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