Read The French for Love for Free Online Page B

blaze of hope that, I have to admit, had by now been burning brightly within me, extinguishing it completely.
    ‘I’m sorry?’ I said frostily. ‘I’m not sure I quite follow.’
    Ed continued breezily, ‘Well, she must have been pretty minted, and you were certainly her nearest and dearest relation, just like a daughter in fact, so surely she’s come up trumps just when you need it most. I always did like the old girl—a great character.’
    His mobile phone, on the pink tablecloth beside a half-eaten bread stick, suddenly vibrated. He glanced down at it and then smoothly—too smoothly—returned his gaze to my face. ‘Gina?’ he asked, as I glared at him in cold fury.
    I reached over and picked up his phone. On the illuminated square of the screen was a little yellow envelope and next to it the name Camilla.
    ‘Ah, yes,’ I said, ‘how is the lovely Camilla these days? Still your landlady? Or did you finally strap on a pair of balls and decide to stand on your own two feet for a change? No?’ I continued, as his gaze flickered uncertainly to the plate of food in front of him. ‘So you’re still living with her, but thought it would be worth checking me out again in case I’d suddenly become a better financial proposition? I should have known. The trouble with you, Edmund Cavendish, is that you are, and always will be, a complete arsehole. Thanks for supper, but sorry, I’ve just remembered I’d rather be at home scrubbing the mould off the shower curtain than waste one more second of my life in your company.’
    Shaking with rage, I pushed back my chair and stalked out of the restaurant, Italian waiters with their oversized pepper grinders scattering before me as I went. Not such a bella signorina after all, evidently.
    And my fury had propelled me to my front door and up the stairs to my flat before I collapsed on the sofa and lay there, breakers of humiliation, pain and grief crashing over me as I contemplated the twisted pile of wreckage that my life had become.

    I must finally have fallen asleep because I come to and the morning light is streaming in at the window, casting the clusters of wisteria flowers that hang outside into elongated, dancing shadows across the bedspread. I lie there for a while longer, my head feeling thick and heavy after yet another troubled night, lost in thoughts of the past few weeks.
    After that ghastly evening with Ed, when I finally accepted what a complete loser he really is, I’d plummeted into a deep depression. I spent my days lying on the sofa eating my body weight in chocolate HobNobs and watching Bargain Hunt on TV. The odd glimmer of hope would come when an envelope landed on the doormat in response to one of the job applications I’d sent in, only to be dashed as the words of yet another polite rejection swam before my eyes and I’d reach for another biscuit to numb the pain.
    I was in grave danger of becoming an expert on Art Deco ceramics and developing a backside the size of the Bay of Biscay.
    The days were bad enough, but I particularly dreaded the nights, contemplating each one with trepidation as it stretched before me, a dark desert to be crossed alone, knowing that in the shadows my anxious thoughts lurked, waiting to ambush me and harry me, nipping at my heels like a pack of wild dogs. Some evenings I would drift asleep in front of the television before dragging myself groggily into bed an hour or so later, only to lie there wider awake than ever the minute my head hit the pillow. Sometimes, relieved that another restless night was over, I would fall into a deep sleep just as dawn broke, floundering in a quicksand of troubled dreams which relinquished their grip on my mind only reluctantly when I woke, leaving me queasy and emotionally drained.
    One of these dreams still stays with me with particular clarity. In it I’m trying to get to France—I have to get to France to see Liz urgently—but am held up at every turn. Firstly I have work to