That Gallagher Girl by Kate Thompson Page A

waiting for her at her work address. She steeled herself before setting sail for mail2web. In [email protected] there was the usual assortment of mail to do with the previous Sunday’s interviewee. The subject had been an up-and-coming young model who also happened to be the daughter of a major theatrical agent, and among the acidic responses provoked were: ‘She only got where she is because of who she is.’ ‘My daughter could do a million times better! See attached pic.’ ‘Who did she blow to get her face on the cover?’ Delete, delete, delete. Keeley found the rancour of some of the email feedback she was subjected to truly dispiriting. Since she’d returned to Ireland from the States, she had come to realise that there might be some truth in the old adage about the Irish being a nation of begrudgers.
    Keeley Considine’s brief each week was to conduct an in-depth interview with an Irish celebrity-du-jour. So far, she’d included among her interviewees a singer/songwriter suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s; a fashion designer who had been abused as a child; an ex-priest who was now living as a woman; and a gay government minister who had walked out on her husband and children (she was now an ex -government minister). What connected all Keeley’s subjects was a moment of life-changing insight – an epiphany – which was why her Sunday column was called (ta-ra!) ‘Epiphanies’. Since being approached by the Insignia the previous year, she’d conducted fifty-one interviews. Fifty-one weeks as confidante to strangers, and forty-one weeks as mistress to the newspaper’s editor had left Keeley feeling burned out.
    She could, she thought ruefully, have been a candidate for one of her own interviews. Attractive Ex-pat Journalist (AEJ) returns to Ireland seeking employment after a decade in New York, during which period she’d served time on a major Sunday newspaper, both as rising star features writer, and as mistress to the editor. Until his wife found out. And whaddayouknow – within three months of arriving back on her home turf, AEJ makes the very same mistake. Except this time, AEJ was in grave danger of falling in love.
    Keeley’s epiphany had occurred when she got the news that her grandmother had left her a cottage in the village of Lissamore in the west of Ireland. Her initial reaction had been one of bemusement. What to do with the joint? Her grandmother had moved out years ago (Keeley had childhood memories of pootling around waterlogged beaches in the so-called summer months), and since then the cottage had languished as a holiday rental on the books of a letting agency called Coolnamara Hideaways. Keeley’s dad was always moaning about the fact that it cost more to maintain than it ever brought in, but he had never managed to persuade his mother to sell. She was, for some reason, adamant that the cottage should go to her only granddaughter on her death. And now Gran had died, and Keeley had come into her inheritance, and was liable for the property tax on second homes.
    Thanks, Gran, she had thought the day after the funeral, staring morosely at the images of her bequest on the Coolnamara Hideaways website. Curlew Cottage was all whitewashed charm outside, all bog-standard pine inside, and – altogether – most un-Keeley Considine. But then she had looked around at her Ikea-furnished apartment with its Bang & Olufsen HD TV and its Bose sound system and the Nespresso machine she rarely used because she usually bought her coffee from Starbucks, and she’d had the most surprisingly unoriginal thought she’d had in a very long time. She, Keeley Considine, with her BA in creative writing and her diploma in journalism and her award for excellence in celebrity profiles – had thought ‘A change is as good as a rest’. And then she had taken Curlew Cottage off Coolnamara Hideaways’ books and