The Women Who Ran Away: Will their secrets follow them? Page 5

  Deira was too experienced in the way of business by now to believe every word he was saying. But she liked to think that she really had made a difference, and said so.

  ‘You totally have,’ Gavin assured her. ‘You’ve made a difference to the company and you’ve made a difference to me too.’

  ‘How have I made a difference to you?’ Deira took a sip from her glass of wine. Solas had provided a free bar for its employees, and she was aware that she had, perhaps, taken advantage of it a little more than she’d meant to. But what the hell, it was Christmas.

  ‘You’ve made me think differently,’ replied Gavin. ‘About how I approach my work. My life, too.’

  ‘Your life?’

  ‘Having you around with your positive attitude to everything has changed me,’ he said. ‘I used to look for reasons why things couldn’t work. Now I look for reasons to make them work.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m glad you think I’m a positive person.’

  ‘I think you’re a lovely person,’ said Gavin.

  It was the free alcohol talking, Deira knew that. And it was the free alcohol that made her lean her head against his shoulder and tell him that he was a lovely person too, and that the day he’d come into Hagan’s had changed her life completely and she was thankful to him for that.

  ‘We’re thankful for each other.’ He put his arm around her and hugged her.

  ‘Hey, lovebirds!’ Derek Coogan from Internal Audit joined them. ‘Don’t worry. What happens at the party stays at the party.’

  Deira sat up straight. ‘Nothing’s happening at the party,’ she said. ‘We were having a moment.’

  ‘Says who!’ Derek, who’d also clearly enjoyed the free bar, started to laugh.

  Deira got up and walked away. It was late, and she reckoned this would be a good time to leave. She collected her coat and walked outside the hotel where the party was taking place.

  The rain was thundering down.

  ‘I’ve ordered a taxi.’ Gavin was standing behind her. ‘Want to share?’

  She turned in surprise.

  ‘No party is worth staying at if you’re going,’ he said as a car rolled to a stop in front of them.

  She wasn’t sure how good an idea this was. But the taxi was waiting and she didn’t know how long it would take to get another one. So she climbed in.

  He’d kissed her before they even reached the main road.

  Chapter 6

  Celtic Sea: 51.5499°N 7.9756°W

  The waiter, returning with the coffee she’d ordered, brought Deira back to the present. Opposite her, Grace had left her book on the table while she selected a dessert from the buffet. Deira could see that she was about halfway through it, although it was clear that it had been read many times before. She wondered if it was Grace’s go-to book, the one she read when she needed comfort. If so, Grace’s tastes were far more literary than her own. Deira’s go-to book wasn’t any of the great classics she’d studied at college, but a romantic thriller that had belonged to her mother, and which she’d read in her teens. Set in the late 1950s, Nine Coaches Waiting was the story of a governess who goes to France to look after the nephew of a count and then finds herself in mortal danger. Deira had been captivated by the glamour and intrigue when she’d started to read it one rainy afternoon, and had been totally caught up in both the predicament and the romantic entanglements of the governess. Even when she read it again now, she still felt a knot of tension in her stomach over the outcome. She’d never understood why people were so sniffy about romance in books when so much of real life was taken up with the effect relationships had on everyone. But she’d never mentioned it to her tutor, who would have been appalled at the idea of one of his students reading what he insisted was inferior trash.

  She sighed. She’d been caught up in the excitement of her forbidden (and secret) romance with Gavin for a long time too. Maybe she’d felt a little like a heroine in her own personal novel. Despite her guilt at their affair, she’d told herself that she was helping him through a bad time in his life. He’d spent a lot of time saying how difficult Marilyn was. How she undermined him in front of the girls. Deira hadn’t intended to fall in love with him, but it had been inevitable. Moving in with him had been inevitable too, even though Gillian had been horrified and had come to Dublin to try to knock some sense into her. But Deira had told her sister that her days of interfering in her life were over and that she was old enough to make her own choices now. They couldn’t be any worse than the ones Gillian had forced upon her.

  Old enough but not necessarily wise enough, she thought as she got up from the table and nearly bumped into Grace, who was returning with the large slice of Pavlova she’d chosen as her dessert.

  ‘Sorry,’ gasped Deira as she sidestepped quickly.

  ‘Well dodged.’ Grace smiled. ‘Enjoy the rest of your holiday.’

  ‘You too,’ said Deira. ‘Safe travels.’

  She walked out of the dining room and paused at the small bar area nearby. Despite her earlier decision to have only water, she suddenly felt the urge for a glass of wine. But the bar was crowded and there wasn’t an available seat, so instead she went to the promenade deck, stepping out of the air-conditioned warmth into the chill wind. She shivered, and zipped her jacket up to the collar before glancing at the sky. It was almost dark overhead, but the horizon was a spectacular canvas of pinks and golds as the sun slid out of view.

  She leaned over the rail, mesmerised by the rhythmic ploughing of the ferry through the water, and wondered what Gavin was doing now. She wanted to think that deep down, at least, he regretted what had happened. She wanted to think that he was ashamed. But she doubted it. He’d left Marilyn and Mae and Suzy to live with her, after all. And that hadn’t bothered him in the slightest.

