The Last Will And Testament Of Daphné Le Marche

‘No,’ snapped Celeste. She had tried to call her father numerous times to learn of the funeral plans, but Robert wasn’t answering his phone.

‘You will let me know?’ Paul asked, sounding very formal, and Celeste hated him for a moment.

‘Perhaps,’ she said and ended the call.

She then scrolled through her phone until she found a number that made her smile.

After dialling, she waited. He would always answer her calls.

‘Hello.’ His voice sounded wary.

‘It’s Celeste,’ she said in her most seductive tone.

‘I know, your number came up on my phone.’

This wasn’t quite the greeting she had hoped for. She had left Charles for Paul and had ignored his calls and heartache for a year. Surely he wasn’t over her yet? She needed to let Paul know she also had a life outside of her bed.

‘Did you want to get a drink?’ she asked, running her finger over the rim of the wine glass.

‘No thank you, I have plans,’ Charles said.

Celeste believed him. She knew he wasn’t playing games; that was her job.

‘Are you seeing someone?’ she asked softly.

‘I’m engaged,’ came the reply.

Celeste sighed. Charles was a good man, which was why she had left him for Paul. She had terrible taste in men, Matilde had once said, not that she was the greatest connoisseur either.

‘Felicitations,’ she said and then ended the call with no further promises.

She leaned back in the chair and lifted up her long blonde hair so it spilled over the black leather.

She had dressed for Paul just the way he liked, in a black chiffon cocktail dress and no lingerie. The dress was short enough to show off her endless legs and plunged to take advantage of her décolletage.

God, men were so easy to amuse, she thought, as she kicked off her heels and then stood up, and peeled off her dress and walked naked to her room.

Pulling on sweatpants and an old T-shirt that was fraying at the edges but softer than what she imagined clouds would feel like, she went back to her chair, collecting the bottle of wine on her way through. Celeste could have been a model if she had been prepared to work hard enough, attending the castings and doing prestigious jobs for little money to build up her portfolio, but she didn’t want to work that hard, and her first two years after leaving Allemagne were spent in Amsterdam, where she got stoned every day and worked in a café, trying to recover from her schooling experience.

Her head began to hurt, so she took two of her extra strong painkillers and put her music player into speakers. Soon the soft sounds of Marvin Gaye singing accompanied her as she poured herself more wine.

She needed to do something about Paul, but she didn’t have the energy for it now.

Marvin was asking her to dance and Celeste needed to move. She felt her feet tapping and then her head bob and soon her hips moved with the rhythm. Closing her eyes, she turned up the music, put down her wine and gave her evening to Marvin, the only man who had never let her down.

Tomorrow could wait, she decided and she wondered what, if anything, was going to change now that Grand-Mère was gone.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_4d759f13-59df-563b-9477-a6d663360cf8)

Billie, Melbourne

The laboratory was empty when Billie March arrived at work. She turned on the lights and breathed in the cleanliness, and then put her bag away. After donning her white coat, she shoved her phone into her pocket and placed ear buds into her ears and turned on the music.

This was her favourite time of day—when her co-workers were exhausted at the end of the week and they struggled into work one by one, talking about their plans for the weekend.

Billie wouldn’t have a weekend if she could help it, but this weekend she had promised to help her mother and stepfather move into their new house.

Marvin Gaye sang about his Inner City Blues, which had seemed appropriate on the tram ride to the university, but now she needed something other than her father’s favourite singer and she settled on Florence and the Machine.

She moved through the scheduled work, testing new deodorants, and then onto a brand of soap powder that claimed to reduce all stains.

The sound of the door clicked and Nick Miller walked into the laboratory.

‘Morning, Billie,’ he said cheerfully. He was still wearing his bicycle helmet and had one leg of his jeans tucked into an unevenly pink-coloured sock, but neither of these facts took away from his happy face.

Billie smiled at him. ‘You look cheerful,’ she said. Nick was her work crush. He was what made it lovely to come in every day. With his good looks and his pleasant banter, she couldn’t wait to see him each day.

‘I got every green light on the ride to work today, do you know the odds of that happening?’

‘I have no idea but I’m sure you can work it out,’ she said, as she went back to her soap powder paste, which she was smearing on lipstick-stained cloth.

Nick had put away his knapsack and taken off his helmet and was walking back to Billie when she pointed down at his sock.

‘Untuck,’ she said.

‘Gee, thanks, Bill,’ he said gratefully.

When Nick had first starting working at the lab, his forgetfulness became an office joke and once, when Billie had taken a rare sick day, Nick had worn his helmet all morning, including in a meeting, and no one had told him because they thought it was so hilarious.

Nick had said it was funny also, but Billie saw the flash of shame on his face when he was teased and she took it upon herself to socialise him, or at least remind him to take off his helmet and untuck his jeans from his socks. Then they began to know each other more and Billie’s friendliness turned into friendship, and then a crush.

Not that she would do anything about it. Billie was as awkward around men as she was around make-up and fashion.

‘You’re in early,’ he said glancing up at the clock. ‘I wouldn’t have got here so fast if it weren’t for the green lights.’

‘I need to leave early to help my mum move house,’ said Billie, ‘so I thought I’d get a head start. God knows it’s going to be a bloody disaster with the amount of stuff Mum has hoarded over the years. The woman finds it impossible to throw out anything.’

‘I’m the same,’ said Nick with a sigh. ‘Thankfully, I live alone, so I don’t have to worry about anyone throwing anything out.’

At thirty-three, Nick was the epitome of a nerd bachelor, living in his little house in Northcote, where he would heat up something frozen for dinner and watch documentaries and reruns of QI for a little light relief—he liked to regale Billie with the highlights of Stephen Fry’s humour.

She knew some people in the lab thought him odd, even weird, but Billie saw through that and noticed his handsome face, and his patience in explaining things to others or when they teased him.

Billie often wondered if he even thought about women, but he hadn’t even tried to ask her out on a date, so she presumed it was safe to say he just wasn’t interested in women at all.

Not that Billie had pretentions about herself, but as a rare female in a science laboratory, who was pretty and had a slight resemblance to a popular character from Game of Thrones, she was nerd candy. Everyone, from the lab technicians to the top scientists, had asked her out, and even some of the married ones gave her the eye. It was exhausting, but slowly they realised she wasn’t there to play, she was there to work.

She glanced at Nick as he pulled on his white coat. He had a slim, well-built frame from bike riding, and his pants sat extremely well on his hips. She always looked at the way a man’s pants sat on his hips. They needed to hang, not cling and for a moment she wondered what was under his pants and then admonished herself for thinking in such a base manner.