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

by Sheila O'Flanagan

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘She met someone new.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens.’

  But Grace heard the catch in his voice.

  ‘The restaurant keeps me busy,’ he said.

  ‘Did you work as a chef in Scotland?’

  ‘In a hotel,’ he said. ‘And before that on a cruise ship. But I always wanted my own place, and now I have it. I hadn’t intended to lose the wife along the way, but I reckon I’ll give it another five years and then retire.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  ‘Everyone has a plan till they’re punched in the mouth, isn’t that it?’

  ‘My husband used to say that too.’

  ‘Are you still together?’

  ‘He passed away recently,’ said Grace.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ His voice softened.

  ‘And after you get punched in the mouth, you make new plans.’ She stood up. ‘It was really nice talking to you, Duncan, but I’m heading up for the night. I’ll definitely come to your restaurant, though.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stood up too.

  When she got to the door of the hotel, she turned around.

  He was still standing, looking after her.

  When Grace came down to breakfast the following morning, she was surprised to see Deira already seated at a table. She’d been there for some time, it seemed, because a waitress was clearing the used crockery while Deira sipped a coffee.

  ‘Good morning.’ Grace slid into the chair opposite her. ‘OK if I join you?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Deira.

  ‘You’re up early.’ Grace thought Deira looked tired, with dark circles under her red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘I didn’t sleep well,’ said Deira. ‘So I got up a couple of hours ago and went for a walk.’

  ‘Are you feeling OK?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Fine,’ replied Deira.

  ‘Have you heard anything more about your insurance claim?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Deira. ‘But I’m sure they’re working their way through it. And then I’ll have to deal with all the fallout between Gavin and me.’

  ‘Get yourself a good solicitor,’ advised Grace. ‘I did, after Ken . . . I worried about what would happen to his life assurance if they ruled his death a suicide. Not that I wanted to be mercenary about it or anything, but he’d paid a lot into that policy. As it turns out, he’d taken it out five years earlier, so there wasn’t an exclusion clause. But I would never have been able to ask the questions the solicitor asked.’

  ‘You never think about things like that, do you?’ asked Deira.

  Grace shook her head. ‘It was all horrible, to be honest. In some ways, that’s what made me more angry than anything else. That he’d left me to sort it all out.’

  ‘You’ve done brilliantly.’ Deira gave her a comforting smile. ‘I admire you, Grace. A terrible thing happened in your life. Both with the professor getting sick and then how it all ended. And yet here you are, driving through France and Spain and being . . . oh, I don’t know . . . so unflappable about it.’

  ‘I’m not unflappable,’ protested Grace. ‘I was practically catatonic when I had to identify his body.’

  Which was true. The sequence of events was blurred in her mind and the memory of her time both identifying Ken and staying with him later had jumbled together, but she could still clearly picture the moment when she saw him lying in front of her at the hospital mortuary. There was a large bruise on his forehead and she’d wondered if the airbag hadn’t worked properly and if he’d slammed into the steering wheel, but she’d been afraid to ask. He’d looked older and thinner beneath the sheet that covered him, and although she’d heard many people say in the past that dead relatives looked as though they were sleeping, it was very clear to her that Ken wasn’t. The muscles on his face had slackened and he was paler than she had ever seen him before. When she went to touch him, she was shocked at how cold he was. It was him being cold that made it seem real. And yet she’d struggled to take it in. That he’d been alive and talking to her that morning. That he was dead now. That he must have, might have, could have planned this. She didn’t want to say anything in case she incriminated him, although she knew that suicide wasn’t a crime any more.

  She’d asked if there was anything she could do. But of course there wasn’t. The truth was that she was in the way.

  The next time she’d seen him was at the funeral home. She and Aline had selected a suit for him to wear, and the undertakers had toned down the bruise on his face. But even though she knew it was her husband in front of her, it was obvious to her that the living Ken was gone and had left nothing more than a shell behind.

  She’d never said this to the children.