  ‘Of course I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Marilyn,’ he told her the day they moved in together. ‘But Deira, darling, the marriage had been on the rocks for years.’

  She believed him about that. From the first moment she’d met Marilyn at the exhibition, she’d wondered about the two of them. Gavin’s then wife had seemed remote and uninterested in the success of the night. She’d insisted on leaving early and taking the girls with her. Gavin had been disappointed to see her go.

  I might have been the catalyst but not the cause, Deira often told herself. The relationship was already splintered when I met him. She reckoned that the thirteen years they’d been together since then proved it. Thirteen years wasn’t a casual romance. It was a proper relationship.

  Marilyn and Gavin had been together for twenty. She’d been right about him marrying young.

  She leaned further over the rail.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The male voice behind her sounded so concerned that she straightened up immediately.

  ‘Of course,’ she said as she turned around.

  If he hadn’t spoken with an Irish accent, Deira would have assumed the man standing in front of her was French. There was a studied nonchalance to the way he wore his old leather jacket, distressed jeans and scuffed trainers. His dark wavy hair was loose and a little too long, but it suited him.

  Could he be the one? The question flashed into her head almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Could it be him? Was it fate meeting him here, now? What would Tillie think? What would she say?

  Deira already knew, because even though Tillie hadn’t said it earlier, she’d said it more than once when she’d learned of Deira’s plans. ‘Don’t do anything crazy. Don’t make a rash decision.’

  She squeezed her eyes closed. Part of the reason she’d decided to come away was to stop asking the same question every time she saw someone new. To put herself in a different place mentally and physically. And yet here she was, same old, sad old Deira. Gavin would laugh at her if he knew what was going through her head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the stranger. ‘I thought you were feeling ill.’

  ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’

>   ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  ‘It was kind of you to ask, though.’

  ‘It’s a bit choppy this evening,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it gets to people. But this wouldn’t be the best side to vomit from. The wind is coming from the west.’

  ‘Ugh.’ She smiled involuntarily at the image. ‘Do you do this crossing often?’

  ‘I used to do it more than I do now,’ he replied. ‘Always enjoy it. And you?’

  ‘It’s my first time,’ she said.

  ‘Are you driving far afterwards?’

  She supposed this was a standard question on a ferry crossing.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ she replied.

  ‘Flying by the seat of your pants.’ He grinned and pushed his hair out of his eyes. ‘I like that. Have fun.’

  The door to the interior of the ferry opened and a family clattered out, the younger children shrieking in delight, their parents watching them closely as they ran along the deck.

  ‘I’d better get back in,’ said Deira. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You too,’ said the man.

  He took up her place at the rail.

  She stepped inside again.

  He was a random stranger.

  He wasn’t the one.

  It was considerably quieter now. Walking around the ferry again, Deira realised that many of the passengers had gone to the forward lounge, where there was music and entertainment, leaving other areas of the ship deserted. After buying some chocolate in the shop, for no reason other than something to do, she returned to the bar outside the restaurant, where she ordered the glass of wine she’d promised herself. She found a seat beside the window, then opened her iPad and selected maps.

  If she stuck with her plan to go to Paris, the drive would take five and a half hours, excluding breaks, travelling via the motorway and main routes. It would be an hour longer if she chose to avoid motorways, but she reckoned it might be better to stick to the major routes for her first few hours on Continental soil. The last thing she wanted to do was wander around the back roads of Brittany without any clear idea of where she was. Obviously the satnav would eventually get her to her destination, but she and Gavin had once had a dodgy experience in Italy where the satnav in their rented car had chosen to bring them down some almost impassable local roads to reach their hotel when there was a perfectly good main-road alternative. (Afterwards she’d worked out it was because they’d selected ‘shortest route’ in the preferences. The local roads had certainly been shorter, but in Deira’s opinion, ‘avoid terrifying routes’ should have been an option too.)

  She double-clicked on the map and brought up hotel suggestions for Paris. She didn’t want her journey around the French capital to be a hair-raising attempt to find a central hotel, so she looked at possibilities on the outskirts. If her dinner companion, the seemingly imperturbable Grace, was too terrified to drive through the city, Deira reckoned she’d struggle herself. In any event, it wasn’t as though she was a first-time visitor and needed to be in the centre. She’d been to Paris twice before with Gavin. On those occasions they’d taken the Métro from the airport to their chic boutique hotel. Staying outside the Périphérique would mean she could take the Métro again at first, and get her bearings before throwing herself at the mercy of the traffic.

  Am I utterly bonkers to want to drive around one of the most chaotic cities in the world just because of a forty-year-old song? she asked herself. When I know there are plenty of things I can do no matter what age I am? What the hell is wrong with me?

  But of course there was still one thing it was likely she’d never get the opportunity to do. And it was the most important thing in the world.

  Out of nowhere, the tears came again.

