That Gallagher Girl. Kate Thompson

      KATE THOMPSON

       That Gallagher Girl

      Copyright

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

      The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      Harper Press

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Copyright © Kate Thompson 2010

      Kate Thompson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9781847561015

      Ebook Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007431083 Version: 2018-07-09

      For Malcolm and Clara

       I am not a friend, and I am not a servant. I am the Cat who walks by herself, and I wish to come into your house.

      After Rudyard Kipling

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Epigraph

       Prologue

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Acknowledgements

       Read on for A Reader’s Guide to Lissamore

       A Reader’s Guide to Lissamore

       Prologue - Summer 2001

      About the Author

      By the same author

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

       Prologue

      On the morning of her seventeenth birthday, Cat Gallagher learned how to break into a house. It was fourth on the list of ten things she wanted to accomplish before she was twenty-one. The first three things she had already achieved. She had learned how to sail single-handed, how to play a winning hand at poker, and how to paint with a seagull’s feather. She had also learned to conquer fear – although that particular lesson wasn’t itemised on Cat’s list of things to learn, for she had always been fearless. Apart, that is, from her fear of needles.

      The house in question was a showcase that had never been lived in. It was the product of a former economy, a ghost house boasting brickwork so symmetrical and a roof so streamlined it appeared incongruous next to the un finished structures that surrounded it, their foundations mapping what was to have been an exclusive development of half-a-dozen luxury dwellings. Those houses would never be finished now. The showhouse stood alone and resplendent on a building site that was being reclaimed by bindweed, buddleia and feral cats.

      Cat and her half-brother Raoul were sitting on a low wall, sharing a bottle of wine. It had a posh French name and a picture of a French château on the label, but Cat hadn’t paid for it. She’d nicked it from her dad’s collection of vintage Burgundy, along with a second bottle from his collection of vintage Bordeaux.

      ‘Cheers,’ said Raoul, touching his paper cup to hers. ‘Happy birthday, Cat.’

      ‘Cheers.’

      ‘I hope you didn’t expect a present.’

      ‘Are you mad? You’re as broke as I am,’ said Cat. ‘Anyway, isn’t teaching me the art of breaking and entering more valuable than any old giftwrapped crap? Passing on skills is the new birthday present.’

      Raoul was ten years older than Cat. He was a student of architecture at Galway University, and had always indulged his little sister. He had been responsible for teaching her to row a boat and fix a bike chain and skip stones, and now he was mentoring her in the art of housebreaking. Their father, Hugo, had never mentored her in anything much, apart from how to tell the difference between a Burgundy and a Bordeaux.

      Cat and Raoul both took after their father in looks. It was said that the Gallaghers were descended from shipwrecked survivors of the Armada, and that they had Spanish blood. Both Cat and Raoul were dark-haired and olive-skinned, with patrician noses and cheekbones like razor shells. Today, Cat’s vaguely piratical appearance was enhanced by the fact that she sported a bandana, and a small gold hoop in one ear. Her eyes were heavily rimmed with black kohl, but that was her only concession to cosmetics. Cat had never used lipstick in her life, nor had she ever painted her nails or GHD’d her mane of black hair.

      ‘I wonder what Hugo would say if he knew you were teaching me how to break into houses,’ Cat remarked as Raoul upended the bottle into their paper cups before sticking it in his backpack.

      ‘Being a champagne socialist,