The Women Who Ran Away: Will their secrets follow them?

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  ‘Lydia? Yes, she’s here. She’s outside at the moment.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad there’s someone there for you. Do you want me to come home?’

  ‘Oh God, no!’ exclaimed Bex. ‘I mean, please don’t. I’m fine. Lyds has been great. She organised everything. Of course we didn’t expect Mum to want to come to Dublin too when we arranged it. We thought we’d fixed it to stay longer than her by planning a second interview, but we wanted to be sure she’d go home. So before we left I bought tickets for the new Disney movie and Lydia pretended to Lucia that she’d won them in a competition. Mum had to go back to bring her to it.’

  Lucia was Bex’s twelve-year-old sister, and a Disney fanatic.

  ‘Lucky she agreed.’

  ‘Oh, you know Mum,’ said Bex. ‘She’s into her Disney too. I knew she’d want to go.’

  ‘I applaud your ingenuity,’ said Deira.

  ‘I wasn’t ingenious at all,’ said Bex. ‘I’m an idiot. I’m the girl no girl wants to be. But,’ she added, ‘I sorted it. I know there’s lots of people who’d disapprove of me and say that I was selfish and that I should’ve had the baby, but I couldn’t. I’m doing really well in college. I have plans. And I can’t . . . I wasn’t ready for this.’

  She was right. There were plenty of people who opposed abortion on any grounds, at any time, for any woman. But they weren’t the ones who were pregnant. And they weren’t the ones who’d have to live with it for the rest of their lives. During the referendum to legalise abortion in Ireland, Deira had agreed with all of her friends and acquaintances who said this. She believed it herself. And yet even though she knew Bex had done what was right for her, her own heart was breaking.

  She stayed on the phone to her niece for another twenty minutes, reassuring her that everything was fine, that she’d done what was best for her and that nobody else needed to know. And she told her that she could stay in the house for as long as she liked. By the time she ended the call, Bex was looking and sounding if not happier, at least a little less stressed.

  It was Deira who lay on her bed and cried.

  Chapter 27

  Toledo, Spain: 39.8628°N 40.0273°W

  Stretched out by the pool, which was set in a large lawn enclosed on two sides by the hotel building, Grace was suddenly aware that Deira hadn’t come to join her. She wasn’t bothered; she was perfectly content with enjoying the spectacular views towards the town, and dipping in and out of her book (having finally finished The Sun Also Rises, she’d moved on to a Joanna Trollope she’d bought on board the ferry and was enjoying it immensely). About a dozen other people were taking advantage of the warmth of the afternoon sun, including a dad and his two young children, who were racing each other up and down the pool. Every time they reached an end, he shouted encouragement at them and they turned to do another length.

  It reminded her of the times that Ken would swim with the children on holidays, doing his best to tire them out so that they’d go to bed at a reasonable time and allow himself and Grace an hour or two of peace and quiet to unwind. Sometimes they’d sit together in silence, sometimes they’d talk. Their conversation was rarely idle; Ken didn’t do chit-chat. He enjoyed talking about politics, both national and the internal politics of the university, which was like a nation of its own. He liked to think of himself as a left-leaning liberal, but the older he got, the more conservative his views had become. Grace had always believed herself to be a conservative sort of woman – she’d given up her career to raise her family, after all – and yet she’d become more liberal with time. Her views were formed by her experiences, which mostly, she thought, revolved around the desire for people to be nicer to each other. To realise that life could be hard and outward smiles didn’t always mean inner peace. Ken was impatient with anyone who struggled, and he found it difficult not to hark back to the greater difficulties of his own youth relative to modern times. And yet he had championed every single one of his students, helping them be the best they could be, and was always vociferous about cuts to education budgets and a lack of investment in arts and culture. Conversations with him had always been challenging. Grace missed them.

