The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,95
and is now an intimate boutique hotel.
Given that Ken had booked her to stay in a convent, Grace was pretty sure that Sister Iñez and Sister Julia had been members of it. There must be more information about them somewhere in the building. All she had to do was find it.
She closed the folder and walked along the corridor, not towards reception but following a sign to the restaurant. This led to yet another courtyard, this time surprisingly large, surrounded by a cloister. One side was taken up by the restaurant, and another led to a lounge. Tables and chairs were placed along the third. Like the two smaller courtyards, this one also had a fountain in the centre, with paving stones leading from it, dividing the area into quarters made up of flagstones. There were stone slabs set into the flagstones.
Grace looked at them more closely.
They were tombstones. Old tombstones, some dating back to shortly after the convent had been opened. And although she couldn’t understand every word, it was obvious that they were the tombstones of nuns who had lived here. It should have been eerie, and yet it wasn’t.
She walked slowly, looking at them individually. There were Marias and Isadoras and Teresas and Anas . . . And then she saw the one she wanted. Sister Iñez, who’d died at a mere twenty-three years old. Grace swallowed the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. She wondered if Iñez had had a vocation, or if her family had sent her to the convent because she was a burden. Perhaps she wouldn’t marry the man they’d chosen. Or maybe, for some reason, her parents were ashamed of her. She wondered what life had been like at the convent for a young woman of twenty-three; if there had been any fun, any joy in it. If Iñez had ever run along the cloisters or sat here on a chair, shaded from the sun. She hoped so. And she also hoped that whatever illness had taken the young woman’s life, she hadn’t suffered too much.
It took another minute to find Julia’s tombstone. The nun had died in June of the following year, at the age of twenty-five. Had she and Iñez been friends? wondered Grace. Had they laughed together? Joked together? Shared stories with each other? And were they, as the inscription on Julia’s tombstone seemed to suggest, at peace in heaven?
Grace didn’t believe in an afterlife, certainly not the one of angels and saints she’d been taught about as a child. It didn’t make sense to her. But here, in the quiet of the courtyard and the shade of the cloisters, she wondered if it might not be possible. And if it was, and she saw Ken there, what would she say to him? What would he say to her?
That was the thing, wasn’t it? People talked about reuniting with their loved ones, but what if their loved ones had done awful things during their lives? And what if you’d found someone else after they’d gone? What sort of set-up was that for all eternity?
Heaven and all its conundrums could wait, she decided; meantime, she’d solved the clue and all she had to do was upload the photo of Don Quixote to get the last number. She could do it now, she supposed, but Deira had been there for every other clue reveal, and even if things between them had been a bit strained lately, she’d feel bad about continuing without her.
She sat at one of the tables and ordered a water from the waiter who’d been hovering around since she’d arrived. Then she texted Deira to say she’d solved the clue and asked if she wanted to come back to the hotel to unlock it when she was finished at the hairdresser’s, or would she prefer to meet in town.
It was about fifteen minutes later when Deira replied, congratulating her on solving the clue and suggesting they meet at the Plaza Cervantes again.
Grace was suddenly quite happy to get away from the silence of the cloisters.
Reading the next clue could wait.
When she got to the plaza, she looked around for Deira, but it took a moment before she saw her, standing near the statue and waving at her.
‘You look amazing!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s fabulous.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’ Deira looked pleased. ‘I thought about what you said and I reckoned that you always look great, so I followed your advice.’