Tabby was reluctant to admit that, on each of the occasions she had met Solange Roussel, she had connected with the older woman on a very emotional level. The first time she had been bubbling with happiness and quite unafraid to admit that she adored Christien. The second time she had been a lot less sure of herself and she had not been able to hide her fear that Christien was losing interest…and the third and final time?

Months after that fatal French holiday that had torn apart so many lives, Tabby had travelled back to France alone to attend the accident enquiry. She had been desperate to see Christien again. She had believed that the passage of time would have eased his bitterness and helped him to acknowledge that they had both lost much-loved parents in that horrendous crash. However, she had soon learnt her mistake for, if anything, the intervening months had only made Christien colder and more derisive. Even Veronique, who had once been so friendly towards her, had become distant and hostile. As Gerry Burnside’s daughter, Tabby had become a pariah to everyone who had lost a relative or been injured in any way by that car crash.

On the day of that enquiry Tabby had finally grown up and it had been almost as cruel and life-changing an ordeal for her as the aftermath of that car accident. Even though the previous months had been a nightmare struggle for Tabby to get through, and she had had to borrow money from her aunt just to make that trip back to France, she had still been full of naive hopes and dreams of how Christien would react to the news that he was the father of her newborn baby boy.

But on the day of that official hearing, her dream castles had crumbled into dust. In the end she had not even got to tell Christien that she had given birth to his son, for she had baulked at making that announcement in front of an audience and he had refused her request for a moment’s privacy in which to talk.