  Fionn had said that his dad looked peaceful.

  Aline and Regan agreed.

  All of them assured each other that it was probably very fast and that he wouldn’t have suffered.

  Grace had wanted to say that he must have suffered, that he’d drowned, that his last moments couldn’t have been easy. But then she thought that perhaps they’d been easier for him than many of his living moments since his diagnosis, and she felt horribly guilty for still being angry with him.

  She wondered whether the guilt and the anger would ever leave her.

  Deira watched Grace, seeing how her jaw tightened and how she was holding her breath. She felt guilty for having brought back memories that Grace clearly wanted to forget.

  ‘Did you take the photo of Cervantes?’ She knew she was changing the subject abruptly, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘I . . . Yes. Yes, I did,’ said Grace. ‘And I checked out the answers to El Greco.’

  ‘Well done you! Did you upload them?’

  ‘No,’ said Grace. ‘I was waiting to do it with you.’

  ‘You waited for me last time too. But it’s your treasure hunt, Grace. You can upload the answers whenever you want.’

  ‘We’ve been in this together the whole time,’ said Grace. ‘I wasn’t going to do it without you.’

  ‘Do you have the laptop?’

  Grace nodded and took it out of the tote bag slung over her shoulder.

  ‘Let me nab some of the breakfast buffet first,’ she said to Deira.

  She returned to the table a few minutes later with a selection of fruit and pastries, and then opened the laptop and uploaded the photo of Cervantes. As always, there was a nervous moment before it was accepted and she was given the extra number, which this time was 3.

  ‘There’s an El Greco museum in the city, but by the time I’d walked to the Cervantes statue, I wasn’t in the mood for a museum, especially when Google is around,’ said Grace. ‘So the answer is 3, and then 7 and 2 for his ripe old age, and then 4 for April, the month he died. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Deira.

  Grace took a sip of her coffee and then punched in the numbers.

  ‘Right,’ she said when the clue came up. ‘Here we go again.’

  Chapter 28

  Toledo to Sierra de Andujar: 230 km

  Another one successfully completed, Hippo! You’re blazing a trail through Spain. I hope you visited the El Greco museum, it’s well worth the trip. Or did you hotfoot it to Cervantes and then nip off to the square for churros and chocolate? I know it’s a weakness! Anyhow, your reward letter is E. Now here’s your Granada clue. Their most famous poet? Probably. He’s not sitting in his park, though, so you’ll have to find him elsewhere to upload his photo. Then tell me how many Galician poems he wrote and how old he was when he died. Five attempts. Best of luck!

  ‘He’s nearly right about me,’ said Grace. ‘I’m always thinking of my stomach. I went straight for the Cervantes statue and then around the corner to a little bar. It didn’t serve churros, but I had a lovely omelette.’ She made a face and then picked up one of the dainty pastries and put it in her mouth.

  Deira laughed. A genuine laugh. ‘I don’t kn
ow how you stay so skinny on all the food you pack away,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve always been slender,’ said Grace. ‘Which people think is great, but sometimes it’s not so good. Look at my scrawny arms.’ She held one out for Deira’s inspection. ‘I’d give anything for plumper arms. And lips. I’d love Julia Roberts’ lips. Or Angelina Jolie’s. But I have thin lips, and although my beauty therapist suggested a bit of collagen, I’m too scared to try.’

  ‘I’ve never had injectables,’ said Deira. ‘Though some of my friends swear by Botox.’

  ‘You’re far too young for that, surely!’

  ‘I’m the absolute right age,’ said Deira. ‘I think even girls in their twenties are getting it.’ She grimaced. ‘Afton – my younger, prettier and more fertile replacement – promotes a brand of filler on her bloody Instagram account.’ She opened her bag and took out a tissue, which she used to blow her nose. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m a bit weepy at the moment. Again.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Grace.

  ‘Family stuff,’ Deira said. ‘Nothing to do with me and Gavin.’

  ‘Would you like to take a little time out?’ asked Grace. ‘Recharge the batteries.’

