Double Madness by Caroline de Costa

Author:Caroline de Costa [de Costa, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Crime
ISBN: 9780994316721
Publisher: Margaret River Press
Published: 2015-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Paris–Singapore, 2 March 2011

Lyndall settled herself in Business Class as the plane levelled out high above eastern France. She accepted a second glass of an excellent chablis. Flying Business between Paris and Singapore made up for the harsh necessity of the budget airline from Singapore to Cairns, which was the most direct option.

Her thoughts turned, as they did so often now, to Bernard. She was delighted that she’d plucked up the courage to call his mother’s number, eighteen months ago now. You’re being ridiculous, she’d told herself, you were just a passing fling. He’s probably even forgotten your name. He will have moved on, with many more women. Very likely married, maybe has children. And was his mother even still alive and living there?

After two rings the phone had been answered by Madame Maupan, who was in full command of her faculties, had no problem understanding Lyndall’s halting French, and told her to wait a moment, her son was visiting and she would call him in from the garden. Within thirty seconds Lyndall was connected to Bernard who not only proclaimed himself delighted to hear from her, but seemed to intuitively understand her situation. When was she coming to France? he asked.

Lyndall had not even considered such a thing till then but suddenly it seemed perfectly reasonable. Her house was for sale. She had emptied it of furniture. She’d bought a new apartment in the centre of Cairns so that she could simply lock up and go whenever she wanted. She had leave due from the hospital and could easily find cover for her private practice for three weeks. Before she knew where she was, she had committed herself to going to France in a fortnight. For three weeks. She had never before set foot in Europe. The United States, Bali and Fiji had been the extent of her overseas travels, and always with Trevor.

In the two weeks before that first visit, as she rushed around renewing her passport, booking flights, arranging her practice, there were flurried email exchanges with Bernard, and then, as they discovered more about each other, increasingly lengthy phone calls.

He had indeed married. He had also divorced, apparently fairly amicably, four years earlier. His ex-wife had custody of their eight-year-old daughter, whom he saw on a regular basis. There had been a number of women since the divorce, including one who’d lasted two years, but she too had moved on. And although there had been someone else recently, that was all done with too.

Lyndall, who was forty-two and had only the same unfaithful husband to report on that she’d had at the time of their Australian liaison, had no illusions about any of this. Bernard was thirty-eight and his emailed photos showed him in the prime of his middle years, still with all his hair and as trim around the middle as he’d been at twenty-six. But she was going to France and if things worked out when she got there, well, she would enjoy it while it was on offer, and accept it philosophically when it ended.

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