But she hadn’t been able to sort out the most important thing, in the end.
She’d let him down.
She could never forgive herself for that.
She couldn’t forgive him either.
As soon as she was alone in her room, she took out the laptop again. She worked her way through a selection of memorable dates, names and numbers, but none of them opened the first document. Finally she tried random keys, banging hard on them in her fury.
Password incorrect.
Password incorrect.
Password incorrect.
‘Damn you!’ she cried. ‘Damn you to hell and back! I’m not doing this any more. I’m not!’
She snapped the laptop closed and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Deira had fallen asleep almost as soon as she lay down, and she was disorientated when she opened her eyes again. Looking at her phone, she saw that it was late afternoon, and although her side still ached, she felt considerably better. She took a long shower, which eased the pain in her ribs, and felt herself relax even more. Afterwards she changed into a pair of cotton trousers and a light T-shirt from her case, swallowed a couple of paracetamol and went downstairs.
The sun was still shining and she took a short stroll around the hotel grounds. But beyond the river in the distance, there was very little to see, so she sat at one of the outdoor tables and scrolled through her phone. There were no further missed calls or messages from Gillian, although Deira’s home alarm app had sent a notification that showed the alarm being disarmed a couple of hours earlier, so she knew they’d arrived. Once again she felt a spurt of irritation that Gillian had put her in this position, as well as unease at the idea of her sister sleeping in her bed. She told herself that Gill was right and that as sisters it was perfectly reasonable for her to sleep in Deira’s room. But the point was, Deira thought, it wasn’t really just her room; it was still hers and Gavin’s, no matter what had happened. And Gill staying there was weird. Also – the thought made her shudder – she was pretty sure that even if Gill didn’t make a forensic examination of all her possessions, she’d still pull open the drawers in the chest against the bedroom wall, and examine the clothes in her wardrobe, and investigate the contents of the bathroom cabinet. She wouldn’t be able to help herself.
I should have been more forceful, thought Deira. I should have said no.
In her professional life she never had the slightest problem saying no, or telling people why an idea wouldn’t work. But as soon as Gill opened her mouth, Deira reverted to younger-sister mode, unable to stand up for herself in the face of Gill’s strength of personality.
‘Nothing I can do now,’ she muttered. No point in thinking about it.
She opened her phone and began to scroll through photographs of the French countryside on Instagram, but she couldn’t help running over her sister’s actions in her head. She rehearsed what she’d say to Gill the next time she saw her, while knowing that she’d forget all of it as soon as they actually met. Irritatingly, she only ever thought of the right words when it was too late.
A shadow fell across the screen and Deira looked up. When she saw it was Grace, she checked the time on her phone and was horrified to realise it was almost six thirty.
‘It’s unbelievable how much time you can waste doing nothing useful with your mobile,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise it was so late.’
‘My stomach told me it was time to eat.’ Grace smiled at her. ‘But if you’re busy . . .’
‘Like I said, just wasting time.’ Deira put the phone, and her thoughts of Gillian, away. ‘Have you got a plan for this evening? Did you want to eat here or in town?’
‘It’s a few years since I was last in Nantes,’ said Grace. ‘My husband and I went to a nice restaurant near the river that time. It’s about ten minutes by car.’
‘I don’t mind driving,’ said Deira. ‘I was in agony when I arrived, but I feel a lot better now and I’d like to test how my side feels.’
‘If you’re sure,’ said Grace. ‘Because I’m quite happy to drive too.’
‘Absolutely.’
The two women walked across to the parked car.
‘Nice wheels,’ said Grace as she looked at the Audi.
‘I know,’ said Deira in a brittle tone that startled Grace. But then she smiled and said it was a joy to drive, before asking Grace if she had an address for the restaurant so she could put it in the satnav.
‘I looked it up on Google Maps,’ Grace replied. ‘I’ll direct you.’
It was nice to have someone in the passenger seat beside her, thought Deira. It wasn’t that she couldn’t cope on her own, but it was good to be able to chat. And Grace was chatty without being overpowering, telling her about the last time she’d stayed at the Hotel Atlantique with her husband on their way back from their apartment.
‘You used to drive from Dublin to Spain as well as doing your camping holidays?’ Deira said. ‘You must love being on the road.’
‘I quite enjoy the trip,’ agreed Grace. ‘But neither of us was crazy about taking the car into strange cities. That’s why we usually stayed in out-of-town hotels. Actually, it’s not the driving through the cities I mind – if you exclude Paris, that is,’ she added. ‘It’s the parking. Most of the city hotels have frighteningly small underground car parks that must have been built in the 1950s and designed for those tiny little Citroëns the French loved so much. I remember once taking about twenty minutes to get out of a car park in Bordeaux. My nerves were in shreds.’
‘I’m planning to stay in Bordeaux,’ said Deira. ‘You’d better tell me where that car park is so that I can avoid it.’
They arrived on the outskirts of Nantes and Grace turned up the volume on her phone so that Deira could hear the directions. A few minutes later, she pulled up outside a narrow building with a blue and white striped canopy over the window. The old-fashioned sign outside proclaimed it to be La Belle Mer.
