Page 3 of The Book of Irish Secrets
‘I went to Killarney on a school trip years ago, when I was sixteen,’ Finola said. ‘Beautiful town. And the countryside is gorgeous.’
‘So I’ve heard.’ Claire felt a dart of excitement. ‘I can’t wait to get down there. Lots to do before I go, though. I know it’s onlyJanuary but I want to start organising all of this. First we have to blitz the house and get it clean and lovely and then organise the rooms upstairs and see about bed linen and stuff. But that shouldn’t be too hard. Great to have two bathrooms up there and the kitchen is in good shape.’
‘We have to make a list of everything,’ Finola said.
‘We do,’ Claire agreed. She put the book carefully on the coffee table. ‘I’m not going to look at this until I’m in Kerry. It doesn’t seem right to open it until I’m there. I’ll put it away for now. Let’s make a list of everything that needs to be done.’
Finola looked across the room at the piano beside one of the windows. ‘You’ll miss playing your music.’
‘I know. But sometimes you have to sacrifice things you love for the greater good. And I feel I’ve been given a mission.’ Claire went over to the desk and got a pen and her writing pad and then sat down on the sofa again. ‘Number one: clean house…’
Half an hour later they had forgotten about going to the pub to celebrate Claire’s birthday and were busy making plans for this huge change in both their lives. Claire’s spirits lifted as they talked late into the night and she felt as if her whole existence was about to change and a new chapter in her life was about to open.
Claire had somehow lost her own persona when she had married Hugh and had become some kind of appendage to him and his life, only worrying about pleasing him. But now, suddenly, she was going to a place she had never been to, searching for her roots and the answers to so many questions that had been troubling her since she was a little girl. Would she finally learn the truth about the Fleury family scandal, and in doing so, find herself? She looked at the book on the table and suddenly, the large F on the front seemed to shimmer in the lamplight. What would she find when she opened it again?
TWO
Three weeks later, Claire was driving down the M7 on the way to Kerry. Her back and arms were still stiff from all the cleaning and shifting furniture she and Finola had done ever since that evening when they had decided to put the house up for rent. They had signed an agreement and also sent an email to Hugh to tell him what they were doing. That had been Finola’s idea. She had urged Claire to inform him of what she was doing as he owned half the house, after all. ‘Otherwise you’ll run into legal problems,’ Finola warned. ‘And you also need to give him a share of the rent you’ll be getting or he’ll kick up a fuss. I’m sure he won’t mind getting a little bit of extra money now and then.’
Finola had been right. Hugh had replied that he agreed to the plan of letting the house as selling it might be bad as the market was not great at the moment. So everything was in place when they put the house on the Airbnb website. They didn’t have to wait long for a response as the house was in a great location and near the Luas, the Dublin tram that went into the city centre. Finola was delighted to see the house in such demand. ‘Three tenants already, one after the other next month,’ she reported with shining eyes to Claire when she came home from a shopping trip. ‘This is going very well.’
‘Brilliant,’ Claire said. ‘Then I can leave with everything in place and you in charge. I can’t thank you enough, Finola.’
‘Ah, shucks,’ Finola said. ‘It’s not a huge chore. It’s fun, actually. And I can do a lot of the work during my day at the library. Then there’ll be the guests to chat with at home. It’ll make my life a lot more exciting. So you can go off to Kerry and not worry about a thing.’
‘That makes me very happy,’ Claire said and went to pack the last bag she was bringing with her to Kerry. She was excited at the prospect and now that she had a little bit of an income from the lettings and the redundancy money she got from the insurance company, she didn’t have to rush into any kind of employment but could take her time and just enjoy getting to know the place where her family had come from and maybe chat to people who might know the Fleurys. She had booked a room for a week at a B&B in the town of Dingle and hoped to find a little flat or even a house to rent after that. She knew she was going straight into the unknown but felt she had absolutely nothing to lose. Her sister, Marian, had replied to Claire’s email and said she was so excited to hear what Claire was planning to do. Neither Marian nor her brother, Patrick, had been able to come to Auntie Rachel’s funeral, which had been doubly hard to cope with, as Claire stood, all alone, greeting guests and receiving condolences. And now Marian’s message made her feel less alone.
