her old tutor, who was much thinner and greyer than she remembered. But then, she reminded herself, it was a long time since she’d been at college, so she had to expect that he would have changed even without his illness. What hadn’t changed, though, was his self-confidence, his unerring belief in his own superiority. Deira could see how that attitude might be hurtful to Grace now. Whatever he might have been feeling himself, Ken Harrington came across in the video as being unconcerned about his wife’s emotions.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘I’m sure that was difficult to watch.’
Grace shrugged. ‘It’s typical Ken.’
‘Do you still want to go ahead with the treasure hunt?’ asked Deira. ‘I totally understand if you don’t.’
‘He says it could be important to my future.’
‘In what way?’ asked Deira. ‘And does it really matter? If you don’t want to do it and if you’re fine the way things are, then you don’t have to.’
‘I know.’
‘Could it be money?’ Deira wondered. ‘Is it possible he has a . . . oh, I dunno, a bank account you don’t know about?’
‘A secret stash?’ Grace shook her head. ‘I can’t see how. He was an academic, not a high-rolling businessman. There was no way for him to make extra money or siphon off expenses or anything like that. Besides, he wasn’t a money-motivated sort of person. We argued about that sometimes,’ she added a little ruefully. ‘I thought he could put himself about more, but for Ken it was always about the knowledge and the learning, not the promotions and the pay grade.’
‘What else could be important?’ wondered Deira.
‘I don’t know. And of course, important to Ken might not be important to me,’ said Grace. ‘Our priorities were often quite different. All the same, I feel . . . obliged, I guess, to figure it out, even though he’s just jerking me around. He was always good at playing on my emotions, making me feel . . .’ She broke off and gazed out over the Bay of Biscay, where the sun was dipping towards the horizon and turning the water into liquid gold.
‘You should do whatever your heart tells you,’ Deira said. ‘If this is too difficult for you, you can let it go, Grace.’
‘What’s difficult is that he keeps setting these silly clues.’ Grace turned towards her again. ‘If there really was something important he had to tell me, why didn’t he say so like a normal person?’
‘Maybe he left another message for you somewhere in case you didn’t work it out,’ said Deira.
‘I’ve spoken with his solicitor. He doesn’t have any envelopes marked “not to be opened until my daft wife returns from her trip empty-handed”.’ Grace snorted.
‘But if it’s so important, surely he’d want you to get the message regardless,’ said Deira.
‘You’d think. Which is why I don’t really believe it’s important at all. And yet . . .’
Deira gave her a sympathetic look. ‘If you want to abandon it, that’s absolutely your choice,’ she said. ‘He’s not here, Grace. You have to live the life you want to live now.’
‘You’re very wise,’ said Grace, a comment that made Deira stifle a snort herself because it was so far from the truth. ‘But you know what, I want to solve them for me. Because I want to believe I can do it. Besides,’ she continued, ‘every hotel on the route is already booked and paid for. I’m not the sort of person who can walk away from something that’s paid for. He probably knew that.’
‘I’m sure you could get the money back, either from the hotel or from your insurer,’ said Deira.
‘Perhaps,’ conceded Grace. ‘But I bet it’s a lot of faff for not a huge amount. Not like your car. Any news about that, by the way?’
‘Not yet. I’ll call tomorrow afternoon if I haven’t heard before then.’
‘I’m sure it’ll all work out,’ said Grace.
Deira smiled at her. ‘You want things to work out for me and I want them to work out for you. Maybe we should want things to work out for ourselves.’
‘One thing I’ve learned about life is that no matter how shitty a time you’re having, it does pass,’ said Grace. ‘And then you look back and say, that was a terrible week, or month, or year. But you’ve got to remember that it’s only a tiny amount of your whole life. It’s important to put it in perspective. Right now, I’m going to have to put Ken in perspective.’
Deira