Sepulchre by Kate Mosse

the relationship had been fun while it lasted. Even so, it had been good to be home.
    They talked most of the cold, snowbound weekend, Meredith asking Mary all the questions about her birth mother's life and early death, all the stuff she'd always wanted to know but had been afraid to hear. The circumstances of her adoption, her mother's suicide, the painful memories like splinters of glass she carried beneath her skin.
    Meredith knew the basics. Her birth mother, Jeanette, had fallen pregnant at a tailgate party in Senior High, not even realising it until it was too late to do anything about it. For the first few years, Jeanette's mother, Louisa, had tried to be supportive, but her swift death from cancer robbed Meredith of a reliable and stable influence in her life and things quickly deteriorated. When things got really bad, it was Mary - a distant cousin of Jeanette's - who stepped in, until finally it became clear that, for her own safety, Meredith could not go back. When Jeanette killed herself, two years later, it made sense for the relationship to be put on a more formal basis and Mary and her husband Bill adopted Meredith. Although she kept her surname, and continued to call Mary by her Christian name, as she always had, Meredith at last felt free to think of Mary as her mother.
    It was in the Pfister Hotel that Mary had given Meredith the photographs and the piece of piano music. The first was a shot of a young man in soldier's uniform, standing in a village square. Black curly hair, grey eyes and a direct gaze. There was no name, but the date, 1914, the photographer and the place, Rennes-les-Bains, were printed on the back. The second was of a little girl in old-fashioned clothes. There was no name, no date, no place. The third was of a woman Meredith knew was her grandmother, Louisa Martin, taken some years later - late 1930s, early 1940s, judging by her clothes - seated at a grand piano. Mary explained that Louisa had been a concert pianist of some reputation. The piece of music in the envelope had been her signature piece. She played it for every encore.
    As she looked at the photograph for the first time, Meredith wondered whether, if she'd known about Louisa earlier, she would have stuck with it. Not turned her back on a music career. She didn't know. She couldn't remember her birth mother, Jeanette, playing the piano or singing. Only the shouting, the crying, and what came after.
    Music had come into Meredith's life when she was eight years old, or so she'd thought. To discover that there'd been something there all along, lying undiscovered beneath the surface, changed the story. That snowbound weekend in December 2000, Meredith's world shifted. The photos, the music became an anchor, connecting her to a past, one day, she knew she would go in search of.
    Seven years on, she was finally doing it. Tomorrow she'd be in Rennes-les-Bains in person, a place that she'd imagined so many times. She just hoped there was something there for her to find.
She glanced at her cell. Twelve thirty-three. She smiled.
     
Not tomorrow, today.
    When Meredith woke in the morning, her night-time nerves had evaporated. She was looking forward to getting out of town. Whatever she achieved, one way or the other, a few days R&R in the mountains was just what she needed.
    Her flight to Toulouse wasn't until mid-afternoon. She had done everything she'd intended to do in Paris and didn't really want to start something new before going off the clock, so she stayed in bed reading a while, then got up and had brunch in the sun at her regular brasserie, before setting out to do some of the regular tourist sites.
    She wound her way in and out of the shadows of the familiar colonnades on the rue du Rivoli, dodging swarms of students with backpacks and parties of tourists on the Da Vinci Code trail. She considered the Pyramide du Louvre, but the length of the entrance line put her off.
    She found a green metal chair in the Tuileries gardens,