Celestial Land and Sea (7 page)

No,
she
didn't have to deal with any of that.

"You're still working on that article about winter footwear, Fran?" Mr Barrie crept up behind her, breaking her concentration

"I've just finished it," she replied, not turning to look at him.

If she had to find the silver lining for her situation, it would be the fact that as long as she concentrated all her energy on giving her boss whatever it was he wanted, she wouldn't have the time to worry about how the rest of her life outside of the office seemed to be spiralling out of her control.

Mr Barrie interrupted her thoughts again. She needed to stop making a habit of drifting off. "I want you to head into town and take a look at the latest bags or accessories or whatever it is you women like to throw yourselves all over this time of year. It's party season, so women are going to need to know what to wear with their little black dresses." He leaned closer to Fran. "There's some money in the top drawer in my office. Pick up something pretty for yourself—maybe go for something that'll accentuate that neckline of yours a little more?" He glanced down, not hiding the fact that he was looking straight down her blouse.

Spending a little time looking around the shops would lift her mood a little—she couldn't deny that—but she wished it was something she could do without having to rely on Mr Barrie's bribery. Giving in to what he desired, she pressed her palms into her back to stretch before standing up and leaning her chest in his direction. Apparently he didn't seem to care that he made her do this right in the middle of the office where everybody could see her. She tried to pretend she didn't care what the others thought, but sometimes she felt like she'd lost all self-respect. But if she wanted to continue to be able to pay her bills and keep a roof over her head, especially now that she was struggling with her imminent divorce, then maybe this was just something she was going to have to live with. With no other alternative in sight, she swallowed her pride and headed for Mr Barrie's office to collect the money.

Mr Barrie scratched at his moustache before turning to face James, who was busy tapping away at his keyboard. "Anything interesting in the news?" He had, of course, read the morning newspapers himself, but he liked to test his employees and put them on the spot. He always gave James half an hour after the daily meeting to go through the newspapers—a generous amount of time as far as Mr Barrie was concerned—before he'd check up on him to make sure that the newest member of his staff was living up to his high standards. Thankfully for James, he always did as he was told.

"Nothing much, sir: another stabbing, gang crime, break-ins. But I still have to go through some of the news sites to see if there's anything breaking. Maybe there's been a murder!"

James had a peculiar appetite for news stories: the more blood and guts, the better. It wasn't that he was malicious, and deep down he hoped that nobody
had
been murdered, but whenever it did happen he tried to think of it like a fictitious story. As long as he maintained the attitude that he was writing a book report for some gripping crime novel, then his emotions wouldn't be affected by the horrors that he had to report on every single day.

"I want you to make some phone calls," Mr Barrie continued, "to see if you can interview somebody involved in anything that's going on. We really need to improve the daily hits on the website...

And Andy," he said, turning in his direction, "you didn't tell me earlier about the match..."

Mr Barrie didn't know the first thing about football, but he certainly liked to pretend that he was interested. Was it not, after all, his duty as a man to love and be devoted to the sport? The last thing he wanted to do was to give the impression that he was soft.

"It was brilliant!" Andy replied. "Both sides played with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I reckon some of them are going to be fantastic players when they're older."

"Have you put the article online yet?" Andy nodded. "Good. And as I told you earlier, I want you to focus on rugby today. I want who's hot, who's not. A report on the league tables, that sort of thing."

Nobody dared to point out that he didn't have a clue what he was talking about. It wasn't worth the risk to bruise his ego; the consequences for the entire Anchor team would be dire. Grace looked up at Mr Barrie as she fought a never-ending battle with boredom.

"And Grace," he said, "you just carry on doing whatever it is you're doing."

Grace often wondered if Mr Barrie actually knew what he had employed her to do. She may have hated her job, but she respected the fact that, without her there to answer the emails and take phone calls, Mr Barrie would not receive any of the correspondence he needed to sustain the business. And without her there to forward emails to people, nobody would have access to half the stories they produced. She couldn't help but feel undermined.

She slumped lower on her chair. It wasn't even ten o'clock and already she was feeling lethargic. Something told her it was going to be a long day.

With nothing else to do, she pulled up the emails, hoping there would be something there to keep her mind active for a few minutes. There was one new email. She clicked it open and sighed. She should have known it would be for Fran. She sent it on to Fran's account, knowing all too well that she would love this; she always seemed to enjoy receiving something for nothing, and now Fran was being invited to yet another product launch. She always returned to the office from such events with an entire goody-bag full of new products to review for the website.

No matter how much she disliked Fran though, she had to admit that she was brilliant at networking. If it wasn't for the fact that Mr Barrie kept buttering her up all the time, she probably would have gone elsewhere by now. Grace was certain that Fran was only staying at Anchor because she liked to be flattered by her boss.

Grace tapped in a reply to the sender to inform them that the email had been forwarded to the relevant recipient and that they should expect a response in due course. She didn't need to think about what she was writing, having responded with the exact same message more times than she cared to consider. She sent the email and glanced over to Fran's desk. She watched as she quickly jotted something down in her notebook before standing and putting on her coat. Without looking around the office, she headed straight for the door with what Grace took to be a grin spread across her face.

She looked up at the clock. Five minutes had crawled by since she had last checked the time. She half expected the big hand to start moving backwards soon. Still another six hours and fifty-five minutes until she could go home. No emails to reply to, no queries to answer. What a brilliant start to the week...

