The Kinsella Sisters Read Free Page A

plenty of childhood memories, but she hadn’t a clue what Dervla’s grown-up dreams might be. The Kinsella sisters hadn’t spoken in any meaningful way for over a decade, and the reason for this was quite simple. They had learned to loathe one other.
    ‘Dervla?’ said Río, when the number picked up. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Coral Cottage was on the market?’
    ‘Because it never was on the market,’ came the cool response. ‘It was sold privately’
    ‘Did you handle the sale?’
    ‘I may have had something to do with it, yes.’
    ‘How could you, Dervla? You
know
it’s always had my name on it.’
    ‘Oh, Río – give me a break! It never had your name on it. It never
will
have your name on it. I thought you’d given up on
that
dream years ago. Oh, excuse me one moment, will you? I have a call coming in.’
    ‘On-hold’ music jangled down the line, and Río repressed an urge to fling the bogging phone off the cliff. Then she took another deep breath, bit down hard on her bottom lip, and decided instead to use this ‘Greensleeves’ interlude to count to ten, the way she’d learned to do any time she had dealings with Dervla.
    As she counted, she compared herself to stout Cortez in the poem, except she was viewing the Atlantic, not the Pacific, and this view was her birthright. To the west, the bay gleamed lapis lazuli, its islets blazing emerald in the low-slung sun. Below her, a low, fluting call and the glissando of wings announced the arrival of curlews on the foreshore. An early season CabbageWhite fluttered past – insubstantial as tissue paper – and a honeybee buzzed over the bright cotton of her skirt, thinking, perhaps, that Río might be a flower. And then, beyond the headland, came the riotous, discordant guffaw of the donkey.
    ‘Is that a friend of yours I hear?’
    Dervla was back on the line, and because Río had only got as far as seven, her voice shook with rage when she spoke again.
    ‘You, Dervla Cecilia Kinsella, are a conniving bitch. I will
never
forgive you for this.’
    ‘I’m quaking in my Manolos, darling. Incidentally, what sartorial statement is
your
footwear making today? Are you sporting espadrilles? Or Birkenstocks? Or are you wandering lonely as a cloud, barefoot along the beach in Lissamore with sea pinks in your hair and—’
    This time, Río did obey the inner voice that had urged her to hurl her phone off the cliff. She followed its trajectory as it sailed through the air, bounced off a boulder and fell with a splash into the sea.
    Shit, shit,
shit!
she thought. That impulse, that fit of pique, that little act of what my sister would describe as
lunacy
, just cost me the best part of sixty bogging punts…

Chapter One

Several Years Later
    ‘You’re like Baa, baa, Black Sheep, Ma.’
    ‘Baa, baa, Black Sheep?’
    ‘You’ve got three bags full by the kitchen door.’ Finn was leaning against the doorjamb of Río’s bedroom, watching her curiously. ‘What are you
doing?’
    ‘I’m decluttering.’ Río looked up at her son from where she was sitting on the floor, surrounded by junk. ‘It’s my New Year’s resolution. I heard someone on the radio this morning say that every time you buy something new, you should discard at least two items of your old stuff, and I haven’t thrown anything out since the cat died.’
    ‘The cat dying hardly counts as throwing something out.’
    ‘No, but throwing out her bed and her kitty toys did. So now I’m making up for the fact that I haven’t trashed anything for ages by dumping
loads
of things. Like this.’ Río tossed a theatre programme over her shoulder. ‘And this.’ A desk diary went flying. ‘And these. Go, go, go!’ A bunch of Christmas cards fluttered after the desk diary. ‘Decluttering’s proving to be surprisingly therapeutic. How’s your hangover?’
    ‘Not too bad.’
    ‘Last night was fun, wasn’t it?’
    Río and Finn had rung in the New Year in O’Toole’s pub,where Río worked