Free Mothers and Daughters by Minna Howard

invited me to stay,’ she giggled, ‘but I never got to go. But I’ll go and find him for you,’ she finished with a bad attempt of nonchalance and if offering to look up someone’s elderly uncle.
    ‘Oh really. Petra,’ Margot protested, ‘we’re in the time of computers, instant texts, emails and all. You don’t have to set out on long journeys, like some medieval traveller going on a pilgrimage. Anyway it’s almost August, the French go away then –
le grande depart
.’
    ‘Then he’ll be there,’ Petra sounded triumphant. ‘I’m only trying to be helpful. ‘I’m going to be in his part of France, so it’s only common sense to go and knock on his door.’
    ‘And bring him back as a trophy, I suppose,’ Margot said sourly.
    ‘What a fuss you two are making over him,’ Alice broke in; wishing she hadn’t mentioned Frank at all if he was going to cause such upset between them. ‘I told you, Cecily’s going to write to him, he sends her cards at Christmas and she has an address for him and she offered, so I’m leaving it to her, thanks all the same, Petra,’ Alice said impatiently, annoyed with Petra for wanting to go and find Frank, remembering how attractive he was. No doubt she’d grab him as she had once grabbed their toys – and later some of the boys they were interested in – when they were younger.
    How complicated everything was. Just thinking of it all exhausted her.

8
    The plane from Singapore landed with a bump and a rush of engine noise at Charles de Gaulle airport, jolting Frank Trevelyan awake. He was cramped and stiff, his mouth dry, his eyes scratchy and he longed for a shower. These flights were so wearing and he felt stale and unkempt still wearing the same clothes he’d worn for almost twenty-four hours.
    He’d take a few weeks off, he promised himself, France all but closed down in August when most people went on holiday. He thought longingly of his boat, he hadn’t had time to get it ready this year, he been swamped by work, but this case was done and he could relax a bit now. He’d go to his house in Port Grimaud and sail, let the sea breeze freshen him up. He was exhausted, he’d been working too hard these last months and it was time to let up, he could afford to take a break.
    He pushed up the blind in the window beside him and looked out, it was raining, not heavily but enough, the sky pearly grey, thick like a blanket over the earth, quite different from the humidity, the hard light of the sun and the swarming bustle of Singapore. Strange, how you could completely change your environment in just a night, flying across the world. It must have been far more fascinating in the past when travellers had to physically make the journey, crossing land, countries and seas, and able to become accustomed to other races, different scenery and customs by being among them.
    Hervey, his driver and assistant, was waiting for him at arrivals.
    ‘Bonjour, c’est bien passé? Everything good?’ Hervey was bilingual, as was Frank, and they communicated in both languages, sometimes not even knowing they had changed from one to the other.
    ‘Oui, merci, but glad to be back.’
    While they crawled into Paris in the morning rush hour, Hervey filled him in with one or two business affairs, nothing that important, there were still a few loose ends to tie up on a couple of his legal cases which he must see to before the start of August, which was a few days away. He’d finished and filed the article he’d gone to write about an important takeover in Singapore, so after a few days in the office here to see everything was in order he’d escape down to the South.
    ‘You’re in demand anyway,’ Hervey said. ‘You had a call from an English lady with immaculate but quite old-fashioned French. Cecily Barnes, she was trying to contact you, make sure she had your correct address so you could be sent a wedding invitation’ He eyed him in the driving mirror, his pugnacious features split