LITMIR.BIZ

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blurb said there was a view from upstairs, too.’

      ‘The roof slopes down too far. There’s no space for a picture window to the front.’

      ‘There’s no window at all?’

      ‘Well, yeah. There’s a kind of dwarf-sized dormer . . .’

      ‘And that’s it?’ Adair sounded incandescent with indignation.

      ‘Well, no. There’s a bigger one in the gable end wall. Hang on a sec.’

      Río moved to the other side of the room. Like its counterpart downstairs, this casement would overlook the junkyard: the view would be crap. Unless, that is, her eyes were deceiving her . . .

      Instead of a junkyard, what she saw was a marine-blue inlet all a-glimmer in the low-slung sun. Fringed by a stretch of footprint-free sand, this was Coolnamara Bay au naturel, before man had left his mark on the shoreline. But it wasn’t real. The view that lay before her was an imaginary one. It had been painted by a visionary’s hand directly on to a canvas nailed to the window frame.

      She let out a low whistle. ‘Well. I didn’t know that Madser had talent in the art department.’ Taking a step forward, Río narrowed her eyes and gave the painting the once-over. In the bottom left-hand corner, a girl was depicted crouching by a rock pool, gazing intently at a red-spotted flatfish that lay half-buried in the sand. The girl was naked, striped all over like a brindled cat, and her lips were pulled back to show feral, pointed teeth. In the bottom right-hand corner was a tiny, barely recognisable signature. She made out just three letters: ‘C A T’.

      ‘No,’ she murmured. ‘Not Madser. Not a man. A woman was responsible for this.’

      ‘What are you on about, Río?’ asked Adair.

      ‘Someone’s left you a painting.’

      ‘A painting?’

      ‘Yeah. It’s not bad. In fact, I think I might be jealous.’ Río took another squint. ‘It’s better than any of the stuff I’ve done recently.’

      ‘Nonsense. Your paintings are wonderful,’ returned Adair, loyally.

      ‘I’ll take a picture of it, shall I? Send you the evidence.’ Río checked the battery level on her phone.

      ‘Is there a signature?’

      ‘Yeah. Banksy. Joke.’ Río leaned a little closer, wishing the light was better: the texture of the paint told her it was acrylic. ‘Talking of paintings, did I see that your Paul Henry seascape was up for sale?’

      ‘How did you know that?’

      ‘There was a description of a Paul Henry in the Irish Times auction preview a couple of weeks ago: it sounded a lot like yours.’

      ‘It is – was – mine.’

      ‘D’you mind me asking what you got for it?’ Río traced the raw edge of the canvas with a forefinger. It came away dust-free.

      ‘I got many thousand euros less than it was worth, Río a grá.’

      ‘Why did you sell it?’

      ‘Why do you think? I need a roof over my head more than I need a picture by a famous dead bloke.’

      ‘Did it cover the cost of your mobile home?’ she asked, taking a step backward, and putting her head on one side. How long had this painting been here?

      ‘No. The le Brocquy portrait did that. The Paul Henry went towards Izzy’s wedding fund.’

      ‘Izzy’s getting married?’ Río was astonished.

      ‘No, no. She’s no plans to get married. But she will one day, and I’m damned if my girl won’t get the most lavish wedding money can buy. The fact that her dad’s on his uppers isn’t going to get in the way of that. Oh – hang on a sec, Río – I just gotta sign something here . . .’

      A deferential murmuring could be heard in the background. Río turned away from the painting and strolled across the room to where the minuscule dormer window afforded a peek of the butt-end of Inishclare island. She imagined Adair in Dubai surrounded by flunkeys, signing documents with a Montblanc pen. Hunkering down, she thought about what he had just said. On his uppers . . . How weird! Just a couple of years ago Río would never have dreamed that Adair Bolger would wind up broke. He’d been a ringmaster at the Celtic Tiger circus, a major beneficiary of the boom. Back in those days his weekend retreat, the Villa Felicity, had been an ostentatious pleasure palace for his gold-plated trophy wife, who had swanned about the joint as if it were her very own Petit Trianon. She remembered the guided tour Adair had given her of the swimming pool and the entertainment suite and the hideous yoga pavilion, and how she had curled her lip at the unseemly extravagance of it all. She remembered how he had hoped to indulge his daughter’s dreams of renaming the joint An Ghorm Mhór – The Big Blue – and turning it into a five-star PADI scuba-dive resort; how he had held on tight to that dream for Izzy’s sake, even when he could no longer afford to. But he hadn’t been able to hold on for long. Now this monument to the excesses of the Celtic Tiger era was lying empty a mile down the shoreline, waiting for its new owner to claim it. The new owner – whoever he or she might be – was clearly in no hurry. The shutters of the Villa Felicity had not been raised in over two years.

      Río got to her feet and stretched. Then she reached into her backpack and rummaged for her cosmetics purse. Her nose had got sunburned yesterday and was peeling. Peering into the cracked mirror on the flap of the purse, she rubbed a little Vitamin E cream on her nose, and then on her lips. Her freckles were worse than ever this year – although you couldn’t really see them in the fractured glass. Maybe she should use this mirror more often? If she couldn’t see her freckles, that meant that she wouldn’t be able to see the fine lines around her eyes, the strands of silver creeping into her mass of tawny hair, the brows that needed shaping, the occasional blemish that needed concealing, the . . .

      ‘There, done and dusted,’ said Adair, back on the phone to her. ‘I’ve just signed away my condo in the Burj Khalifa.’

      Something told Río that, despite the jocularity of his tone, he wasn’t being facetious. ‘Are you really on your uppers, Adair?’ she asked.

      ‘Pretty well,’ he acknowledged, cheerfully. ‘You don’t sound too put out about it.’

      ‘You know me, Río. As long as my girl’s happy, I’m happy. And she’s doing OK.’

      ‘What’s Izzy up to?’

      ‘She’s got herself a grand job in marketing. How’s Finn?’

      ‘His father got him work as a stunt double on his latest blockbuster.’

      ‘Cool.’

      ‘I guess. But LA doesn’t suit him. He’s making noises about going travelling again.’

      Travelling solo, Río supposed, since – as far as she knew – her son had not had a significant other in his life since he and Adair’s daughter had gone their separate ways. When Finn and Izzy had first become an item, their Facebook albums had featured the kind of pictures that had made Río smile every time she browsed through them. Most of them showed the dynamic duo at work and at play as they backpacked around the world: Finn at the helm of a RIB, Izzy hosing down scuba gear; Finn signing logbooks, Izzy poring over dive plans. The pair of them together, swimming with manta rays, dancing on beaches, perched on barstools and swinging off bungee cords. The loveliest one of all (Río had printed it out) showed them lounging in a hammock, wrapped in each other’s arms.

      And then, once Izzy had made the decision to embark upon a real-life career, her Facebook albums had reflected this U-turn. The backgrounds of sand, sea and sky had been replaced by vistas of gleaming steel and glass edifices in front of which a well-heeled Izzy posed with the élan of Condoleezza Rice, briefcase in one hand, iPhone in the other. Finn’s pictures, by contrast, continued to show him coasting in his own groove – surfing the shallows,

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