I am delighted to support the celebrations for the paperback launch of Sheila O'Flanagan's The Women Who Ran Away. I have an extract for you to sample and I am also reposting my review from the hardback launch in July 2020.
THE NO. 1 IRISH BESTSELLER!
'One of my favourite authors' Marian Keyes
'If you've had to cancel your holiday plans this summer,
don't worry - this beautiful new novel will transport you to sunnier climes...'
- HEAT'S READ OF THE WEEK
In Sheila O'Flanagan's stunning new novel, two women face up
to shocking truths about the men they've loved - and start to make their own
decisions about what to do next...
Deira isn't the kind of woman to steal a car. Or drive to
France alone with no plan. But then, Deira didn't expect to be single. Or to
suddenly realise that the only way she can get the one thing she wants most is
to start breaking every rule she lives by.
Grace has been sent on a journey by her late husband, Ken.
She doesn't really want to be on it but she's following his instructions, as
always. She can only hope that the trip will help her to forgive him. And then
- finally - she'll be able to let him go.
Brought together by unexpected circumstances, Grace and
Deira find that it's easier to share secrets with a stranger, especially in the
shimmering sunny countryside of Spain and France. But they soon find that there's
no escaping the truth, whether you're running away from it or racing towards it
. . .
WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THE WOMEN WHO RAN AWAY:
'Didn't want it to end' *****
'I would have given this 6 stars if I could'
'Within the first chapter, I had left reality and social
distancing behind and joined two amazing women on a life-changing adventure'
*****
'A great summer read'
'Five stars all the way!' *****
'Sheila O'Flanagan never disappoints' *****
'Fantastic read!'
'Couldn't put this book down!'
EXTRACT
Chapter 1
Grand Canal, Dublin, Ireland: 53.3309˚N 6.2588˚W
Even after she’d put her luggage in the tiny boot of the
convertible, Deira still wasn’t sure if she was going to go through with it.
Which was crazy, she told herself, because this was the easy bit. The harder
part had been the previous night, when she’d walked into the dimly lit
underground car park and waited for the Audi to unlock automatically. Even as
she’d told herself that nobody would take any notice of her, she’d expected one
of the residents to suddenly appear and ask her what the hell she was doing.
But the one person already there, a young man in head-to-toe Lycra, was more
concerned with unchaining his bike than with Deira’s actions.
Nevertheless, the
familiar click as she slid her hand along the driver’s door was comforting. So
was lowering herself into the driver’s seat and finding that it still moved
automatically to her favoured position when she pressed the memory button.
She’d been afraid it would have changed. But there was no lingering scent of an
unknown perfume or a different shampoo. No sense that someone else had taken
her place. Nothing at all was different. Her heartbeat slowed down. Everything
felt normal. Easy. Right.
Driving slowly
out of the apartment complex, she’d told herself that her criminal career was
off to a good start.
Of course she had
a key, which surely meant that taking the Audi wasn’t actually a criminal act,
no matter how anyone else might see it; but she wasn’t supposed to be here,
doing this. Deira didn’t care. She was past caring. And being back in the car
was comforting in a way she hadn’t expected. So it was worth it.
Now, as she
slammed the boot closed and walked back into the granite mews overlooking the
canal, she felt a sudden rush of tears fill her eyes and clamped down hard on
her jaw to try to stop them falling. It didn’t matter that she was tired of
crying; the slightest thing still set her off, blubbing uncontrollably and
embarrassing both her and anyone around her. She rubbed her eyes with the back
of her hand. If for no other reason than the sake of her skin, she needed to
get over it. Her complexion was ruined from the salt of her ever- present
tears.