We might finally find the answer to all our questions. Please keep me posted on whatever you discover. I want to be with you on this journey vicariously, if not in real life. I will tell Patrick in Canada what’s going on too. He was happy to hear that you’re going on this quest.
This made Claire feel she was on an important mission, both for herself and her branch of the family. She had never felt close to Patrick, as he was so much older than her and had left for Canada when she was only five years old. But Marian and Claire had been very fond of each other as they grew up, Marian being five years older and a very supportive sister.
Claire hadn’t told Marian yet about the book she had been sent. Despite her resolve not to open the book until she got to Kerry, she hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to flick through it as the sun set out of her bedroom window that same night she’d received it, desperately searching for the truth about the feud. But she’d found nothing but names, dates, and photos she couldn’t understand. She was even more determined now to go to Kerry to uncover the truth about what it all meant.
As she drove, Claire’s thoughts drifted to the Fleury family in Kerry and how she could get to know them. She couldn’t just barge in and tell them she was from ‘that’ Fleury family in Dublin. They might think she was lying as they might not even know that the other Fleurys existed. Or, if they knew about the feud, there might still be a resentment against the Dublin branch that hadn’t yet gone away. She would have to try to find out more before she attempted to get near them. It would be awful if they closed the door in her face and she lost any chance of ever knowing what happened. She knew Autie Rachel’s book held some clues, but maybe not the whole story. Claire had a feeling that the answer to what really happened all those years ago had to be found at the manor itself, maybe among their archives or old diaries or whatever records they had of the history of Magnolia Manor.
She shivered at the thought of what she was about to attempt. The separation from Hugh, and the way he had left her, had made her fear rejection ever since. It had shaken her belief in herself and it would have been even worse if she hadn’t hadFinola’s support. But this time she was on her own and her mission drove her to carry on despite her fears.
Claire hoped that maybe, in the end, she’d manage to bring the two branches of the family together and heal the rift Rachel had spoken about. A tall order, but she was, after all, a Fleury girl and she had heard her great-aunt say that Fleury girls were feisty and strong and very, very stubborn when the going got tough. That matched her own image of herself, along with having the blue-green eyes and the freckles, which were Fleury traits that went back many generations, or so her great-aunt had whispered in her ear once when Claire was a little girl. ‘You’re a throwback, Claire,’ she had quipped. ‘A true Fleury girl, just like me.’ Then Auntie Rachel had put her finger to her lips and had never said anything more of what she knew about the Fleurys. It was a secret, she had said.
As she drove down the roads towards Kerry, Claire wondered what the Kerry Fleury girls were like and if they were as feisty as her great-aunt had said. In that case, there might be trouble ahead and she would have to be careful not to reveal her identity too soon. She was sure her green eyes and freckles wouldn’t give her away. Kerry had to be full of people with that colouring.
‘Lily, Rose and Violet,’ she said to herself, thinking about those girls who had grown up at Magnolia Manor. They were grown women now, ten years or more younger than her, all successful in their own way.
Lily, the eldest, married to a local builder, ran the café and garden centre in the gardens of the manor and it had become the in place to be seen in Dingle.
Rose, the middle girl, who was married to a solicitor with a firm in Dingle, ran the apartment complex and the wedding venue, mostly held in the old ballroom of the manor.
Violet was the youngest daughter. She was an actress who had starred in many Irish productions shown on mainstream TVand Netflix and her husband, Jack Montgomery, a former actor, was now a director and producer. A very glamorous couple who were often seen on the red carpet at movie premieres. They had an image of being down to earth, living in the gatehouse of the manor with their two little boys.
Claire had read all about the Fleury girls and their families in various newspaper articles and magazines, all cut out and saved in her ever-growing folder with material about the Fleurys of Kerry. And now she had that big book with the family tree and photos of some of the Fleurys from the time before the feud. She couldn’t wait to open that book again.
Just as Claire was about to leave Barack Obama Plaza, after a quick stop for lunch, her phone rang. It kept ringing until she had pulled up and she replied. ‘Hi, Finola, what’s up?’
‘Nothing dramatic,’ Finola said. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m just leaving Barack Obama Plaza. It’s about two hours from Dingle town. What did you call about? More tenants?’
‘No, a job advert I just saw,’ Finola replied. ‘I thought it might suit you.’
