Deira tapped her fingers on the table, then hit Gill’s number.
‘Hello,’ said Gillian. ‘My call went straight to voicemail, so I thought you didn’t have a signal.’
‘I’ve stopped for a break. I got your message.’
‘Oh, great.’
There was a moment’s silence, and Deira suddenly realised that her sister hadn’t expected to be called back quite so quickly.
‘I was a bit surprised,’ she said.
‘I had to make a spur-of-the-moment decision,’ Gill told her. ‘Bex badly wants this job. She’s absolutely peppering about the interview. I checked out some B&Bs and hotels, but Dublin prices are extortionate and it seemed ridiculous to shell out all that money when your place was lying idle.’
‘And what about her friend?’ asked Deira.
‘Lydia was able to come today too,’ said Gillian.
‘So all three of you are planning to stay?’
‘It makes so much more sense than a B&B,’ said Gill.
Does my sister really think it’s perfectly fine to make herself at home in my house? wondered Deira. Or am I the unreasonable one?
‘Look, I know it’s not ideal from your point of view,’ conceded Gillian when Deira stayed silent. ‘But this job is important to Bex – and she is your god-daughter after all.’
‘It’s just for tonight?’
‘Well, Bex and Lydia had hoped to stay in Dublin for a few days,’ said Gillian. ‘They wanted to meet up with some friends, do some shopping, you know yourself. I’ll probably do a bit of shopping too.’
‘In that case, you’ll be going back when?’
‘A day or two,’ said Gillian. ‘But don’t worry. I’ll make sure everything is left in pristine condition.’
‘I only have two bedrooms,’ Deira said. ‘I’m sure you don’t want to share with two nineteen-year-olds.’
‘Oh, look, I’ll use yours,’ said Gill. ‘I don’t mind. We’re sisters after all.’
The throb in Deira’s ribs turned into a stabbing pain as she inhaled sharply.
‘Yes, but—’
‘It’s good security for you too, having people going in and out.’
Deira knew she wasn’t going to win the argument. She never did with Gill.
‘OK, but in future you’ve got to ask me first,’ she told her. ‘I could have made other arrangements for the house while I’m away.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No, but . . .’ Deira’s voice trailed off. She knew there was no point in continuing the conversation.
‘We’ll be grand,’ Gillian said. ‘Have a good time yourself. Drive safely.’
Deira ended the call without saying another word. Her ribs were aching more than ever.
Chapter 10
Loire-Atlantique, France: 47.1987°N 1.6537°W
Despite sticking to a steady 100 kph, Grace arrived far too early at her hotel to check in. The Atlantique, with views over the Loire, was small but friendly – she and Ken had stayed there before, and she presumed that was why he’d booked it again. There were two elements to the building: an old house that contained the reception, dining and bar areas as well as the de luxe suites, plus a small modern wing where most of the bedrooms were located. Ken, extravagant for the first time in his life, had booked her into one of the suites.
Grace parked the Lexus, then strolled to reception, pulling her overnight case behind her. The young receptionist told her she was welcome to leave the case with them and avail herself of any of the hotel services until her room was ready. There was a pool, she told her, and a café if she would like some refreshment. And of course she was welcome to relax in any of the public areas.
Grace thanked her and went to the café, where she ordered tea and a pastry. One of the drawbacks of doing a road trip, she thought, was the amount of snacking it entailed. When she’d been with the airline, she’d felt the pressure to be slim and attractive, and she rarely ate between meals. The old habit of not grazing had stuck with her. Except when she was driving. She was sure that was why she always put on weight during the holidays.
She took an appreciative sip of the tea and then opened Ken’s computer. The documents were still neatly arranged on the desktop. Still looking for their passwords. Still urging her to do what Ken wanted. And still making her feel even more stupid than usual.
She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her late husband was still pulling her strings, even though most of his ashes were now scattered, as he’d wished, in the Celtic Sea. The rest were in the boot of the Lexus, waiting for her arrival in Spain. It seemed somewhat disrespectful to leave them in the car, but she hadn’t wanted to pack them in her luggage. All the same, fulfilling Ken’s wishes was how she’d persuaded her children that she needed to do this trip.