‘This is convenient,’ remarked Deira as she parked a few metres past it. ‘You’d be lucky to get street parking near a restaurant in Dublin.’
‘Oh, well, Nantes isn’t a capital city. The population is only a few hundred thousand.’ Grace glanced at her. ‘Are you going to put the roof up?’
‘Sure.’ Deira pressed the button.
‘So cool,’ said Grace. ‘Maybe I should trade in the SUV.’
The two of them got out of the car and walked into the restaurant. It was as chic as Grace remembered, with pale blue walls hung with charcoal drawings of boats and ships and a dozen dark-wood tables beautifully laid with polished cutlery and sparkling glasses. About half were occupied, and there was already a quiet hum of conversation. A young waitress led them to a free table in the corner and brought them a basket of bread accompanied by a selection of olive oils.
‘Oh, it’s lovely.’ Deira looked around her with real pleasure. For the first time since she’d left Dublin, she felt as though she might be on a holiday instead of – well, whatever she was on. And for the first time in the last couple of months, she felt hungry too. She took a piece of bread and dipped it in the oil. ‘Thanks for asking me to eat with you,’ she said to Grace. ‘This is so much better than having hotel food.’
‘Thank you for saying yes,’ said Grace. ‘I prefer to eat out rather than in hotels too.’
She faltered on the last words and for the first time her air of serene confidence seemed to desert her. Deira didn’t say anything, though, as at that moment the waitress returned with a blackboard chalked with the day’s menu, and asked if they’d like anything to drink.
Deira declined wine as she was driving, but Grace ordered a glass of Chablis to go with the duck they both decided on. When she’d taken a sip, she looked at Deira and asked her if she enjoyed travelling alone.
Deira dipped her bread in the olive oil again and took a bite. For a moment Grace thought she wasn’t going to answer and wished she hadn’t asked the question. But then Deira
spoke.
‘I wasn’t meant to be alone, but I’ve broken up with my . . . my . . . partner.’ She busied herself with the bread so that Grace wouldn’t see the tears that had filled her eyes once more.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Oh, it’s in the past now,’ said Deira, although from her point of view it wasn’t. ‘But I needed some time out to get myself back together, and we were going to come to France anyway, so . . .’
‘At least you’re going to have a great time driving through some fabulous countryside. Bordeaux you mentioned already. Have you decided on anywhere else?’ Grace spoke as if she were unaware that Deira was doing her best not to cry.
‘Not yet,’ said Deira as steadily as she could. ‘I might plan out a route tonight. But given that I abandoned my plan to start there, I’m finishing up with Paris. And you?’
‘My entire trip is mapped out for me already,’ said Grace. ‘I have no control over it.’
‘Really?’ Deira looked at her in surprise. From the moment she’d first seen Grace, she’d thought of her as completely in control. She was cool and calm and collected in a way Deira knew she could only aspire to. And yet the sudden undercurrent in her voice made her think that the unflappable woman might have issues of her own.
Deira watched as this time Grace was the one who busied herself with the bread, slicing a portion into narrow slivers and arranging them on her side plate. The control was there, for sure. But emotions were definitely bubbling under the surface.
‘I suppose I could change it if I wanted to.’ When Grace looked up, her blue eyes were as serene as before, and it was as though the tremor in her voice had been a figment of Deira’s imagination. ‘It’s just that in theory I need to do this trip in a certain way. Even though I’m not sure I can work out exactly what it is I’m meant to be doing.’
Deira couldn’t immediately ask her what she was talking about as the waitress returned to place their meal in front of them. But when she did, Grace took her time before replying.
‘It’s a bit mad,’ she said. ‘You’ll think I’m off my trolley if I tell you.’
‘No I won’t.’ Deira knew that she could see Grace’s madness and raise her own. ‘Do you want to talk about it? You don’t have to. We can change the topic if you prefer.’
Grace never talked about her personal life to strangers. She didn’t want to be judged. But did it matter if Deira judged her? She was never going to see her again, after all.
‘It’s not like you’re going to see me again.’ Deira echoed her thoughts. ‘But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, so let’s think of something else.’
‘My daughter is always on at me to talk,’ said Grace. ‘She thinks it’s good to share.’
‘Sometimes it is,’ agreed Deira. ‘But there can be too much sharing too – think about some of the posts people put on social media.’
Grace smiled. ‘I don’t do social media. Not really.’
‘Me neither.’ Deira refilled her water glass.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Grace. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not.’
‘So . . . I’ll start at the beginning.’
‘I was twenty years old when I married my husband,’ she said. ‘I was airline cabin crew and I met him on a flight. Back then, of course, we were called air hostesses – trolley dollies was the less flattering phrase. I didn’t mind,’ she added. ‘Being an air hostess was seen as a glamour job. A good job too; we were paid well and had fantastic perks. I stayed working for a few years after we got married, but both of us wanted to start a family and that would’ve been tricky if I was flitting around the world serving drinks at thirty thousand feet.
‘So I left, and I got pregnant nearly straight away. We had three children, and even though I missed work, I was happy at home. Ken was doing well in his career and it was good for me to be able to support him.’
