The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,84

head pounding. But this morning her eyes had flickered open gently and she’d had a few moments of complete restfulness before becoming fully awake.

When she got up and opened the curtains, she was cheered by the blue sky and the sound of people already going about the business of the day. As she showered and then dressed in her travelling clothes of T-shirt and capri pants, she thought of Deira and the feelings of jealousy she’d harboured towards her the previous evening. In the bright light of the morning, she found it hard to believe that she’d resented her for being younger and prettier and catching the attention of a man. Why should she care? Besides, Deira was going through a trauma of her own. And in Grace’s opinion, she was a lot less well equipped to cope than Grace herself was. While not being part of the so-called snowflake generation, the younger woman hadn’t had the tough-love upbringing of Grace, who’d been told from an early age that life wasn’t fair, that she could never have everything she wanted and – one of her father’s favourite sayings – that there were more important people in the world than her. Of course there were more important people, she acknowledged, but you were the most important person to yourself. The trick, she reckoned, was not always behaving as though that were the case.

She’d raised her three children with a lot more demonstrations of affection than her own parents had shown towards her and her siblings. She’d raised them as though they were the most important people in her life, because that was true. She hoped it had been a better way of doing things. She hoped that it meant they could cope with whatever life threw at them, and still feel loved and cherished. Somehow she got the impression that Deira didn’t feel that way, which was sad.

It was shortly after nine when she went to the breakfast room. As she selected fruit, coffee and croissants, she allowed herself to think about the clue that she hadn’t yet been able to solve, the clue Ken had said he couldn’t make any easier if he tried. She knew the number of the room was right. But how could the statue of Hemingway be wrong?

She poured herself a second coffee and texted Deira. But there was no reply. She wondered if Deira was annoyed with her for rushing away the previous evening. But there was no reason for her to be annoyed. She didn’t know the thoughts that had been going through Grace’s head.

Going to see if I can find a photo of Hemingway to upload, she texted when she’d finished her breakfast. It’s not the one I took of him at the café yesterday. Let me know when you want to meet up. I thought we could leave about midday provided we manage to solve the clue. It’s a four-hour drive to Alcalá de Henares. She put her phone in her bag, took an information leaflet from the stand in the hotel’s reception area and went outside.

There was a Hemingway route through the town that took in various locations relating to the writer’s time in Pamplona, so she crossed the plaza and walked along the Paseo Sarasate – a wide street with a paved rambla where people could walk and sit. The apparent significance of the street was an old restaurant where Hemingway used to eat that was now a chocolate shop, but other than the fact that the chocolate looked amazing, there was nothing remarkable about it. Nor was there anything noteworthy about the next stop on the map either. She was beginning to think that every business in Pamplona had a tenuous Hemingway connection simply to draw business their way.

Five minutes later she was in front of the bullring. That was where she saw Deira, phone in hand, taking photos.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ she said as she caught up with her.

‘Grace.’ Deira smiled. ‘I’ve just seen your text. Are you feeling better?’

‘Much,’ said Grace. ‘And Deira, listen, I’m sorry about last night.’

‘What for?’ asked Deira.

‘I kind of left you in the lurch with Charlie,’ said Grace. ‘I—’

‘You were feeling a bit frazzled. Don’t worry about it. I went to the art gallery and it was lovely.’

Grace had been so sure that Deira would have picked up on her irrational jealousy about Charlie that she couldn’t quite believe the other woman hadn’t a notion what she was talking about. She exhaled