‘You could fly to Murcia with the ashes and hire a car,’ Regan told her when she’d said this to her. ‘Honestly, Mum, Dad wouldn’t have expected you to take the ferry and drive. Not on your own.’
‘You’re in Argentina on your own,’ Grace pointed out.
‘Well, yes. That’s different, though.’
‘Not really,’ said Grace. ‘Anyhow, I’ll be fine.’
‘I don’t doubt you’ll be fine,’ Regan said. ‘But will you enjoy it?’
Which was an entirely different question. And one to which Grace still didn’t know the answer. Along with the passwords.
Before she’d left the previous stop, still riled up about Gill and Bex commandeering her house, Deira had put down the roof so that, Paris or not, she could enjoy the freedom of open-top driving. And if it hadn’t been for her aching side, she would have enjoyed it immensely; the sun was high in the sky and it was glorious to speed along the road without feeling insulated from the world around her.
But every bump in what had looked like a very smooth carriageway was now sending a knifing pain through her, and she wasn’t sure how much more of it she could take. She wished she’d stopped at the motorway services she’d passed ten minutes earlier, but she’d told herself to keep going. Now she knew she’d have to rest again and reconsider her options.
The next sign on the motorway was for an aire, which she’d worked out was a lay-by or camping site. She indicated and pulled into it, parking in one of the spaces beneath the trees. The rustling green leaves provided shelter from the direct sunlight as she sat at the only unoccupied picnic table. Families were eating at the others, while further away, a group of children were playing, chasing each other around a couple of camper vans and an SUV with a large roof box.
Deira remembered her own days of chasing with her best friend, Cecily, who lived two doors down from their home in Galway. Deira had tried to spend as much time as she could in Cecily’s house, which always smelled of home baking, and where Mrs Donnelly was ever present. She would sometimes create scenarios in her head that resulted in Mrs Donnelly having to adopt her. She felt that living with her best friend and visiting her dad at weekends would be a much better way to manage things than being constantly ordered around by Gillian, or ignored by Peter. She knew her Dad did his best, but he worked long hours as a sales rep and often left the house early in the mornings, not returning until after seven in the evening. And although Deira was sure Dom O’Brien loved his children, he hadn’t been a hands-on father before her mum had passed away, and that didn’t change afterwards. His relationship with them had always been remote, and even now, retired and living in a small bungalow in Spiddal, he didn’t engage with them very much. He didn’t know about her and Gavin. She hadn’t told him. He wouldn’t have had anything useful to offer on the situation anyhow.
She made a determined effort to push the complications of her life to the back of her mind and opened Google Maps on her phone. Her search for hotels nearby showed there was nothing within a thirty-minute drive, but that wasn’t all that surprising. Even though she could hear the sound of cars speeding along the motorway, she was in rural France. So she tapped on the first hote
l on the list, which was on the outskirts of Nantes, saw that it had availability and booked a room there and then. It didn’t much matter to her what it was like, given that all she wanted was to lie on a bed for a few hours. Hopefully the worst of her pain would be over by the morning and she could resume her journey to Bordeaux.
If, of course, she wasn’t arrested for stealing her own car before then.
Grace had abandoned the password-protected documents in favour of finishing The Sun Also Rises, although the only reason she was reading it was because it seemed appropriate to bring one of Ken’s favourite books on the journey. She’d started it on one of their camping trips years earlier, but had abandoned it saying that she couldn’t warm to any of the characters.
‘You’re obsessed with wanting to like the characters in the books you read,’ Ken told her.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ demanded Grace.
‘Great literature isn’t always about likeability,’ Ken said. ‘And Hemingway won a Nobel Prize.’
‘Maybe because his was the best book around back then,’ retorted Grace. ‘But there’s a lot more to choose from now. Besides,’ she added, ‘I’ve read all about him and he doesn’t seem to have been a particularly nice character himself.’
