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

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 hurried back down the main street, keeping her head low in the hope that her demeanour might discourage people from engaging her in conversation. But Tommy Maguire was at the door of his pub, and she couldn’t pass by without acknowledging him. He spent five minutes offering his condolences, and ended by telling Dervla how much he would miss her father’s custom.

      You betcha, thought Dervla darkly, as she finally disengaged and hotfooted it back to the Kinsella family home. As she let herself in, she waved at Mrs Murphy, who was gazing through the window next door with her phone clamped to her ear, probably trying to get through to the radio programme to complain about the cost of funerals.

      In the kitchen, Río was sitting at the table, perusing a document. Dervla saw at once that the stapled A4 typescript was their father’s will.

      Río looked up as Dervla came through the door, and gave her a mirthless smile. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ she said.

      ‘Oh! I hate that question,’ said Dervla, reaching for the corkscrew. ‘Just bring it all bloody on.’

      ‘Brace yourself. Frank divided his estate into separate entities–dwelling and land.’

      ‘Well, that’s probably fair enough,’ said Dervla cautiously. ‘With planning permission, the land could be worth almost as much as the house.’

      ‘In that case, you’ll be glad to know that you’ve inherited the lion’s share.’

      Dervla bit her lip. That clearly meant that Frank had bequeathed the house to her. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘So you’ve inherited the garden.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Oh. Did he…could he have left it to Finn, then?’

      Río shook her head.

      ‘So who did he leave it to?’

      Río gave Dervla a mirthless smile. ‘He left it to Mrs Murphy,’ she said.

      ‘The ironic thing,’ Río said to Finn a couple of hours later, after she’d dried the copious tears she’d wept upon returning home, ‘is that we’d thought it would be a nice gesture to let Mrs Murphy have a memento of Dad. Some memento, eh?’

      ‘Maybe she’ll do the decent thing and refuse to accept it.’

      ‘Refuse to accept a prime wedge of real estate with development potential? Are you out of your mind, Finn? And even if she declined, her sons would be in like the clappers to claim it on her behalf.’

      Frank had known full well the passion Río had felt for that garden. She had tended it for years, growing the kind of plants that her mother had told her would thrive beside the sea, in the inhospitable soil of Coolnamara. She had brought in topsoil and compost and mulch to nurture her plantlings; she had even gathered donkey dung, which was the best fertiliser she knew of, and seaweed to wrap around the roots of saplings to keep them cosy in winter. She’d kept the pond clean–even though the koi no longer swam there–and she’d pruned and weeded and mowed and strimmed.

      She had done it because she knew Rosaleen would have wanted her to do it, and any time she spent in that garden, she felt as if her mother were smiling down at her beneficently from the blue-and-white-washed Coolnamara heaven.

      And then one day around two years ago her father had told her that he’d lost the key to the back door.

      ‘That’s all right,’ Río had reassured him, ‘I’ll get a locksmith in.’

      ‘No,’ Frank had said mulishly. ‘I don’t want to set foot in that garden ever again, and I don’t want you going out there either.’

      ‘But Mama would want me to take care of her garden for her,’ Río had protested.

      ‘What she wanted doesn’t matter any more. She’s dead, and her garden should be allowed to die with her. It’s morbid, so it is, to keep it alive when she’s not here to enjoy it.’

      ‘But don’t you want to be able to enjoy it, Daddy?’

      ‘I never enjoyed it. I hated it, and I resented the time your mother spent looking after it. She took better care of that effing garden than she did of me.’

      Can you blame her? Río thought, but didn’t say. What she did say, with a stroppy toss of the head, was: ‘Well, you’ve only yourself to blame if the place gets so overgrown you lose all your light.’ Which was exactly what had happened.

      And now Río wondered if perhaps it had been around that time that Frank had discovered the letters written to his wife by the man called Patrick. Had that been why he’d denied Río access to the thing he knew she loved best, and allowed the garden to become a wasteland? And had that been when he’d tampered with her kimono and drawn up his will so that she, the bastard offspring of his wife’s