The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,100

the beautifully restored buildings, and the interior of the hotel (including the tombstones), she added the one of her, Deira and the university lecturers they’d met at the bar.

It was a late night, she finished. But we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

And that was true, she realised as she hit send. For the first time since Ken’s death, she hadn’t felt the weight of guilt pressing on her shoulders. It had started to lift when she and Deira had gone into the beauty shop and she’d shown the younger woman how to use lipstick. Grace had always felt that there was nothing more uplifting than wearing a bright-red lipstick and swirling blusher on your cheeks, no matter how bad you were feeling. Shallow though she supposed other people might have found it, wearing Rouge Allure had helped her any time she left the house after Ken’s funeral. But that had been a temporary lift. Now, it was different.

When they’d been at the bar talking to the lecturers, Grace had joined in the conversation without once thinking of Ken or worrying that he would have been embarrassed by her lack of knowledge of the town and its cultural heritage. The men had been quite happy to answer the questions she’d asked, without thinking them stupid. And they’d been equally happy to share the bottle of wine with her and Deira. It had been both cheering and liberating and she’d returned to the hotel in a haze of positivity.

She still felt positive.

So positive that she wasn’t going to worry about baring her cellulite at the pool later.

Deira was about to go down to the pool herself when Bex FaceTimed her. Deira usually confined her phone calls to audio, but when her niece actually made an effort to speak rather than text, it was always FaceTime. Bex was sitting on the sofa, her feet up, propping the phone against her legs. She looked tired and less groomed than usual, her honey-blonde hair pulled back in a scrunchy. Too many late nights in the city, thought Deira.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked. ‘Gavin hasn’t come back, has he?’

‘No,’ said Bex.

‘Good. I’m sorry he bothered you.’

‘He didn’t. Not really.’

‘It was wrong of him to come in all the same.’

‘Maybe.’

Deira frowned. Her niece appeared distracted and worried, even though she’d said everything was OK. Although actually, she hadn’t. She’d replied to the question about Gavin. Not about herself. ‘Is everything all right with you?’

‘Sort of.’ Bex rubbed her eyes.

‘Why sort of? Did you hear back about the internship? Didn’t you get it?’

‘I . . . I lied to you about that,’ said Bex.

‘In what way?’

‘I didn’t go to an interview.’

‘Oh,’ said Deira, although she was thinking that Bex had lied to her mother more than to her. She said so.

‘I had to lie to her,’ said Bex. ‘She would’ve killed me otherwise.’

‘Why?’ asked Deira. ‘Wouldn’t she have let you stay in Dublin without her?’

Probably not, she thought as she spoke. Gill was the sort of woman who thought she was her daughter’s best friend, who thought it was fun to do things together. But mothers weren’t supposed to be best friends, not always. Sometimes they had to be mothers.

‘I had a different reason for coming to Dublin,’ Bex said.

A boy, thought Deira. It was nearly always a boy when you were lying to your mother.

‘I couldn’t tell her and I couldn’t tell you,’ continued Bex. ‘But I’m here in your house and . . . and I have to talk to someone.’

‘You can talk to me, of course,’ said Deira, although Bex rarely confided in her, and she never expected her to.

‘I came to Dublin for a . . . for a procedure.’

‘What sort of procedure? A beauty job? Your nose? Your boobs?’

Like every young person Deira knew, Bex was obsessed with her appearance. It took her at least an hour to get ready to leave the house, thanks to a routine that involved the application of more products than Deira even knew existed, while her insistence on using at least half a dozen specialist concoctions meant that going to bed took almost as long. However, Bex reserved particular displeasure for her 34B chest, saying that her assets were paltry in comparison with those of her friends. The last time she’d stayed with Deira, she’d talked about surgery, and Deira, feeling old beyond her years for not thinking this was a good idea, had tried to persuade her otherwise.

‘No,’ said Bex in reply to her question. ‘I stopped