your father’s death that he was, in fact, not your real father must be some kick to the head. No wonder her sister craved alcohol.

      In Ryan’s, the local shop, Dervla responded to the expressions of sympathy that came her way, the offers of help, the solicitous enquiries. Everybody wanted to reminisce about Frank, and tell her what a ‘character’ he was. ‘Character’ was a very useful word to use about a deceased person, Dervla decided. A bit like the obituaries that referred to a stonking misanthropist as someone who ‘didn’t suffer fools gladly’ or a roaring alcoholic as a ‘bon vivant’.

      She selected a pricy bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape for her and Río to share, then waited for ages at the cash register while Mr Ryan regaled the queue with a lengthy anecdote about Frank Kinsella’s wit and wisdom. By the time Dervla left the shop, a glance at her watch told her that she had been gone fifteen minutes longer than the five she’d promised Río.

      She СКАЧАТЬ