The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,3

stay in a guest house near the port and wake up refreshed and ready for the sailing. Also, Ken would say, there was no need to worry about breakdowns or anything slowing them down en route if they went ahead of time. They were where they needed to be.

Only once had Grace pointed out that if they had a breakdown in Ireland they’d be in big trouble regardless, given that they usually had at least a two-hour drive after getting off the ferry at Roscoff. But Ken had shaken his head and told her not to be a drama queen. Even though he was the one who made their annual holiday into a drama, planning it down to the finest detail and fuming if things didn’t go exactly to his meticulous plan.

Grace always did her best to ensure that nothing interfered with the plan, without him ever being aware of it. Ken was a man who became stressed when things didn’t turn out the way he wanted. This stressed Grace out too, although the children, Aline, Fionn and Regan, never seemed to notice the undercurrent of tension that surrounded the house in the week leading up to their departure. All they cared about was arriving at that year’s chosen campsite and having a good time.

And despite the stress that Ken placed upon himself, their family holidays invariably were good times. Grace’s memories of them were precious.

She sat on the bed in Portview House – the same guest house they’d used all their lives – and opened the laptop she’d brought with her. Ken’s laptop. She hadn’t intended to bring it, but at the very last minute, she’d gone back inside the house and grabbed it. She could have emailed the documents to herself, but she’d decided that perhaps the laptop might have hidden information on it that she might need. She hadn’t yet found anything, other than the sent email she’d received three months earlier. And she didn’t need to read that again. But having the laptop, knowing that it was Ken’s, was important to her.

She gazed indecisively at the folder entitled The Big Anniversary Treasure Hunt. She’d opened it when he’d first sent the email and then closed it again, not willing to be part of a plan that she’d known nothing about. And not willing to have him tell her what to do. Not when he’d done something so truly dreadful that he’d shaken her faith in everything they’d had together. But here, now, she couldn’t help herself.

She clicked on the folder. It contained eight documents, each with an individual title:

Nantes

La Rochelle

Bordeaux

Pamplona

Alcalá de Henares

Toledo

Granada

Cartagena

Each document was locked by a password. Grace had tried a couple of random passwords on them without any success. Then she’d concentrated on the Nantes document, because it was the first in the itinerary that he’d set out, bombarding it with memorable dates and other significant combinations. Frustrated by her failure, she’d moved on to La Rochelle. After her third incorrect guess, she’d got a message saying that she had seven further attempts before being locked out. She’d stopped then. Even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to see the contents of the document, she didn’t want to be locked out yet.

She’d gone back to the Nantes document, where it appeared she had as many guesses at the password as she liked, possibly because it was the first of the collection. That would be typical of Ken. Break her in easily before making things progressively more difficult. But she could almost feel his disgust at her not having been able to figure it out straight away. He’d known by the time he’d sent the email that he wouldn’t be with her to help. So why hadn’t he left her some sort of clue to start her off?

Maybe he had, she thought. And maybe she was too stupid to spot it.

Had he considered at all that she might not play his silly game? Or had he always known she’d do what he wanted no matter how ridiculous?

She snapped the lid of the laptop closed. Her brain was too frazzled to work on the passwords now. It was focused on getting to the port and boarding the ferry, as though Ken was sitting beside her telling her not to shilly-shally. He’d always made sure they arrived at the terminal exactly two and a half hours before the sailing. Once they’d even been the first car in the queue, which had pleased him no end. Grace didn’t