  Chapter 7

  Dublin to New York: 5,112 km

  Like Deira, Grace Garvey also had a cabin on Deck 8, which meant that she too had an outside balcony and a small seating area. After dinner, she’d spent some time on the balcony, but the chilly wind had driven her back inside, and now she was sitting at the low table, Ken’s laptop open in front of her.

  She was looking at the eight documents again, clicking on them one by one and shaking her head each time they asked for a password. She was torn between her desire to work it out and a quite separate desire to completely ignore Ken and his stupid documents and head straight for their apartment in the south of Spain without any palaver. It was about half an hour’s drive from Cartagena, the name on the last folder.

  But he’d got inside her head, that was the problem. He’d always been good at getting inside her head.

  So she stayed looking at the computer screen and eventually turned her attention to the folder titled Nantes. Her initial guess at a password had been the date of their wedding anniversary, thinking it was the most likely answer, but no matter which way she entered it – numerically, with text, or a combination of both – she continued to get a ‘password incorrect’ message. She felt her irritation with her late husband increase at every failed attempt to unlock the document, and imagined Ken’s exasperation at her failure. He would have told her to think, she knew. He was always telling her to think. Use your head, not your heart, he’d say. Stop making mad, emotionally charged decisions.

  She’d tried desperately hard, particularly over the last couple of years, not to make emotionally charged decisions, although his assessment of her approach was flawed. It was never as emotionally charged as he believed. But it wasn’t based on pure logic either. She often told him that a man like him, who read so much, should be more in tune with feelings than he was. And he would say that it was precisely because he’d read so widely that he understood the disastrous effects of unfettered feelings. That was why he liked his life to be determined by reason. But not all the time, he’d add with a smile, because I married you, didn’t I, Hippolyta, which was definitely emotion not logic.

  Had he regretted that? And had his final decision been emotional or logical? She wished she knew.

  She turned back to the documents. There had to be something she hadn’t tried yet.

  ‘You idiot,’ she muttered as she got another ‘password incorrect’ message. She wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or to her husband. ‘If you wanted me to solve this, if it’s as important as you want me to believe, then why did you make it so bloody hard?’

  Because he’d loved mysteries, she supposed. And riddles. And codes. After he’d cut back on his academic workload, he’d taken up setting crossword puzzles for the professional journal he subscribed to. He liked to make them as difficult as possible. After all, he told her, his peers were clever people. He had to pose a worthwhile challenge to them.

  ‘But not annoy them too much, surely,’ she’d said. ‘You want them to be able to finish it, don’t you?’

  ‘Eventually,’ he’d replied. ‘But not immediately. I don’t believe in instant gratification.’

  She’d never been able to finish one of his crosswords. In fact she was triumphant if she solved more than a couple of the clues correctly. Now she had eight to work out and no idea how she was going to go about it.

  Were we completely incompatible? she wondered, as she continued to enter a variety of dates into the password bar. Was our entire marriage based on him being super-intelligent and me being super-thick?

  She thumped the keyboard, to no effect. She knew she wasn’t stupid. But there was a difference between her intelligence and Ken’s. She was life-clever. Competent at resolving issues and conflicts. Competent at getting things done. He was – had been – intellectually clever. Which was very different.

  She’d known that from the start.

  Grace Garvey had met Ken Harrington on her first transatlantic flight from Dublin to New York. Transatlantic was a promotion for her and she’d worked hard not to show her nervousness as she greeted the passengers with a confident ‘good morning’ and a pleasant smile so that they felt personally welcomed on board.

  She’d noticed him init
ially because he didn’t have his boarding card ready when he arrived at the door to the plane. If there was anything that was guaranteed to put a passenger in Grace’s bad books it was not having their boarding card ready and consequently holding everyone else up as they searched through everything they possessed to find it.

  As he tried his inside jacket pockets and then the battered leather satchel that was slung over his shoulder, she reminded herself that he could be one of the many people who were heading to the States in search of work that simply wasn’t there in Ireland, and that he might be distracted and upset, the boarding card the least of his worries. She had sympathy for the emigrants, who she normally identified straight away – young men and women with resigned expressions on their faces. But Ken didn’t have their broken air of despair. He was quietly confident, if somewhat distracted over the disappearance of the boarding card, and he frowned and rubbed his beard in frustration while he wondered aloud where it could be. Unlike his hair, which was dark brown, the beard was liberally sprinkled with fiery red.

  ‘Perhaps in the pocket of your jeans?’ she suggested.

  ‘Oh God, yes. Sorry.’ He found and handed her the boarding card. ‘I’m not good on details,’ he added.

  She bit back her riposte that the boarding card wasn’t a detail and directed him to his seat before turning her attention to the queue of passengers behind him.

  When everyone was finally boarded and the plane was being pushed back from the stand, she did her walk through the cabin to make sure that seat belts were fastened and table trays up. She generally divided the passengers into two categories. Those who buckled up as soon as they took their seats and who watched the safety demonstration intently before checking out their nearest escape route; and those who rebelled by not bothering to do either and who sighed theatrically when she asked them to fasten their belt and secure the tray in the seat-back in front of them.