The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,98
with the message that it was a match, and that the number she needed was 5. So she typed in 5236 and waited.
Chapter 26
Alcalá de Henares to Toledo: 105 km
Good that you’re still with me, Hippo. Your reward is the letter T. Did you like Alcalá de Henares? It’s an amazing place, the history, the culture, the learning . . . I hope you had time to take a proper tour. Anyhow, moving on, you’re going to have to find and upload a picture of our previous scribe in Toledo. Easy pickings, don’t you think? It’s not only about the literature, though; another creative artist did some of his best work here. How old was he when he died? And what month? Six guesses in case you need them, but I’m sure you won’t. Easy-peasy!
‘I wonder what these letters are going to spell out,’ said Deira.
‘Another place, perhaps?’ suggested Grace. ‘Somewhere else he wants me to visit.’
‘Could be,’ agreed Deira.
‘Are you planning to continue the journey with me?’ Grace asked the question casually.
Deira hesitated. She hadn’t given much further thought to her idea of abandoning Grace in Alcalá de Henares. It had seemed the right thing to do when they’d argued, but now she didn’t like the idea of walking away.
‘I’d be happy if you stayed,’ said Grace. ‘But it’s entirely up to you.’
‘I was angry at you because you were reading my mind and I was being stupid,’ said Deira. ‘I’m sorry. If you don’t mind having me with you, I’d really like to carry on.’
‘We’ve come this far together. It would be a shame to break up a successful partnership,’ Grace told her.
Deira smiled. ‘True.’
‘I’ll leave you to have your breakfast in peace. There’s no rush to leave. It’s only an hour or so to Toledo. I’m going to go for a wander around the town again. Checkout is at eleven. D’you want to meet back here then?’
Deira nodded.
Grace walked out of the breakfast room.
And both of them sighed with relief.
While she lingered over the peppermint tea she’d decided would be better for her than coffee, Deira sent Bex a text asking if everything was OK at the house. Even though she’d initially been annoyed at her niece staying in her home, she felt terrible that she’d been caught in the crossfire between her and Gavin. But there was a part of her that was now happy to think that Bex was there and that Gavin and Afton couldn’t try to move in. At the moment, the two of them were living in an apartment that, Deira had learned previously, actually belonged to Afton’s parents. If she wasn’t so angry with Gavin, she’d think there was something a little sad about a fifty-seven-year-old man living in an apartment owned by the parents of his twenty-something girlfriend, but she didn’t have any room in her heart for sympathy.
There was no response from Bex, so she spent some time checking social media, eventually turning, as she so often did these days, to Afton’s Instagram. Normally Afton posted half a dozen times a day, but there had been nothing for the past week. Deira wondered if Gavin had asked her not to put anything up because he didn’t want Deira to see their lives together. Whatever the reason for the other woman’s social media silence, there were still no updates.
Having finished her tea, Deira filled her glass with more juice and sent a photo of the cloisters to Tillie. She was pleased to get a response straight away.
Looks super chilled and mindful.
Deira told her about the tombstones of the nuns.
Their spirits are watching over you, was Tillie’s response.
Deira doubted that. And anyhow, she wondered if the spirits of two women who’d died young, probably from some contagious disease, could possibly watch over her in any way other than with disgust that she was so crap at coping with life at her advanced age. Back then, when life expectancy had been so much shorter, she’d have been considered an old woman. And now, despite her sharp new hairstyle and embracing of scarlet lipstick, her body still didn’t think it was young. She thought of the statistics again. Even if by some miracle she did get pregnant, the chance of a miscarriage for a woman her age was 34 per cent; for a woman in her early twenties it could be as low as 9 per cent.
She thought of all the times in the past she’d worried about being pregnant: when she’d been