That Gallagher Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

her it was acrylic. ‘Talking of paintings, did I see that your Paul Henry seascape was up for sale?’
    â€˜How did you know that?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜It is – was – mine.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜I got many thousand euros less than it was worth, Río a grá .’
    â€˜Why did you sell it?’
    â€˜Why do you think? I need a roof over my head more than I need a picture by a famous dead bloke.’
    â€˜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?
    â€˜No. The le Brocquy portrait did that. The Paul Henry went towards Izzy’s wedding fund.’
    â€˜Izzy’s getting married?’ Río was astonished.
    â€˜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 . . .
    â€˜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,