On the first Saturday of the great decorating job, everyone wanted to use the wallpaper stripper.
Emer demanded the first go: ‘I’ve seen them do this on the telly,’ she said. ‘It’s easy.’
After ten minutes, she wanted to give it back. It was the hottest job ever. Steam rose from the stripper all the time. The person using the stripper was permanently covered in a cloud of steam.
‘You asked for it,’ said her father from the top of the ladder. He was slowly stripping wallpaper with a scraper.
‘Think of it as a type of skin treatment,’ Clodagh said. ‘People pay good money to have their faces steamed.’
Emer was stuck with the steamer.
By six that night, they were all sick of it. But the walls in the sitting room were bare.
‘Tomorrow, we’ll do the hall,’ said Clodagh. She was in charge of the plans.
‘Can’t we have tomorrow off?’ begged Emer. Watching television shows about doing up houses and actually doing them up were very different.
‘No,’ said Clodagh. ‘Dan and I are going to get us a takeaway from the chipper for a treat. Who wants what?’
It was a fantastic summer. As good as being in Spain, thought Kim, as she lay on the deck outside the mobile home on their last day away. She’d got a suntan and so had the twins. Even Elsie had freckles on her arms. The only person who was still pale was Clodagh.
‘I’m as white as a milk bottle. I haven’t had a chance to sit in the sun,’ she told Kim the last time they spoke on the phone. Clodagh was spending every spare moment doing up the McDonnell house. In the two weeks that Kim and the girls had been away, she’d been finishing it.
‘What have you done, exactly?’ asked Kim. She was a bit nervous about the whole thing. When they’d gone away, there wasn’t much painting done. Tom, Rob and Dan had laid a patio. Elsie had bustled about with plants. Kim hadn’t seen her mother so happy in ages.
‘You need a couple of geraniums there,’ Elsie would say, looking at a patch of earth. ‘And I love roses. A small bush would be nice. Bright pink is my favourite colour.’
Bright pink was Clodagh’s favourite colour too. She couldn’t wear pink, not with her red hair. So Kim was afraid that Clodagh would have gone mad and done the walls pink. Kim didn’t think she could live with pink walls. What was wrong with cream wallpaper, anyway?
The following day, Kim parked the Mini outside the house in Dublin. Emer, Laura and Elsie got out. Clodagh’s car, which was even more rusty than Kim’s, was parked outside.
‘I can’t wait to see what Clodagh’s done,’ said Emer eagerly.
‘Neither can I,’ said her mother.
Kim opened the front door nervously and stepped into the hall. For a moment, she thought she was in the wrong place.
‘Oh,’ she said. Her hall table was still there and on it was the same old lamp she’d got as a wedding present. The coatstand was the same too. But the walls … Kim stared around in wonder. The cream wallpaper with a pale pink stripe was gone. Now the walls were a rich green colour. Ivy was carefully hand-painted up the walls. The painted ivy trailed along over a mirror. Kim looked more closely at the mirror. It was her old one. But it had been covered with gold paint and made to look really old and expensive.
A huge real ivy sat on the hall table. There were photo frames beside it, full of pictures of the family. Clodagh had put them in gold, hand-painted frames.
Kim peeped into the living room. It had been a mushroom colour once. Now, it was bright cheery yellow with bits of blue here and there. It looked like a different room. Kim realised that her old cream curtains had been dyed a sunshine yellow. The armchairs and couch were covered with soft yellow throws. Fat bright blue cushions lay on the armchairs. Clodagh was lying on the couch.
‘I’m exhausted,’ Clodagh said. She had a cup of tea in one hand and she wore jeans with paint marks all over them. Clodagh’s fingers were covered with paint too. Her red hair had wild yellow and green streaks in it.
‘But I enjoyed it, you know,’ Clodagh said.
Kim looked around in awe. The room was like one from a magazine. Everything looked great because of Clodagh’s bright new colours. She had turned a tired room into something special.
‘It’s like a different house,’ Kim said.
‘I know,’ said Clodagh proudly. ‘I think I’m good at this interior decoration stuff.’
‘Good isn’t the word,’ said Kim. ‘You’re brilliant.’
Emer and Laura grinned. ‘Wait till you see the bathroom, Mum,’ said Laura.
They all trooped up to the bathroom. It was like diving into the sea. Clodagh had painted it in deep blues like the ocean. At the bottom, there were fishes and sea creatures like starfishes. The tiles had fishy designs on them too. Higher up, the walls were a paler blue, like the sea near the surface. There were pale blue towels and a pale blue blind. It must have all taken days to paint.
Kim hugged her sister tightly. ‘You’ve worked so hard,’ she said.
‘Do you like it?’ asked Clodagh.
Kim could barely speak. She wanted to cry instead. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said finally. ‘Really beautiful.’