thebargain-priced linen jackets and skirts with Paris labels and the inexpensive jewelry and strings of brilliantly colored glass beads.
Then she sat on a café terrace, shedding her worries like dust motes in the sunshine, happily watching the world go by over a
café crème
and a buttery croissant. The hospital and the broken skull and the man who wanted to murder her seemed a million miles away. Only the dark terror of not knowing the past remained to haunt her, the nightmare of falling endlessly down the black tunnel, falling and falling….
Some nights she would leap, shaking, from the bed and run to the open window, to look out at the midnight blue sky, and feel the cool air on her fevered skin, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and to feel normal again. Or as normal as it could be for a young woman who did not know who she was. But there were still many nights when the beauty and stillness did not soothe her. Those were the nights when despair overtook her, and she sobbed until dawn, when exhausted, she finally slept. She never spoke to Millie about those awful nights. She did not want to burden her with her problems. And if Millie noticed her pallor and swollen eyes, she made no comment.
Bea was also reluctant to worry Phyl. She decided her new friends had done enough for her. It was up to her to manage her own life now.
Millie had hired a white Mercedes convertible, and with Bea at the wheel, they explored the coast and the hills behind. Millie was full of memories of the way it used to be, “in the old days,” when she was just a girl, kicking over the traces, dining and dancing and flirting and gambling.
“It was still unspoiled, dear girl,” she said, filled with nostalgia. “You should have seen it then, Bea, when this string of towns and high rises along the coast were just tiny fishing villages. There are some compensations to getting old, I suppose. The things one has seenand done, the memories. You never lose them, you know.”
Millie flung herself into the hectic social life of the Riviera, looking up old acquaintances and making new ones, attending openings and galas and dinners and concerts, and enjoying herself thoroughly. And being a woman who could afford to indulge her whims and fancies, she suddenly announced that she intended to buy a house somewhere along the coast that she loved best.
Bea did her best to talk her out of it, saying it was just another whim that she would live to regret, but Millie was adamant. She had made up her mind she wanted to spend her summers on the Riviera. “Just like the old days.”
They were going house hunting that very morning, and Millie had dressed for the occasion. She looked like a plump tropical bird in a floating lime green and pink dress with her blond curls hidden under a shady pink straw hat.
She threw a critical glance at Bea, cool in navy silk shorts and white T-shirt.
“You should always wear a hat, Bea,” she told her severely. “Believe me, if you don’t, you’ll regret it when you’re forty. You’ll have skin like a piece of old leather.” She laughed as Bea obligingly pulled on a Yankees baseball cap. “That’s not quite what I meant, dear girl. But on you it looks good.”
Bea drove to the smart real estate office in Cannes, and Millie told the smooth buttoned-down agent she wanted “something with a touch of class.”
“Don’t bother showing me any of those white plaster boxes all tricked up with marble and sliding glass doors on lots the size of a postage stamp,” she warned him. “I want terraces and balustrades and proper French doors and arches and columns. And a view of the Mediterranean.
Class
, my dear man. That is what I want.”And the agent raised a supercilious eyebrow and informed her that the firm dealt only in the best.
But a few days and several dozen houses later both she and the agent were exhausted and beginning to lose their patience. “I’ll leave it to you,” she told Bea, retreating to the
Then she sat on a café terrace, shedding her worries like dust motes in the sunshine, happily watching the world go by over a
café crème
and a buttery croissant. The hospital and the broken skull and the man who wanted to murder her seemed a million miles away. Only the dark terror of not knowing the past remained to haunt her, the nightmare of falling endlessly down the black tunnel, falling and falling….
Some nights she would leap, shaking, from the bed and run to the open window, to look out at the midnight blue sky, and feel the cool air on her fevered skin, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and to feel normal again. Or as normal as it could be for a young woman who did not know who she was. But there were still many nights when the beauty and stillness did not soothe her. Those were the nights when despair overtook her, and she sobbed until dawn, when exhausted, she finally slept. She never spoke to Millie about those awful nights. She did not want to burden her with her problems. And if Millie noticed her pallor and swollen eyes, she made no comment.
Bea was also reluctant to worry Phyl. She decided her new friends had done enough for her. It was up to her to manage her own life now.
Millie had hired a white Mercedes convertible, and with Bea at the wheel, they explored the coast and the hills behind. Millie was full of memories of the way it used to be, “in the old days,” when she was just a girl, kicking over the traces, dining and dancing and flirting and gambling.
“It was still unspoiled, dear girl,” she said, filled with nostalgia. “You should have seen it then, Bea, when this string of towns and high rises along the coast were just tiny fishing villages. There are some compensations to getting old, I suppose. The things one has seenand done, the memories. You never lose them, you know.”
Millie flung herself into the hectic social life of the Riviera, looking up old acquaintances and making new ones, attending openings and galas and dinners and concerts, and enjoying herself thoroughly. And being a woman who could afford to indulge her whims and fancies, she suddenly announced that she intended to buy a house somewhere along the coast that she loved best.
Bea did her best to talk her out of it, saying it was just another whim that she would live to regret, but Millie was adamant. She had made up her mind she wanted to spend her summers on the Riviera. “Just like the old days.”
They were going house hunting that very morning, and Millie had dressed for the occasion. She looked like a plump tropical bird in a floating lime green and pink dress with her blond curls hidden under a shady pink straw hat.
She threw a critical glance at Bea, cool in navy silk shorts and white T-shirt.
“You should always wear a hat, Bea,” she told her severely. “Believe me, if you don’t, you’ll regret it when you’re forty. You’ll have skin like a piece of old leather.” She laughed as Bea obligingly pulled on a Yankees baseball cap. “That’s not quite what I meant, dear girl. But on you it looks good.”
Bea drove to the smart real estate office in Cannes, and Millie told the smooth buttoned-down agent she wanted “something with a touch of class.”
“Don’t bother showing me any of those white plaster boxes all tricked up with marble and sliding glass doors on lots the size of a postage stamp,” she warned him. “I want terraces and balustrades and proper French doors and arches and columns. And a view of the Mediterranean.
Class
, my dear man. That is what I want.”And the agent raised a supercilious eyebrow and informed her that the firm dealt only in the best.
But a few days and several dozen houses later both she and the agent were exhausted and beginning to lose their patience. “I’ll leave it to you,” she told Bea, retreating to the
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