She glanced at the
clock on the kitchen wall and released a slow breath. Unless she was going to
chicken out at the last minute, she’d have to leave soon. After all the trouble
she’d gone to, missing the ferry would be a complete disaster. But instead of
picking up her keys and bag and heading back outside, she put a pod in the
coffee machine and made herself an Americano. She sipped it slowly as she
studied the tickets in front of her, making doubly sure that she had the right
date. It would be idiotic of her to go on the wrong day, but over the last
couple of months she’d done so many idiotic things that she didn’t trust
herself any more. She recalled the phone calls, the emails and – worst of all –
the scene in the office, and she shuddered. She’d been made fool of, but she
knew she’d been a fool too. And that was hard to take.
She put the
tickets back in her bag. She had the right date. She wasn’t a complete idiot,
no matter what other people might think.
Although the trip
had been booked nine months previously, she’d totally forgotten about it until
the direct debit for the balance had resulted in her account being overdrawn.
She hadn’t even realised she’d gone into the red until her bank card had been declined
at her hairdresser’s. It had been one more humiliation added to all the others.
Naturally she’d burst into tears again.
It had been Gavin
who’d first suggested taking the car to France, confessing a need to drive a
stylish convertible along some decent motorways before people judged him a sad
old fart and passed comments about his virility and the size of his penis.
Deira had laughed
when he said that, and wrapped her arms around him.
‘Nobody would
think that of you, ever,’ she’d told him. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’
Because Gavin
Boyer looked at least a decade younger than his fifty-seven years. True, his
hair, once even darker than Deira’s, was now almost entirely silver-grey, but
that only made him appear even more distinguished than when he was younger. He
was still tall and broad, and even if his waist was thicker than it had been in
his twenties and thirties, he’d managed to maintain his athletic build. Rather
unfairly, in Deira’s view, he achieved this without any great effort other than
golf twice a week and an occasional visit to the swimming pool of the nearby
gym. Metabolism, he’d say airily, when she complained that, at seventeen years
younger, she put on weight simply by looking at a packet of biscuits. He made no
comment at all about her monthly trip to the hairdresser to have her own
increasing number of greys covered with an approximation of her natural
chestnut brown.
Definitely not
fair, she thought now. But life wasn’t fair, was it? Because if it was, she
wouldn’t be standing here with a rapidly cooling cup of coffee in her hand
wondering if he would set the police on her when he got home.
She took a sip of
the coffee. There was no need to worry. He wouldn’t set the police on her
because he wouldn’t know that the car was gone until the end of the following
week, and even then he wouldn’t know she was the one who’d taken it. Besides,
even if he did suspect her, she’d be miles away and there’d be nothing he could
do about it. Interpol would hardly worry about a missing car, after all.
She shook her
head. Car thief. Interpol. None of that was part of her life. France was
supposed to have been a holiday. For both of them.
My Thoughts
I
found this to be a fabulous read. I was hooked in on the journey with
Deira and Grace and found their friendship to be a major part of the
story for me. They had different life stories but both had ceded up a
part of themselves to their partners. It is so refreshing to read a
story with more mature protagonists. You are kept on the edge of your
seta as to whether their friendship will survive the journey and I
thought the stumbling way it evolved to be credible.
If one person fascinated me in the story, it had to be Grace's absent
husband, Ken, who I wanted to shake at times. Always seemingly in
control, his final letter really threw a light on their relationship.
The further the women travel, the more they have to face up to certain
facts about themselves. Warm, uplifting and full of life, you feel as if
you are on the road trip with the women. Each destination came to life
with the little details about each place. The book shimmers with the
sunshine and is a complete tonic in these lockdown days.
In short: A treasure hunt through Eutope throws two women together.
About the Author
Sheila O’Flanagan is the author of bestselling chart-toppers,
including Her Husband’s Mistake, The Hideaway, What Happened That Night, The
Missing Wife, My Mother’s Secret and All For You (winner of the Irish
Independent Popular Fiction Book of the Year Award). After working in banking
and finance for a number of years, Sheila’s love for writing blossomed into
curating stories about relationships in all their many forms.
Thanks to Sheila O'Flanagan, Headline Review and Rachel of Rachel's Random Resources for the extract and a place on the event.
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