Over the years in the Bahamas, we lived in several different houses that dad built in Lyford Cay in Nassau. The last one was his dream house. He and the architect were very good friends and spent many hours poring over the plans. The house was Spanish in style, with lots of red terracotta tiles and dark wooden beams, and the walls were plain white.
There were four bedrooms and I had my own room. The kitchen was open-plan with lovely tiling, a big island unit and a huge cooker. There were two walk-in storage areas and a big farmhouse-style pine table where we ate all our family meals.
The house pool was like an exotic oasis with big rocks and trees surrounding it. My mum planted baby palm trees that would one day grow into big and beautiful trees overlooking the pool.
Foolishly, they didn’t wait to finish the planting before filling the pool. One baby palm was being wheeled into place with a wheelbarrow by three Bahamian guys when they lost control of it and splat — the tree ended up floating in the pool. The guys thought this was hysterical, but my dad was apoplectic. The angrier he got, the more they laughed.
Lyford Cay is quite a posh area, but we lived there long before it became posh. Many celebrities had a house there and it was a little surreal seeing movie stars in the local supermarket. When I was about nine, I remember meeting Sean Connery and shaking his hand, as my half-brother was giving him a golf lesson. I refused to wash my right hand for days as I had such a crush on James Bond, but I was finally dunked into the bath.
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I was used to being in Ireland from early on, as we visited my grandparents here in the summer. That was the hurricane season in Nassau and it got incredibly hot and humid.
My sister, Peaches, was in boarding school from the age of 10, so we only got to see each other in the holidays. We used to fight like cat and dog. Luckily we got over that, as we are now in business together.
Food always played a big part in our house. My dad would get smoked salmon and haggis sent from Scotland, where he was from. He used to eat kedgeree and drink Scotch and milk for breakfast and he smoked about 60 cigarettes a day. If somebody did that nowadays they would be locked up by the health police. My mum was a great cook and always making classic French dishes such as coq au vin and beef bourguignon, despite the fact that it was always boiling in the Bahamas. Because of the proximity to Florida, the supermarkets always stocked plenty of American products, so we grew up familiar with American junk food. We weren’t allowed to eat rubbish, so for years the white bread and red plastic processed cheddar at my friends’ houses seemed exotic.
My childhood in the Bahamas was like a Bounty advert crossed with a Lilt advert: gorgeous beaches, tons of swimming, waterskiing and horse-riding. My mum is a horse fanatic, so she used to rescue polo ponies and former racehorses and train them as showjumpers.
The best fun was swimming with horses. There was a small beach with a sand bank that suddenly disappeared into water deep enough for them to swim. You had to hold on really tightly, as the plunge could throw you right under and you had to be careful not to get caught under their legs. Horses are great swimmers and once they got their bearings they would try to go further. It was absolutely thrilling — very different from the first time I went into the Irish sea with my grandfather (who represented Ireland in water polo at the 1924 Olympics). Running down to the water’s edge, I imagined it would be just like back home in Nassau. Apparently I turned blue.
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Interview by Dara Flynn