Maybe they would find Ivan in the spring. Maybe not. He really didn’t care either way. He got back in the car, whose engine was still running, and closed the door. Then he drove carefully down the hill, towards the city.

Chapter 35

Chapter 35

Sophie didn’t want to go back to the office, but there was no real alternative. Richard was waiting there with her car. If she caught a taxi out to St.-Aude—and they could always be persuaded into the country for the right amount of money—she would need to call and make up some excuse as to why she hadn’t used Richard; then call him back, to drive to the château without her.

Of course it was inevitable that the servants would gossip. But Sophie wanted to keep it as private as she could; this pain was all her own; she would not drag her son into it any more than she had to.

This might as well be a normal day at work. She tried to comfort herself as she walked back through the baking Parisian streets, heading towards rue Tricot, breathing in deeply so her nose would lose that telltale redness. It could have been worse. Tom had agreed he loved her—that much she could be thankful for. She knew horror stories of women, scions of French society, who through some quarrel or other had become estranged from their children; they were still alive, somewhere in the world, but dead to their mothers.

Sophie would rather die than let that happen to her and Tom. Okay, so it hurt. “I don’t like you very much.” That hurt, bitterly. But she had to see the positives in this situation, or she would go mad. Tom said he loved her—had heard her say it to him. Tom said he would come back home once the shareholders’ meeting was over. That much Sophie had. She would cling to that.

The rest, the other, dreadful things . . . the accusation of betrayal of Pierre she could overlook, but her own boy had practically called her a slut indulging a midlife crisis, selfishly usurping his property. . . .

No. No, that line of thinking would start her crying again. Sophie didn’t want any questions from Celine. There was quite enough rumour at House Massot as it was.

She contemplated changing route, walking to rue Faubourg. Popping into the Massot showroom to watch the brisk business Claudette told her they were doing, had done every day since her party; to remind herself that whatever Tom imagined, she, Sophie, had an innate feel for the business—she loved jewels, believed in them as art, as dreams you could hold in the palm of the hand—and the stock price reflected her ability.