Read The Kinsella Sisters for Free Online Page B

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 bothgoing 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.’ Dervla looked at the black cast-iron fireplace that was grey now with ash and dust, and that boasted not the art nouveau figurines that their mother had collected, but a battalion of empty bottles and sticky-looking glasses and dirty ashtrays. ‘Maybe we should write a misery memoir,’ she said. ‘We could go on
Oprah
or
Richard and Judy
and make a fortune.’
    Dervla and Río turned to each other, but this time they didn’t laugh. ‘Poor Dad,’ they said simultaneously, each reaching for the other’s hand.
    And then they had their arms wrapped around each other, and they were crying, and Río was saying, ‘I’m so, so sorry about the thing with Shane.’
    And Dervla was saying, ‘Don’t be sorry–sure, wasn’t it ages ago and wasn’t he an awful eejit anyway. And weren’t we theawful eejits to let something as petty as a teenage crush mess us up.’
    ‘And for so long!’ exclaimed Río. ‘Twenty stupid, stupid years we’ve wasted, acting like characters in a Dostoevsky novel.’
    ‘Except in a Dostoevsky novel the characters would never kiss and make up.’
    ‘Is that what we’re doing?’
    ‘I think so. Don’t you? Don’t you think it’s possible to wipe a slate clean after twenty pointless bloody years of resentment and strop?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Río. ‘I do. I’m so sorry’ And leaning forward, she gave Dervla a kiss on the cheek.
    Dervla kissed her back. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry, for overreacting the way I did.’
    ‘No, no–I’m the one who should be sorry for stealing him.’
    ‘No, no–you didn’t steal him. He was never mine anyway.’ And then they were laughing again, but it was a kind of snuffly laughter.
    ‘Do you have a tissue?’ Río asked finally, wiping her cheeks.
    Dervla undid the clasp of her shoulder bag, and passed over a packet of Kleenex.
    A plaintive mew from the doorway made them turn. There, arching his back and rubbing his muzzle against the door jamb was W.B., their father’s cat. His