She broke off and took another sip of wine while Deira wondered if it had been a difficult decision for Grace to give up a job she seemed to have loved.
‘Anyhow, we rattled along quite happily,’ continued Grace. ‘Ken moved up the ladder of success. The children grew into well-adjusted individuals – at least, I like to think so. They’ve had their moments, of course, but they’re generally OK. Aline, my eldest, is married with a little boy. Fionn is an engineer with a technology company in China, and Regan is currently living her dream and working on a polo ranch in Argentina.’
‘It sounds like they’ve done well,’ said Deira.
‘They’re happy, at any rate,’ Grace said. ‘Which is the most important thing. When Regan was fifteen, I decided it was time for me to work outside the home again, and I returned to the airline because they were looking for experienced staff. A few years later, Ken had a heart attack.’
‘Oh Grace. I’m sorry.’ Having already heard Grace refer to her husband in the past tense, Deira assumed it had been fatal.
‘He recovered.’ Grace’s words were coming more quickly now, and her voice was considerably less serene than before. ‘He bounced back from it and afterwards became a bit of a fitness freak. Our holidays after his attack were always active ones – boating, skiing, hill-walking . . . we even did a few stages of the Camino. He got into organic food, wouldn’t eat anything processed, drank litres of water every day. He looked great on it, to be honest. Everything was fine until last year, when he had an unexpected fall. And then, not that long afterwards, another one, totally out of the blue. Eventually he agreed to see a doctor. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease.’
‘Oh no,’ said Deira, with even more sympathy. ‘That’s what Stephen Hawking had, isn’t it? I saw the movie about his life. It was amazing.’
‘He had a form of motor neurone, yes,’ said Grace. ‘Ken and I saw that movie too, and when they told us of Ken’s diagnosis I thought . . . well . . . Everyone was surprised at how much Professor Hawking achieved despite his illness. I knew it would be different with Ken, but I thought it might help, both of them being academics. Both professors. It was stupid. He laughed at me.’
‘I’m sure it was very difficult,’ said Deira.
‘You know how it is.’ Grace sighed. ‘You want to be positive. You talk about all the good things you can do together. You try very hard.’
Deira nodded.
‘But Ken didn’t want to be positive. He was furious with life. Furious with his body. Furious with himself. And furious with me.’
‘Why with you?’
‘Because suddenly, in his eyes, I was more valuable than him,’ she said. ‘He’d always been the driving force in the family. Everything we did revolved around his schedule, his work, his publications, his brilliance. I was his support. Even when I went back to the airline, my hours had to fit in with his.’
‘Was he brilliant?’ asked Deira.
‘He was a brilliant intellectual, that’s for sure,’ said Grace. ‘I often think he married me because I would never be able to challenge him. I was pretty and looked good beside him, but I hadn’t read the books he’d read or done the studying he’d done. So I was his . . . his accessory.’
‘All the same, I’m sure he loved you.’
I love you, Hippolyta. Grace remembered him saying that on their wedding day. She remembered him telling her how lucky he was that someone like her could love someone like him. But he’d rarely said it afterwards. And there was a part of her that always thought he’d considered her a prize to be captured from the moment he’d seen her on the flight to New York. He may have loved her, but how had he loved her? As Grace Garvey? Or as the person he’d chosen? She’d asked herself the same question on more than one occasion. She’d never really known the answer.
‘We were married for nearly forty years, so I guess he must have done,’ she told Deira. ‘Though I’m not sure we were so bothered back then about men loving their wives as much as their wives were supposed to love them. You met someone, you got on well, you wanted sex, you ti
ed the knot.’
‘Seriously?’ Deira looked at her sceptically.
‘OK, not just to have sex,’ conceded Grace. ‘But it was important to be married. It really was. And I was punching above my weight with Ken, that’s for sure.’
‘Maybe he was punching above his weight with you.’
Grace smiled. ‘That’s exactly what he once said, but no. He was the brains. I was the—’
‘Brains too,’ said Deira. ‘As well as the beauty. I can see that.’
‘Well preserved is the term I’ve heard,’ Grace said. ‘But I suppose I was attractive enough when I was younger. Back then, being pretty was part of the job description when you worked as cabin crew. Anyhow,’ she continued, ‘Ken and I were a good partnership for a very long time. But once he was diagnosed, it was difficult to make it work.’
‘Did you split up?’ Deira couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to break up a marriage when one person had a terminal diagnosis.
‘Of course not,’ said Grace. ‘I would never have done that. I told Ken that if he only had a certain amount of time left – the prognosis was two to five years – we should spend it in the best ways we could. I suggested this trip. He’d always organised our holidays before and I thought if we did it again it would be great quality time together as well as giving him a project to focus on. It seemed like it was a good suggestion, because he got very animated about it. He said he’d put it together, plan everything, book our berths, our accommodation in France and Spain, everything. There were more stops than we’d normally make, of course, because otherwise it would have been too difficult for him. It would have been our wedding anniversary next month, so he called it the Great Anniversary Road Trip. I thought it really mattered to him.’
The Women Who Ran Away: Will their secrets follow them? Page 9
