The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,11

your own? That must be a couple of thousand kilometres at least.’

‘Seventeen hundred,’ said Grace. ‘Though I’ll be adding a few more with some detours. And you?’

‘My original plan was to drive to Paris. But I’ve been rethinking that over the last few hours. So I’m not entirely sure yet.’

‘I was always too terrified to drive in Paris,’ said Grace. ‘I should have tried it first when I was younger, but I didn’t, and now I doubt I ever will.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you look like a woman who could do anything she put her mind to,’ Deira said.

Grace smiled. ‘Thank you.’

‘I guess if you’ve done this trip nearly a dozen times, you’re used to driving on the Continent,’ said Deira.

‘I’ve only driven there twice,’ Grace told her. ‘As a family, the furthest we travelled was to La Rochelle. My husband did most of the driving; he only trusted me behind the wheel every so often.’

Deira wasn’t sure what to say in reply. There had been an undercurrent to Grace’s tone that made her think the other woman might not always have appreciated being the passenger. She wondered where the husband was now, but she didn’t ask.

The waiter arrived with Grace’s main course (she’d also opted for the tuna) and cleared away Deira’s finished meal. Deira ordered coffee and then went back to the buffet to choose a dessert. Out of habit, she avoided the luscious chocolate tarts and selection of cheesecakes and instead went for a fruit salad and yoghurt.

Grace had returned to reading her book as she ate, and didn’t look up when Deira sat down again. Deira supposed that the older woman would have liked a table for one just as much as she would. And yet it had been nice to speak to another person. Besides, there was something comforting in Grace’s calm, melodic voice, something stabilising about her serenity. Somehow Deira could easily imagine her driving sedately the length of France and Spain. She had no idea how long such a journey would take, but it would certainly be a good deal more than the six or so hours from Roscoff to Paris. After Gavin had booked the ferry and Deira had looked at the route to the French capital, she’d wondered why he hadn’t chosen a ferry to Calais instead. Paris was less than two hours from Calais by car. But he’d told her that he’d wanted to do the Cork to Roscoff journey again. That it had been lovely when he’d done it before and he wanted to share it with her. That had shut her up, because they never talked about his time before her. When he was married to Marilyn and part of a family with two children of his own.

Deira had never intended to become part of his life.

But she had.

And for a while, it had been the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Chapter 5

Dublin, Ireland: 53.3498°N 6.2603°W

She was twenty-five years old and had been working in Hagan’s Fine Art Gallery and Auction Rooms for almost a year when Gavin Boyer walked in. She noticed him straight away, a tall, confident man with jet-black hair who ignored the carefully curated displays and strode up to the mahogany desk where she was seated. After introducing himself, he asked to see Kevin Hagan.

‘Mr Hagan isn’t here today.’ Deira was polite despite the fact that Gavin had been abrupt. ‘He’s at an exhibition in London. Can I take a message?’

‘He can’t be in London. I have a meeting with him,’ said Gavin.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Boyer, but he’s very definitely in London, and if you arranged a meeting with him, he’s somehow mixed up the dates.’ Deira knew she was right, but nevertheless she tapped on her keypad to check the online calendar. ‘There’s no meeting in his diary.’

‘I should’ve texted him to confirm,’ Gavin said irritably. ‘He’s hopeless.’

Deira kept quiet, but privately she agreed with the attractive man standing in front of her that Kevin was hopeless when it came to meetings, especially if he set them up himself. Never knowingly missing a detail when it came to arts and antiquities, he was forgetful about everything else.

‘The earliest I can schedule a meeting for you is Monday afternoon, if that helps,’ she said.

‘Monday it is, so.’ He smiled suddenly, and looked less like a grumpy old man. Not that he was old in the first place, Deira thought as she logged the meeting. But he was older than