The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,77

although she’d also found time to explore the area around the city walls, which included a large park where tourists and locals alike were relaxing in the shade of the spreading trees.

She pulled out her phone to take a photo of the city walls, and at that exact moment, it buzzed. As always, her heart skipped a beat, but it was only Gillian.

Just to let you know I’m home. You might like to text a good luck message to Bex.

Deira made a face at the screen. Once again Gill was telling her what she should do, and it irked her, especially as she’d sent a message to her niece.

It gave her a certain satisfaction to reply, Already done to Gill.

It was ridiculous to think that at this stage of their lives, their relationship was still more or less the same as it had been in their teens, a regular series of meaningless battles for one-upmanship. Somehow neither of them had got past Gill’s self-promotion to mother status; Deira hadn’t stopped resenting it, and Gill had never stopped flaunting it. ‘Or meddling in my life,’ muttered Deira as she closed the cover on the phone.

Of course if Gill had left well enough alone when they were younger, things might have turned out very differently and their relationship might be less fractious than it was. But she had meddled, and Deira had never quite forgiven her. It didn’t matter that it had been (at least in Gillian’s eyes) for Deira’s own good. It didn’t matter that Deira had forged a successful career doing what she loved afterwards. Gillian had interfered and changed everything when she should have minded her own damn business.

Deira never really knew if it was Gill’s innate snobbishness or simply her distrust of Thomas Kinsella and his family that had made her get involved. Not that her motives mattered; the result was still the same.

Thomas had been Deira’s boyfriend back when she was in her final year at school, and she’d been head over heels in love with him. At first Gillian hadn’t said anything, but over time she began to make offhand remarks about the unsuitability of a boy who hadn’t gone to college and was working full-time at a petrol service station on the Oughterard road for a girl who was smart and pretty and could do better for herself.

When Deira protested that they loved each other, Gill snorted and asked if she really thought he was what her mother would have wanted for her.

‘She would have wanted me to be happy,’ Deira replied. ‘Thomas makes me happy.’

And he did. He was a kind, uncomplicated person, lacking the nagging sense of injustice that both Gill and her father always seemed to carry with them. (Peter didn’t count; her brother did his own thing, untroubled by Gillian’s efforts to boss him around.)

‘You’re too young to know about love and happiness,’ Gill said. ‘The problem with you, Deira O’Brien, is that you think you know it all, but you don’t.’

Maybe Gill had a point now, Deira conceded, but she hadn’t back then. And yet she’d managed to split them up, though at the time Deira had had no idea about her interference. She didn’t know that Thomas stopped calling because Gill had gone to the service station and told him that Deira was going to college when she left school and that Thomas would hold her back by stopping her forming new friendships and making new connections. She didn’t know that Gill had told him that ending their relationship quickly and cleanly would be better for everyone, especially Deira. She didn’t know that Thomas, thoughtful, gentle Thomas, had taken Gill’s words to heart. Had believed them. And had broken up with her the next day without ever saying why.

Of course they’d been young and of course things might have ended of their own accord when Deira started college. But when, at her graduation, her sister casually mentioned that the day wouldn’t have happened without her, and said, with a certain sense of pride, that she’d been responsible for Thomas splitting up with her, Deira had felt herself go white with rage. And even though it was four years later and she was going out with someone else at the time, she could neither forgive Gill for interfering nor for souring her graduation day.

She’d eventually put it behind her and found happiness (at least until the moment Gavin had come home and told her about Afton), but any time she’d