  She debated texting Deira to check on her plans, but decided to leave her alone. They were travelling companions, not soulmates. Nevertheless, she was pleased that Deira was still with her on the journey and that they’d overcome the awkwardness of their different opinions regarding her desire to sleep with Charlie Mulholland. Grace still believed that Deira was wrong, but she also accepted that the younger woman was struggling to cope with the result of her ex-partner’s behaviour and the challenge of her declining fertility.

  There had been a time, shortly after Regan was born, when Grace had suspected Ken of seeing someone else, and her suspicions had taken over her very existence. But when she’d eventually confronted him, he’d been truly shocked by her accusation and told her that he’d never even looked at anyone else. ‘Why would I rock the boat for a fleeting moment of pleasure?’ he’d asked. ‘You know me better than that, Grace.’ It was because he’d called her Grace, and not Hippo, that she’d believed him.

  She understood that it was hard for Deira to accept that Gavin was now going to be a father by two different women when he’d refused to have a baby with her. Grace couldn’t imagine life without Aline, Fionn and Regan. They were the foundation of her existence and the greatest comfort she could have. It didn’t matter that her two youngest were so far away from her. She felt their presence every single day. And Aline was always there, ready to call around if needed. Ken’s death would have been a million times more difficult if the children hadn’t been there to support her. And if she hadn’t been there to support them. That was what family was, she thought. People you could depend on when you were at rock bottom. And yet Ken hadn’t depended on her. He’d excluded her from the most important decision he’d ever made.

  She closed her eyes and let the book slide from her hand as she drifted into sleep. In her dream, she was driving through France with Ken again, the children in the back seat, arguing loudly. He wasn’t taking any nonsense from them, telling them that if they didn’t keep quiet, they weren’t going out on the boat that afternoon. But the children were arguing more and more, until Ken suddenly swerved to one side and drove the car off the bridge over the River Penzé.

  ‘No!’ gasped Grace as they hit the water with a thud and she felt the airbag explode against her chest. And then she gasped again as the car began to fill up. The children were screaming and she was sobbing and Ken was looking at her and telling her that he was sorry, it had been an accident, he’d never meant for it to happen . . .

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  The words were clear and distinct, spoken in a Scottish accent. Grace’s eyes snapped open, and she saw a grey-haired man wearing bright-blue shorts and a white T-shirt standing at the end of her sunbed. He picked up the yellow inflatable ball that had landed on her.

  ‘They were told not to kick it about. Alejandro, Susanna – come here at once!’

  The two children she’d seen racing in the pool earlier scampered across the grass to stand beside him.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Apologise to the lady.’

  The boy began to speak in Spanish, and Grace waited until he’d finished before saying that her Spanish wasn’t good enough to understand everything but thanking him for his apology all the same.

  ‘English,’ said the man, and Alejandro repeated his apology in a Scottish accent.

  Grace laughed. She couldn’t help it. It sounded so odd to hear the gentle burr coming from a boy who’d previously spoken in perfect Spanish.

  ‘Can we go back to the pool now, Grandad?’ asked the girl.

  ‘Scoot,’ he said, and threw the ball into the water. ‘But no messing, mind,’ he warned. ‘I’ll be watching you, and I’ll tell your papa if you step out of line.’

  ‘We’ll be good,’ said Susanna. ‘Promise.’ Then she jumped into the pool, followed by her brother.


  ‘You’re not hurt, are you?’ asked their grandfather.

  ‘Startled,’ said Grace. ‘Otherwise fine.’

  ‘They’re good kids really. But you know what they’re like when they see a pool.’

  Grace nodded.

  The man, who, she thought, looked young to be a grandfather of children who were about seven or eight, stayed where he was.

  ‘You’re not actually English, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Irish,’ she replied.

  ‘I knew when you started to speak.’

  ‘And you’re not from around here either.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Aberdeen originally, but I’ve lived in Spain for the past twenty years. My daughter married a man from the local town, and so I’ve proper roots here now.’

  Grace nodded. There were plenty of people in similar situations in the area around the apartment.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘Sorry again about the kids.’

