Carrington Curphy’s Reviews > Pardonable Lies > Status Update

Should I really be that surprised about Ralph Lawton being alive?

“You look more like your aunt.”
A crippled gardener trying to save Ralph the pilot… who (the gardener) is secretly Pascale’s dad. Could the gardener be the brother of Priscilla? Who else would be the aunt that Maisie knows?

“You should allow yourself to indulge in this remembrance. When you face the past, all you will see is that which has gone before. So I have some advice: Let this be your turning point. Have done with it, and turn to face the future. Only then will the future rise up to meet you. Only then will the distress pass."

Maisie identified this as fear but could it also be a form of PTSD? The French memories are full of death and it’s panic and tears while preparing to go

“As she drove steadily back toward London, the rain glancing off the MG's windscreen, Maisie tried to recall if there had ever been another time in her work when she received two threats in one day and for the same reason: Ralph Lawton had loved another man.”

Ralph + Jeremy, the disabled politician championing got women’s rights, = deeper relationship ??

“Or read, which was of course her other distraction; the quest to learn, to expand her knowledge of the world without taking another step overseas. Perhaps that was why her meditation practice had suffered, for Maisie did not always like the message she heard when she was alone at the end of the day. It was a voice that spoke of her isolation and of her choosing not to move beyond the boundaries of those worlds”

“She could not help but be drawn by parallels in the two requests, one from a stranger and one from her dearest friend. One inspired by the other. Two men dead in France, two grieving relatives unable to rest, one of whom she loved dearly.”