‘She’s younger than me!’ But Grace smiled. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
She led the way to the restaurant, which was a couple of streets back from the seafront. There were half a dozen tables on the street outside, another half a dozen on a covered terrace and the same again inside. When they told the waitress they didn’t have a reservation, she brought them to the last unoccupied table on the covered terrace.
‘This is pretty,’ said Deira as she looked around. The decor was in shades of cream and pale green, and the walls were stencilled with flowers. ‘Did you come here a lot with the professor?’
‘No,’ said Grace. ‘He preferred to eat at the other end of town. This is my first visit, so I hope it’s good.’
It was. Over their lobster dinner, the conversation turned to Deira’s upcoming interview, and she told Grace of her fear that if she got the job, people would think she’d left Solas because she couldn’t bear working with Gavin any more.
‘Who cares what they think?’ said Grace. ‘You’ll know the reason.’
‘I know. But . . .’ Deira snapped one of the breadsticks that had been left in a basket on the table. ‘All my working life it’s mattered to me how I’ve been perceived. It’s why I am who I am. A senior executive. A person with responsibility. Someone in control.’
‘You’d be all those things in the new place too,’ Grace pointed out. ‘As for being a person in control, I can’t help thinking that’s vastly overrated. It was what Ken always wanted, and when it was taken away from him because of his illness, he couldn’t cope. Like I said before, he struggled when I had more influence in the relationship. It wasn’t good, Deira. It really wasn’t.’
‘I’m talking about work,’ Deira said. ‘I’m not talking about Gavin and me personally.’
‘But it all stems from a personal thing, doesn’t it?’ said Grace. ‘And you feeling that he has something you don’t. You don’t want that to be the defining thing in the office either.’
Deira looked at her silently. Grace had put into words much of her feelings about her life since Gavin had left her.
‘You’re right,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t want them feeling sorry for me. Thinking that he’s all strong and virile and a baby-making machine, whereas I’m a sad old woman who’s had to leave the job because of him and who can’t even do what women are supposed to do.’
‘Women aren’t only here to have babies,’ protested Grace.
‘I know. I’ve always believed that. It’s just that when you haven’t . . . when you’ve decided you should have . . . when you’ve made a fool of yourself with a man over it . . .’
‘Which man?’ asked Grace. ‘Gavin or Charlie?’
‘Oh God, both of them.’ Deira covered her face with her hands as she felt her colour rise.
‘But how do you feel about it yourself?’ asked Grace. ‘Have you given up on the idea of going down the IVF route and doing it on your own?’
Deira let her hands fall to her lap again. ‘It’s such a hit-and-miss scenario,’ she said. ‘According to the HFEA – that’s the Human Fertilisation and Embryo Authority – the birth rate for women trying to conceive from their frozen eggs is eighteen per cent. If someone came to me with a proposition for an event with that kind of success rate, I’d tell them to sod off. And only just over three per cent of women in my age group have a successful live birth. Those aren’t odds, Grace. They’re impossible numbers.’
‘But lots of women do have babies over forty. You might be one of the lucky ones.’
‘True,’ said Deira. ‘But I’d have to go through all that IVF entails for even the tiniest chance.’
‘If it’s what really matters to you, though . . .’
Deira put her fork on the table and looked thoughtfully at Grace. ‘I honestly don’t know if it’s that I can’t bear being the only one of Gavin’s women who hasn’t had a baby, or if I subconsciously clamped down on my desire to have a baby while I was with him and truly feel my life is incomplete without a child. If I don’t know why I want something, how mad is it to be looking at ways of having it?’
‘It’s easy to second-guess yourself,’ said Grace. ‘You need to listen to your heart, Deira.’
