Imelda slammed down the landline handset, picked up her mobile phone and scrolled down her contacts until she came to her solicitor’s number and pressed dial. It was answered almost immediately. ‘Annie, it’s Imelda O’Brien. Can you give me an appointment to see Garrett, please? I want to revise my will,’ she said, her lips a thin line of disapproval, her eyes narrow slits of fury as she drummed her fingers impatiently on the kitchen counter, waiting to be given the date that would see Keelin, Marie-Claire and Brigid summarily disinherited. No ifs, ands, or buts about it!

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Brigid flung open the duck-egg blue shutters and opened the window to breathe in the fresh Pyrenean air. Below her, the fields of the Durand family’s vineyard stretched to meadows and hillsides beyond, shaded by the majesty of Mount Canigou. It was a view she never tired of.

It was hard to believe she’d been in France for nearly three months, but the heat of the morning sun, shining on the red roof tiles of the houses in the village below, was growing stronger daily, and the long shadows of winter were shortening as spring blessed the Pyrenees.

How she loved this sturdy, stone-walled maison de maître with the shuttered windows and big wooden front door. Her bedroom was on the third floor. A large square room, with a double bed and an old-fashioned, gleaming, cherrywood wardrobe and dressing table. A winged armchair placed beside the biggest window was her favourite place to read, or simply watch the changing light of the sun and sky over Canigou, and the vineyards, fields and village below. Today the sky was clear and bright, right across to the coast, the peaks of the mountains sharply etched against the azure palette.

Two days previously, Canigou’s majestic snow-capped peak had been shrouded from view by the mist weaving its way across the vineyards towards Les Quatre Vents. Brigid had spent a gloomy afternoon reading in her armchair; engrossed in a book Keelin had given her. The memoir of a woman, Fiona McLaren, who came to the conclusion that the painting that had hung in her farmhouse for many years was a lost Da Vinci. The subject of the painting was Mary Magdalene – hidden in plain sight, as were many of the artist’s depictions of the woman believed by some to have been married to Jesus. The journey to authentication was full of revelations, and Brigid had flipped from reading the book to googling names and facts on the new iPad she’d treated herself to. The Gnostic gospels, the gospel of Mary Magdalene and the gospel of Saint Thomas, made intriguing reading.