‘You have to make allowances for his genius,’ said Ken.
‘Why is it only male geniuses we make allowances for?’ she demanded. ‘Why can men behave appallingly and we give them a free pass but a woman has to be calm and composed in order not to be dismissed as hysterical no matter how brilliant she might be?’
‘I never make those judgements.’
‘Not knowingly,’ she muttered.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Grace said nothing. She didn’t want to start an argument with Ken because she never won arguments with him. He always managed to tie her into linguistic knots so that by the end she was agreeing with him even though she didn’t really. It was hard work, she often thought, being married to a college professor who could turn everything she said into the opposite of what she meant.
But now, even though she was still finding the book more hard work than pleasure, one line had struck home and made her think that maybe Ken had had a point, and old Ernest wasn’t quite as bad as she’d first thought.
You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.
Was getting away from herself what she was trying to do? wondered Grace. Or was she trying to get away from Ken? Not that she could, of course, with his open laptop on the table in front of her and his ashes in the boot. Dammit, he’d planned all this. More of it than she’d ever expected. And he’d betrayed her. Other people could say what they liked, but Grace saw it for what it was. A massive betrayal of everything they’d had together. He’d freed himself from her yet somehow she wasn’t able to let go because she was here doing what he’d wanted just like she always had.
Men were bastards.
Even the ones you loved.
Especially the ones you loved.
Chapter 11
Nantes, France: 47.2184°N 1.5536°W
The satnav directed Deira to her chosen hotel on the outskirts of the city. The view over the river was the only exceptional thing about it, she thought, but that didn’t matter. It was nothing more than a pit stop for the night. A pit stop that many others seemed to have chosen too, as there were no available spaces in front of the main building and she had to park under a wooden pergola a little further away.
She winced as she hauled her large suitcase as well as her overnight bag out of the boot. She might only be staying for one night, but she needed a change of clothes, and as the temperature was rising the further south she travelled, she wanted to wear something lighter the following day.
‘Oui, madame, you booked online,’ said the receptionist when Deira arrived at the desk. ‘I am sorry, but you are early.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Deira. ‘I’ll hang around till the room is ready.’
She left her cases with the concierge and sat down cautiously on a sofa near the window. Looking around, she reckoned she’d been lucky to get a room at short notice, because the hotel was busy. Most of the guests seemed to be French families and businesspeople. She didn’t know if the area was popular with holidaymakers; she didn’t know anything about it. She could be anywhere. Maybe it would be a good idea to look at her exact location on a map.
She’d just taken out her iPad and was accessing the Wi-Fi when she heard someone say her name. Her heart did a triple somersault and she felt it pound in her ears. But it was a woman’s voice. Gavin hadn’t somehow turned up, spitting fury at her, thanks to Tillie’s mythical webcam tracker.
‘How nice to see you again.’ Grace Garvey stood in front of her, smiling yet with an expression of surprise. ‘I thought you were going to Paris.’
It was nice to see Grace too, thought Deira, although she’d assumed the older woman would’ve wanted to make better progress in her journey through France and Spain. But then perhaps, like her, she wasn’t in too much of a hurry.
‘Change of plan,’ she said. ‘And then I was sort of forced into stopping here.’
‘Really?’ Grace looked at her enquiringly.
‘Yes.’ As Deira gave her a brief summary of her mishap in the service station, Grace’s expression changed to one of sympathy and she sat down opposite her.
‘Oh, how horrible for you,’ she said. ‘Hurting your ribs is always so painful. Are you badly bruised?’
‘Not that I could see,’ replied Deira. ‘It’s usually internal, though, isn’t it?’
Grace nodded. ‘Have you taken anything?’
‘Painkillers.’
‘I have arnica,’ Grace said. ‘I’m not sure how well it’ll work on bruised ribs, but it won’t do you any harm.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t—’
‘Of course you could!’ Grace opened the wheelie case she had with her and took out a large cosmetic bag containing a selection of painkillers, an antiseptic spray, plasters, stomach tablets, antihistamines and eye drops as well as half a dozen small tubes of cream.