‘It was listening to my heart that landed me in a mess with Charlie,’ said Deira. ‘Or, being honest, it was listening to my damn hormones! There’s a part of me that thinks I want a child because I’m supposed to want a child. And another part of me that longs for a baby of my own to hold. But is that just the same as me wishing my mother had bought me the same doll that she bought Gill when we were kids? I honestly don’t know. And I don’t have the time to think about it, because every second of every day my few remaining eggs are becoming more and more fragile.’
‘I wish I could advise you.’ Grace’s words were heartfelt. ‘I know that my children are my greatest achievement,’ she continued, ‘but sometimes I wonder if I lived some of my life through them instead of doing things for myself. I invested all of my own dreams in them, you know. I chose to be the best wife and mother I could be, but I wasn’t always happy about it. I comforted myself with the achievements of my husband and my children. And yet doing this trip on my own – or at least with you – has made me wish that I’d done more things for myself and by myself when I was younger.’ She gave Deira a rueful look. ‘Maybe no matter what we do in life we look back and think things could have been better. Or different. Or that we should’ve chosen another path.’
‘Do you wish that?’ asked Deira.
‘From time to time,’ admitted Grace. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t change my kids for the world, but from where I am now, I wouldn’t have been as flattered as I was that Ken wanted to marry me, and I wouldn’t have believed myself so unworthy that I had to accept the first man who came along and asked me.’
‘Do we ever get it right?’ wondered Deira.
‘We never get everything right,’ said Grace. ‘But we can adapt. We have to.’
The two women were contemplating each other’s words in silence when Duncan Anderson walked over to their table, a wide smile on his face.
‘You came,’ he said to Grace. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’
Deira looked from one to the other.
‘How could I not?’ said Grace. ‘I’m only a short walk away.’
‘Did you enjoy your meal?’
‘Delicious,’ she assured him. ‘Duncan, this is my friend Deira.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ He smiled at her and then asked both of them if they’d like dessert.
‘I couldn’t manage it,’ said Grace. ‘But coffee, please. A decaf Americano.’
‘Same for me,’ said Deira.
‘Right away.’ Duncan went to get the coffees.
‘I thought you said it was your first time here,’ said Deira. ‘But you seem to know him well.’
‘It is,’ said Grace. ‘Oddly, I met him in Toledo and I couldn’t believe the coincidence in him living near me. We got chatting that night you stayed in your room. I thought it would be nice to check out his restaurant.’
Deira gave her a speculative look as she commented that Duncan had seemed very pleased to see her.
‘Of course he was,’ said Grace. ‘All the restaurant owners make a fuss of their regular customers.’
‘But you’re not a regular customer,’ Deira reminded her.
‘Well, no. But I’m sure he hopes I will be.’
‘Ah, a customer. You think that’s all he’s hoping for?’ Deira raised an eyebrow.
‘I’m sure it is.’ Grace felt the colour rise in her cheeks. ‘I just thought—’ She broke off as Duncan came back and placed the coffees in front of them.
‘There’s chemistry,’ said Deira when he had gone. ‘I can feel it.’
‘You’re being silly.’
‘No,’ said Deira. ‘I’m not.’
When they asked for the bill and Duncan told them the meal was on the house, she gave Grace another pointed look that the older woman studiously
ignored. And when Duncan gave them a double-cheek kiss in farewell, she noticed that he lingered slightly longer than necessary with Grace.
‘I like him,’ said Grace defensively when they were having a drink on the balcony later that night. ‘But that’s as far as it goes. I’m not looking for a replacement husband, Deira. No matter what you might think.’
Deira said nothing.
But she smiled into the darkness.
Chapter 34
Cartagena to Dublin: 2,729 km
She still hadn’t driven through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair, thought Deira as she stepped off the plane at Dublin airport into a gusting wind and temperatures ten degrees lower than the south of Spain. But that didn’t matter. She’d get around to it someday. However, having a child – would that ever happen? She still didn’t know. Nevertheless, she realised that in the last few days she hadn’t looked at a man and wondered if he could be the possible father of her child. She hadn’t thought about getting pregnant every minute. She hadn’t almost doubled over in pain every time she saw a mother and baby. Which wasn’t to say that might not happen again. It was simply that right now, at this moment, she’d managed to put that particular desire and longing into a space in her head that didn’t need to be accessed. And for the next few weeks, despite the precarious state of her eggs, she wasn’t going to access it.