  ‘No bother.’ She smiled. ‘I was having a rather horrible dream and it was good to be woken up.’

  ‘Nightmares on the sunbeds are usually to do with people reserving them with towels.’

  She laughed.

  ‘See you around,’ said the man, and went back to supervise his grandchildren.

  Grace stayed by the pool for another hour before returning to her room. This time she did text Deira, who responded by saying that she wasn’t feeling great and would stay where she was. She then sent a follow-up text saying that she’d do some investigating on the Toledo clue later, but that obviously there was a statue of Cervantes somewhere in the town and Grace should take the photo of it herself.

  Clearly Deira’s hangover had been worse than she’d let on, thought Grace, as she got into the car and headed down the steep hillside towards the town on the opposite side of the river. Shots were always a disaster.

  She found a car park on the outskirts of Toledo and left the car there before walking into the medieval centre. The throngs of tourists couldn’t take away from the fact that it was like walking through the pages of history; at every turn she was faced with ancient city walls, Roman ruins, Moorish arches, churches, mosques and synagogues. In the narrow streets of the old town, the shops were full of knives and swords. When she stopped to look at them, a shop assistant told her that the city was famed for its steel work and that the knives were the best in the world. She invested in a set of steak knives and matching forks to bring home, thinking that ferry travel had a lot going for it; she’d never have got them through a luggage check at the airport.

  She’d googled Cervantes before she left the hotel, and followed her map to find the statue, rather oddly placed at the bottom of some steps leading from a narrow cobbled street through an archway to a plaza. She took a photo, then walked along a pedestrianised street, shaded from the sun by brightly coloured sailcloths stretched across it. There were more knife and sword shops here, and jewellery stores too, but Grace’s legs were beginning to ache, and when she found a small bar on a corner, with tables outside, she sat down at one and looked at the menu tucked into the napkin holder.

  She ordered a sparkling water and a mushroom and herb omelette, which was lighter, fluffier and infinitely more tasty than she’d expected. From her table she could watch other tourists taking photos of a nearby church with an enormous wooden door, everyone adopting the same pose of looking as if they were knocking on it.

  Are we all utterly predictable? she wondered as she sipped her water. Do we all think we’re unique but actually end up doing exactly the same things as everyone else?

  Given that everyone around her was happily taking selfies, Grace took one too and sent it to her children. Aline responded straight away with a ‘looking good’ message, and a few minutes later, Regan sent a thumbs-up emoji. Grace didn’t expect to hear from Fionn, given that it was the middle of the night in Beijing.

  Her attention was suddenly caught by the sight of the man who’d been playing with Alejandro and Susanna in the pool earlier. He was walking across the small square, his arm around a young woman wearing a pretty pink sundress. The children were nowhere to be seen, so clearly their grandfather was still looking after them. He’s probably on the trip to give the parents a break, thought Grace, as her eyes followed them. There was something quiet and intimate about the couple, and once again she was transported to the past, but this time to before her children were born, when she and Ken would walk together around cities. In those days, when she was still working as cabin crew, she’d been able to get him cheap travel with her. It had been before the advent of budget airlines, when flying anywhere had been prohibitively expensive and a rare occurrence for most people. But she and Ken had travelled to Amsterdam and Brussels and Paris and Rome together. Back then, he’d enjoyed the perks her job brought. It was only after Aline had been born and she’d given it up that he’d got sniffy about air travel with her.

  Were we a good partnership? she wondered. Or did we simply put up with each other? She’d always thought that the fact they’d stayed together through good times and bad was a good thing. But what if it hadn’t been? What if she could have had a happier life with someone who respected her more?

  The grass is always greener, she told herself.

  Be glad that you endured.

  It was a little after nine thirty by the time she got back to the hotel. She was feeling pleased with herself, because as well as having taken the picture of Cervantes to upload, she’d looked up the answers to the El Greco part of the clue. But it would have felt wrong to try and unlock it without Deira, who was nowhere to be seen.

