Kate Thompson - That Gallagher Girl

‘How’s Ophelia coping?’ she asked.

‘She’s covering up quite well. I have to say I’ve a grudging admiration for her. She even managed to drag Hugo out to some dinner that was being given in his honour last week. The pics were all over the papers.’

‘Well, it’s in her interest to cover things up, isn’t it? What’ll become of her status as muse and keeper of the votive flame when Dad finally burns out? Our Oaf loves the limelight. She won’t like being a nobody.’ The spider emerged from the crack and started to scale Cat’s hand. Yes!

‘She’ll find some way around it. She’s a survivor. And she’s no eejit.’

That was true. When it came to finding her spotlight, Raoul and Cat’s stepmother was exceptionally clever. She’d been an actress in a former life, and – conscious that she was approaching her best before date – she’d been glad to fill the vacancy left when Paloma wearied of her role as Hugo Gallagher’s muse and ran away from the Crooked House, taking their only daughter with her. There was a lot of artyfarty crap talked about being a muse, Cat had learned. It was a thankless job really – a bit like being an unpaid minder to a grown-up baby. It wasn’t about lolling around on divans eating grapes and quaffing champagne: it was about cooking and cleaning and nagging and making sure that money was coming in to pay the bills. Cat remembered her mother locking Hugo into his studio for hours on end, not letting him out until he had something concrete to send to his gallery. Then, when payment finally came through, Paloma would spend a day feverishly scribbling cheques to all their creditors and writing thank-you letters to those local tradesmen who had been patient with her – the butcher and the plumber and the market gardener (all of whom were, Cat suspected, a little in love with her mother). She remembered how, on the day electricity was reconnected after three weeks of suppers cooked on a Primus stove and homework done by candlelight, she and her mother had celebrated by making buckets of popcorn, turning on lights all over the house and playing Madonna at full blast. Hugo had celebrated by going off on a pub crawl that had lasted three days.

But things had changed since then. In Paloma’s time, Hugo had been on the cusp of success: now he was feted as one of Ireland’s greatest living painters. Paloma’s successor, the lovely Ophelia, could afford to hire someone to do the cooking and cleaning. She could shop till she dropped online (now that broadband had finally infiltrated the Crooked House), have all her bills paid by direct debit, and not be obliged to dream up outlandish excuses for creditors.

‘How did Dad look, in the pictures?’ she asked Raoul.

‘Distinguished as ever, according to the caption. You wouldn’t think he was burnt out.’

‘What about her?’

‘She looked great.’

Cat didn’t want to hear this. She would have loved it if Raoul had told her instead that Ophelia had looked awful, playing up to the camera like the WAG she was at heart. But her stepmother had modified her look since she and Hugo had first met. In the early days, Oaf had traded on an overt sex appeal that turned heads – and pages in the tabloids. Once she had Hugo in her sights she had toned things down, knowing that her wannabe image was inappropriate for a gal who was auditioning for the role of real-life muse to a national treasure. Now she was more country girl than siren – softer, earthier, even a little curvier. The last magazine spread Cat had chanced upon had featured Oaf in full-on bucolic mode, waxing lyrical about life in the Crooked House and her role as homemaker and devoted wife to Hugo Gallagher. Clad in dungarees and wellies, hair artfully dishevelled, she’d been pictured scattering corn for her hens and feeding her pretty little goats.

‘She’s bringing out a book, by the way,’ remarked Raoul.

‘What? Oaf is? But she has the imagination of a flea!’

‘You don’t need to have an imagination to write a book any more. You just need to be a celebrity. And/or photogenic. Ophelia will milk her celebrity for what it’s worth. Like I said, she’s a survivor.’

Cat’s lip curled. ‘It won’t be much longer before she’s unmasked.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘She’s a liar, and not a very good one. It takes one to know one, Raoul, and I’ve had her number for ages.’

‘I’m sorry to say that I quite like her.’

‘Ah, but you’re not a liar, Raoul. You don’t understand the way our minds work. She knows how to push your buttons, just like she knows how to push Hugo’s.’

‘But she can’t push yours?’

‘No. And that’s why she hates me.’

‘Aren’t you being just a little OTT, Catkin?’

‘No. My instinct is right on this one. It’s that feeling I told you about – the one I get in my bones. Trust me.’

‘But you’ve just admitted to being a liar. How can I trust you?’

She could hear the smile in his voice, and she smiled back. ‘Blood ties, Raoul. We’re family.’

The spider that had been travelling across Cat’s palm began to lower itself effortlessly over the parapet on a lanyard of silk.

‘Oh!’ she said, gazing downward. ‘Whaddayaknow! I got company.’

‘What?’ Raoul’s voice on the phone sounded alarmed. ‘No worries. It’s just some local ICA types. They’ve descended on the next-door allotment.’

‘ICA?’

‘Irish Countrywomen’s Association. There’s a market-garden-type place right next to this house – very convenient, I have to say, for poor starving me. I’ve been feasting on organic produce all week.’

‘You’ve been robbing an allotment, Cat? You’re going to get yourself into trouble.’

Cat affected an injured tone. ‘What else is a gal to do, bro, when her daddy done gone and left her broke?’ From below came the sound of women’s laughter. They were unpacking a picnic hamper, Cat saw, and laying out rugs and cushions under the apple trees. They were clearly going to be there for some time. ‘They’d make a great subject for a painting,’ she remarked. ‘I could put one of them in the nude, like Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe .’

‘Cat?’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing will come of nothing. That’s Shakespeare, ain’t it? Better go, bro.’

Cat pressed ‘end call’, and stood staring at the display on her phone for some moments. She knew what Raoul had been going to say. He was going to tell her to get her ass back to school, get some qualifications, and get a job. He was going to tell her that she couldn’t carry on living the way she had for the past couple of years, and that it was time for her to wise up. He was going to tell her to get real, to get a life. But Cat had a life. She had a life that suited her. And she didn’t want to get real. Not just yet.

Another laugh drifted up from the allotment. It really would make a great subject for a painting. Fête Champêtre , Irish style. A bunch of middle-aged country women gossiping over ham sandwiches and flasks of tea, swapping recipes and showing off pictures of their grandchildren. Very petit genre , as her art teacher would have said! Cat pulled a scrunchy off her wrist, scraped up her mass of damp hair and wound it into a knot on the top of her head. Then she flexed her fingers. It was time to go cut some wallpaper.

Río emerged from the water and shook salt droplets from her hair. A swim was the only surefire way to clear a gal’s head after knocking back quantities of iced Cointreau and gin in the afternoon. Above her on the terraced slopes her sister Dervla was strolling between raspberry canes and strawberry beds, sampling produce; while under the shade of a parasol, recumbent on cushions, Fleur was leafing through a magazine and murmuring love songs to her baby. The words of some French nursery rhyme came floating down to the shore – Alouette, gentille alouette, alouette, je te plumerai . . .