‘It’s weird to be back sooner than I expected,’ said Grace after they’d collected their bags and gone through passport control. ‘It goes to show, doesn’t it, that you can make as many plans as you like, but they can come to nothing.’
Deira nodded and followed her into the arrivals hall, where, almost immediately, Grace gave a cry of delight and waved at a tall woman holding a toddler in her arms. The woman was a younger version of Grace herself. Less elegant, Deira thought, but with the same fine features and blue eyes. The toddler, when he saw Grace, squirmed in his mother’s grip and held out his arms towards his grandmother.
‘Who’s my best boy!’ cried Grace as she lifted him towards her and smothered him in kisses. ‘Who’s the person I’ve missed the most in the world?’
‘Not me, I’m guessing.’ The woman gave her an amused look. ‘Hello, Mum.’
‘Aline, sweetheart, it’s lovely to see you. Thank you for coming to pick me up. This is my friend Deira.’
Aline held out her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. ‘Mum’s talked about you a lot.’
‘And about you,’ said Deira. ‘It’s nice to finally meet you.’
‘Thank you for travelling with her,’ said Aline.
‘I was lucky she asked me,’ Deira said. ‘Otherwise I might have been stuck in Nantes for the duration. As it is, we had a fabulous trip together.’
‘But you cut it short, Mum.’ Aline frowned. ‘You weren’t terribly clear why in your phone call. Plus you’ll still have to go back to bring the car home.’
‘I know, I know,’ said Grace. ‘But that’s not for over a month. I can be home for a few days in the meantime.’
‘Of course you can,’ said Aline. ‘It’s just—’
‘We can talk about it later,’ said Grace. ‘Right now, I think we should make a move.’ She turned to Deira. ‘Are you absolutely sure you want to take a taxi? It’s no trouble to drop you home.’
‘It would be madness for you to even think about it,’ said Deira. ‘It’s close to rush hour and I’m on the other side of the city. Go home with your family and . . . well, we’ll talk soon.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Grace. ‘Take care of yourself.’ She handed Declan back to Aline and hugged Deira. ‘As soon as I have the USB, I’ll call you.’
‘OK.’
‘You’ll be all right, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will.’
‘Talk soon.’ Grace gave her another hug and then picked up her grandson again. ‘My goodness, you’re getting to be a big boy,’ she said. ‘Soon I won’t be able to lift you at all.’
Deira watched as they walked out of the terminal building together, then made her way to the taxi rank.
Other than asking her for her address, the taxi driver didn’t speak and, grateful for the silence, she tipped him generously when he pulled up outside the house. Before going in, she opened the post box and took out the accumulated mail. There wasn’t much – she’d signed up to paperless billing for most things, and nobody sent personal letters any more. But she identified the documents from the insurance company straight away.
She put her key in the lock and stepped inside.
She walked past the tied bag of rubbish that Bex had left in the hallway and climbed the stairs. Another time she would have raged at her niece for not putting it in the bin outside, but now she didn’t care.
Her bedroom door was open and the scent that lingered very faintly in the air was Gillian’s. Her sister always wore strong fragrances. But apart from the traces of Black Opium, everything was exactly as she’d left it and there were no other signs that anyone had slept in her room. Even the sex toys that Gillian had commented on hadn’t been disturbed, although Deira had a sudden wild image of her sister trying out one of the vibrators. She clamped down on it immediately before deciding that she was never going to be able to use any of them ever again.
Before starting to unpack, she rang the local Thai restaurant and ordered honey pepper chicken for delivery. When she’d finished eating, she opened the envelope from the insurance company, took out the forms and signed them.
