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Must a promise be kept when the author of the secret is dead and gone?
Everything she would do in the next two months would be entirely of her own choosing.
She was turning a page. Agatha Christie, wife, was about to become Mary Miller, adventuress.
In her wildest dreams she had never imagined setting up home in a city in the middle of the desert. But where else could she go? Who else would take her in?
How is it, she thought, that one can create a character who is more intelligent, more observant, more perceptive than oneself?
The shot had caught the tension in her. She looked like a cornered animal. And he was looking straight at her, not at the camera.
If there is a God, she thought, music must be his language. She closed her eyes to shut out all other distractions, breathing in the ancient, comforting scent of old churches, of polished wood, melting wax, and lingering incense. She had fallen into a sort of sleep when a voice behind her startled her back to the present.
“Well, I think that when you’re on holiday, you should do exactly as you please.”
‘When everything goes against you and you get to a point when it seems you can’t hang on a minute longer, never, never give up—for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.’”
She wondered if Nancy had felt as she had when she walked down the aisle: so excited, so in love, so naïvely optimistic. How long had it been before Nancy’s dreams were shattered? That marriage, it appeared, had crashed to earth even faster than her own.
“I’ve deliberately avoided making plans because it’s quite exciting not knowing where each day might take me.”
She casts a spell on you, and before you know it, you’ve become her slave. Be careful of that, won’t you . . .
She couldn’t go back to hemlines and handbags and hats. Not when she was making her mark in a man’s world. A world of lost kingdoms and buried treasure. Living like a man was what she loved, what she craved.
Suddenly, her old life in England seemed very small, very insignificant. This was what she had dreamed of. Here, in this barren landscape, she was truly away from everything—with the silent morning air, the rising sun, the sand for a seat, and the taste of sausages and tea.
“Marriage is always a leap into the unknown, even if you think you know the other person inside out. It works for some people. But I doubt there are many truly happy marriages.”
The trouble with still, peaceful places was that they allowed all manner of uninvited thoughts to push their way inside your head.
“Abraham was a moon worshipper before he was told to leave Ur and worship Jehovah instead,” he said as they climbed high over the desert. “The moon god was the principal deity all over Arabia—his legacy still exists in the crescent moon symbol of Islam.”
“It’s not easy to believe in anything when your whole world turns upside down. The main thing is to keep believing in yourself.”
Trust the train, mademoiselle, for it is le bon dieu who drives it . . .
For the train, like life, must go on until it reaches its destination. You might not always like what you see out of the window, but if you pull down the blind, you will miss the beauty as well as the ugliness.
