The Women Who Ran Away - Sheila O'Flanagan Page 0,2

being in touch with at all.

Maybe the very fact that her account had been debited without her actually noticing it was a cosmic sign. Perhaps the fact that she’d had no problem taking the car was a sign too. Or the sign could simply be that the sun was shining in a clear blue sky and the drive would be lovely.

On the other hand, it was always possible there would be something on the way to Cork that would make her come to her senses and turn around again.

‘Plenty of signs on the road to Cork,’ she muttered as she picked up the car keys. ‘Mostly telling you about motorway exits.’

She slung her bag over her shoulder, set the alarm and walked outside.

The morning air had warmed up and the bright sunlight dazzled off the canal water as she sat in the driver’s seat and lowered the roof of the car. Truth was, she rarely drove it with the roof down. She lived in Ireland, after all. There was always a good chance that a torrential downpour would arrive out of the blue. And even on the sunniest of days, the wind-chill factor meant that it wasn’t always ideal for open-top driving.

But today was perfect.

So maybe that was the sign.

Deira wondered if she should call Gillian and tell her what she was doing. But if she did, her older sister would want to know when she’d decided to make this trip and who she was going with and why she hadn’t said anything before and . . . No, talking to Gill would definitely be a sign, Deira thought. A sign that I’ve lost my mind completely.

She started the car and pulled away from the kerb. Her phone rang almost at once, and her heart began to beat wildly.

‘Are you on your way?’ asked Tillie.

‘I’ve just set off.’

‘You’ll be late.’

‘No I won’t.’

‘No phone calls?’

‘No,’ said Deira.

‘Everything will be fine,’ said Tillie. ‘Have fun.’

She waited for Tillie to remind her not to do anything crazy, but when she didn’t, Deira simply replied that she’d do her best to have a good time.

‘You deserve to,’ said Tillie. ‘I’ll send you positive vibes and keep in touch.’

‘Thanks.’ Deira ended the call and continued to follow the canal before turning onto the industrialised Naas Road. The traffic on a Saturday morning wasn’t too heavy, and she nudged her speed up a little. Her hair whipped across her face and she tucked it behind her ears. My life hasn’t been wasted, she told herself, as she thought again of Lucy Jordan. It really hasn’t.

And yet as she drove on, she was regretting once again the choices she’d made and the decisions she’d taken that now meant that, in ways she’d pretended to herself didn’t matter, the last thirteen years of her life had been entirely wasted. There was no point in thinking otherwise. Nothing could change it. That was the thing. Not taking the car, not driving to Paris, not telling herself that forty was the new thirty. What had happened had happened and the worst part of it all was that she’d been complicit in it. Which really did make her an absolute, utter, complete fool.

‘Of course you’re not a fool.’

Tillie’s words, spoken when Deira had first broken the news to her, came back to her.

‘Yes I am,’ Deira had told her. ‘I’m the same kind of fool that all women are. Thinking they’re doing what they’re doing because that’s what they want when really it’s just because they’re in love with the wrong man.’

Tillie had hugged her then.

And Deira had felt the rage and the hurt ball up inside her so tightly that she literally doubled over with the pain of it.

She felt it again now. A horrible feeling in the centre of her stomach. And the pain higher up too, the one that had made her think she might be having a heart attack. But she knew she wasn’t. She knew it was simply her anger at being played. At allowing herself to be played.

She was angrier with herself than with him.

She blamed herself more than him.

But she blamed him too, and that was why she was going away and taking the damn car with her.

Chapter 2

Ringaskiddy, Ireland: 51.8304°N 8.3219°W

Grace Garvey was already at Ringaskiddy. She’d driven from Dublin the previous night because that was what she and Ken had always done in the years when they’d taken the children on their annual camping holiday to Brittany. Drive down the night before,