  ‘Do you want to stay here a bit longer?’ Deira looked at her in surprise.

  ‘No. I was actually thinking about what you suggested before. About that place in the wilderness. The place where Charlie Mulholland may or may not be.’

  ‘Grace, I know how you feel about—’

  ‘How I feel isn’t the point. It’s your life, your choice, Deira.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘And you said he might not be there.’

  ‘He didn’t tell me when he was filming. It was a stupid idea on my part.’

  ‘But the place itself sounded nice.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Grace exhaled slowly. ‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been throwing a lot of advice your way but not really thinking about my own attitude.’

  ‘Your attitude is perfectly fine,’ said Deira.

  ‘I’m not talking about my attitude to you,’ said Grace. ‘I’m talking about me.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Following Ken’s itinerary. Doing what he wants me to do, when he wants me to do it.’

  ‘That’s because there might be a time limit on the treasure hunt,’ said Deira. ‘It’s because you want to get it right. And because he’s booked all the hotels in advance.’

  ‘The time limit is only set by the fact that he booked the hotels,’ said Grace. ‘And that means he’s chivvying me along like he always did. Visiting all these places has been lovely, but I want to do something for myself too. I want to see somewhere that hasn’t been approved by him in advance.’

  Deira nodded slowly.

  ‘And this place sounds . . . well, nobody would go there unless they’d heard of it, would they?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘One place that he didn’t plan on me going to,’ said Grace. ‘Just one.’

  ‘What if Charlie is there?’

  ‘What if he is?’ said Grace. ‘You can do your thing. I’ll do mine.’

  Although she’d wanted to visit El Pozo de la Señora before, Deira was less sure that it was a good idea now. But if she said no, would she regret not taking the opportunity that Grace was offering?

  ‘If you’re OK about it, then let’s do it,’ she said.

  ‘Right,’ said Grace, and opened the web browser.

  She managed to get two rooms at the wellness centre and rebook the Granada hotel for the following day, and so, after they checked out, Deira put the address of El Pozo de la Señora into the satnav of Grace’s car. She offered to drive, and Grace was perfectly happy to let her.

  ‘It means Lady’s Well,’ Deira said as they set off. ‘They should twin it with Galway.’

  ‘Is there a place called Lady’s Well in Galway?’ asked Grace.

  ‘There’s probably loads of Lady’s Wells around Ireland,’ Deira said. ‘I can imagine a whole bunch of grottos where someone in the past thought they saw apparitions of the Virgin Mary. My grandmother used to take us to the Galway one to pray. Apparently it had healing powers.’

  ‘You wouldn’t remember the summer of the moving statues,’ said Grace.

  ‘What?’ Deira glanced at her.

  ‘Sometime in the eighties,’ Grace told her. ‘I can’t recall where it started, but a group of children claimed that they saw a statue of the Virgin Mary move. The place was inundated with pilgrims. Then it happened again somewhere else. Same thing. And a group of girls thought they saw her appear in the sky.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Oh, it was a total phenomenon,’ Grace assured her. ‘I’m pretty sure the locals were raking it in with all the pilgrims that turned up, though most of the towns were small and couldn’t cope with the numbers. It was tens of thousands.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Deira. ‘So what happened in the end?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Grace. ‘Maybe people saw sense when autumn set in and they couldn’t spend long evenings staring at statues, waiting for them to leap around.’

  ‘I suppose there are times when people want to believe in something more than what’s around us,’ said Deira. ‘My friend Tillie is a bit like that. Looking for meaning in everything. I’m not sure she’d have much truck with moving statues, though.’

  ‘I’m sure the Spanish spring is just a spring,’ Grace said.

  ‘Given that they’re calling it a wellness centre, I’m assuming that at the very least the water is supposed to be pure,’ said Deira.

  ‘Either way, it actually looks quite nice and restful on the website.’

  They continued in silence through the flat and featureless countryside of Castilla–La Mancha. After a while, the road suddenly curved and rose through the mountains that marked the border with Andalusia.