She found it hard to believe that it was less than a fortnight ago that she’d sneaked into the car park of Gavin’s building to take the Audi. She remembered thinking of herself as a spy back then. And now what was she?
A woman on her own who had decisions to make.
But who really wasn’t sure how she was going to make them.
Even though the house had felt big and empty after Ken’s death, Grace hadn’t been bothered by it. But today, after Aline had kissed her goodbye and gone home, she was suddenly overwhelmed by the stillness and silence surrounding her. For the first time, her husband’s passing seemed real to her; she accepted he was gone and wasn’t coming back.
She pushed open the door to his office. The walls were lined with shelves crammed with books. His desk was piled with papers. Box files overflowing with even more papers were piled up on the floor. Everything about the room spoke of Ken.
She sat in the swivel chair beside the desk. It was the first time she’d ever sat in it, and it was more comfortable than she’d imagined. She wondered if, in the hours that Ken had been locked away in here supposedly working, he’d done what she was doing now: sat back in the comfortable chair, closed his eyes and propped his feet up on the desk.
‘I’m busy!’ She could hear his abrupt tone as she tapped on the door. ‘Don’t disturb me.’
But maybe he’d been busy enjoying the peace and quiet of his private space while she dealt with the competing demands of Aline, Fionn and Regan and whatever crisis had taken hold. She couldn’t blame him if that was the case. She’d often wanted a private space herself.
She opened her eyes and stood up again, walking out of the office and through the house. It had been a perfect family home, with its four bedrooms, two reception rooms and extended kitchen, but she was no longer living as a family. She was a woman on her own. She was a woman in charge of her own life.
She was going to put it on the market straight away.
Deira dropped the signed forms at the insurance office on her way to her interview with the CEO of the tech company. As with her current job, she’d be able to walk to work if she took up a position there, a benefit of being so close to the city. Nevertheless, that depended on being able to continue living in the canalside mews, which would be in doubt if Gavin took an adversarial approach to their separation. She’d never really thought about what might happen if they split, because she’d never thought they would. And on the occasions when Gill had mentioned that she might be in a better position
legally if she married Gavin, she’d dismissed the comments as further interfering in her life. Yet Gill could have had a point and she’d been a fool not to listen. Perhaps she’d misjudged her sister. Maybe she always had.
She turned towards Hanover Quay, where so many tech companies were now headquartered. Except for occasional visits to the contemporary theatre nearby, it wasn’t a part of the city she usually visited, and she was struck by the energy of the glass and chrome buildings around her, somehow more dynamic and less forgiving than the warm terracotta of the Solas Life and Pensions offices.
Am I dynamic enough or modern enough for them? she wondered as she walked up the steps of Arc Tech. Or am I like my damn eggs, approaching my best-before date?
Yet she was enthused rather than dampened by the wide space inside the building that the young CEO told her was the designated area for the proposed visitor centre, and she couldn’t help envisaging herself working there.
‘We want to make it welcoming and accessible,’ said Ardal Crane. ‘We want to showcase art and culture. We want to make people feel that we’re part of the community.’
She asked questions about the business itself as well as the ideas he had for the space, pushing against his thoughts for it and testing her own. He was as eager as she was to explore the possibilities, and she was surprised when she realised that they’d been talking for over an hour.
‘I think you’d be a great fit for us,’ he said. ‘How about I chat to Bethany and see what sort of proposal I can put together to make this happen?’
‘Sounds good,’ she said, and shook his hand.
It was only after she’d left that she wondered if he could possibly be the one.
But she dismissed the thought almost as soon as she had it.
As Pat Rice lived on the other side of town, Grace had agreed to meet him in the city centre on Saturday morning. They both arrived at the Starbucks in College Green at exactly the same time, which made Pat observe that she was one of the few punctual women he’d ever met in his life.
The Women Who Ran Away: Will their secrets follow them? Page 32
