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

the way across the road, she produced a key from her bag, and inserted it in the lock. Next door, she saw a net curtain twitch, revealing the sparkle of Christmas tree lights. She hoped that her neighbour had invited her father in for mince pies and mulled wine at some point over the Christmas period.

      ‘Mrs Murphy’s on our case,’ she observed. ‘We’d better say hello.’

      ‘Maybe she brought him the chops,’ Río said in an undertone.

      Mrs Murphy emerged onto her front step, wiping her hands on her apron, and wearing a lugubrious expression. Dervla found herself wondering why her father’s neighbour had phoned her in her Galway office with the news that Frank had popped his clogs, rather than phoning Río, who lived just down the road. But when she saw Mrs Murphy glance reprovingly at Río’s red shoes, she concluded that it must be because Río had always been seen as the less responsible of the two sisters. She, Dervla, was the sensible one, while Río was the flibbertigibbet. Dervla was the level-headed career girl, Río the boho vagabond. It made sense to contact Dervla rather than the giddy one on an occasion that required a degree of gravitas.

      ‘I’m sorry for your trouble, girls,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘Will you come in for a cup of tea?’

      Dervla returned her doleful smile. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs Murphy, but we’d best be getting stuck in to cleaning.’

      ‘I managed to tidy the upstairs a little, after your father…you know.’

      The sisters nodded solemnly. ‘Thank you so much. And thank you for taking care of the removal and—’

      ‘I would have done the downstairs too,’ resumed Mrs Murphy hastily, clearly reluctant to dwell on any morbid particulars, ‘but my back started giving me gyp. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been of more help.’

      ‘No worries, Mrs Murphy. You’ve been a real trouper. Daddy couldn’t have wished for a better neighbour.’

      It was true. Frank could never have survived without the help of Mrs Murphy and the other denizens of the village who ‘kept an eye’ on him. The care in the community myth actually existed in Lissamore, where twitching curtains were less a sign of nosiness than of a genuine concern. The villagers looked out for each other, and nobody had been ‘looked out for’ more than Frank Kinsella. People dropped food in to him, they saw him safely home at closing time, and every so often somebody would slip into his house while he slept, to wash dishes or clothes or floors.

      Río and Dervla did their bit too, of course, but both drew the line at moving in with Frank. There was no way Dervla would consider leaving her penthouse and her business in Galway, and it would be unfair to expect Río–who’d already reared one child single-handedly–to become full-time carer to a father who was more demanding and irresponsible than any adolescent.

      ‘I’ll bake a fruit cake for the wake,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘And if there’s anything else I can do, just ask.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘It’ll be hard, living without your da next door.’ To Dervla’s astonishment, the elderly lady’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’ll miss him, so I will. He had the gift of the gab, did Frank. Better than the radio, he was, with those stories of his.’

      For the first time, Dervla entertained the possibility that people had actually liked her father. She had dreaded it when he’d launch into one of his stories when she had brought friends home as a child. Frank would go on and on about some mythical Irish hero of the Celtic twilight, or sing rebel songs, or spout Yeats’s poetry endlessly while her mates tried hard not to yawn or snigger.

      From inside the house came the musical intro to the lunchtime radio chat show.

      ‘Oh!’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘I’d better get back in. They’re talking about rip-off funeral parlours. Oh! Saving your presence.’

      Bowing her head, she made a tragic little moue before disappearing back behind her front door.

      ‘Poor Mrs Murphy,’ said Dervla, turning to Río. ‘She’s genuinely gutted about Dad.’

      ‘Do you think she fancied him?’ Río asked.

      Dervla considered the possibility of Mrs Murphy fancying her father. ‘I dunno. I suppose he was a handsome dude once upon a time, in a Rabelaisian kind of way.’

      ‘He certainly knew how to charm the ladies. Didn’t he sweep our poor mama off her feet? How long did they know each other before they got married? Two months, or something stupid?’

      ‘Two months and two days, Mam told me. Kinda proves the point about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure.’

      ‘She certainly did that. I wonder why she never divorced him?’

      ‘Divorce wasn’t allowed, in those days.’

      ‘I guess they were just young and foolish. I guess we all were once.’

      There was a pause as the sisters regarded each other. Then Dervla turned the key, pushed open the door to their father’s house, and stepped over the threshold. To the right of the hallway, the sitting room was in darkness. She flicked a switch, then strode into the room and yanked open the curtains.

      Sunlight made a reluctant entrance through grimy window-panes, and dust motes could be seen spiralling sluggishly around the room. The curtains had evidently not been opened for some time.

      ‘Jesus,’ said Río. ‘What’s that smell?’

      ‘There’s a dead mouse somewhere. We may have to lift a floorboard.’

      ‘Ugh. You’re sure it’s not just rotting food?’

      ‘Sure. I’ve smelled enough mice corpses in my time. You wouldn’t believe some of the house-of-horror recces I’ve done. Let’s just hope it’s not a rat, and that it isn’t survived by its dearly beloved wife and children.’

      The women stood in the middle of the floor and surveyed the room where, on rainy Sunday evenings, they had once played board games in front of the fire. In those days their mother would make sandwiches–chicken or lamb or beef left over from the roast they’d had at lunchtime–and sometimes as a treat they’d have marshmallows to toast, and then they’d watch the Sunday evening soap opera with Rosaleen, while Frank dozed under the newspaper. And then they’d pack their school books into their satchels in readiness for the next day, and kiss their parents good night, and go upstairs to the big attic bedroom, which ran the length of the house, and tell each other stories about what their futures would be.

      Dervla was going to live in a Great House, while Río was going to live in a cottage by the sea. Dervla’s garden was going to have manicured lawns and a topiary, while Río’s was going to have apple trees and hollyhocks. Dervla was going to have a Dalmatian, while Río was going to have a marmalade cat. They were both going to marry tall, dark and handsome men who looked like Pierce Brosnan in Remington Steele, and they were both going to have two children each, and it didn’t matter whether they were boys or girls as long as the babies were healthy and had all ten fingers and all ten toes.

      ‘What are you thinking about, Dervla?’ Río asked.

      ‘Those Sunday evenings. The ones that seemed happy until we realised that Dad wasn’t snoozing contentedly under his paper, but was comatose with the drink.’

      ‘Remember how he’d head off to the pub after lunch, and when he came back he’d be in flying form, and give us piggybacks, and roll down the slope in the garden with us, and we thought he was great craic? And all the time, Mama would be in the study doing the weekly accounts and we always wondered why her eyes were so red, and she told us she’d got allergic to the cat.’

      ‘God. We were like something in a novel by John McGahern.’

      Río laughed. ‘At least it wasn’t out of a novel by that bloke who wrote Angela’s Ashes.’

      ‘Frank McCourt.’