  The sun was beginning to set and the edges of the sky had turned a flaming orange behind a city that was a pincushion of light from the terrace of the hotel. Grace ordered another sparkling water from a passing waiter and found a comfortable chair from which to look at the view. She’d only been sitting there for a few minutes when she heard the distinctive accent of the man from the pool.

  ‘Is this chair taken?’ he asked, indicating the empty one close to her.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head and glanced around. The terrace had filled up in the last few minutes, and it was the only one available.

  ‘Thanks.’ He angled the chair away from her slightly and sat down. A waiter placed a glass of beer in front of him. He took a sip while Grace observed him casually. In a pale-blue shirt worn loose over jeans, he looked fit and attractive. That she even noticed this was a little disconcerting to Grace. But it was true.

  The waiter returned with some peanuts, which he placed on the table between them. The man pushed the bowl closer to Grace and asked if she’d like one. She took a handful, which she put on a paper napkin.

  ‘You can have the rest,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have any at all; I stuffed myself with food earlier.’

  ‘Easily done here.’ He nodded. ‘The cooking is superb.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked.

  ‘Near Cartagena,’ he replied. ‘A place called Playa Blanca. It’s in the south-east.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ Grace turned her chair to face him. ‘I have an apartment there.’

  ‘Really?’ He laughed. ‘Small world. Although not that small,’ he added. ‘So many people have bought second homes in Spain that it’s probably more likely than not that you’ll bump into someone. How long have you lived there?’

  ‘I don’t live there full-time,’ said Grace. ‘My husband and I bought our apartment about six years ago. The plan was to spend more time there, especially in the winter.’

  He nodded. ‘Snowbirds,’ he said. ‘Home for the summer, back for the winter.’

  ‘Actually, we ended up spending early summer here and then coming back in the autumn for a couple of months,’ said Grace. ‘We never quite made it through the winter. Too many commitments at home, and then . . .’ She stopped. What is happening to me, she asked herself, that I’ve started blurting out my personal life to perfect strangers? First Deira and now this man. Not that I’m goi
ng to share anything with him. I’m not that sort of person.

  ‘Duncan,’ he said into her sudden silence. ‘Anderson.’

  ‘Grace Garvey.’

  ‘Are you on your own, Grace?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I’ve a friend with me.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘A girlfriend,’ she clarified. ‘At least, I mean, a friend who’s a girl. A woman. God!’ She looked at the glass of water. ‘Have they put gin in this or something? I’m blathering.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re fine,’ he said.

  ‘Down at the pool, you said you came here a long time ago. Do you work here?’

  ‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘Myself and the wife opened a restaurant.’

  ‘Have you always cooked?’ asked Grace.

  ‘D’you mean did I know what I was doing or am I one of those people who thought I’d give it a go and do breakfast fry-ups and roast dinners on Sundays?’

  ‘I wouldn’t knock a breakfast fry-up, or indeed a roast dinner, although perhaps not here,’ said Grace.

  ‘Sorry if I was taking it a bit personally,’ said Duncan. ‘It’s just that . . . Yes, I am a chef. Not the kind of chef that would’ve worked with Gordon Ramsay, but not the kind that’d be caught on his Kitchen Nightmares either. Not the sort that says he cooks honest food or smothers everything in cream. Good food, I hope, though.’

  ‘I do feel I might have hit a nerve,’ admitted Grace.

  ‘Ah, it’s me. I can get defensive about it,’ he said. ‘You should come and eat, though. As my guest.’ He opened his wallet and took out a card. ‘This is us.’

  ‘Flor de la Esquina,’ she read. ‘Flower on the Corner?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s small, but I promise you it’s good.’

  ‘Do your family work there with you?’ Grace put the card in her bag.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just me.’

  ‘Not even your wife?’

  ‘No,’ he said again. ‘Turns out the dream wasn’t her dream after all. We divorced after ten years and before I took over the Flor.’