There was one positive thing about having nothing else to do though. Glancing around the office, she made sure nobody was watching her. Thankfully everybody was too busy working on their articles to notice her, and Andy, who often wandered over to speak to her, was chewing the end of his pen with his eyes glued to the computer screen, and it didn't look like he'd be moving any time soon. Satisfied that nobody was paying her any attention, she reached under her desk and pulled up her handbag. Unfastening the top, she felt around inside for the pocket at the back.

It was still there.

She held the letter in her hands and read her name on the front:
Miss Grace Byrne
.

She inhaled deeply, preparing herself for the one thing she'd been putting off all weekend. It was time to read the letter.

 

Dear Miss Byrne,

 

I made the decision to leave this letter inside one of my boots as I knew you would be requiring them. I hope they fit you reasonably well. I expect you have a lot of questions you would like to ask me. However, I am afraid that I am unable to answer them for you at this moment. The answers to your questions are something that you must, and will, discover for yourself as you travel through your journey. I ask only that you trust your instincts. I know you will do the right thing. And remember, a walk in my boots will help you see that there isn't anything you can't be
.

 

Your friend,

Gráinne

 

If Grace had expected that reading the letter would help to clear her mind, she had been wrong. It was written in dark ink, the words formed from the tip of a quill. Some of the letters were difficult to read, but she had managed to make her way down the scroll until she reached the end.

Gráinne
?
She didn't know anybody by that name. There had once been a Gráinne living on her street when she was a child, but that didn't seem to be a likely connection. She scanned the letter again.

"A walk in my boots will help you see," she whispered under her breath so that nobody could hear her muttering the words to herself, "that there isn't anything you can't be."

What was that supposed to mean? Grace was no longer thinking about how the letter had come into her possession; it was more important now that she concentrated on whatever it was the letter was trying to tell her.

It had to be some sort of a riddle. She thought about how she'd found the note inside the pair of boots on the ship. Boots which she had now learned belonged to somebody named Gráinne.

Grace had often heard about weird mystery trails around the world. Not the fun kind like hunting for Easter eggs in the garden, but scavenger hunts conducted by anonymous communities online. It wasn't territory she particularly wished to involve herself in as she knew how nasty it could get, but there was a possibility that somebody on the Internet had concocted this riddle. It wouldn't help her understand how she'd apparently managed to be transported back a few centuries, but maybe it would at least help her solve the problem that lay directly in front of her.

She typed in the words into a search bar and hit the enter key. The screen flashed as it brought up pages of results. After a few seconds though, Grace realised that none of them seemed to be what she was looking for. They were all concerned with selling self-help books or offering cheap hiking trips up and down the country. There were no matches for the words of the letter.

Grace folded it up neatly and placed it into the pouch in her bag, out of sight. She tried to replay the entire event in her mind, searching for things that might give her clues. But it was hopeless. She wasn't getting anywhere.

But then she remembered something.
Didn't the ship have something written on its side? A name of some sort?
She thought for a moment, rubbing the tips of her fingers against the sides of her head as if trying to help the information come forth.

"The Pirate Queen!" She flung a hand to her mouth, worried she'd said it too loudly. She glanced around. Nobody was looking at her.

Grace searched for the name and waited for the results to load. She clicked on the first link and started reading.

She had hoped to find photographs of the ship so she could confirm that it was the same one, but she soon realised why she wasn't finding anything. According to the website,
The Pirate Queen
was associated with the sixteenth century—or more accurately, sixteenth-century Ireland.

"So I was in Ireland?" Grace said to herself, a little more quietly this time.

"Wait... She was a person?"

It hadn't been quite what she had expected to read, but something inside her told her that this was exactly what she was looking for. She continued down the page, muttering to herself as she read out loud to help her take in the information.

"So,
The Pirate Queen
is the name given to an Irish pirate," she confirmed to herself: "Grace O'Malley, better known to those in Ireland as Gráinne, or Granuaile." She stumbled over the last word, butchering the pronunciation. It took a few seconds for the information to register before Grace realised exactly what it was that she had discovered.

"
Grace
O'Malley!" she gasped as she finally took it in. Why hadn't it occurred to her immediately that her own name was the Anglicisation of Gráinne? She was starting to think she hadn't spent nearly enough time researching her heritage.

Her head was starting to spin. "The girl, Cathleen, what was it she'd called me?' She tried to think back, but her mind was racing so fast that she was struggling to digest the information. She looked at the screen again and as she read the words and it all started coming back to her. "Miss
something
, wasn't it? Miss...Granuaile? That's it! Miss Granuaile!" She absorbed the word on the screen as she rejoiced in remembering the name, pronouncing it more accurately this time. "Cathleen must have thought that I was Grace O'Malley!"

This new information was a welcomed relief, but still little of it made sense to Grace. How could she find herself in sixteenth-century Ireland, being mistaken for a pirate she had never heard of before and with whom she shared a first name?

Okay, so she'd established that the boots in the ship—the boots in which she'd first discovered her letter—belonged to Gráinne O'Malley. Perhaps the clothes Grace had somehow found herself wearing had been Gráinne's too. But it still didn't explain much. Grace hadn't even heard of this pirate woman before, so why was she trying to communicate with her? And
how
was she doing it? She couldn't possibly know about Grace four hundred years before she was even born.

She continued reading down the page. 'Grace O'Malley's castle on Clare Island still stands today.' Next to the paragraph there was a small photograph of a grey building. It took a moment for it to register with Grace before she realised that it was the same castle she'd seen in the distance when she had climbed down from the ship.