Ken Harrington, seated in 35D, was a rebel, having neither fastened his belt nor put up his table tray, on which he’d propped a large bound manuscript that he was studying intently from behind his black-rimmed glasses. He didn’t respond when she first spoke to him, and she had to tap him on the shoulder to get his attention.
He looked up at her with big brown eyes that in other circumstances might have melted her heart. But she needed to complete the cabin check and she didn’t have the time or the patience for rebellious passengers.
‘Seat belt,’ she said. ‘Table tray.’
‘Huh?’
‘Seat belt. Table tray.’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I suppose I should be grateful to have Hippolyta looking after me so assiduously.’ He put the manuscript into the seat pocket in front of him and winked.
She glanced at her name badge, even though she knew it said ‘Grace Garvey’.
‘Hippolyta was an Amazon queen,’ he said. ‘You remind me of her.’
A smart-arse as well as everything else, she thought.
The broad smile he suddenly flashed at her was genuine, and this time her heart did melt a little. ‘I really am sorry,’ he said. ‘I get caught up in stuff, you see.’
‘I understand,’ she told him. ‘But you have to listen to the instructions of the cabin crew. It’s for your own safety.’
‘Of course, Hippolyta,’ he said.
‘My name is Grace.’ She touched her badge. ‘If there’s anything I can do to make your flight more comfortable, don’t hesitate to ask.’ And then she continued down the cabin.
She’d half expected him to be one of those demanding passengers who spent their time pressing the call bell, but he stayed engrossed in the manuscript for most of the seven hours it took to get to New York. It was only when she came around to check the cabin for landing that he stopped her and asked if she’d like to meet him for a coffee while he was in the city.
She looked at him in astonishment.
‘If you’ve nothing better to do,’ he added.
‘Thank you for the invitation,’ she replied when she’d recovered her composure. ‘But I’ll be overnighting with the crew and heading back tomorrow.’
‘I’d like to see you again,’ he said. ‘Perhaps after your next flight?’
‘I’m not an Amazon queen,’ she told him. ‘And I doubt I’m your type.’
‘I’d like to think you were my type, but I accept I might be punching above my weight.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a dog-eared business card, which he handed to her. ‘Still, I’d be grateful if you’d consider it.’
She looked at the card and knew that she was very definitely not a woman that Kenneth Harrington BA, MA, MPhil (Dublin) would be interested in. And that she’d be far too intimidated by his educational qualifications to want to spend time in his company either.
‘I hope you have a great stay in New York,’ she said, giving him her professional smile and putting his card in her jacket pocket before turning to the next passenger.
Naturally she didn’t call him. She wasn’t entirely convinced that he hadn’t been teasing her the whole time. And she hadn’t been brought up to phone men she didn’t really know. So before she went to bed that night, she threw the card in the trash and forgot about him.
She sometimes wondered if it was fate that put him on her flight again four months later. At first she didn’t recognise him, because the red-flecked beard had gone and his previously unruly mop of brown hair had been tapered at both sides while left curly on top, giving him a younger, more up-to-date appearance.
‘Hippolyta,’ he said as he showed her the boarding card already in his hand. ‘You never called.’
‘Welcome on board, Mr Harrington,’ she said. ‘It’s good to see you again.’
‘Your silence broke my heart,’ he told her.
‘Seat 37C,’ she told him. ‘Have a nice flight.’
The return from New York to Dublin was overnight. Ken pressed the call bell once the cabin lights had been dimmed and the passengers were trying to sleep.
‘I was pretty sure you wouldn’t get in touch,’ he said when she asked what she could do for him. ‘Although I’d kind of hoped you would. I was going to try to find you but I was too nervous. You’re so beautiful, you see. You have all the power.’
‘I find it hard to believe that I could possibly make you nervous,’ said Grace.
‘A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror,’ said Ken.
She smiled involuntarily.
‘I could pretend I said that first, but it was Jung,’ he told her. ‘He also said that as a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.’
‘I’m sorry if I’ve terrorised you or disappointed you,’ said Grace.
‘Your beauty terrorises me. The only disappointment is that you didn’t call. And I really would like to have coffee with you.’
‘I don’t know that I’d be interesting enough to have coffee with,’ she said.
‘You totally would be.’
‘We’ll see.’
Before he left, she gave him her number.
Two days later, he called her.
He wasn’t as intimidating as she’d expected, but he was very sure of himself.
He’d gone to the States, he said, as part of an exchange programme with an American professor. In New York, he’d shared his thoughts about the influences of Greek mythology on modern literature, while his counterpart discussed European influences on American novelists.
Grace told him that her favourite novelists were Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher and she couldn’t honestly think there was much Greek influence there for him to talk about. He said that he’d never heard of either of them but that she should read the great American novelists. Everything you needed to know about life, he said, could be learned from Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Steinbeck.
‘I read The Great Gatsby in school,’ she said. ‘I hated it and all the characters in it. But Maeve and Rosamunde write about life and love, so I think I have the bases covered.’
