"Lucy Sussex - Matricide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sussex Lucy)

just to look at it." She frowns faintly, remembering. "I was only just pregnant at the time."

"You threw the case out. I was so glad, I wanted to thank you."

"No thanks necessary."

"And to say I'm sorry about you and the baby …"

"Sorry?"

That faint frown has returned to Judge Judy's face.

Now I've put my foot in it, Sylvie thinks, but nonetheless can't stop the words.

"Sorry, because you're both dead … like I am; otherwise we wouldn't be here."

"Don't be ridiculous," says the judge. She gestures at the passing passengers, singling out a group of
depressed-looking Middle Eastern men. "Do you think that's Mohammed Atta and his merry men? And,
just disembarking, the planeloads of their victims?"

"No, it doesn't exactly look like him."

"Of course it isn't. I'm very much alive, and so is my child. So are you, Ms. Lester, for the moment. What
happens next is up to you; it always is. We can't pick our beginnings"—with a downward glance—"but
we should try and control our endings. Life's that way. And now excuse me, I have to buy a present."

And with a wave of her hand, Sylvie is dismissed, out of the judge's sight, out of the gift shop, out of the
airport concourse. She curls up fetally, eyes closed in a personal darkness. We can't control our
beginnings, she quotes to herself, but we can control our endings. Yet where in the Sylvie-story do I
begin? It'd make a novel in full, and somehow I don't think I've got enough time. Choose scenes, fast
backward. Pause.

Maybe it begins with Miles …

Immediately she has the sense of wind in her hair, the indefinable scent of imminent, looming snow,
overlaid with coffee and Gauloises. She uncurls into a Paris side street, the outdoor settings of a café,
coffee and frites on the table in front of them. She looks up, smiles despite her jet lag.

"At last!" he says, lifting his coffee cup. Miles, a big, amiable bear of a man she'd met in a language
course. He was polishing his French before his move to Paris: to my dream life, he had said. Why she
was doing the course, she couldn't recall. But they'd gotten on, found a common ground in the arts, their
conversation, even in French, a pleasant exchange. They had parted with a kiss on both cheeks,
French-style, an invitation: "If you're in Paris, get in touch."

With an implication, a possible double meaning, double entendre.

On the flight from Singapore she hadn't slept well; she could just fall into bed at this point. But whose?
That point remains to be negotiated. Miles met her at Charles de Gaulle, took her into town, deposited
her bags at the hotel. It's her first time in Paris and despite her tiredness, the boulevards, the rows of
Baron Hauptmann's terraces, the style of the Ile de France fascinates. They've spent the morning