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

a door in her face as he’d made his final undignified exit from this life.

      What was she to do now? What would become of her? She knew it was venal, but she’d always expected to inherit half of Frank’s property, and hoped she might one day have enough capital to put a down payment on a place of her own. A place of her own! That dream was now as vestigial as the dream she had once woven around Coral Cottage and her orchard and her marmalade cat.

      Money was at the root of her problems–of course it was. Money–or the lack of same–was always a worry for Río, and money was especially tight off-season when there were no tourists around to be ferried to and from the airport. There were fewer people too, clamouring for pints of the black stuff in O’Toole’s bar where she worked so hard at charming them. And once Finn was off travelling she’d be hard-pressed to pay the rent on her house without his weekly contribution. Her landlord had hinted that a hike was due.

      She shook the thoughts away. She wouldn’t think about that stuff now; she’d think about it once the funeral was over and Finn was gone. In the meantime, she would have to put a brave face on things. She would have to play-act very hard indeed, because she knew that if she wept and wailed as she had done earlier in the evening, Finn would not leave Lissamore and set off on the adventure that was his life–he would stay here for her.

      ‘Ma?’ he said to her now. ‘I’ve been having second thoughts about going away. I mean now that Grandpa’s dead and–and all this stuff has happened, it wouldn’t be fair on you if I upped and left. I think it’s best if I hang around for a while.’

      Oh God. He was thinking about staying for her! No, no–she refused to allow him even to consider that option. She would not become one of those needy mothers who clung on to their children and ruined their lives.

      ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said smartly. ‘You know me, Finn. I’m resilient. I bounce back–always have. I won’t allow the bastard to get me down. I just won’t.’ She reached for the phone. ‘Now that I’m all cried out, I’d better phone your father. Tell him about Frank.’

      ‘I already did,’ said Finn. ‘He said he’d phone you later, and he said he was mightily sorry for your trouble.’

      Río smiled. ‘Begorrah, and did he now?’

      ‘He did. It seems you can take the man out of the bog, but you can’t take the bog out of the man, even after twenty years in Lala Land.’

      ‘How is the fecker?’

      ‘He seemed grand. He’s working.’

      ‘Let me guess. In McDonald’s? Or Burger King?’ joked Río, stapling on a grin. She’d smile and smile and joke and joke, and she’d get through the next couple of weeks somehow until Finn was gone from her, and then she’d launch herself into the fray again, because Río was resilient. She’d gone through tough times–name her one single parent who hadn’t–but she’d always somehow emerged on the other side battle-scarred and weary, but otherwise intact.

      ‘No, he’s not waiting table this time,’ responded Finn. ‘He’s got acting work.’

      ‘He has?’ Río was genuinely astonished. Shane had done nothing but wait on tables for at least two years now.

      ‘Yeah. He’s got a part in a pilot for a new TV series.’

      ‘Oh. The title of which is presumably The Series That Will Never Be Made.’

      Shane had appeared in numerous pilots for projects that had never got off the ground. He had played a cowboy in something called Clone Rangers, and a vampire in something called Blood Brothers and an alien commander in something called Ace of Space, which Río had renamed Waste of Space. She and Finn had dutifully watched the DVD he’d sent them and tried not to laugh, but after a couple of glasses of wine not laughing had proved impossible, and Río had guffawed so hard that wine had come spurting out of her nose. The pair of them had gone round quoting from Ace of Space for weeks afterwards, intoning such gems as ‘Instruct the hyperdrive to convey us to Twelfth Warp!’ and ‘Planet Quatatanga is ours!’

      ‘Well, you know what Dad’s like,’ said Finn. ‘He’s always convinced that whatever he’s in will be the next Lost. He said to tell you how sorry he is that he won’t be able to make it to the funeral. He’s shooting all this week and next.’

      ‘That’s sweet of him to even think about coming over, but I wouldn’t have expected him to travel all that way for Frank.’

      ‘Sure, it’d be no problem for him with the auld Hyperdrive. That conveyed him to the Twelfth Warp in no time at all’

      ‘But the Hyperdrive exploded on Planet Quatatanga, taking Captain Ross and his crew members with it. And that was the end of that pay cheque. I got my winter coat and my Doc Martens out of that pilot.’

      ‘And I got my Xbox.’

      ‘I wonder what we’ll get out of this one?’

      ‘I know what I want.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘My scuba-dive instructorship.’

      ‘Oh, Finn! It breaks my heart to think that if Frank hadn’t left me out of his will—’

      ‘Ma, Ma! Please don’t beat yourself up over it! I’ll find a way to get my certification, I promise I will’

      ‘But it’s so expensive—’

      ‘Please, please don’t worry about me, Ma. That’s the last thing I want you to do. You’ve enough on your plate.’

      Río made a face. ‘I just wish it was scallops and lobster.’

      ‘I’ll fetch you scallops on my next dive. I know where there’s a big bed off Inishclare. Hey! Let’s check the EuroMillions results.’ Finn reached for the mouse and set sail on Internet Explorer. ‘Maybe we’ll be lucky tonight.’

      There was a pause, then Río stapled on that grin again. ‘Knowing our luck,’ she said, ‘Dervla’s probably already won it.’

      That night–after she’d said goodbye to Río, and driven the forty kilometres back to her penthouse in the Sugar Stack in Galway, and sipped a glass of chilled Sancerre, and performed her Eve Lom routine, and slid between her Egyptian cotton sheets–Dervla did something she often did after she’d recced a property. As she lay in bed, she walked through it in her head, retracing her steps in a kind of virtual tour.

      The front of Frank’s house would clean up well. White-washed walls, a new front door painted a tasteful shade of duck-egg blue, window boxes. Inside, the porch would have to be retained. Porches were important on this stretch of the Atlantic coast, not just as storage space for fuel and wellie boots and umbrellas, but because they acted as buffers against the wind that beat up against the fronts of the houses in wintertime. Beyond the porch, the hallway, the sitting room and the kitchen could be knocked through into one vast, L-shaped living space, with the kitchen housed in the extended foot of the ‘L’, and with the old scullery beyond serving as a utility room. The study could be converted into a spare bedroom.

      Downstairs and up, huge, double-glazed picture windows could be installed to frame that panoramic vista of sea and sky and mountains. The front bedroom was sizeable enough to accommodate an en suite shower room if a section of the landing was annexed. The bathroom would have to be ripped out, and all fittings replaced with state-of-the-art sanitary ware. A home office could be fitted under the stairs, library shelves in the stairwell, and the spare room overhauled and fitted with storage units. A deck could be constructed on the roof of the downstairs extension that housed the kitchen and utility room, with double doors opening onto it from the landing.

      The only conundrum was–what to do about the attic?

      That night, after saying good night to Finn, Río poured herself a glass of rough red wine and took it into the bathroom to sip while she cleaned her face. Studying herself in the mirror, she