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

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СКАЧАТЬ the village. But here is my favourite place. It’s so unspoiled. Did you know that it’s a designated area of outstanding natural beauty?’

      Adair and James exchanged neutral looks. ‘Is that so?’ said Adair.

      ‘You mean you weren’t aware of that when you made the decision to bulldoze Coral Cottage and build your Legoland mansion?’ Río gave him a disingenuous smile. ‘That’s a shame. You might want to take things a bit more slowly, Mr Bolger. People in the country don’t like it when things happen too fast.’

      ‘I’d hardly describe the planning procedure as “fast”,’ said James, with a supercilious smirk. ‘Each application is subject to rigorous examination by the relevant department and—’

      ‘Don’t patronise me, and don’t push your luck,’ returned Río. ‘You might just about squeeze permission to stable a donkey here. But I’ve never heard of planning permission being granted for a yoga pavilion in Lissamore. And as for mooring a pleasure craft…’ Raising her chin, she gave them a challenging look. ‘Let’s just say you could find yourselves with a fight on your hands. Slán, lads.’

      With a toss of her head, Río strode away from them, back in the direction she’d come. The climb up the cliff path was a stiff one, and by the time she got to the top she was breathless with exertion and anger. Looking down, she saw that the beach was deserted now but for Finn, poised above his rock pool. Fishing in her backpack for her phone, she dragged a couple of deep breaths into her lungs before jabbing the keypad. What she was about to do was going to take some nerve. She was going to phone her sister.

      Río had read some aphorism somewhere, about sisters being bonded by childhood memories and grown-up dreams. She and her sister, Dervla, shared plenty of childhood memories, but she hadn’t a clue what Dervla’s grown-up dreams might be. The Kinsella sisters hadn’t spoken in any meaningful way for over a decade, and the reason for this was quite simple. They had learned to loathe one other.

      ‘Dervla?’ said Río, when the number picked up. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Coral Cottage was on the market?’

      ‘Because it never was on the market,’ came the cool response. ‘It was sold privately’

      ‘Did you handle the sale?’

      ‘I may have had something to do with it, yes.’

      ‘How could you, Dervla? You know it’s always had my name on it.’

      ‘Oh, Río – give me a break! It never had your name on it. It never will have your name on it. I thought you’d given up on that dream years ago. Oh, excuse me one moment, will you? I have a call coming in.’

      ‘On-hold’ music jangled down the line, and Río repressed an urge to fling the bogging phone off the cliff. Then she took another deep breath, bit down hard on her bottom lip, and decided instead to use this ‘Greensleeves’ interlude to count to ten, the way she’d learned to do any time she had dealings with Dervla.

      As she counted, she compared herself to stout Cortez in the poem, except she was viewing the Atlantic, not the Pacific, and this view was her birthright. To the west, the bay gleamed lapis lazuli, its islets blazing emerald in the low-slung sun. Below her, a low, fluting call and the glissando of wings announced the arrival of curlews on the foreshore. An early season Cabbage White fluttered past – insubstantial as tissue paper – and a honeybee buzzed over the bright cotton of her skirt, thinking, perhaps, that Río might be a flower. And then, beyond the headland, came the riotous, discordant guffaw of the donkey.

      ‘Is that a friend of yours I hear?’

      Dervla was back on the line, and because Río had only got as far as seven, her voice shook with rage when she spoke again.

      ‘You, Dervla Cecilia Kinsella, are a conniving bitch. I will never forgive you for this.’

      ‘I’m quaking in my Manolos, darling. Incidentally, what sartorial statement is your footwear making today? Are you sporting espadrilles? Or Birkenstocks? Or are you wandering lonely as a cloud, barefoot along the beach in Lissamore with sea pinks in your hair and—’

      This time, Río did obey the inner voice that had urged her to hurl her phone off the cliff. She followed its trajectory as it sailed through the air, bounced off a boulder and fell with a splash into the sea.

      Shit, shit, shit! she thought. That impulse, that fit of pique, that little act of what my sister would describe as lunacy, just cost me the best part of sixty bogging punts…

       Chapter One Several Years Later

      ‘You’re like Baa, baa, Black Sheep, Ma.’

      ‘Baa, baa, Black Sheep?’

      ‘You’ve got three bags full by the kitchen door.’ Finn was leaning against the doorjamb of Río’s bedroom, watching her curiously. ‘What are you doing?’

      ‘I’m decluttering.’ Río looked up at her son from where she was sitting on the floor, surrounded by junk. ‘It’s my New Year’s resolution. I heard someone on the radio this morning say that every time you buy something new, you should discard at least two items of your old stuff, and I haven’t thrown anything out since the cat died.’

      ‘The cat dying hardly counts as throwing something out.’

      ‘No, but throwing out her bed and her kitty toys did. So now I’m making up for the fact that I haven’t trashed anything for ages by dumping loads of things. Like this.’ Río tossed a theatre programme over her shoulder. ‘And this.’ A desk diary went flying. ‘And these. Go, go, go!’ A bunch of Christmas cards fluttered after the desk diary. ‘Decluttering’s proving to be surprisingly therapeutic. How’s your hangover?’

      ‘Not too bad.’

      ‘Last night was fun, wasn’t it?’

      Río and Finn had rung in the New Year in O’Toole’s pub, where Río worked part time as a barmaid. But for once she hadn’t been pulling pints–she’d been singing and laughing and dancing into the small hours. She and Finn had swung home around three a.m., and then Skyped Finn’s dad and left a recording of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on his answering machine in LA.

      ‘Last night was a blast.’ Finn moved across to the pile of debris that Río had fecked into the middle of the floor, and pushed it about a bit with his bare foot. ‘Anything here I might want to keep?’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘What about the bags in the kitchen?’

      ‘They’re full of crap too.’

      In the kitchen Río had bagged–amongst numerous other useless objects–a torn peg bag, half a dozen broken corkscrews, a copy of a GI diet book (never read), a cracked wine cooler and a yoghurt maker still in its box.

      Upstairs, she had decided to attack her bureau before attempting to cull her wardrobe. She suspected that if she opened the closet door, her clothes would start pleading with her not to discard them–especially those heart-stoppingly beautiful garments СКАЧАТЬ