‘Oh, Hippolyta.’ Ken took her hand in his. ‘I have so much to teach you.’
The weird thing, she thought now, was that he did teach her to appreciate things that she didn’t necessarily like, and she did fall in love with him too, even though he was her polar opposite in so many ways. Because beneath the arrogant intellect, Ken was a good man. Even if he hadn’t always put his family before his career, he was still a thoughtful father and a faithful husband. Perhaps he’d pushed the children a little too much, and perhaps he hadn’t always taken Grace as seriously as she would have liked, but they’d made it work, and she missed him.
She particularly missed him because she needed him to unlock this stupid folder.
It was almost eleven thirty, and she knew that disembarkation would start at around seven in the morning. She needed to get some sleep. But first she had a task to complete, one that could only be done under cover of darkness.
She opened her carry-on bag and took out the cylindrical cardboard tube. The pattern on it was of the moon and the stars over a midnight-blue sea. It had been the most appropriate available. She opened the door to the patio and stepped outside. The air was significantly cooler now and she felt goose bumps along her arms.
She shivered and leaned over the rail, looking in both directions to see if anyone else seemed to be outside. But no one was daft enough to be standing out in the cold. She held the tube in her right hand and raised her arm as high as she could. It was important that she get a bit of distance. Then she took a deep breath and threw it.
There were notices all over the ship telling passengers not to throw anything into the sea. But the tube was biodegradable. And so were its contents. So she didn’t feel too badly about it. It might not have been exactly what he’d had in mind, but it was the best she could do.
She stayed outside for another minute.
>
She didn’t cry.
Chapter 8
Roscoff, France: 53.8006°N 4.0694°W
Deira had expected the movement of the ship to lull her to sleep, but the constant rocking had the opposite effect and she was awake at five thirty when the ship-wide announcement that they would shortly be arriving at Roscoff was made. She’d just finished dressing after a quick shower when a steward arrived with her Continental breakfast, and she gave thanks that booking the most expensive cabin meant that it had been brought to her and she didn’t have to face the excited holidaymakers in the restaurant again.
As she sipped the strong, aromatic coffee, her phone beeped with three alerts in quick succession. She froze, the cup halfway to her mouth, then replaced it carefully on the saucer and checked the messages.
They were all from her Irish service provider, detailing roaming and data charges outside her package. She exhaled slowly. There was nobody who should be trying to contact her at this hour on a Sunday morning, but the beeps had reminded her that there would still be a reckoning for what she’d done.
She didn’t care.
She finished her coffee, but she was no longer hungry, so she wrapped one of the buttery croissants in a paper napkin and put it in her bag. She planned to stop at motorway services on her journey, but she wasn’t sure how long it would be before her first break and reckoned it might be useful to have something to snack on until then.
Another announcement informed passengers that they would shortly be able to access their cars. Once again, Deira chose the stairs rather than the lifts to get to the car deck, where many people were already standing beside their vehicles. They were mostly young families with slightly harassed mothers keeping an eye on their children, and fathers engrossed in making sure that the containers on the car roofs and bicycles attached to the backs were securely fastened.
A pregnant woman with a toddler in her arms walked to the SUV in the lane beside Deira. She strapped the toddler into his seat and rubbed her back before getting into the car herself. A couple of minutes later her husband arrived with a bottle of water, which he handed to her before kissing her lightly on the forehead.
That could have been me, Deira thought, as she looked at the woman.
It should have been me.
It should have been us.
But it was far too late for that.
It was about twenty minutes after the huge doors at the stern of the ship had been opened and disembarkation had commenced before the lane of cars that Grace was in began to move. Even though it took time, and patience with the process was necessary, she’d always liked the efficiency of how it was done. She slid the gear lever in the Lexus to the drive position and moved slowly forward.
The hazy clouds had begun to dissipate while the passengers had been waiting below deck, and the weak rays of sunshine were becoming stronger. Grace took her sunglasses out of the glove compartment and put them on, knowing that for the first part of the drive at least, she would be travelling eastwards into the glare.
She continued to follow the cars ahead of her out of the port and onto the local road that cut through countryside dotted with brick houses and slate roofs. Although it was a few years since she’d last done the trip, the same hoardings urging arriving visitors to check out the supermarkets with their cut-price wine and cheese offerings lined the route. She recalled going to one of them on their return from a holiday in Saint-Malo, loading up the back of their estate car with boxes of Merlot (for Ken), Chablis (for her) and a selection of cheeses (for both of them).
A wave of nostalgia almost overcame her and she gripped the steering wheel more tightly. She was suddenly uncertain about the trip and her reasons for doing it. She was unsure if she could manage it on her own after all. She’d told herself that her cabin-crew days had accustomed her to travelling on her own, but of course she hadn’t been on her own back then. She’d been with the team. And hundreds of passengers. This was entirely different.
