The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,109

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 door 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