  ‘Wow,’ said Grace, as the satnav told them to leave the motorway and they climbed even higher along a much narrower road. ‘The views are breathtaking.’

  ‘I’m concentrating more on where we’re going,’ said Deira. ‘This is steep.’

  And it was. A lesser car than the Lexus might have struggled with the incline, but they forged onwards and upwards, further and further away from the motorway.

  ‘I hope we don’t get a puncture,’ Grace murmured. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere here. Are you sure we’re on the right road, Deira?’

  ‘I have faith in the satnav,’ Deira said. ‘And I did check it on Google Maps too.’

  ‘I’m thinking that the miraculous thing about this Lady’s Well is that people got here at all,’ declared Grace. ‘It must have been some trek before cars.’

  ‘I guess they had donkeys.’ Deira negotiated a hairpin bend.

  ‘Or maybe getting up here was a kind of pilgrimage in itself,’ said Grace.

  ‘It would certainly have been a penance.’

  It took another thirty minutes of driving through the isolated countryside before they saw a large wooden sign saying ‘El Pozo de la Señora’.

  ‘Whew,’ said Grace. ‘It exists.’

  ‘I was feeling a bit anxious that it didn’t,’ admitted Deira as she turned at the sign and followed an even narrower road.

  ‘I guess if you’re going to do a wellness retreat, this definitely gets you off the beaten— Oh!’

  Grace gave a cry of pleasure as the road opened out and she saw the building ahead of them. It was whitewashed and single-storey, built in a squared-off U shape. Vivid pink and purple bougainvillea cascaded from the terracotta roof over the deep-set windows. Neatly rounded orange trees lined the way to a covered parking area containing half a dozen cars.

  Deira parked the Lexus and the two women got out. The heat was fierce and the silence absolute.

  They took their bags from the boot and walked along a flagstone path to the entrance of the building – an enormous wooden door with a smaller door set into it. The smaller do
or was open, and they stepped through.

  Like at the converted convent in Alcalá de Henares, there was a fountain in the centre of the reception area, the cascading water effectively cooling the interior space. The floor tiles were dark green marble, as was the reception desk.

  ‘Hello, and welcome.’ A woman in her thirties with a mop of curly red hair came to greet them. ‘Deira and Grace?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deira. ‘You must be Muireann.’

  The woman smiled. ‘That’s me. It’s nice to hear another Irish accent.’

  ‘It’s the last thing I would’ve expected here,’ said Grace. ‘How on earth did you discover this place?’

  ‘My dad is from Aljaha. It’s a small town nearby,’ said Muireann. ‘I was brought up in Cork, but I always loved coming to Spain. And then the opportunity to open this place came up, and I jumped at it.’

  ‘That was brave,’ said Grace.

  ‘Ah, not as brave as you think,’ Muireann told her. ‘I know the area.’

  ‘But there’s so little around,’ Grace said. ‘And it’s hard to get to.’

  ‘Hard if you’re coming from the north,’ agreed Muireann. ‘But easier from the south. Anyhow, let’s get you ladies sorted.’

  She registered them and then handed them two large key fobs.

  ‘We’re as back-to-nature as we can be,’ she said. ‘There are no TVs and no Wi-Fi, except in the designated Wi-Fi room, which is only open for an hour a day. We want people to disconnect as much as possible, which is why we encourage you to have your phones locked away while you’re here.’

  Deira had read all this on the website and had had no intention of handing over her phone. Yet here, in the quiet serenity of El Pozo de la Señora, she was beginning to think that there was a certain merit in doing so.

  ‘The signal is a bit patchy anyhow,’ said Muireann.

  ‘How do you manage?’ asked Grace. ‘I mean, you need technology to get bookings and call people and so on.’

  ‘We have a satellite system,’ explained Muireann. ‘We need to be connected, but guests don’t.’

  ‘I suppose . . .’ Grace hesitated.