After about half an hour, the procession of cars, camper vans and caravans from the ferry began to string out, while the sun had risen enough to reflect brightly off the nearby River Penzé. The sight of the cheerfully painted boats anchored along its length banished Grace’s self-doubt, and she recalled the times in the past when she and Ken had hired one. She’d never felt a hundred per cent comfortable on the water, but Ken and the children enjoyed sailing, and he’d been competent, if not accomplished, in a boat. He used to tease her about her dislike of them, saying that planes were a far more dangerous mode of travel, something she always refuted with an army of statistics. If he were beside her now, she thought, he’d start talking about hiring a boat. She could almost hear his voice in her ear.
‘It’ll be fun, Hippo. The children love it. You’ll love it too if you give it a chance.’
She leaned forward and switched on the audio system. Classical music filled the car.
She breathed out.
Relaxed.
Deira was wondering at what point she could drop the roof of the Audi. She glanced at the temperature gauge and saw that despite the fact that the sky ahead was now cloudless and the sun was shining brightly, it was still only 17 degrees outside, so she decided to wait until she spotted a good service station. Or perhaps when the gauge reached 20 degrees. Whichever happened first.
She’d left the extra breakfast croissant, still wrapped in the paper napkin, on the seat beside her, and she nibbled on it as she drove, loving the sounds of the unfamiliar towns as she read them on the signposts. Henvic, Saint-Brieuc, Montauban-de-Bretagne . . . As she passed each one she felt freer and more light-hearted, even though everything that had weighed her down for the last couple of months was still there. Nothing had really changed. But right now, at nine o’clock on a bright Sunday morning, she felt as though it had.
Her phone rang, startling her so much that she dropped the remains of the croissant and allowed the car to veer towards the outside lane. An enormous camper van, with the brand name Vengeance, gave her a long blast of its horn as it sped by. There were three pink children’s bicycles on the back.
‘Asshole,’ she muttered as her heartbeat returned to normal.
She pushed the button on the steering wheel to answer the phone, but she was too late; the caller had already disconnected. It couldn’t be anything important, she told herself, because she hadn’t recognised the number when it had flashed up on the screen in front of her. So she had nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Not yet.
She increased her speed by another ten kilometres an hour and set the cruise control.
Grace had relaxed into the drive from Roscoff, the memories of previous journeys still crystal clear in her mind. In the early days she’d been in charge of the map-reading, something she was good at, even if Ken occasionally ignored her instructions because he thought there was a better route. In the later years, they’d used the satnav, but Ken still sometimes ignored its advice and took roads he thought might be quicker. (He never had found better or quicker routes, but he used to claim that whichever way he’d chosen was an easier drive, even when it wasn’t.)
She dropped her speed a little so that she stayed at a comfortable distance from the Range Rover in front. She was happy to drive at a steady 100 kph, even though the limit was 130 and there was a constant stream of other cars overtaking her on the left. She wasn’t in a hurry. She didn’t want to arrive at her hotel too early. She wouldn’t be able to check in before two, so she might as well take her time and savour the beauty of Brittany’s rolling hills and green meadows, which reminded her so much of Cork and Ireland.
Ken had always liked Brittany. He’d liked the coastal scenery with its deep inlets forming natural harbours that made sailing and related activities so popular. He liked the Breton culture and art, and invariably brought copies of Jules Verne to read when they were on holiday there because the famous writer had been born in the region.
‘Quite the genius, Verne,’ he used to say when they’d re
ached whatever campsite they were staying in and had got themselves settled. ‘Sadly, none of those sci-fi writers of the past realised that technology would become miniaturised. Their robots were enormous metal devices with wires and valves rather than microchips. But what imagination all the same!’
Ken had started writing his own novel on one of their holidays. He told her it was a reflection on family life, which worried her slightly, but she became less concerned the more time he spent on it, because she doubted it would ever get finished, let alone published. She asked to read it a number of times, but he always shook his head, telling her that the only people qualified to pass judgement on his work were professionals. She bit back the comment that the most important people who’d pass judgement would be his readers. In the end, she simply left him to it, not interrupting him when he retreated into his study to write or when he brought foolscap notebooks on subsequent holidays and covered them in his scrawling script.
It took him five years to complete. And it was another five years before it was published.
‘Excellent reviews,’ he told her after the first month, although sales were low and, from her perspective, when she’d finally been allowed to read the novel, the female characters highly improbable.
Nevertheless, he’d achieved a lifetime dream, and it allowed him to update his online biography to say ‘critically acclaimed author’. Whenever Grace spoke about him, she called him a critically acclaimed author too. Their marriage might not have been perfect, but she had always supported him. And it had endured.
That wasn’t something many people could say these days.
Sometimes enduring was just as important as loving.
Maybe more.
Chapter 9
Loire-Atlantique, France: 48.1173°N 1.6778°W
After almost two hours of driving, and with the signposts showing that she wasn’t far from Rennes, Deira pulled into a big service station off the N12. The almost sleepless night and early-morning start had caught up with her, and as well as wanting to drop the roof of the convertible, she needed a bathroom break. She could do with another coffee too, she thought, even though she’d finished the pot on the ship earlier.
The Women Who Ran Away: Will their secrets follow them? Page 6