Aisling's Summer Diary

Chapter 13 | The Secret Lives of Siobhan and Ali

Do you ever get the impression that everyone else’s life is WAY more exciting than your own?  Lately, that is me all over the place.  I’ve been trying so hard to keep my promises to Siobhan and uncle Ciaran, and every time I turn around my two besties have disappeared!  Who knows what they’re at!  I swear, it’s so ironic—the only one here who’s up front with me is Ciaran, and HE’S the one keeping the biggest secret of all!   

2 p.m.

This afternoon, I got my first hands on lesson in DIY, and I have to say, it definitely beats cooking!  Ali and I gave Ciaran a hand hauling all of the furniture from the hotel out to the garage to see what we could salvage.  A heap of it was beyond repair, brittle with age and stained through with damp.  We set to work giving the rest a good scrub while uncle Ciaran hammered tight loose nails and stapled the tag ends of torn bits of upholstery back into place.  

Watching him hammering away—big grin on his face, nodding his head along with AC/DC—made think of my Dad.  The two of them would get on, I think, even though Dad would probably make some kind of joke about his surfing—“What, at YOUR age?”—and his (GET THIS!) nose-ring!  I wonder if he had it all along and only now started to wear it in front of us, the whole Uber Businessman front going up in smoke the way it did.  I, for one, like this hipper, surpisingly Zen Ciaran.  All that frantic bumbling we saw a few days ago—gone.  It’s as if he’s decided, win or loose the hotel, he’s going to concentrate on what’s most important to him from now on.  And I think that has a lot to do with Siobhan.   

When I went into her room this morning to fetch her for breakfast, she was already up and gone—her bed made and her mobile gone.  Now SHE’S pulling Ali’s disappearing tricks, and conveniently when we’d gotten into the real dirty work of fixing up this place.  You should SEE the state of my hands!  I moaned a bit about it to Ciaran, and he waved me off as if I was being melodramtic.  “She’s probably in town on some sort of errand,” he said.  “You know she’s working as hard at all of this as we are.”  I had to try VERY hard not to roll my eyes.    

The three of us stood back and surveyed our work.  “Not too bad,” Ciaran said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his forearm.  It was going to a scorcher of a day.  “We’re going to need at least three more mattresses.  Four or five chairs.  Another dining table,” Ciaran said as he surveyed our progress.  “Not to mention all the odd jobs that need doing.”  He heaved a sigh.  “I was hoping we’d be able to get on with what we had, but now I’m not so sure.”  

“Well we’ve got to try,” Ali said, his voice weighted with an odd determination.  “Since when did you become so enthusiastic about all this?” I asked, elbowing him in the ribs.  “What?” Ali’s eyes darted from side to side.  “C’mon.  What’s the story?” I prodded.  “I was only saying...”  He paused and fumbled with an end table.  “We should do our best.”  “Riiiight,” I said.

Then Siobhan magically reappeared.  In a van.  Filled with furniture.  The three of us gaped in complete shock, and I could feel myself blushing the slightest bit for having second guessed Siobhan.  She hopped out of the van and went round to the back where Ciaran was staring wide-eyed, his head craned into the open tailgate.  “Siobhan, where did you get all this?” he asked.  My thoughts exactly!  She whipped out her ever-handy copy of 100% Business.  “Your book,” she said.  She pointed to the chapter on “Deep Discounts.”  

Ali eyed Siobhan’s haul, incredulous.  Everything in the van looked pretty much brand new.  There’s no way she just raided a charity shop or two, and anyway I didn’t see one in town.  “Seriously,” Ciaran gushed, “this is everything we need.  How did you get it?  Really?”  “Well,” Siobhan grinned cannily, “you don’t want me to go into ALL the detail of how I did it now, do you?”  

“Well yeah,” Ciaran’s forehead wrinkled with worry.  “I kind of do.  This doesn’t look very discounted.”  Siobhan shrugged then stammered.  AH-HA!  Sounds like a wind-up for a slightly less than true explanation!  “I’ve...” her eyes darted about, searching, it seemed, for an answer.  “I got a sponsor for the hotel.”  “A sponsor?” Ciaran asked warily.  She told us how they weren’t too pushed, and then they heard it was a Ciaran Kelly hotel and jumped at the chance to invest.  “What’s the catch?” I asked.  “We’ll have to hand out a few leaflets, but...” she shook her head as if to say, no biggie.  “For a few leaflets, they’ve given you all of this?” Ciaran wanted to know.  Siobhan nodded an emphatic YES!  

I so wanted to ask who this mystery sponsor was.  They must be local, or else there’s no way Siobhan could’ve been back so soon with all of this stuff.  But who in Dún Mártain would want to help us?  “You must have really sweet-talked ‘em,” Ciaran said.  Siobhan gave him a big smile, and he put a hand into the boot and grabbed hold of a chair.  He didn’t catch the way Siobhan’s face clouded as soon as his back was turned, but I did.  What WAS she up to?

No sooner had we unloaded the van, Ali dashed upstairs to “practice” one of his newest tricks.  I’m pretty sure he’s back emailing the Gateshead sorceress, but who am I to judge, right?  I mean, I had a secret date with Dún Mártain’s most-off-limits bachelor!  I s’pose we all have our secrets!  

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