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replied firmly. ‘It’s not. All I’m doing at the moment is trying to leave the bad stuff behind.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t bloody believe this….’ Grace groaned again, and Leonie wondered what the kids were up to this time. ‘Rocky! What on earth goes through that head of yours?’ she said in obvious exasperation.
    ‘Grace, honestly, you’d better go, it sounds like you really have your hands full there.’
    ‘I suppose I’d better before they burn the house down around us,’ her friend sighed. ‘Typical, the one time I get to have a bit of adult conversation! Oh well, never mind, congratulations on the new job and I’ll talk to you again soon, OK?’
    ‘Sure,’ Leonie replied. ‘Give my love to the kids.’
    Having said goodbye, she replaced the handset and walked over to the bay window, her thoughts still full of the conversation about Grace’s holiday plans.
    Tunisia of all places.
    Well with any luck she mused, her thoughts drifting back to her own experiences there, Grace would have as unforgettable a time as she had.
     
     

Three years earlier
     
    The flight had been delayed in Dublin by a couple of hours, so by the time Leonie arrived at Tunis airport, she was jaded and irritable. The early evening heat and stuffy arrivals hall didn’t do much to lift her spirits, and as she waited at the carousel for her luggage she was inclined to agree with what Grace had said before she left.
    ‘I don’t know what you get out of taking off abroad like this,’ her friend chided when Leonie informed her she was heading away for a week’s holiday. ‘It’ll hardly be much fun on your own and maybe if you gave me a bit more notice, I might have been able to come along with you.’
    But Leonie knew that pigs would fly before Grace would leave her beloved newborns, (nor would she expect her to) not to mention that these days her friend generally needed a few weeks’ notice for something as simple as meeting up for coffee!
    Notwithstanding the fact that Grace wasn’t a fan of foreign travel, so in truth the thought of asking her to come along had never even crossed Leonie’s mind. As it was, she’d been due a couple of week’s annual leave from work, so she decided to make the most of them.
    A quick search on the internet for last-minute sun holidays had thrown up the usual packages in Spain, Portugal and such-like, which didn’t particularly interest her, and she was just about to abandon the plan altogether when she came across an option for Tunisia. It wasn’t somewhere that had ever been high on her list of countries to visit, yet it did sound that little bit more interesting than Costa del Golf.
    A few days lounging by the pool combined with a taste of North African culture sounded good, and a bit of sunshine would definitely be welcome. Even though it was late April and almost summer, Leonie could barely remember what the sun looked like.
    But now as she waited impatiently at the carousel, sweat rolling down her back and the heavy reek of tobacco in the air, she wondered if this was such a good idea after all. She wouldn’t mind but she’d only brought a teeny case, small enough to count as hand luggage on any other day, except for the old-school and restrictive rules of this particular airline. Hardly surprising when the ancient 737 that had flown them here had threadbare seats, an out of order in-flight entertainment system and in all honesty, looked to be held together with little more than duct tape!
    A few minutes later Leonie finally spied her little case, one of the few that wasn’t festooned with brightly coloured ribbons and other identifiable markers, but was instead a simple generic-looking holdall. Going outside the terminal she waved down a taxi, and much to her relief was soon en route to her hotel.
    Almost immediately she felt her irritation subside and her body relax as she stared out the window of the cab and began to take in her new surroundings. There was always something