Thomas stood up from his bed and caught sight of his reflection in the little age-spotted mirror over the sink. His eyes were bright red and his nose was flushed. He blushed with sheer embarrassment; he looked like the child his mother thought he was. He grabbed one of his monogrammed flannels and washed his face, breathing in deeply until it had returned to normal.

Good. Better, anyway. He was not as young as all that. He picked up his Blackberry and tapped in the name G-e-m-m-a. She was another of his girls, more pliant than Polly, a little blander, but what he wanted right now. Nothing stressful, a woman who knew her place. He needed to assert his manhood and she would do very well. After Gemma, he would go to the bank, check his current account. Take stock of everything he had. Perhaps there would be enough to hire a really good lawyer of his own, not like Foche, that double-crossing old fool. Perhaps he could stop his mother doing this.

If she really loved Papa as he did, she would never have done it. He was ashamed of her.

Oh well, she was not a Massot by birth. He must not expect too much of her. In a few years it would be down to him. Calmetoi, he told himself.This uncharacteristic action was the only thing his mother had done on her own account since Papa left. Most likely, other than the dreadful declaration of his death, she would not rock the boat. She knew nothing about anything. She would leave things for him, as was right and proper, and so, perhaps, in time, he might possibly forgive her.

But for now he would get himself a woman.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The car purred silently through the twisting streets of Paris. The traffic wasn’t too bad; she would be there in good time. Sophie tried to calm her nerves. She’d felt forced to make this decision—it was in the interests of Tom, and, please God, the worst was over already. The visit to her mother-in-law, and then the letter, and the awful phone call that had followed it.

The loneliness she had been feeling and trying to ignore for so many years was as nothing compared to the loss of her son.

Was that too melodramatic? It did feel like a loss. The cheerful, bright, laughing little boy she had grown up with, altered of course since the night he lost his father, at eleven, but still at heart her Tom, the light of her life. The only true purpose to her days, to rising and sleeping. Even back when he had been around, Pierre had not visited her bed often, and the lovemaking, if you could call it that, had been cold and perfunctory. After Tom’s birth it had stopped completely. That was such a relief.