‘This one,’ she said, handing one of the tubes to Deira, who was looking at Grace’s pharmaceutical supplies with a mixture of bafflement and admiration.
‘I’m not a complete hypochondriac, but I always pack for every eventuality,’ explained Grace. ‘Comes from having travelled a lot with children. If something can go wrong, it does, but at least with the kids there’s very little that can’t be cured by a sticking plaster and some ice cream.’
Deira laughed and then held her side.
‘Keep the arnica,’ said Grace. ‘I rarely use it these days, but it became a staple after my son was born and I can’t help including it. Fionn was an absolute devil as a child, into everything. If there was a tree he could climb and fall out of, he did. If there was a stone he could bump into, he found it. He was a walking disaster. Probably still is, but he’s not my problem any more.’
‘I’m sure there’s a pharmacy nearby and I can get some myself,’ said Deira.
‘Probably,’ agreed Grace. ‘But why put yourself through looking for one? Though if you do want to go into the town centre, it’s about five kilometres.’
‘Maybe later,’ said Deira. ‘At the moment, lying down is my priority.’
Grace nodded. ‘Have a snooze as soon as your room is ready.’
‘I’m not usually good at sleeping in the middle of the day,’ admitted Deira.
‘A nap is good for you,’ Grace said. ‘It restores your brain power.’
‘I’m not sure I have any brain power to restore. If I’d been watching what I was doing, I wouldn’t have slipped in the first place.’
‘Accidents can happen.’
‘I know. I seem to be prone to them lately, though.’ Which was true, Deira thought. Ever since she’d split with Gavin, she’d been uncharacteristically clumsy. And stupid. And forgetful. It was as though when he walked out on her he’d taken part of
her with him. And he was holding on to it so that she wasn’t functioning properly any more.
‘Are you having problems sleeping generally?’ asked Grace.
‘God, no, I’m fine.’ Deira was suddenly afraid she was talking to a doctor or nurse who was feeling forced into giving her a free diagnosis. ‘My life’s been a bit up and down lately, that’s all. Resulting in me being all over the place.’
At that moment the receptionist walked over to them and said that Grace’s room in the old house was available and that Deira’s, in the new wing, would be ready in five minutes.
The two women looked at each other hesitantly, but it was Grace who spoke first, surprising Deira by asking if she’d like to have dinner with her later. Almost immediately she added that it was merely a suggestion and that Deira should feel free to ignore it. Deira then surprised herself by saying that she didn’t have plans and it would be fun to meet up.
‘Shall I see you back here around six thirty?’ asked Grace. ‘We can decide then what we’d like to do.’
‘Perfect.’
Deira watched Grace walk across the reception area. Tall. Beautiful. Confident. Married with children. Possibly even grandchildren.
She wanted to be her.
Grace had been taken aback to see her table companion of the night before at the hotel reception, but she was even more taken aback at herself for saying hello rather than hurrying away so that she wouldn’t be noticed. As for suggesting dinner that evening – she didn’t know what had come over her. She wasn’t one for suggesting things. She normally waited for them to be suggested to her. Besides, the road trip wasn’t a journey on which she’d expected, or wanted, to meet new people. And Deira, with her dark, haunting looks and permanently worried expression, hardly promised an evening of light-hearted conversation.
What mad impulse made me do that? she asked herself. Now I’m stuck with something I can’t get out of.
She didn’t normally act on impulse. Over the years of her marriage to Ken, she’d lost her youthful spontaneity and become a more measured person, weighing courses of action carefully before making decisions and then implementing them. She’d learned to build on the skills she’d gained in dealing with people at the airline company. Like the many passengers who seemed to go into a brain freeze as soon as they stepped on board, Ken had assumed that someone else would sort things out for him. And she always did.
The Women Who Ran Away: Will their secrets follow them? Page 8