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

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СКАЧАТЬ what the dogs on the street are saying.’

      Shaking back her hair, Río stretched, got to her feet, and wandered to the window. On the street below, there were indeed dogs–quite a few of them. Her neighbour’s Yorkshire terrier was sitting on the harbour wall chatting to the postmistress’s Airedale, and Seamus Moynihan’s lurcher was looking out to sea, waiting for his master’s trawler to arrive back with the lobster pots. The bichon frise that belonged to Fleur of Fleurissima was posing prettily in the doorway of the shop, waiting for one of the local curs to pluck up the courage to ask her for a date.

      Fleurissima was the village’s sole boutique. Río’s friend Fleur specialised in non-mainstream designers sourced from all over Europe: her beautiful shop was a mecca for those with some wealth and a lot of taste, who were seeking unusual and elegant one-offs. It opened for just nine months of the year, because it didn’t make financial sense to stay open after October. In wintertime there were no well-heeled visitors around to snap up her exquisite garments, so Fleur opened the shop only in the run-up to Christmas, but she always took New Year off to fly to some exotic location with her latest lover. This year, she planned to celebrate New Year’s Day by swimming in the Blue Lagoon in Jamaica.

      Río had helped run the shop once upon a time; now she just dressed the window. In the old days, she and Fleur had acquired their stock from the house auctions that were held every few weeks in estates and big houses all over Ireland. They’d pull up in Río’s ancient, battered Renault, and drive away with cardboard boxes crammed with silk and satin and velvet and chenille, some bearing labels with legendary names: Ossie Clark, Yves Saint Laurent, Mary Quant. It broke their hearts to sell their spoils–in fact, sometimes they ‘borrowed’ the frocks themselves before they sold them–but that had been how they made their living in the days before Lissamore had become a playground for plutocrats.

      Lissamore was one of the prettiest, most picture-postcard-perfect villages in the whole of the west of Ireland: there was even a sign to say so, a quarter of a mile down the road from Río’s house. It read: ‘You are now entering Lissamore–possibly the most picturesque village in Ireland.’

      Since the sign had gone up a couple of years earlier, Río had been tempted to deface it by crossing out the word ‘possibly’. Opposite her front door, fishing boats bobbed cheerfully in a photogenic harbour against a backdrop of purple mountains. Islands shimmered in the bay beyond, rimmed with golden beaches–the kind of beaches that would be bound to win awards if only Condé Nast copped on to them. On the outskirts of the village, leafy boreens wound their way here and there, mostly leading to random beauty spots. Boats and boreens, mountains and islands–all could have been designed by a deity in a benevolent mood, or by the Irish Tourist Board.

      Río’s house was on the main street, one of a nineteenth-century terrace of two-storey cottages. It was the kind of house that epitomised the estate agent cliché ‘oozing with character’, the kind of house that tourists chose to pose in front of for photos. There were, however, two major drawbacks to the property as far as Río was concerned. She didn’t actually own it, and it didn’t have a garden.

      All her life Río had dreamed of tending a garden by the sea. When her mother had lain dying, she had sat by her bedside and told her stories about how one day she, Río, would own Coral Cottage, where she and Mama had used to go to fetch freshly laid eggs. She promised to plant there all the flowers her mother had grown in the garden of their family home, and build a bower for Mama to rest in on warm summer days, and a tree house for her future grandchildren to play in, and a picnic table, for when they felt like entertaining. And she’d promised her mother that when she died–and oh! she could have years ahead of her still! Mama could outlive Río!–her ashes would be scattered on the promontory by Coral Cottage, which overlooked the Atlantic. This last promise Río had kept; but of course the bower and the tree house and the picnic table had never been built. Instead there was an ostentatious yoga pavilion in the garden of what had once been Coral Cottage, and which was now known locally as Coral Mansion.

      ‘Ma? What are you daydreaming about?’ Finn’s voice brought Río back to the here and now, and she turned to him and smiled.

      ‘I was thinking about Coral Cottage, and the way it used to be. It was the loveliest place, Finn. My mother used to take me and Dervla to buy eggs from the old woman who lived there when we were small. There was always a smell of baking in the kitchen, and there were geraniums in pots on all the windowsills, and there would be a turf fire lighting and a cat on the hearth and hens in the henhouse, and I always used to dream that one day I might own a place like that and live the good life.’

      Finn gave his mother a ‘get real’ look. ‘Come on, Ma! Who lives like that any more? Even you’d be lost without broadband and Skype.’

      ‘I was always a romantic, I guess. And the fact that you were conceived there made me—’

      ‘What! I was conceived in a derelict cottage?’

      ‘No. You were conceived under an apple tree in the orchard. I remember there was a full moon that night and—’

      ‘Ew, Ma! Too much information!’

      ‘Sorry I’ll shut up.’ Río returned to her bureau, absently leafed through an old notebook, then lobbed it onto the rubbish heap. Kneeling down and reaching randomly for something else to trash she said: ‘You should do this, Finn, in your room. Declutter your life. Isn’t it about time you got rid of a load of your old computer games?’

      ‘Funny you should say that. I was just thinking it was about time for me to do a blitz. I’ve been doing some thinking, Ma, and—’

      ‘Oh, look! One of your old school reports. Listen to this: “Finn is a popular and outgoing boy. However, he tends to concentrate overly on the physical aspect of his education. This is, unfortunately, to the detriment of his academic work, at which he could be very successful if he applied himself more rigorously.” I used to get that sort of thing in my school reports too. “Could do better. Must try harder.’”

      ‘Ma?’ Getting to his feet, Finn swept his hair back from his face, and the gesture reminded Río–as it always did–of his father.

      ‘Mm-hm?’

      ‘Carl’s decided he’s going to do the round-the-world thing this year.’

      ‘Good for Carl. When’s he going?’

      ‘In about three weeks.’

      ‘And he’s going for a whole year?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘You’ll miss him. What do you fancy for dinner this evening, by the way? Or maybe we should forget about cooking and head down to O’Toole’s for chowder? My treat.’

      ‘I hadn’t really thought about it. You see, Ma, the thing is that Carl’s asked me to go with him.’

      Río paused in her perusal of a mail-order catalogue. ‘Oh?’

      ‘Yeah. And I’ve really been thinking about it. It would be a really amazing experience, wouldn’t it?’

      ‘Yes. It would.’

      ‘He’s–um–planning on hitting Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, South America…’

      ‘That’s going to cost a lot of money.’ Río turned a page automatically. A garden gnome that was great value at only €22.99 winked up at her with unseemly cheerfulness. How could it СКАЧАТЬ